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The House on the Frontier
#WritcoStoryPrompt41
The mirror loomed over them as they traversed the hallways of the abandoned mansion. It was rumoured that no one came out alive from it...only silence endured in that place, and the echoes of the past foretold the tidings of his future.
The old lathe and plaster house had sat on the western edge of that forgotten town for time immemorial. Both the dwelling and the village itself were long forgotten relics from a time when even the most detailed of records were nothing more than colourful hyperbole. Knowledge of the forsaken town is scarce even in circles where such knowledge remains cherished and well tended. For all intents and purposes, that remote place and its opaque history has long since passed from all living memory. Abandoned at some distant point during the tumultuous birth of the nation, eccentric scholars assumed that the town may have served in some ancillary capacity during the war, in which war no one knew. No one could say. Such things are mere speculation as there were no documents pertaining to the settlement in any archive, on any map or land registry from those tumultuous times. Government land surveying expeditions completed during the early eras failed to note the township or any of the natural landmarks in the region. It was as if the place had never existed at all.
The few buildings that constituted the town proper stood as hollow guardians to some secret past, barring trespass to regions beyond this distant country. This was a place that remained perpetually still, a place where no wind danced and rustled through the leaves. Where no sparrows chirped amongst the boughs. This was a place bereft of the natural order of things. Whoever had built the place had chosen a remote and arid scrap of land, far removed from any conventional trappings or comforts of civilised society. The architecture and design, if this amalgamation of clapboard and shake were to be classified as such, was an eclectic mix of frontier utilitarianism and old world sentiment. The entire construction was hard on the eyes of a civilised man, but practical in every aspect. Old world gothic and frontier ruggedness formed an odd pairing out here on the fringe of the frontier wild.
Those with knowledge of this place and its existence assumed that they had built it on the rim of the frontier to serve as a waystation or supply depot to those headed west in the wilds. Built before the railroads and before the charge of the iron horses into the frontier where they broke the west and revolutionized the world. The town stood, as it had, unnoticed by the influence of man. Throughout all the various uprisings and conflagrations that consume and preoccupy the idle interests of power, it had remained unsullied. No roads passed through the place, no rail lines had ever served it, and no map had ever marked it.
To venture out to this remote and desolate region was an exercise in antiquarian detective work of a peculiar sort. Myth, legend and strange folklore lent a hand to those foolhardy souls seeking such a place. To this day the reason behind the construction of such a settlement, its purpose, its location or its founders have eluded all inquiry. And the myriad endeavours to search out its origins and its dim history have ended in even more questions.There was no mention of the town anywhere in regional archives. None of the hardscrabble locals had any knowledge of the place or its founding in all of their odd folk history. Its purpose was a complete enigma, and if there ever was a record of its utility, that knowledge is gone, lost to whatever remote things obscure fact and logic.
No record of the...
The mirror loomed over them as they traversed the hallways of the abandoned mansion. It was rumoured that no one came out alive from it...only silence endured in that place, and the echoes of the past foretold the tidings of his future.
The old lathe and plaster house had sat on the western edge of that forgotten town for time immemorial. Both the dwelling and the village itself were long forgotten relics from a time when even the most detailed of records were nothing more than colourful hyperbole. Knowledge of the forsaken town is scarce even in circles where such knowledge remains cherished and well tended. For all intents and purposes, that remote place and its opaque history has long since passed from all living memory. Abandoned at some distant point during the tumultuous birth of the nation, eccentric scholars assumed that the town may have served in some ancillary capacity during the war, in which war no one knew. No one could say. Such things are mere speculation as there were no documents pertaining to the settlement in any archive, on any map or land registry from those tumultuous times. Government land surveying expeditions completed during the early eras failed to note the township or any of the natural landmarks in the region. It was as if the place had never existed at all.
The few buildings that constituted the town proper stood as hollow guardians to some secret past, barring trespass to regions beyond this distant country. This was a place that remained perpetually still, a place where no wind danced and rustled through the leaves. Where no sparrows chirped amongst the boughs. This was a place bereft of the natural order of things. Whoever had built the place had chosen a remote and arid scrap of land, far removed from any conventional trappings or comforts of civilised society. The architecture and design, if this amalgamation of clapboard and shake were to be classified as such, was an eclectic mix of frontier utilitarianism and old world sentiment. The entire construction was hard on the eyes of a civilised man, but practical in every aspect. Old world gothic and frontier ruggedness formed an odd pairing out here on the fringe of the frontier wild.
Those with knowledge of this place and its existence assumed that they had built it on the rim of the frontier to serve as a waystation or supply depot to those headed west in the wilds. Built before the railroads and before the charge of the iron horses into the frontier where they broke the west and revolutionized the world. The town stood, as it had, unnoticed by the influence of man. Throughout all the various uprisings and conflagrations that consume and preoccupy the idle interests of power, it had remained unsullied. No roads passed through the place, no rail lines had ever served it, and no map had ever marked it.
To venture out to this remote and desolate region was an exercise in antiquarian detective work of a peculiar sort. Myth, legend and strange folklore lent a hand to those foolhardy souls seeking such a place. To this day the reason behind the construction of such a settlement, its purpose, its location or its founders have eluded all inquiry. And the myriad endeavours to search out its origins and its dim history have ended in even more questions.There was no mention of the town anywhere in regional archives. None of the hardscrabble locals had any knowledge of the place or its founding in all of their odd folk history. Its purpose was a complete enigma, and if there ever was a record of its utility, that knowledge is gone, lost to whatever remote things obscure fact and logic.
No record of the...
