The Mansion (9 page)

‘You can’t escape what you always wanted. You
asked to join us,’ several voices said in unison.

Tony ran across the kitchen towards the door
in the corner. Pots escaped their hooks and flew from the rack
towards the investigator as he raced across the room. He ducked and
dodged the metal cooking pans, hearing them crash against the floor
or wall. He reached the door and pulled on the handle, half
expecting it to resist against his effort, but it flew open,
forcing him to stumble backwards. He felt the coldness of the floor
tiles on his hands and his backside through his trousers as he hit
the floor. He quickly pushed himself up as the voices began to
laugh. The sound of the laughter surrounded him as if it were
coming from within the swirling wind. He ran through the door and
into a corridor. He continued down towards the large oak door at
the far end of the corridor that led through to the library. He
looked over his shoulder several times, seeing nothing but sensing
the energy and coldness of the wind that followed him. Several
voices continued to laugh and call to him as he ran towards the
door, a door that seemed to be moving away. His eyes widened as he
watched it pull away from him. He found himself running faster, his
chest burning as his lungs struggled to take in oxygen. The
laughter got louder, and he could feel the cold air pushing against
the sweat on his neck. He couldn’t run any more, and his body began
to buckle, his legs giving way, forcing him to begin to stumble
forward. Just as he gave in to his exhaustion and prepared himself
to fall to the floor, the large oak door appeared, and he smashed
his already bloodied face into the dark-stained wood, his nose
shattering on impact.

Tony’s body lay at the foot of the large oak
door motionless. Blood pouring from his now disfigured and
splintered nose. The laughter became hysterical, until the man who
had sat at the head of the table materialized from the swirling
wind that surrounded the unconscious investigator. The man looked
down at him and grinned; he then disappeared. The wind began to
speed up and tighten its rotation around Tony’s body. A white glow
began grew above him, its light becoming brighter and brighter
until finally it exploded like a firework, silver glitter like
sparks falling around him. When the last spark extinguished itself
on the floor, all was dark in the corridor. The body of the
investigator had disappeared, leaving only a bloody stain on the
wooden floor.

Voices spoke from within the darkness. Young
children and adults were having a number of conversations, but he
could see no one. It was so dark that he lifted his hand up to
where his face was but could not see it. He brought it closer until
he felt his fingers touch his nose. His nose felt normal, and he
ran his fingers down over his lip until he reached his chin. Again
there was no pain, and all he could feel was the thick prickle of
the stubble that had grown over the last four days.

The voices suddenly stopped, and only one
spoke. It spoke direct at him, calling him by name;

‘Tony, welcome. We are glad you have decided
to join us,’ the deep voice of a man said.

He recognized it as the man who had sat at
the head of the table in the dining room.

‘Where am I?’ he called out.

A number of voices began to laugh, and then
the man spoke again.

‘You are everywhere. You are about to become
part of the house. You will live forever between the living world
and the next, able to travel wherever you want—to listen to all the
people in the living world if you desire too.’

Tony could feel his anger inside him begin to
grow. He no longer felt fear, only anger. They had taken him away
from where he wanted to be. He didn’t want to stop living.

‘I don’t want to be here with you!’ he
shouted.

There was more laughter, and then the voices
began to attack his mind. They shouted and they screamed at
him.

He lifted his hands to his head and covered
his ears, but the voices were relentless. They were passing the
barrier his hands had made and still invading his head. The pain
from his face suddenly returned, and he could no longer see his
nose. The pain caused him to screw his eyes tight.

He screamed, squeezing his eyes shut. He
suddenly felt a sharp coldness on his skin that forced him to stop
and open his eyes.

He could see the light grey clouds above him.
Snow lay on the ground and lightly dusted the branches of the
trees. He tried to move but found himself unable to, his arms were
tied back behind him around something. His fingers quickly began
feeling whatever he was attached to. He could feel rope fibers and
the rough texture of tree bark. He looked down at his feet and saw
a pile of wood stacked up against the base of what he was tied to.
He looked around him and saw four piles of wood. A body hung limp
from a thick wooden stump in the center of each. He recognized each
of the bodies as his fellow investigators. His attention was then
drawn to the dark shapes that stood just beyond the pyres. A cold
blast of air swirled around him and then the man and several
children slowly appeared. The children all giggled, and the man
smiled at him.

‘The mansion keeps us all alive, able to
cheat death and enjoy the wonders of the world beyond,’ the man
said.

‘But you are dead!’ Tony shouted.

The man was about to speak when the voices of
the children began talking in unison.

‘Our bodies may have died but our spirits
live on. The adults look after us as we play. The mansion allows us
to return to this world providing we give it what it needs.’

Tony looked at them as they grinned at him.
‘What does it need?’

The children began to laugh.

‘It needs a sacrifice—a sacrifice to allow us
to continue to live,’ they responded.

Tony’s attention suddenly shifted from the
children to his four friends. A figure walked between each,
touching the piles of wood with a burning torch. The figure stood
back as if to admire his work once the wood beneath John had been
lit. The light from the fires highlighted his features. The old man
who had shown them around when they first arrived stood holding the
burning torch.

