Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-26388043-20150510230355

I usually don’t… *sigh* maybe I’m not ready for this. I can’t remember. That’s what I told the police. It was… a wedding. Yes. My brother’s. We travelled to our parent’s old farmhouse, situated in the “monts d’aree”; sorry, that’s a region in the North of France, famous for the stunning views and its… huge expanses of forest. I was to get there first, ‘air’ the house, after it had been left by the previous tenants almost a year ago. Only three days, just those three nights, until my parents would arrive. The house is around 20 miles from civilisation, along a narrow road, I remember only being able to get to school in the snow via a hardly used footpath that lead only to the quaint little village of “Le Cloitre”. As you approach the driveway along the winding, crumbling road, there are two tall green trees in between which you need to navigate your car, without meaning to sound like I’m giving you directions for this place. Believe me. I am not. After straightening the little post, bearing the name of the house, “Le Foennec”, I got back in the car and approached the house. The gloom of the place hit me like a cool chill, as I crept up the gravel driveway that crunched beneath my tires. It was overgrown with weeds, and most of the gravel was sunken beneath the soil. The once pristine, trimmed plants that populated the gardens beside the driveway, had become a kind of decayed green, spotted with brown areas of mould and other undesirable substances. I parked and entered the house. That familiar scent of home, one feels only when returning to a place they lived a considerable stretch of life in, swept over me the second I walked through the door. That smell of pine, of family and of happy, cherished memories. It was the silence that put me on edge. My work, London, the constant noise. Sirens, car engines, trains…and the almost soothing whir of the computer fan or the quiet buzz of electricity was completely gone. There was no talking, or cars, or the familiar sound of company. In these situations, the mind tends to imagine its own sounds. Only when exposed to total silence, will the mind conjure up its own noises; as though to fill the gap? There was the wind quietly rattling and whistling at the windows, and the creaking an old farmhouse makes as its floorboards adjust to the colder temperatures. I was making my way upstairs when the air became polluted with a stench, foul like the putrid odour of meat left unrefrigerated for months. There were three doorways, one to the left, closed, another to the right, open, and a final door straight ahead, also shut. I inched forward holding my breath for fear of vomiting as a result of the now intoxicating smell. Flies buzzed on the other side of the door, and I swear I heard a voice. Only a murmur, a whisper. “…here”. I leaned closer, pressing my ear against the door near paralysed by shock, but all of my senses were immediately awakened “he’s…here”. I heard it clearly. A man’s whisper. Frozen outside the door, my mind was whirring. My brother? Had he got here early? There was no other car outside. Perhaps this was an elaborate prank? As a rational man, I was no more afraid of the voice; in fact the voice was a mere hallucination, caused by my first proper encounter with silence. I burst through the door and several flies flew right into my face, causing me to blink for a few seconds until I saw it. Right in the corner of the floor. A dead rat.  