This site is my effort to bring a sample of my Writing to cyberspace
Part One
of FIVE
Angela Dodge was a very analytical person. Her belief system was
based in scientific fact and if the intangible was not readily
explained she dismissed it as fantasy. For this reason when her boss
at the Beaufort Herald asked for volunteers for a new expose piece,
she jumped at the opportunity when everyone else blanched.
The assignment was a simple one. Stay in the old mansion known as "The
Castle" down on Federal Street for just one night. Then write about
the experience. Having grown up in the old coastal cotton town, Angela
had heard the stories all throughout her youth, but her mind refused
the idea of the place being haunted.
She stood outside the rusty iron gate courtyard studying the old
facade with her sleeping bag tucked under one arm and her journal and
flashlight tucked under the other. The wealthy doctor's name who had
built the mansion in pre Civil War days escaped her mind, so she made
a mental note to do some historic research in the morning when she got
home.
What she did know was that the home was occupied and used as a Civil
War hospital by Union soldiers in the late 1800's. Now, as she stood
before the looming edifice, she felt as though she had stepped back
into that time. Behind a moss covered oak the mansions columned three
story front seemed to radiate history as if it possessed a
personality of it's own. Huge shuddered French windows, dusty from
decades of neglect, overlooked the overgrown courtyard.
The setting sun mottled the front of the Greek-style building through
the oak and palmetto trees in waning blood like colored light. Despite
her skeptic attitude, she could not help but shudder as she stepped
onto the cobbled walkway leading into the front yard.
Almost on cue a gust of wind blew off the Beaufort river and across
the mansion grounds into her face as if warning her not to approach
the house. Angela did not know if the sprouting goose pimples upon her
skin were from the chill wind or the growing pit of fear within her
stomach.
"C'mon Angela," she mumbled to herself trying to gather her composure,
"get yourself together girl. Nothing to fear but fear itself." Her
words came to her ears without much confidence, doing little to dispel
her growing anxiety.
As she admonished herself for being so jittery, Angela scanned the
darkened windows as she reached the wide wooden steps leading up to
the second story porch on the front of the house. When she stepped
onto the first step, another chill gust of wind, carrying the stink of
low tide, almost knocked Angela off her feet. As she reached for the
wooden rail to regain her balance she thought she spied a little girl
looking down on her from the third floor balcony. A second glance
revealed no one there.
"I must be getting spooked," she nervously laughed to herself and
ascended the stairs carefully stepping over rotted planks and holes.
At the top she came to a double oak door that stingily held onto a
last few flecks of time worn paint. The door slowly opened with a loud
creek as Angela crossed the weathered porch's deck boards.
"That's odd," she mumbled slightly unnerved, "must be the wind," she
dismissed the incident as timely chance. Angela cautiously stepped
inside "The Castle" and began the only night she would spend in
the most haunted house in the Southern United States.