Page 1 of Whispers of Shadowbrook House

The rolling River Hamble weaves through land grown thick with trees. Old houses of all origins and sizes hug riverbanks, sinking their feet into the earth and its history even as the world looks forward toward the coming century.

In a crumbling manor of red brick, a lonesome man clings to the memory of all those he’s lost. Whispers echo through walls and down staircases, voices of the dead clinging to this ruin of a house that once was a home.

Clenching his teeth against the murmurs, he nevertheless breathes in the sound with all his senses, desperate to keep any connection with those who have deserted him in life as well as in death.

The old man grips most fiercely to the child who remains. Fingers clamped as tightly as jaw and heart, he cannot allow himself any release, for he knows to relax his hold would be to lose the only person left he might still—in his flawed, desperate way—-remember how to love.