Day 36: 13 December 2025

 Short Story -- Monkshood Manor: Part 8

After finishing her talk with Mr Drey, Teddy decided it was time for some manual labour. She walked to her room, changed into something that she wouldn't mind getting dirty and made her way to the Blue Room. 

'I'm going to need more clothes, since I'm staying,' Teddy thought to herself. 'And I should probably inform my landlord. But I also I need to hear what the will says.'

She made a detour, stopping at the telephone. She called Mr Reed and made an appointment to return the following day.

Opening the door to the Blue Room, Teddy immediately noticed it was chilly and dusty and dark. The air was heavy in the way air is when it hasn't seen the sun in ages. 

She crossed the room, threw back the heavy velvet drapes and flung open the shutters. The sunlight only exemplified how much dust there was as it danced through the air. 

Rolling up her sleeves, Teddy started pulling the sheets off of the furniture and folding them neatly into a pile. 

'I need some soapy water,' she said to herself.

'I thought you could use these,' Mr Drey's voice came from near the door. He was holding a bucket, several rags of various sizes, a feather duster and a broom. 

'Seriously,' Teddy asked aloud, 'How? How do you do that?'

'In this instance, the house alerted me to your purpose. I simply gathered what seemed necessary and brought them.' There was a hint of a smile in his voice. 

Soon both sofas, two arm chairs, a round table and it's four chairs and a side board had been uncovered. 

After wiping off the top of the side board, Teddy proceeded to look inside. On side was full of games. On the other side there was a medium sized box. 

Teddy took the box and went to the table (which had also been cleaned by this point). Gently lifting the lid, inside was an array of black and white photos: Lizzy at 10. Thomas at 7. Lizzy's first ball. Thomas in his Army uniform. Amy at 9. Mary at 12. Family photo by the lake. And on and on. Each photo had a neatly written caption in a fine hand on the back. 

'Who are Lizzy and Thomas and Amy and Mary?' Teddy wondered.  

As if in response, a sheet dropped from one of the frames on the wall and a book fell from the mantle. 

Going to examine the picture first, it was a family tree tracing back to the people who had built Monkshood Manor. According to it, the children in the photos had been the children of the couple that first built the manor. And picking up the book, Teddy noticed there wasn't a title on the spine. She gently opened it and realised it was a journal. She brought it back to the sofa with her and started reading: 

Dear Diary, 

I love our new house! Father says that we will be welcome here always. Us and our children (imagine!) and our children's children. He says that this house is a part of us now. It is in our blood and we are in its. What a strange turn of phrase! 

Of course, Amy and I began exploring immediately! Mary is too proper and Thomas is too young. He's just a baby up in the nursery still! 

One thing we noticed immediately is how beautifully furnished everything is! I do hope that Papa included some secret passages as well, but we've not found any yet. It'd be awfully fun if he did though! So we will keep looking. 

I have to go now, as dinner will be served soon, so Nanny will come to make sure we look presentable. 

Teddy wondered if the bit about blood had something to do with making the house sentient. Had the house always been sentient? And she was relatively certain now that the journal had belonged to Lizzy. 

Teddy looked around her. Firstly, she tried to imagine the young girl in the photo running around with her sister exploring their new home. 'Why had they moved?' Teddy wondered to herself. Secondly, she was quite pleased with how much cleaner the room looked now. 

She stood up and gathered the journal, box of photos and the sheets. She would drop the latter off in the kitchen, assuming that the laundry was near there. The journal and photos would come with her to her room. There she would clean up and get ready for dinner. 

As she reached the door, she turned around to surveille the room once more. She smiled. Until something caught her eye. 

She could swear that behind a group of trees not far from the windows she saw a flicker of movement. An extra shadow. 

She walked back over to the windows and peered out. The sun was starting to go down. She couldn't see anything now, but that didn't necessarily mean that something or someone hadn't been there or wasn't still, hidden by the large trees and their long shadows. She checked to make sure that the windows were secure and balanced everything she was carrying to close the drapes. 'Perhaps you can alert Mr Drey?' Teddy asked softly of the house. 

What she didn't see because the drapes were closed now was that a man did indeed step out from that group of trees and head off in the opposite direction of the drive or any of the walking paths glancing behind himself from time to time and sticking as much as possible to trees, bushes or shadows were he wouldn't be seen.