AN ABANDONED FARMHOUSE
BRITTANY, FRANCE
August 1951
Mr. A was on a cycling tour of France when a shard of glass ripped his front tire, and soon after, the rain came. It was miserable, wet, and cold. Since he had no spare with him, he set out on pushing his bike to the nearest village. The road was old, obviously, and little more than a cart track. This pushing went on for an hour or more, until a huge farmhouse loomed into view.

The house was large and impressive, obviously for a man of some wealth and importance, and it had outbuilding and other such faculties along with it. it stood on the edge of a large lake, and most importantly, it was dry.

It was more than dry, on closer inspection: it was dilapidated. The windows were boarded up, but the front door was unlocked, and the house was still filled with furniture - mold and decay permeating the air - and mold clung to the walls. Although it was dry, it was a dank, lonely place.

As Mr. A set about making up a fire, he suddenly felt inexplicably terrified. Turning around, he saw through the light coming in through the windows a glistening wet trail showed up clearly in the dust on the floor. It led down the hall and ended at a sofa. Following the trail, he saw that resting on the sofa was a crumpled, tattered rag caked with dried mud. The rag was the remains of a decaying pair of pajamas. When touched, the cloth filled him with nausea.

Then he clearly felt as if he were being watched, or if somebody were standing behind him. Of course, he was quite alone in the house. Eventually, he succeeded in getting a fire lit, only to have it suddenly blown out by an unfelt draft. Suddenly, a noise echoed through the house from out in the hall - it sounded wet and squishy, as if somebody had dropped something soaked in water on the floor. It sounded again.

Looking out in the hall, he saw the damp trail was a lot wetter now - and it was slowly moving towards him! The wet trail worked it's way over to the sofa... the pajamas began to jerk and twitch, as if being disrupted from within... and suddenly, they began to swell and fill out into human shape, water oozing from within...

Mr. A had had enough, and he ran out of the house, down the overgrown yard, and down the road, blindly, until he came across an old inn after a mile or so. He collapsed inside, soaked to the bone, and nearly hysterical. After a night's rest at the inn, he later researched the house and found out that a man had drowned there during WWII, a pro-nazi collaborator after the German Occupation. He was found drowned in the lake behind the house after he was released from a 2 year term in jail, and his body had been dragged by the police inside to be examined.

The house no longer exists; it had to be torn down to make room for a freeway.