Chapter 1

If there was a beginning, it was the cough. Richard Darke remembered it distinctly. He was sitting in the TV room, the TV being off, with his feet up and crossed on the coffee table and he could hear a motorcycle engine revving up around the corner somewhere in the distance, and he looked out the window at the sound's general direction and thought to himself, 'it's starting to get dark now', which was not a simple determination because the afternoon was bleak and unviting, and a little chilly. Then suddenly the motorcycle was gone silent and he heard the cough, over his shoulder, just outside the door of the TV room, by the kitchen. The quite distinct sound of someone coughing. 'Uhmm-ah'. He turned to look over his shoulder into the gray of that room, but of course, as he already knew, there was no one there. Now, that caused a slight, somewhat eerie feeling to grow out from the nape of his neck and down his back, a cold numb sensation of something being out of sorts.

His eyes blinked and changed directions, from the doorway over his shoulder, to the far room, to the window, and back again to the doorway. He wasn't afraid, he just recognized in the back of his mind, 'well...that was definitely someone coughing'. And the more he thought on the matter, the more he realized that it was problematic. 'Somneone coughed, there is no one there to cough, someone coughed'. How does this compute? He pondered, and that was when the unease became more prevelant upon his mind, almost physically so.

Finally, he stepped up out of his chair and looked into the kitchen. He walked into the room and everything was dim and gray but there was nothing there. There was no sense at all of anything out of the normal. He shrugged his shoulders and turned back to the TV room. He stepped into the room and grabbed the remote to the TV and the weird sensation went away as he channel surfed.

With his left hand he scratched the side of his head and it wasn't until much later that he looked back and remembered that the cough was when everything started to get weird.

There was such sublteness to the disturbances that their frequency and kind are also a little muddled. But perhaps a week later, while sitting in the same chair, in front of the TV again, the door to the bedroom slammed, quite loudly. He turned his head again in that same fashion, looking over his shoulder out at the kitchen. He wasn't startled or scared, just aware that the bedroom door slammed and again no one was there. Wind? Na. A settling old house is capable of the spurious door slam? Well..yes indeed, that would explain it. So, not much to do.

Another week had gone by. Dick had gone to the Salvation Army store and had found an old picture frame for four dollars, a dark maple, primitive style that he quite liked. He took it home, and carefully loosed the back horseshoe shaped nails that held the horrible old print of a woodlands meadow scene in place. He removed the cheap old print, and carefully tapped out the glass plate in front of it. All Dick wanted was the frame. He would clean it with some wood soap and polish it with some furniture polish. Dick held the frame up to eye level and saw that it was in quite nice shape, and was a great find for four measly dollars. He stood in the living room and bent over to carefully lean the frame down on the floor, against the wall. He took the glass plate and then leaned that against the frame. Into the kitchen he went, to crumple up the old print and throw it away in the garbage bin.

Dick sat down in his chair in the backroom and put his feet up. He began to think of what work of art he would create to place in the frame. It was 20 x 14 inches, not too large, but beautiful dark wood. Young Dick had always loved to draw and had decent sets of both watercolors and acrylics. His mother had always been a creative person and had instilled in him the joy of expressing himself through arts of various forms. Wendy Tan, Dick's good friend from school, who lived down the street had taken Dick, or more properly, Mr. Tan had taken Wendy and Dick, to The Salvation Army store one afternoon to drop off some old goods that had belonged to Wendy's passed away Grandmother. The store was filled with the remants of other's lives; old glassware, old furniture, discarded toys, half-working stereos and kitchen appliances. Dick and Wendy wandered down the aisles fascinated by year 2001 Champagne glasses, sit-up machines, old telephones, and golfclubs. Then Dick noticed the far wall in the back, completely filled with a stack of old painting leaning on each other. While most of the art work was beaten, dreary, dime-store prints and copies of famous paintings, Dick immediately realized that the old picture frames were basically being given away. With some sanding and staining, young Dick had discovered a way to cheaply finish his art with fine frames.

Dick recalled his discovery of the frames, and thought of Wendy, and was somewhat proud of how clever he was, and how few people realized that his treasure source of frames was there for the picking. He thought that for this new frame, perhaps he would test the theory of his art teacher, Robert Blaine, that 'all colors are arbitrary'. 'Why should the sky be blue', thought Dick. 'Why should the grass be green'?

That was the second that Dick heard the crash in the living room. As if something had fallen, or been thrown. Dick jumped with a start and strove calmly into the front room and saw his frame and the glass shattered on the floor. Dick sunk into the living room couch, he placed his hands in front of his face, finger tips to finger tips. Something was wrong. Perhaps the frame and glass could have, what? Slid down the wall? Maybe. Would that shatter the glass? Of course. Would that break the frame? Na. No way. But the frame is broken. Dick blinked his eyes a number of times and then, for the first time, a supernatural answer crossed his mind. Ghosts. Of course, it was one of a number of ideas that he rifled through. A ghost could have thrown the frame down. A spirit? A Demon? Dick stared at the ceiling, sighed, and then went to get a broom and dustpan to clean up the mess.