The Third-floor Bedroom

It all began when someone left the window open

Eleanor Grenville owned a series of tenements in south Liverpool.  Along with Eleanor, there was her older uncle Amos, who was the groundskeeper and the maintenance man. Eleanor and Amos never really saw eye to eye…  The tenements were originally manors which belonged to her family long before she had been born. Sometime around the turn of the century, they had been converted from their once elegant and Victorian state.  The original Grenville family, including a young Amos, had hosted many dinner parties and social gatherings, in which they entertained their guests with extravagant displays of magic and illusion. The family had been blamed for a large number of disappearances relating to these parties, but there was never enough evidence to prove that they were the ones truly responsible...

Many of the tenants were fond of Eleanor, but they often found that she was uptight on certain issues, issues that didn’t seem to make any sense. One day, young Allen Thelmann found Miss Grenville awaiting him as he returned home from a late night shift. “Why on Earth was your bedroom window left open? I return from making groceries and look up and there it is, wide open! You know the rules, Mister Thelmann. DON’T make me remind you.” “Yes, yes, sorry Miss Grenville, it won’t happen again”, he quickly spat out. Allen never really understood why Grenville was always so furious with people leaving their window open, or her other strict set of rules for that matter; no swimming in the pool after 10pm on Fridays, no using the secondary stairwell on Saturdays, absolutely NO windows left open, and no wandering near the edge of the woods that lie along the maintenance building after 9 on the weekends. 

However, Allen Thelmann was a very forgetful young man. He one day returned to find his entire apartment stripped to nothing but the furniture marks on the floor and all of the birds on the wallpaper, vanished. With Allen Thelmann feeling the ultimate loss and confusion, a grinning Amos Grenville was in utter bliss as he enjoyed his new rocking chair, wall hangings, and books in his newly created sanctuary as wallpaper-birds swirled and chirped around him.