THE HOURGLASS - Chapter 1 - The Old Houses

The Angel and The Hourglass

Chapter 1.                                          

The Old House

One really great thing about living in a once grand old seaside town is that we have all these fabulous old houses sitting up on the hill overlooking the ocean, all boarded up, but left just as they were 50 years ago, waiting for their rich old owners to return.

It seems crazy, but when everyone started going to the newer more fashionable towns, those rich people just left their old houses as they were and simply bought new houses in the new towns.

You'd think there would be squatters or something, or they'd be broken into all the time, but amazingly, they just stand there, waiting, facing the sea, snugly shuttered, but slowly decaying.

Naturally, us kids began to sneak up the hill to play around those houses.  They were pretty irresistible.  The biggest house of all had one of those huge old maple trees, the kind with thick sturdy limbs evenly spaced up the  trunk, growing right at the back of it, so it was easy to climb up it and pry open the tiny attic dormer window that no one had thought to board up.