OCTOBER 31: HAUNTED HOUSE
You come to and find yourself in the foyer. Or maybe you're just outside, being chased in by something you can't quite see. Either way, there's little chance of getting out before the sun rises...
A: The foyer leads into a long hallway. The floor is wood, polished and expensive, and the muffled squelching sounds your feet make on the dark red carped runner are more worrying than any creak. There's not a soul to be heard in the house, but pairs of shoes are neatly lined up next to the doorway. One pair is a scuffed pair of seventeenth-century buckled shoes. One pair of childrens' sneakers has an extra left shoe, stacked on top of its brothers. The smell coming from the rain boots should deter the faint of heart from peeking inside. There are portraits hanging on the walls; they're nobody you recognize, especially since you don't know many people with their eyes missing.
C. The study. A piano is the centerpiece of the room; it's dusty, and if you try and play, the keys are out of tune. Strangely enough, though, as you walk through the rest of the house, you might hear a fragment of piano music that sounds perfectly in key. The walls of the study are lined with books. Diaries, in fact, with month and date, but no year. The earliest contain neat, cramped writing; the latest, wild scribbles, torn pages, and anatomical diagrams that have little to do with any human you've ever seen.
D. A workroom. One of the house's occupants must have been a seamstress, as the room is filled with faceless mannequins. Half-finished outfits are strewn about, but who knows who they were intended for? After all, it's hard to find someone who needs three sleeves or a hole for their tail. You can feel the mannequins watching you, and as you turn around to look at them, you wonder... were they always facing you? And were they always that close? And it seems like there aren't as many as there were before. Could some of them have slipped off to roam the house while you weren't looking?
E. A long table is the focal point of this dining room. It's set for a party, with the chandelier twinkling, the crystal polished, and the heavy curtains drawn over the tall windows. If you lift the lids on the serving trays, though, you'll find nothing but rot. The liquid in the glasses has long since evaporated, but a red film gives you a hint.
F: A small storage closet, perhaps once used as a pantry. There is a heavy wrought-iron latch on the outside, and if you enter the room and pull the dangling lightbulb chain, you'll see that the latch is only on the outside. The deep scratches in the door hint that maybe this room wasn't used to store food-- or maybe it was...
G. A patio with glass walls, which must have functioned as a greenhouse. Plants in varying stages of decay sit on the shelves and tables; the only one still in bloom is a rosebush. The flowers are bright red. Blood red, even, close enough to make you wonder if something is buried in the soil. If the rusty tools lying on the workbench are any indication, you may not like what you find.
H. The kitchen contains a walk-in freezer. Be careful-- the door is known to slam shut, and the heavy steel is impossible to budge when closed. The freezer is no longer in use, so you won't have to worry about freezing to death. In fact, the only thing to worry about is that dragging sound that seems to be getting closer and closer. Lucky for you, the door swings open just in time, the light revealing a perfectly empty disused freezer. Empty except for those arcs of blood on the walls, that is, and you can't quite remember if they were there when you entered. As for the kitchen itself, the walls are covered in grime. If you open the fridge, you won't see anything-- the light's been smashed, you see. You can hear an uncomfortable slithering, skittering noise, though. The cupboards are fully stocked, but will you trust unlabeled boxes and plain silver cans when you want a midnight snack? You might not like what's inside. Or they may contain cornflakes and chicken soup. Will you risk it?
I (1): a child's nursery. Pristine and brightly lit, there is nothing to fear here. Dolls sit lined on the dresser, and a polished trunk holds dress-up clothing. There is a child's bed, as well as a crib, both neatly made up. If you choose to leave and return, however, the room tells a different story. Abandoned for years, moths have eaten holes in the curtains and the bedspread. The paper peels off the walls at the slightest touch. The dolls are hanging from the ceiling, spinning slowly in the breeze from the smashed windowpane. The trunk is now nailed to the floor, and no matter how hard you turn the key, it won't open. Don't try too hard, though-- you might not want to meet whatever's making those awful banging sounds from under the lid. As for the crib, do you want to examine the small, silent, unmoving bundle lying in it? It's all right if you do; it's only a bundle of cloth. It's the stains underneath the bundle that will send shivers down your spine.
I (2): The door to this bedroom has a few planks of wood barriccading it, but most have been torn down. It looks like they were put up in a hurry, and the wood is rotted and moist, so it would take barely a touch to rip off the remaining ones. The room itself is large, with a four-postered bed in the center. The rich velvet curtains are not only drawn, but sewn shut, and the stains running down them are too old to guess at their origin. The bedskirt fully covers the gap between the mattress and the floor; it's impossible to see what, if anything, is under the bed, but very easy for anything to reach out and grab your ankles. A pitcher of water sits on the bedside table, but you won't want to drink it-it looks moldy, as if drawn from a pond. A broken cup lies on the floor, as well as the candles from the chandelier, neatly snapped in half. The rest of the room is old and dusty, like the rest of the house; an upended jewellery box lies on the dresser, next to an enameled music box. The wardrobe is open, with odd objects at the bottom; you aren't sure what they are, just that they're made of leather, stiff cloth, and twisted metal.
I (3): The only thing in this room is a tall mirror. There are no lamps; in fact, any light you try to bring in the room with you dims like it's being seen through fog at night. It leaves just enough illumination for you to see that there isn't just one mirror in this room. In fact, the walls are covered in them, all shapes and sizes, in every condition you can imagine. A good number of them are cracked or smashed, but when you look away and back, you can never be sure that it's the same ones as before. From time to time, the mirrors will fog over in places, as if someone is breathing on them. And the dozens of reflections makes it hard to count just how many people are in the room...
I (4): It's a bedroom, that's all. A normal bedroom, with a slightly worn-down bedspread, a dresser filled with neatly folded clothing, and a few harmless landscapes hanging on the wall. But there's a sense in this room that you're not the only ones here, more than anywhere else in the house. You can hear snatches of conversation, muffled screams, and loud slamming doors that seem to suggest you're not the only hapless group stuck here tonight.
J: The master bathroom. The tub is an old-fashioned claw-footed one, filled with water up to the brim. It's too cloudy to see the bottom of the tub, and who knows what would happen if you tried to pull out the plug? The sinks are dry and grimy, but you swear you can hear dripping water. In fact, there's a slowly growing stain on the ceiling, but it's too dark to make out its exact color. As for the mirror, something is ever so slightly off with the reflections...