‘What are you doing?’ Tony screamed at him,
the damage to his nose causing him to shout with a lisp.

The man stared at him and smiled.

The four investigators suddenly came to life
and began screaming. They struggled against the ropes that held
them back, finally looking up to the cloudy sky and letting out a
final blood-curdling scream.

Tears ran down Tony’s face, running around
the bone splinters that protruded from his flattened nose.

The children moved closer to him and began to
speak to him in an eerie, comforting tone.

‘Don’t cry, we want you to join us.’

He managed to gather enough saliva and
spittle in his dry mouth to be able to spit at the children out of
defiance before once again all went dark.

When he opened his eyes, he found himself
lying on his back, staring up at a ceiling. A red pentagram stood
out against the black. He tried to sit up but found his wrists and
ankles bound and tied to the floor. He looked at his wrists, and
his attention was suddenly taken away from the rope that held him
down and to the walls of the room. Skeletal remains were stacked up
along the walls. The bodies of children and adults, some were
clothed, others still had hair attached to the dry, green-colored
skin of the skulls.

He lifted his head and looked towards his
feet, seeing that the same kind of rope that tied his wrists bound
around his ankles. He craned his neck so he could look behind him
and noticed that there was no door set into any of the walls—just
human remains.

He turned his head to the side, his cheek
coming to rest on the cold, smooth floor, a floor that was white
and stone. His eyes then focused on a green line that scored the
white stone. He raised his head and followed the line as it curved
around him. The straight lines that ran underneath him told him
that he was lying on a pentagram, one that mirrored the one above
him in red. He yanked at the rope that held his wrists and found
them to be set within the stone and fixed so that he was unable to
create space for him to slip his hand out.

He felt the coldness of a breeze race over
his face. It made his nose sting, which was the first time he
noticed the numbness of his smashed nose. It hadn’t even registered
that he had stopped breathing in through it.

The breeze got stronger and stronger until
the dust that covered the skeletal remains began to rotate above
him. The skeletons didn’t move; they remained in their fixed and
intertwined positions.

Tony could feel his heart begin to pound
against his chest as the wind increased and tightened until a
spinning vortex of dust spun above his chest, the top of it
connecting to the center of the red pentagram. The tightest part of
the tornado began to push into his solar plexus; the pressure as it
pushed down made the investigator take short deep breaths.

The red pentagram began to glow brighter, the
spinning winds turning red as if the color were being sucked from
the ceiling and becoming part of the tornado. Tony struggled again
against the ropes that held his wrists. He began to fight back
against the probing, spinning winds that pushed harder into him. He
looked at his left wrist, hoping that by looking at it he could see
some kind of difference. What he did see forced his eyes to
bulge.

The green pentagram he was lying on was
glowing, its bright rays of light slowly reaching up like a sail
being hoisted up into place.

A number of voices began to laugh, and a
mixture of adults and children’s voices began to speak.

‘Join us, become one with the house.’

The tornado that pushed down on him began
ripping his clothes from his body, the fabric disintegrating and
joining the now red and green spinning winds.

Tony watched with his eyes wide as his flesh
began to burn as the friction of the winds and debris cut into him.
The twister pushed further and further into him until it finally
penetrated his layers of skin and fat. Blood began to spin from his
body up around the swirling winds until it engulfed the mini
tornado. The now red fluid spinning vortex pushed deeper into his
body.

Then he could feel the probing finger-like
end of the tornado; he took one final deep breath and let out a
scream.

Deep within the walls of the snow covered
mansion, within a windowless and door less room at the heart of the
building, a scream pierced the silence.

The sun rose slowly, the thick grey clouds
cloaking its bright rays. A man began to unlock the doors of the
mansion and entered. He moved straight through to the dining room,
where he began to unplug and remove the equipment that had been
placed there by the paranormal team. He loaded it back into the
vehicles that the team had arrived in before taking them one by one
to a large lake on the estate that was hidden by a barrier of thick
conifer trees. He drove them down the small dirt path until he
reached a steep slope above the lake. He placed them in neutral,
released the handbrake, and let them roll into the cold waters. The
light frost that had turned the lake to ice gave way easily and the
vans slowly sank beneath the surface, joining the several other
vehicles that lay on the bottom, cars and vans that spanned
different generations of design. The old man then walked back to
the house and removed any other evidence of the group's presence.
The four piles of burnt wood and chard bones were cleared from the
back garden, the remains of the four paranormal investigators were
taken to one of the statues that lined the long driveway and buried
beneath them, joining the several other skeletal remains that had
been placed there over the years.

He returned to the dining room one last time,
bowing towards the large deer antler sculpture. As he left the
house, he paused at the bottom of the stairs and looked up.
Standing on the staircase were three children. They smiled at him
and waved.

‘Thank you for bring us someone to play
with,’ one of the girls said without moving her lips.

The man smiled back and then left the house,
locking the doors once more. He walked slowly to his car. Before
getting in, he looked up at the windows of the bedrooms; a face
looked down at him.

The face looking out at the man standing by
his car was that of the lead investigator, his spirit now trapped
within the walls of the mansion.

###

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