The Haunting of Mary King's Close (No longer writing)

BOOK TWO: Prologue

For nearly forty years, Mary King's Close rested vacant. Many people knew of the whispers that echoed off the walls and stirred the air, but few knew the real desperation that filled the forty year old cries. Rumours skidded around inside the minds of Edinburgh but imagination could not come near to the truth. Every day, people passed by the entrance. Most stayed away and pinched their noses within smelling distance.

For nearly forty years, winter brought down its torment upon the bricks, the buds of spring carried pouring rain underneath its wing, summer pelted beating rays down upon the Close's back and autumn covered it in a blanket of crunchy, copper toned leaves.

For nearly forty years, the sun rose in the morning to hammer truth into each living mind that wondered past the decaying wood and set in the evening to cover the horrid measures.

For several tearful years, people remembered the ghastly dealings that brought misery upon the residents of Mary King's Close.  Mourners crossed over the Close and whispered parts of Holy prayers into their shaking hands. They prayed for those they knew, for those they didn't and for each soul that climbed their way to Heaven.

The plaque shifted into the supple soil and buried itself for secrecy. The stone's sharp lines faded, by unsympathetic weather, to present a far resemblance to the words that used to be.  The previously sharpened corners were smoothed into round mounds as Death pressed itself upon the facade of the previously glorious Mary King's Close.

But slowly, very slowly people began to forget about the despair that captured the walls and took hold in each home. The people of Edinburgh were weaned away from the Close's enchanting opening and let the Close slip into the cities' mundane scenery.  The forgetting started with the toddlers who were frightened by the smell and cried every time they saw the entrance claiming to hear things moving.  After the toddlers, the adults lost interest and simply skipped by the Close without thinking one thought and only focusing on their lives. Eventually the disregarding reached the older generations that remembered everything else.

Life carried on throughout all the deaths that drifted into the background of history. For nearly forty years, men and women married, had children, watched as the children turned to adults and finally watched as they tied the knot.  Life moved on in Edinburgh.

But the dead were more reluctant to act like the living mirrors.