Writing Assignment #2

Drip…drip…drip… It was raining- again. The house was a horror, to be sure. It was hardly a desired vacation destination. Oh yes, Jane was having a lovely winter holiday stuck inside of an old decrepit ‘mansion’ that could only be described as being perpetually dark, damp, and having a funny smell that no one had yet been able to name. She sat in an (of course) old, rickety armchair trying to absorb as much of the feeble gray light that strained through the windows to reach the cramped parlor as possible, glancing up once in a while from Jane Eyre (her namesake), to scan the lush green landscape outside.

Her attention returned to her book for a brief moment before her eyes flicked around the room again. A thin shaft of light illuminated tiny dust particles floating lazily through the air. The extent of Jane’s boredom was so great that she actually began counting them as they drifted past on their mission to blanket the entire interior of the house; ‘One…two…three…what was that?’

There was a movement, down by the floor. The edge of an ancient tapestry hanging from the wall was fluttering slightly. That tapestry looked as if it were near the end of its days. It barely clung to the dark wood of the wall and appeared threadbare even from across the room. The only part of it that was somewhat well-preserved was the bottom-right corner, still fluttering. There the image of a tiny stag in mid stride on a dark green background was still visible.

Setting her book down on a scratched mahogany drawing-table, Jane rose from her creaky armchair, stretched, and walked quietly across the room towards the tapestry to investigate. She studied the phenomenon for a moment, then crouched down near the corner of cloth and stuck her hand out. ‘This is just like Indiana Jones,’ she thought as she felt a weak stream of air blowing out from behind the tapestry. She ran her hands along the wall until she felt a thin seam in the wood where the air current came from. She pushed against the wall, it didn’t budge. She shoved against it again and heard a slight rattle from above and stood up. Pulling aside the ragged tapestry, a small swinging handle was revealed. ‘Right, that makes sense,’ she thought, and pulled open a narrow door.

Compared to the once grand furnishings of the rest of the house, the passageway leading on was surprisingly bare. The slanting walls were unfinished, the plaster left uncovered and rough, and a few fragments of the ceiling fell and settled themselves in Jane’s hair as she closed the door behind herself.

It seemed to go on forever, Jane couldn’t remember the house being this big…until at last she turned a corner and nearly died of a heart attack when she found herself face to face with Jonathan (never Jon, always Jonathan- or else he would completely ignore whomever it was that had made such an outrageous error), the ‘grounds-keeper’. He was a decent fellow, just a bit odd in some respects. He was tall, thin, and had wispy white hair that he covered with a floppy hat that was covered with the strangest assortment of little artifacts that he found aesthetically pleasing if no one else did.

Both of them were clutching their hearts and gasping for breath for a while before Jonathan asked; “What are you doing down here, Jane?”
Jane shrugged her shoulders and replied; “I don’t know, I was just bored out of my mind! What is this place supposed to be, anyway?”
Jonathan looked down and said; “Well I don’t know…you have plaster in your hair.” He then turned and walked quickly down the hall calling back; “Have a nice day, see you tomorrow.”

‘What,’ Jane thought; ‘How strange….why was he trying to change the subject?’ She shook her head and looked down at her watch, then realized that she’d been on her excursion for nearly an hour, and rushed off back the way she came.
When she made it back to the parlor, she carefully shut the door behind her and pulled the tapestry back into place, still puzzled by Jonathan’s odd (more so than usual) behavior. Just then her mother carefully opened the door to announce that dinner was nearly ready.

She looked at Jane for a moment and then asked; “Jane, why is your hair covered in bits of plaster?”