Unexpected! - 5

"Tell me dear!", Robert almost shouted. "I then responded saying that she need not worry as I was there! She seemed to repeat something continuously then. I did not exactly get what she said, but was happy seeing the tone of her voice getting to normal. She then said something that will live in my memory for ever, Robert! She just said, 'I will come soon!'. I believe that it is God's message, dear!", Nancy said and paused.

Robert deduced that she was so moved and was in a delirium then, as one thing after another happened which disturbed her mind even more. But he did not want to destroy her happiness then. "Oh! Thats great dear! But tell me! How come you were found outside then?". Nancy continued: "I suddenly had an urge to see that girl Robert. And I just tried to move in the direction of the voice. As I ran to the other side of the room, I was able to hear that clearly. Then I faced a door. Confused, I pushed it hard and it opened to show me a series of steps. I went down and it led me closer to the brook. After that I did not know what happened!", she said. Robert felt that she would have felt exhausted after the adrenaline rush and must have fainted.

Even though the mystery was not resolved, Robert felt happy that Nancy was alright. He went back to that room and locked it. The next morning, they went in the morning itself and saw each and everything in that room. As Nancy said, there was a staircase after a door in the far-end of the room and that led closer to the brook as well. They opened the other door and it was there that they found a few photos in a box. They saw a lovely looking girl and a young mother in them and in only one photo, they saw an old man hugging the child, while the mother stood closer. Robert called his friend and explained it all. His friend came in a few hours and saw them all. He was in tears when he saw the photos and told him that the old man was his uncle and the mother and child were his daughter and grandchild respectively.

"Aunty died many years back and Uncle raised her single-handedly. And he could not forgive her for a while when she ran away with a loafer in the area. He even wrote a will where he mentioned that upon his demise, the house should go to my father [his brother]. That loafer died after 2 years and she was left with this child. Uncle went and brought her back here. Within a month, they all died in an accident. It was my father who did their last rites and he ordered all their items to be dumped to these two rooms. He never liked to come back here. I used to come here occasionally and even let it out to a local guy under a condition that those two rooms would not be let. Later, I found that he is a rascal after all. Even he defaulted the rent that he owed me. When I ordered him to leave, he came and asked this house for a rock bottom price. I laughed and vacated him with force. He vowed that he would not allow this house to be sold to anyone else. But that was a year back!", he said.

"Was his name Theo?", Robert asked with a smile.

p.s. [Added later] They later found the player with the tape just outside the door that led to the staircase from behind. That tape had the recording of that little girl while practising for a drama.

 

Thanks a lot CharmBabez, for your feedback and motivation all along. Happy to receive from you. And sorry, had I sort of misled you. -rgs

 

Thanks Pallavi, for your continuous support to my writing here. I feel really charged, to receive your feedback anytime. -rgs

 

Thanks for your appreciation and many feedback to this story Strangerrr. Am glad that you liked it. I had various alternatives available to me then, as I said earlier.
Perhaps another equally good thing was to add that it was Nancy's friend Sheila who was the mother of the kid. And I could have taken the ghost angle. And promoted the story to a point where the friend was the killer of them. But these are cliched, I felt. -rgs