Patrick George Callaghan

Episode 52… Plain truth With Charles insistence on just a darkened room. Bill suggested the old stone smoke house at the back of the cottage. ‘We’ve not used it since we moved here and there are no windows, so it may suit your purpose Charlie.’ With thought of having brought most he needed with him, he returned to the car for those items that would be useful. Once his photographs became stable from the dim light of his occasional striking match, the pictures seem to be taking on very different images from those he had seen at the ruins. Through Esme’s mind set, he could see the those fine green laws, those beautiful dancing ladies. This magnificent house of true splendour. A place of dreams. A place of hope and love abounded in its every crevice, every fragment of its brick and stone. Now it was there, alive and in those pictures. ‘Look, this is the plain truth. Look at the photographs.’ All of you. ‘This is what Esme saw. For some reason, I w...

Episode 51… Charles visits the ruins The heavy camera and its tripod were no match for Charles enthusiasm to reach the ruins. In good measure he reached the headland and stood in front of this ruined Manor House. In his eyes, it was as Esme had first seen it. Crumbling structures of forgotten walls, of forgotten rooms, of forgotten lives, overgrown and left to the winds of time. Nothing would enter this dark place, he thought, and yet there was a compelling feeling to it’s strange hypnotism. He felt that love and death dwelt both within its presence and it brought about a chill that could muster only the heart of a living soul. He began walking through what must have been beautiful gardens skilfully managed by loving hands, now only tall unkempt shrubbery, dark and thorn like, stood where ugly weeds grew upon this dismal soil. He felt no change as he approached. No voice in his head, as Esme had described in her encounter. He stopped some yards from th...