Chapter 2 The Mystery of An Old Mansion

At present time on one morning of the autumn season:

‘It wasn’t unlocked.’

Sonya Duville inhaled deeply as she found a wooden gate behind her family house’s backyard was unlocked.

‘It’s time for me to explore that abandoned mansion while I am taking a morning walk. I hope Auntie Caroline is still sleeping in her room!’

She decided to take a morning walk through the path in front of her. It was a small path from red stones where along both sides, some willow trees, some medium-height pine trees, and bluebell plants were growing shadily.

‘It was five-thirty in the morning.’ Sonya sighed. 

Her ears were catching the sound of chirping birds on some pine and willow branches to welcome a new day. 

‘Lord of the Day on Earth just appeared to show his sunny and reddish throne!’

‘It’s so peaceful here!’

She took some long deep inhales and put as much fresh oxygen from the fantastic morning into her lungs as she traced the path.

‘All I need is time to contemplate and restructure my life! I think this village will be a good place for me to reside.’

She stretched out and continued to walk again.

In the middle of her paces, she stopped walking, rubbing her back neck as she felt a bit shivering. 

She scattered her sight to her surroundings as she pondered that her eyes had caught slightly a shadow of something sneaking so fast behind her. Sonya turned around and found nobody was there.

She took a deep breath to become a bit relaxed.

‘I’ve been a little bit paranoid lately!’

She thought and folded her two arms forward.

‘I thought something was following. Glad it was only my overrated unstable emotion.’ 

Pulling up the collar of the jogging sweater that she wore as the breeze was quite chilling.

The ambiance in her surroundings was tranquil, far away from the crowded noises of the big city where she used to live. The natural voice of some birds chirping, and water streaming of a brook nearby sounded babbling. 

Suddenly, she heard something, a creature was grunting and panting near the streaming brook as she walked through. 

Sonya halted her steps and tried to listen carefully. 

‘What’s that?’ she encouraged herself to find out.

The wind was blowing and it dispensed the rancid gore scent from a nearby place into her nose.

Sonya stepped carefully as she avoided making any sounds, stepping away from any piles of dried leaves and old branches or twigs on the ground. She strolled down some hedge plants to approach the brook.

‘Are those stains of blood?’ she thought in her silence at that time her eyes were capturing some reddish substance scattering on the ground in front of her. She felt a bit suspicious and her mind started to run some scenarios of what had happened in front of her place. She followed the blood marks and the sounds of panting, granting had vanished.

“It is a private land belonging to my big family. My ancestors had bought the land from a rich merchant family before they either moved away to another state or could flee to another country. That rich merchant family should sell their wealth because the market was getting worse at that time”.  Sonya talked to herself to make herself calmer.

‘It should be a predator that killed its prey!’ Sonya sighed and kept walking to follow the blood traces. 

‘My gosh!’ She covered her mouth with a hand. What she saw was quite a nasty sight. It was a fox with a cracked opened abrasion on its neck.      

‘What did kill that poor fox?’ She began to become anxious and curious. Approaching the dead body of the fox that was positioned near the side of the brook, she found out that something had sucked all the blood that carcass had.

Her legs reached out to the carcass and pulled it near to her as she felt a little bit sickened with the form of its biting-off cut.

‘Was that a bear, a wolf?’ She sighed. ‘Impossible. It’s private land. I am sure no wild beast is living in this area.’ She started questioning. ‘But what did this to the carcass?’ She disseminated her sight to the surroundings, otherwise, she only caught the sound of streaming water, some birds chirping and nothing looked weird.

In a few seconds, Sonya thought what she would do with the carcass and then, decided to bury it. She sighed and her eyes caught an old shovel that was put into the ground, under an old willow, not far from her. 

‘Perhaps, the gardener has left it!’ Sonya tugged the shovel and started to dig a hole in the ground to bury the dead body of the fox.

She was washing her hands in the streaming brook when she found a steam of withered white rose passing through in the water flow.

‘Where is this withered rose coming from?’

She wondered where the white rose probably came from. 

She picked up the rose and got up from her kneeling position. 

‘Did it come from that mansion?’

Sonya’s memory flashed into her childhood.

She saw that old mansion behind the fence of her family’s property. It was only separated by a small path. 

It was an ivory-coloured mansion with some rambling plants.

‘Granny often warned me not to visit that old mansion. She always said that the mansion once was owned by a rich and arrogant merchant family. Whenever I asked Granny why she didn’t allow me to visit that mansion, she answered that the mansion had been aged and never renovated. She was afraid of something bad happening when I played around that place!’

