Darkness held sway in this part of the house; it seemed to be a solid mass that would forever forbid light to enter in. Along with the Darkness came its best friends Damp and Chill, both provided ample deterrents of their own to unwanted guests. Today there were new guests wandering the hallways above
The house was best described as being of cold stone, green with age the land around it seeming to feel the pressure of those accumulated years. The house stood a little alone, aged and almost forgotten. There had been people, there had been laughter but the last of the people were gone. It had been known by many names, each one given by the tenant that briefly stayed. Even those that stayed for what to them was an age were to the house were but passing fancies.
The gardens once immaculate and envied by many around were now forests of unkempt brush, bushes had become trees and wild trees had added their spawn to the growing tangle. None of the sunlit paths that had wound their merry ways around the grounds survived the onslaught of nature.
Of the nature that infested the grounds most of it was plant. The few rodents that strayed in seemed to stray straight back out again, the message was plain if you are not a plant it is unhealthy to reside within these lands. Other things were claimed to live if live were a word that could be applied to them. Rumour abounded of things that went bump in the night, but that surely was just the local gossip and derived from the long absence of residence.
The house currently bore the name of the Smithson Place. The name on the gate was unreadable, but trace memory within the village where it stood said that the Smithson name was the last family to live there. If this were the case such was the loss of time no one could actually be sure.
Built at a time when manors were common, it had once commanded and controlled at least the part of the village where it stood. Generations had lived and died there and few had found rest below.