THE WROUGHT-IRON GATE IN FRONT OF Mortimer Hall squeaked when the bus driver pushed it open. Mary-Ann kept her face glued to the bus window while she gaped at the building. Mortimer Hall was enormous, a behemoth of a building, larger than it had seemed on the pictures.
Old and decayed, it stood like a remnant of the past, a last reminder of lives long perished, of families long deceased. Made from gargantuan, gray stones, with countless windows and a front door tall enough to let a giant through, it seemed bleak and depressing, as if it had seen too much sorrow and hardly enough joy. Half a dozen chimneys lined the roof top.
“It’s gorgeous,” Mary-Ann whispered, her face still plastered to the window.
“If you like the withered and abandoned look,” I countered. I thought the building look
