Mark’s feet crunched on the gravel of the driveway as he got out of his car. He took his suitcase out of the trunk, and then closed it gently. He patted the closed trunk, as he smiled at the old car. He sent a quick glance in the direction of his sister’s car, and then finally turned to face the house.
It was a house made almost entirely from wood a long time ago, and it had weathered the years with a certain degree of grace. The exterior was for the most part unblemished, while a sidewalk ran from the driveway to the front entrance. The flower gardens had long since become home to weeds, though the yard was still well maintained.
To Mark the house had always had a bit of a foreboding feel to it, an unwelcome sensation that crept up his spine. Even in his childhood he had only found the shadowy place to be naught more than a dust laden mausoleum. Nightmares had been a constant issue for him, and he had been forced to learn how to live with minimal sleep.
His father, grandfather, and great grandfather had all passed away inside of it. To Mark the place was a gluttonous monster that would devour any who stayed too long, and so when he had the chance he left as soon as he could.
So the fact that he now stood outside of the large structure, with a suitcase in one hand, was something that irked him. Mark used the intricately carved knocker on the main door, and then used it again, and only after a few minutes did he start to worry. He had come at the request of his sister, she knew he was coming, but why was she taking so long to come to the door?
“Sarah, I swear if you’re taking a shower or something else,” he grumbled as he set the suitcase down on the ground.
Mark stepped off of the patio and walked along the outside of the house, looking for any telltale signs of something different. After he had gone halfway around the house he found a small pile of rocks pushed up against the wall. A few moments later and he had returned back to the front of the house with a fake stone in hand.
His sister had always been a fan of using fake stones to hide her spare keys, since she was a forgetful sort of person. The only problem was that she didn’t like to leave them near the front door, as she felt it made it easier for a robber to find them. Mark had grown a bit too accustomed to scrounging through piles of rocks during his youth.
The old lock clicked loud enough that anyone inside should’ve heard it, and Mark opened the door and brought his suitcase and the fake stone inside. The stone was unceremoniously dumped as soon as he entered.
The interior of the house was nothing grandiose, as though his great grandfather might have wished for a mansion the Hadley family had never been rich. So the first room he entered was at best ten feet by twenty feet. There were two doorways beside the exit from the house, one that led to the kitchen and another that went into the dining area. A single stairwell was to Mark’s left, the only access to the upper floors. If he wanted to get to the basement he’d have to go through the kitchen.
The wood floor creaked as Mark put the suitcase down, and then he turned and closed the door. From above a slight noise could be heard, the telltale sound of creaking coming from the hinges of a door.
Mark stepped quickly over to the stairs and he put one hand on the end of the railing. “Sarah?” he called as he peered up, “are you up there?”
The stairs themselves were old and slightly warped, the actual size of each step slightly different since they’d been hand made by a poor craftsman. The railing swooped up along the right wall of the stairwell, while the left was a blank wooden wall that curved along with the stairs themselves.
The odd part was that the light which would normally be on if Sarah had gone up the stairs was dark, and so the only thing that greeted Mark were deep shadows. No one responded to his call and the silence of the house only deepened the dread Mark felt.
He ran his left hand up along the wall and fingered the darkened light switch. He was about to turn it on when he realized that it already was. “What? Sarah!” he yelled, as he started to worry even worse.
A slight tension in his chest had begun to mount and his breath came faster. With no response to his second call Mark turned and half-ran for the kitchen. The interior of it was as always, a wooden floor with an old stove nestled up in one corner. A fridge that also had a section for frozen items wasn’t far off from it, while the sink was filled with dirty dishes.
Nothing new there, Mark briefly thought, because he knew well how little Sarah cared for doing the dishes. However he had no time to think on that as he ran to one of the drawers and opened it, rummaging quickly inside. He shoved it closed and moved to the next one, while he hoped that Sarah hadn’t changed the layout too much since he’d left.
Finally he found what he wanted, a flashlight, and returned to the dark stairwell with it. He clicked it on, the dim bulb barely powered by half-dead batteries, and he hesitatingly began his ascension. The steps creaked beneath his weight in protest, a familiar sound to him from his youth, while every movement of dust in the air evoked a sensation of fear from Mark.
“There’s no killer, there’s nothing dangerous,” Mark told himself as he continued the climb, “that’s just silly movie garbage.”
When he reached the second floor he paused, aiming the flashlight down the dark hallway that greeted him. Light filtered in through a window inside one of the open rooms, but it was barely enough to help alleviate the claustrophobic sensation that had mounted within Mark.
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Before he moved further he flipped the light switch for the second floor hallway on, the bulb instantly flaring to life. The burst of fresh light caused Mark to wince, but he didn’t care and instead basked for a moment in it.
Yet Mark needed to move on and so he started to check the second floor for Sarah. He opened each door that was closed, and he called her name over and over again. The bedrooms were empty with most of the bedding gone save for in two of them. The bathroom was dry and dark and there was no sign that it had been used recently.
That meant Mark was forced to return to the dark stairwell, and so armed with his flashlight he once more began to climb it. When he reached the door to the attic he found that it was partially open, and so he gingerly pushed at it.
The door swung and pressed flush against the wall on the inside, revealing a pitch black room inside. Mark swung the flashlight he held left and right as he scanned the room, confused as to what was going on. Sarah’s car had been in the driveway, so she had to be here.
As he moved the flashlight over everything he noticed two changes from the last time. Three if you were to count the new cobwebs that had gathered, but Mark tried to push that to the back of his mind. The thought of spiders crawling over him as he walked through that inky blackness was a bit too much for him right now.
