Haunted

The house was old and I loved it from the first moment I saw it. It was of Victorian design, and all three stories of it leaned slightly to the south, like an old man huddled over a fire on a cold day. Janine Harold had called it 'the blue house', but what little you could see of the paint beneath the ivy was peeling and had long since faded to grey. Dusty, moth eaten curtains hung wearily in the large windows, and combined with the overgrown hedges skirting the fence and the large oak tree that obscured most the house from the street, it gave the house a feeling of impenetrable solitude.
The little iron gate squeaked as I pushed it open, a sound somewhere between heartache and a slow smile. Silence hung low in the yard, swirling idly about the empty bottles, balls and broken things that it had collected over the years from opprobrious neighbors. It was like stepping out of reality into the realm of forgotten and overlooked treasures, and I felt neither wanted nor unwelcome- I was just another lost thing that had found my way to the place where all lost things go.

I heard Janine's car purr to a stop just beyond the hedge. I sighed, and tried to look at the house as I thought she might. I couldn't get far enough out of my head. I turned to watch her pick her way across the yard in her heels, jamming my hands into my sweater's pocket. She looked up and gave me a tight lipped smile. I imagine she was trying to appear friendly and eager, but a blind man would have been able to see how uncomfortable she was. A plump, smartly dressed woman in the shady end of a seedy town.
"Good morning, Miss Brunning!" her voice was so overly sweet it almost hurt as she extended a hand towards me.
I barely touched her hand before she whisked it away.
"So, this is the house! Its a...bit of a fixer-upper, I suppose." she gestured to the front door and "For the life of me, I don't know why your mother never did anything with it. She refused to sell the place, but as far as I know, she hadn't gone past the front gate in over a decade before she died."
I followed her onto the front porch and watched as she fumbled with the keys and the front door.
"I can't imagine a woman like my mother had much interest in a house like this." I offered quietly.
Janine shot me a strange look "She...She said that it had been her mother's house. They used to come here for the summers when she was little. Fond childhood memories, I suppose."
She finally convinced the door to open, and stood to the side so I could enter.
"Your grandmother had the place re-wired for electricity and fixed up the plumbing. The heat is all gas, you can find the tank in the back. I believe your mother kept it full, just in case."
I stepped inside and flicked the old light switch to the side of the door. The light-an old chandelier with regular 100 watt light bulbs screwed into it- flickered on, illuminating the entry way. The walls were the shade of yellow that could once have been white, a long time ago, and the hardwood floor was carpeted with dust. Janine stepped in behind me, leaving the door ajar, and moved to stand by the stairs.
"The door to the left leads to the parlour, the other leads to the old library. If you follow the hallway, it leads back to the kitchen, dining room and office. A bathroom" She pointed as she spoke "There are stairs down to the cellar in the kitchen, I believe. The second floor is all bedrooms. One master bedroom, a nursery, and two smaller bedrooms. Two bathrooms. The third floor was all servant housing, I don't think anyone's done anything to change that since the place was built. Then there's the attic, of course."
I nodded, and pushed open the door to the parlour. It was smaller than I'd imagined it, but still large. The furniture was all draped with dust cloths. Portraits in oval frames hung on the walls, so covered in dust you could barely see them.