The Mystery of Darkson House
About this ebook
just sitting around wishing for a swimming pool, seem to get caught up
in mysteries.
Karen and Jodie are best friends, but they don’t always think about
problems the same way. Jodie’s fave subject is science, and she likes to
think things through logically. Karen loves art, and can’t always
follow Jodie’s thinking, she uses intuition: seeing with the mind’s eye,
feeling with the heart, and looking for that surprising flash of
inspiration to provide answers.
But this is their mystery, so I’ll let them tell it just the way it happened.
"After thirteen years of being deserted Darkson House is now occupied
again. This famous house, which is 100 years old this year, was
constructed by Mr Darkson at great expense in the early days of Dayman
Heads. When it was built, it was considered one of the grandest mansions
in Australia. The marble floor was imported from Italy, the chandeliers
from Austria, and the furniture was brought from Transylvania.
During its construction two workmen died in freak accidents, and work
had to be stopped at one stage when two skeletons were found buried near
the side of the house. Then, Mr Darkson, forty years old, lived in the
mansion for thirteen months before dying mysteriously in his sleep. Mrs
Darkson was so upset after his unfortunate death that her hair turned
grey in less than two weeks. Seeing herself in a mirror distressed her
so much that she smashed every one of the thirteen mirrors in the house.
About the author
Marcus Clark
I was born in the mid-1940s, and grew up in Sydney, since then I have lived in various cities in Australia.
I
became interested in writing because I loved to read. I joined the
local library when I was eight years old, and rarely stopped reading.
At
the age of 17 I was reading copiously, and at the same time I was
wondering what career path I should take. I had already embarked on an
apprenticeship as a telephone technician, but that was not where my head
was. The work was okay, boring mostly, but many jobs are. It seemed
mechanical, repetitive, and of little real value. In retrospect, I see
that it was of value-- it was the hardware of the internet.
The
problem for me was, that day to day, it was not connected with the
greater world where my thoughts were. I was interested in the things
that were shaping the world: history, ideas, philosophy, discoveries ...
not just physical but mental discoveries, such as hypnosis, suggestion,
psychology.
At 17 I had read Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead,
Brave New World, any number of books on the Occult/ Mysticism, and
novels of all kinds. Unfortunately Ayn Rand and Occultism were never
going to be reconciled to each other. Yet I could see value in both
philosophies. (Just not at the same time!)
But in writing, it
could all come together. I could explore ideas, and create characters
who would be subjected to interacting with other characters. And I would
be connected with books that I loved.
So that's why I wrote.
That's why I still write. I write because I become passionate about
contemporary history, about ideas, events, people.
As an example,
back in the late 1970's I started reading newspaper reports about
Vietnamese boat people who were fleeing the harsh regimes in Vietnam and
Kampuchea, their boats were attacked by pirates as many as ten
different times before they reached Malaysia. The women were raped,
children thrown overboard, men murdered, they were robbed again and
again, even their food and clothes were stolen by the pirates.
I
began to gather information about the situation in Kampuchea and
Vietnam. While Australian and American troops were in Vietnam, there
were plenty of reporters, cameramen, and TV crews, but after 1975 their
was little information getting out. But it did come out from the
refugees fleeing.
And that became the basis of my book EXIT VISA.
There
are literally more than a thousand books written about Vietnam in
English. Unfortunately most of them were written by combat soldiers or
journalists. They nearly all told the story from that perspective. Very
few (in English) ever told the story from the Vietnamese point of view.
And
that is what is different about my book Exit Visa. Although it is a
novel, it was drawn from the lives of the oppressed. When it was being
published (1989) the publisher asked me when I was in Vietnam. I said,
I've never been there. He looked puzzled. But because I had never been
there, I was able to write the novel not about my experiences, but about
the Vietnamese experiences. It made a world of difference.
