Last Trip down Memrie Lane

Chapter 1
Prologue

Prologue

There was a considerable amount of excitement in the village that year. Pumpkins were springing into season sooner than intended and remained ripe and plump for much longer than needed. The smell of apples drifted out from the nearby orchards to cling to shop windows and clothing wherever it landed. Turkeys were being prepped for thanksgiving, and the cool breeze on the air was not too cold and yet held no trace of that year’s summer.

It seemed as though when Autumn had officially struck the calendars, costume shops sprang up in numbers around the town. Yes, the town of Fawnside was one where holidays were treated with great reverence, and very few people in the town neglected celebrations. Halloween was next on the calendar and the days were counting down quickly but yet not quite fast enough.

Soon, children would be traveling door to door putting on their sweetest and most adorable faces for a few bits of candy, parties would run until November, and dentists would be smiling widely at their soon-to-be profits. But one place stood out in the town and its reputation was neither lost nor desired.

“Take a trip down Memrie Lane, on a night when moon does wane

And if you knock thrice at the door, you’ll be there forevermore”

Indeed, Memrie Lane had gotten a bit of a bad reputation from some strange and unsavory things which happened there many years before. The road stretched out Westward from the town and ended in a cul-de-sac , on which stood one large and lonely house. The massive Memrie Manor stood alone, dark and quiet at all times. Vines had grown over a few of its surfaces and the windows were never on at any time of day. But aside from its imposing demeanor and eerie visage when the sun set over the manor’s rightmost shoulder, there was nothing particularly sinister about it. The eeriness it had gained was the stories which had been told about it in the years.

In the late 1800’s, when the Memrie family had lived and thrived in the manor, a grand masquerade ball had been held there on a Halloween night when the moon was in its last stage of waning, the night before the new moon. A tiny sliver of silver light could be seen in the sky, shining down dimly on the many, many carriages parked along Memrie Lane, the whole of which had been bought by the family and renamed for them.

At that party all those years ago some odd things had happened. Nobody who would have remembered the actual accounts were alive to tell them anymore, but what was known was that at some point that night, a fight had broken out between Randolph Memrie (the owner of the house) and a young couple. The cause was unknown, but people had heard the sound of flint-lock pistols being fired, screaming, breaking, and cursing. But six of the party-goers were not seen again. Nor even were they ever seen leaving the manor. The stories had sprung up quickly that the victims had been buried under the floorboards or dumped in the nearby river. But no bodies were ever found. The only person who was accosted was Randolph Memrie, who said that he had shot a young man due to an insult towards Memrie’s wife. Still, no explanation could be found for the other victims.

And so the rumors had grown until the townsfolk would not approach the house on Halloween. Often kids would travel in the summer to sight-see the once-magnificent manor, but when Halloween approached, people steered clear, save for the few brave souls who would act out the Halloween chant to knock three times on the heavy oak front doors, only to immediately dart away in fright.

Nothing ever happened, of course. It was simply an old house with bad memories. But the chant was never forgotten or ignored, because Memrie Lane’s weird history was not forgotten, and a trip down Memrie Lane induced eye-rolling and laughing amongst the townspeople.

This year the large manor seemed to be destined to watch Halloween roll bye without its involvement. If only that had been true.