The Manor

• Evelyn Crowley, Grade 10
• Short Story
• 2022

The Manor was barren. The air lay stale. The Lord, his Lady and their guests had left, their things forgotten; strewn across the floor and the door lay open. The crimson carpets, once gingerly laid out by the serfs along the hallways had greyed. The residents had been gone from The Manor for so long that the memories of it may have been washed away with time had they not been so disquieting. Had their last memories of The Manor not stained the old, peaceful ones, then they would have kept the desire to leave their memories as they were. The residents would have remained the way they lay before The Monster came.
The Monster was not large nor small, was not beautiful nor beastly, not light nor dark, but could hide in either, not man nor woman, or nothing between. It didn’t feel warm nor cool, cultivating into the antithesis of both everything and nothing. Its presence was lacking, at first, it hid behind the curtains, underneath the beds and in the large oak armoires of the dressing rooms, rustling in with the old newspapers and forming bulk in hollow clothes. It weaselled itself into the cracks of doubt that formed in the residents, and they only grew from there, out of fear of one another and The Monster that haunted the halls.
The residents worked out of fear, but the children of The Manor were unafraid, they ran the halls, wreaking havoc and smearing their happiness across The Manor. The residents remained unaffected by the children’s infections and instead boiled in their own broth of flight. With their growing fear, The Monster’s confidence did the same. It began walking the halls with the residents, always just out of sight and reach, but always heard. Its presence was effervescent, heating through over long hours like a pig rolling on a spit. It would creep up on them, tapping on the recently hunched shoulders of the residents, scratching the walls as they slept like rats that would scramble for heat in the winter, chasing them out of their comfort as they lay on their beds in the morning before forcing them out into the cold. And so, the residents ran. They stole their children from their glee while they slept to keep their screams silent and left The Manor as it was. Their home had a blanket of ivy, the decay of The Manor obscured through the green and the new.
The Monster released The Manor from its hold once the residents left. It had no use for it, for The Monster had already spread its fear. So, The Manor sat, isolated in its blight of loneliness.