The bricks on the house were as broken and crooked as the old owner's back had been when they found him. The papers said he'd fallen down the stairs and through the old floorboards, breaking his back on the way down and cracking his head on the concrete below. The small puddle of blood indicated that he'd been dead long before he fell. The bloating of his corpse suggested at least four days prior to the fall.
So the question the papers proposed was thus - was he pushed or had he died at the top of the stairs and gradually toppled down, the weight gained from the post-mortem gas buildup making him heavy enough to break the wooden flooring before his eventual resting place in the concrete foundations of the house? There wasn't much of an answer given by the police who dubbed it an accidental death, no suspects or witnesses or anything to suggest foul play.
It was left a small conspiracy column in the local papers, made into a "Who dunnit?" with weekly responses that slowly became wilder and less realistic as time went on. Nobody bothered to go into the house and check, unwilling to cause unwanted attention from the police and the resulting paperwork that took literal years to complete.
In their fervent attempts to study the house while trying to appear uncaring in case the police were observing in hiding, it was discovered that the house was changing in ways a house shouldn't be able to. The formerly deep grey roof tiles became a soft honey-yellow, the upper windows stained themselves baby blue and the deep red bricks became a gentle beige. This was, of course, contrasted by the way the house shifted and contorted to further resemble its former owner.
Nobody quite knew what to do when the windows blinked, they'd call it a trick of the light and walk faster to their own definitely-just-brick-and-wood homes. Not even the most seasoned postman wanted to hang around for too long, all claiming they'd been invited in by an old man's voice coming through the fluttering letterbox. They'd say they felt as though they were being eyed up like a turkey at Christmas and perhaps they weren't wrong.
It became known as Mr House and was cordoned off by the police accordingly. The potentially sentient was terrifying enough in a doll or a book, let alone a full three storey house and possibly everything inside it! No official statements were made about the house's new found life but the weekly column made subtle references to "a house that contains a great character", just in case the papers were still read by whatever claimed itself to be the inhabitant.
So the question the papers proposed was thus - was he pushed or had he died at the top of the stairs and gradually toppled down, the weight gained from the post-mortem gas buildup making him heavy enough to break the wooden flooring before his eventual resting place in the concrete foundations of the house? There wasn't much of an answer given by the police who dubbed it an accidental death, no suspects or witnesses or anything to suggest foul play.
It was left a small conspiracy column in the local papers, made into a "Who dunnit?" with weekly responses that slowly became wilder and less realistic as time went on. Nobody bothered to go into the house and check, unwilling to cause unwanted attention from the police and the resulting paperwork that took literal years to complete.
In their fervent attempts to study the house while trying to appear uncaring in case the police were observing in hiding, it was discovered that the house was changing in ways a house shouldn't be able to. The formerly deep grey roof tiles became a soft honey-yellow, the upper windows stained themselves baby blue and the deep red bricks became a gentle beige. This was, of course, contrasted by the way the house shifted and contorted to further resemble its former owner.
Nobody quite knew what to do when the windows blinked, they'd call it a trick of the light and walk faster to their own definitely-just-brick-and-wood homes. Not even the most seasoned postman wanted to hang around for too long, all claiming they'd been invited in by an old man's voice coming through the fluttering letterbox. They'd say they felt as though they were being eyed up like a turkey at Christmas and perhaps they weren't wrong.
It became known as Mr House and was cordoned off by the police accordingly. The potentially sentient was terrifying enough in a doll or a book, let alone a full three storey house and possibly everything inside it! No official statements were made about the house's new found life but the weekly column made subtle references to "a house that contains a great character", just in case the papers were still read by whatever claimed itself to be the inhabitant.
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