First draft

The vexing thoughts while ascending the staircase raised cold sweat along the nape of his neck. A fortnight ago he’d received the Anonymous note, warning and calling doom upon him, for not attending to the “cursed spirit which shall arise in that damned place…was his family not dear to him?” In truth, there had been no stirrings or stiflings in this first week of inhabitance, only the creaks and settlings of such old abodes, and the note was an anomaly in the smooth transition from city to country life. Compelled, and then obsessed by it, he’d cleared his startled wife and children to a local inn, and now on the uppermost floor, the candle elongating shadows and his breaths quickening, he wondered what, in fact, he was (searching for). The wind beginning to whip up outside, the place groaned like a nettled giant. The nearest window, a subtle trick of shadow, or… he went to it, and a banshee howl when he reached the dim square. Upon the road below, obscured of face, a figure made a determined move toward the mass of tangled trees. The stranger, prickling his skin, was at least going away from the property and not skulking closer, but had he earlier been a-skulk?