Sonya gazed at the mansion from her place.

‘It looks elegant, mysterious and spooky!’

‘When I was ten years old, perhaps I would obey that warning although the mysterious façade of that old mansion kept my curiosity to find out more about it. Now, I am a grown-up woman! No one could warn me to investigate it.’

She was drawn to follow the path along the brookside and stopped near the small brick bridge with its old red wall that separated the land from the old mansion.

She checked the padlock of the gate.

‘It was unlocked!’ She whispered. 

After breathing deeply, her curiosity enormously draped her mind to uncover the mansion’s mystery.

The cracking sound of an old gate was horrendous, Sonya paused and reached her eyes out from what existed behind the slightly opened gate. Her heart was beating faster and she almost caught its sounds in her ears. She closed her eyes and encouraged herself.

‘Everything will be fine!’

She got startled at the time she was about to step into the entrance path of the old mansion, a big crow perched on the wall.

‘Which direction that the crow did hover?’

Sonya inhaled and looked at the crow that just appeared.

The crow was cawing on the top place where she was standing still.

‘I see something magical from that crow’s stare. Did it try to say something to me?’

Sonya was nervous as she looked into the crow’s eyes. It was staring at her. 

She encouraged herself to walk into the entrance path.

She paused her strides, turning her head around and finding the crow was still perching on the gate wall, as its pair of black eyes kept staring at her. 

Sonya still held the stem of a withered white rose that she found floating in the brook. The wind started to blow chilling.

‘What the mystery it is keeping for years.’

She fixed some hair strands from covering her eyes as the breeze kept blowing further to bestow some biting sensations on the bones than it was before. 

She stopped walking, turning around and seeing Lassie, the family’s dog running to approach her. 

The dog seemed not to be brave enough to step out from the gate and even to bark. He was only sitting in the front of the gate and kept staring at her. The same thing as the crow did.

“Be quiet Lassie!”

She put her finger on her lips as a code to ask for the German shepherd dog not to bark. 

The mansion had an archway gate with the old brick wall but there was no door. Some of the bricks were broken and made a big hole in the way Sonya could sneak through it. 

Sonya stood in front of the archway gate. She could see some piles of dried leaves in its front yard.

The mansion’s front door was closed with some rambling plants covering its handle. The wall was covered with mosses as it had been aged. The smell of dumpy, rotten plants or probably dead rats or any dead animals made Sonya decide to not continue investigating the mansion in front of her. 

‘It smelled so rotten. I couldn’t stand for it!’

Sonya closed her mouth and nose with her hand.

Further, she listened to a woman shout her name. 

‘It must be my auntie, Caroline!’ Sonya turned around and rushed to return to the gate of her family’s property land. She tried to lock the padlock but it seemed that it had broken because of corrosion. 

“Come on Lassie!” She yanked the necklace of the dog to run with her. She found that the crow had hovered away as it disappeared from her sight since she closed the gate. 

She walked a few steps before she heard something growling and the breeze blew harshly behind her. She turned her head and watched the mansion. It was so gloomy, dark, aged, and timely worn. 

She sighed and Lassie was running ahead. His barking voice made Sonya return to her realm. 

“Okay. I am coming with you!” She said as she found the dog sitting ahead and waiting for her to approach.

Lassie walked with Sonya but she could see some fear in that dog’s eyes as he frequently stopped just to turn his head back, directing his sight to the mansion. He woofed softly and looked at Sonya.

Without saying any words, Sonya put him into her arms and carried him away.

Sonya saw Auntie Caroline waiting behind the wooden gate of the family backyard. She looked quite worried in her waiting for Sonya but, finally, she made a big smile on her lips when she saw Sonya approaching with Lassie in her arms.

Auntie Caroline was a woman who hit her sixties with grey hair in a bun. She couldn’t see clearly since she had a cataract on her left sight. She was a widow of a local writer, Mr. Hengelbert who died more than a decade ago because of mysterious syndrome. 

“What a wonderful morning, Auntie!” Sonya smiled and put down Lassie on the ground as she closed the gate.

Auntie Caroline sighed.

“I hope you don’t visit the mansion anymore as you used to be so curious about it! Mother always warned me to keep an eye on you for doing that!”

Sonya nodded and caressed the neck of Lassie as they were walking into the house. 

Before she walked into the yard of her family house, Sonya threw the withered rose out from the gate and rushed to follow the steps of Auntie Caroline and the wiggled tail dog, Lassie who couldn’t stop barking as he tried to tell something to Auntie Caroline.