"Blood & Benevolence"
The Miller Mansion had sat empty for more than twenty years, since the last member of Millersburg's founding family took a seat in an old rocking chair on Christmas Eve, put the end of a shotgun barrel under his chin, and painted the Main Hall with brains and blood.
After that, plans for the place had never reached fruition. The home and the 100 acres that surrounded it had been on the open market for a half dozen years. After that, the Historical Society had tried to turn it into a museum but hadn't been able to collect the necessary funds. The City considered turning it into a Community Center, but by then few of the town's remaining 800 citizens were interested in a library or game room or gym or movie house in a home where a man had emptied his skull all over the wall.
Ultimately, the State foreclosed on it for back taxes, boarded over the windows, and surrounded it with chain link fence. That didn't keep the meth cooks from occupying it twice, nor did it keep out the partying teenagers who every Friday night were looking for a place to drink and fuck.
So when a caravan of construction related trucks headed for the hill north of Millersburg, the town came alive with conjecture. People flocked from their homes and stores and farms to watch the activity: the plywood over the windows was stripped away, new glass was installed, and a crew of two dozen were all over the exterior like a wake of vultures, ripping away the dead and dying portions of the nearly two century old dwelling.
As the crew of workers then shifted to their new duty of applying a new exterior to the mansion, a steel and brick fence was reaching out in both directions from the wrought iron gate that had been the first completed exterior project. With amazing speed, the fence began to encircle the overgrown, long-untended lawns and gardens surrounding the mansion.
From their cars and pick up trucks parked along the road beyond the gate, Millersburg's curious counted three times as many men going in and out of the home, working on the interior. The place was first gutted; then truck loads of building material went into the home; and finally three massive moving vans arrived and several dozen pieces of furniture and other furnishings were carefully carried inside. Those onlookers with binoculars could see that the items were elegant, antique, and likely valuable. Along with furniture there were statues, paintings, chandeliers, and much more.
Those in the know were aware that even during the height of the Miller Family's fortunes, their mansion had never been so well furnished.
The work on the mansion had begun just after sunrise on Monday morning, and on Thursday just before sundown, the last of the construction trucks and moving vans headed down the hill for the distant freeway. And suddenly, Miller Hill was once again silent, except for the two dozen die hard townsfolk standing outside the locked gate whispering their theories of who the new owner might be.
Most of the curious had made their departures when the final surprise came. Just short of 9pm, a single candle appeared in the upper most window of the West Tower. As the locals watched, the candle moved away from the window, reappearing in another, then another as the person carrying it made his -- or her? -- way from the tower's third floor to the main level, then across the home to the front entrance. As eyes widened and binoculars rose, the front door opened and a man emerged, immediately heading down the hill toward the gate ... and the whispering citizens of Millersburg...
The Miller Mansion had sat empty for more than twenty years, since the last member of Millersburg's founding family took a seat in an old rocking chair on Christmas Eve, put the end of a shotgun barrel under his chin, and painted the Main Hall with brains and blood.
After that, plans for the place had never reached fruition. The home and the 100 acres that surrounded it had been on the open market for a half dozen years. After that, the Historical Society had tried to turn it into a museum but hadn't been able to collect the necessary funds. The City considered turning it into a Community Center, but by then few of the town's remaining 800 citizens were interested in a library or game room or gym or movie house in a home where a man had emptied his skull all over the wall.
Ultimately, the State foreclosed on it for back taxes, boarded over the windows, and surrounded it with chain link fence. That didn't keep the meth cooks from occupying it twice, nor did it keep out the partying teenagers who every Friday night were looking for a place to drink and fuck.
So when a caravan of construction related trucks headed for the hill north of Millersburg, the town came alive with conjecture. People flocked from their homes and stores and farms to watch the activity: the plywood over the windows was stripped away, new glass was installed, and a crew of two dozen were all over the exterior like a wake of vultures, ripping away the dead and dying portions of the nearly two century old dwelling.
As the crew of workers then shifted to their new duty of applying a new exterior to the mansion, a steel and brick fence was reaching out in both directions from the wrought iron gate that had been the first completed exterior project. With amazing speed, the fence began to encircle the overgrown, long-untended lawns and gardens surrounding the mansion.
From their cars and pick up trucks parked along the road beyond the gate, Millersburg's curious counted three times as many men going in and out of the home, working on the interior. The place was first gutted; then truck loads of building material went into the home; and finally three massive moving vans arrived and several dozen pieces of furniture and other furnishings were carefully carried inside. Those onlookers with binoculars could see that the items were elegant, antique, and likely valuable. Along with furniture there were statues, paintings, chandeliers, and much more.
Those in the know were aware that even during the height of the Miller Family's fortunes, their mansion had never been so well furnished.
The work on the mansion had begun just after sunrise on Monday morning, and on Thursday just before sundown, the last of the construction trucks and moving vans headed down the hill for the distant freeway. And suddenly, Miller Hill was once again silent, except for the two dozen die hard townsfolk standing outside the locked gate whispering their theories of who the new owner might be.
Most of the curious had made their departures when the final surprise came. Just short of 9pm, a single candle appeared in the upper most window of the West Tower. As the locals watched, the candle moved away from the window, reappearing in another, then another as the person carrying it made his -- or her? -- way from the tower's third floor to the main level, then across the home to the front entrance. As eyes widened and binoculars rose, the front door opened and a man emerged, immediately heading down the hill toward the gate ... and the whispering citizens of Millersburg...
