Dark Winter Tales: a collection of horror short stories. Paul Finch

throughout was sombre and old-fashioned. The rooms were tall with elaborate, hand-painted cornicing around their ceilings, but there were heavy curtains drawn everywhere, which made the interior dim to the point where it was almost difficult to find one’s way around. Carpets and rugs, many threadbare and frayed, muffled all sound as Don and Berni entered the lounge. There was scarcely a peep from the outside world. The windows, which were double-glazed, were presumably closed and locked. The walls of this house were very thick, and then of course there was the tree-filled garden encircling it, and the high wall surrounding the garden.

      Thanks to the radiator in each room, the house was warm, as Helga had said, but it felt stuffy and lived-in. The air smelled stale. Berni gazed at her reflection in the large mirror hanging over the stone fireplace; because of its deeply tarnished glass, only a fogged spectre gazed back. When she ran a fingertip along the top of the mantel, it drew a visible trail. Don made no comment when she mentioned this. Instead, he grabbed their two holdalls – his blue/grey in colour, hers covered with pink flower patterns – and took them up the steep, creaking staircase to the first floor.

      Berni glanced around, irritated as always by the steady process of neglect that continued to reduce her husband’s nest egg to a pathetic shadow of what it once must have been. Upstairs, she heard the strident tones of Don’s mother as she berated him for not getting here sooner.