The first change was the fact that there was a door that had been installed onto the middle divider of the attic. He knew Sarah had wanted to do that for years, but he never really cared much about it. The fact that she wanted to be able to lock away some of her less desirable collectibles in a safe spot had no impact on him.
The oddest new thing was the wooden box that was on an old billiards table. It was a well worn table, one that had had the felt changed many times over the years. The pool cues had been left hung on the wall, awaiting players.
Mark tried the light switch next to the door and was greeted by yet another blown bulb. In the end all he could do was rely on his flashlight, which he aimed at the billiards table. Mark walked over to it, his free hand fingering gently at the top of the table while memories quickly flashed through his mind.
He smiled for a brief moment, even with how tense he had felt somehow he could still feel a bit of joy. Then his mind wrenched back to the oddity of what was at hand and he aimed his flashlight directly at the wooden box.
It was about a foot wide and half a foot tall, with intricate carvings drawn into the wood by a true artist. Images of dragons and unicorns ran across the sides, while on the top a regal crown was centermost with vines running alongside it.
Mark opened the box slowly, ready to bolt if something exploded out of it. For all he knew this was all some silly prank by his sister, and a large part of him wanted that to be the case.
Instead the box swung harmlessly open and a velvet interior was revealed to Mark. An indent in the velvet was on the left while another indent was on the right of the box. Inside that right indent was a silver key, one that had a diamond embedded in the bow. As Mark reached to pick up the key a small piece of paper fell out of the top of the box.
Mark’s hand recoiled from that sudden appearance, but once he realized what it was he laughed at himself a little. He was a little too worked up, he thought to himself, because obviously nothing had gone wrong here. If something had happened to Sarah why would the house be for the most part alright?
“I’m just getting silly,” he told himself as he picked up the piece of paper and looked at it.
Instead of words all it had was a drawing of the key, or another like it, and it being put into a lock. Mark flipped the paper over, confused at the lack of any text, and was greeted by another picture which showed a door half-opened.
“What is this?” he wondered aloud as he turned the paper back over, and then immediately dropped it on the ground, “Fuck! What?”
Mark aimed the flashlight almost accusingly at the paper that he had dropped. That tension that he had managed to start to squash had surged back, and he could feel his heartbeat in his ears. His mouth felt dry even as his breathing had become even worse than before.
Instead of the picture of a key being put into a lock there was instead a new image on the paper. One that showed his sister on the other side of a door, a gold key in her hand. A chain had been attached to her neck, while a hand that belonged to an unknown person held it.
“That’s not possible, that’s not god damned possible!” Mark continued to swear as he reached out with his foot and poked the paper.
The paper sat there, uninterested in Mark’s actions. As he continued to poke at it the paper was barely moved by his hesitant actions, and finally he was forced to bend down and pick it back up. Mark treated the paper as though it might bite him at any moment, but he still somehow managed to work up the courage to turn the paper over once more.
“Oh come on,” Mark nearly whined, as he looked away from the paper.
The paper had changed again, and this time it showed an image of Mark on the other side of a door. Instead of a gold key Mark held a silver one, and instead of a chain Mark had a tattoo on his neck.
Mark took a deep breath and closed his eyes. If this was a prank done by Sarah it was a good one, obviously she’d gotten her hands on some sort of high end paper. Maybe she’d learned how to do the trick from someone online, after all there were plenty of videos out there that anyone could access.
When Mark looked at the paper again it hadn’t changed, and as he turned it over and over the images remained the same. He stood up straight and tucked the paper into his pants pocket, before he looked once more at the key in the box.
“Alright, I’ll play your game Sarah,” Mark said loud enough that she should be able to hear him wherever she was hiding.
Mark picked up the silver key and studied it once more. Though there was a diamond in it at the very center was a small ruby. What made it even weirder was that the diamond had some black gem, perhaps onyx, that surrounded it. The combination of the gems created the illusion of an eye with a small red iris.
“Come on, how much money did you waste on this?” Mark asked of the air around him.
With no response, as he had expected, Mark gave up and instead walked over to the one door in the middle of the attic. He had seen what was on the other side of the divide before, a small antechamber which held a lot of antiques and boxes, so he expected Sarah had hidden herself amongst it all. As soon as he went through she’d pop out and scream, scaring him.
Mark slid the bit of the key into the lock, and then he grasped it and turned it. A tingling sensation spread from the key as he did it, and for a moment Mark thought he had been electrocuted. He even stepped back, concerned for his own health, before he realized that he’d overreacted.
“Calm down,” Mark told himself with a light chuckle, before he reached out and opened the door.
A warm breeze spread out from the doorway as it cracked open, the sound of bugs instantly audible. Light shone through, a brilliant yellow hue that brought with it warmth. The attic was flooded with the smell of grass and flowers, and as Mark continued to open the door the smell intensified.
“What the hell,” Mark muttered as he pulled the door all the way open, and then stood slack-jawed.
What lay before him was a doorway that, on the other side of it, held a landscape that was impossible. A field of golden grass grew tall, with a light breeze that played across the top of the plants. The ripple spread out across the field and teased at a variety of flowers, each one with massive petals and a variety of colors.
Off on the horizon what could only be called a castle rose up on top of a cliff, while a forest served as a barrier between it and the open doorway. The sound of birds mixed in with the noise of insects, and a few deer darted across the field away from the freshly opened door.
Mark promptly closed the door.