Topic: The invitation

blice

Date: 2011-02-14 17:03 EST
It had been three hours since the massive doors had slammed closed on her. It had been a ridiculous invitation that drew her to the manor, one that in retrospect should have been discarded the moment she first lay eyes on it. A simple card was all that had been left in invitation. Mostly black in colour with silver calligraphy "to those seeking" the message seemed simple, but upon taking the card in hand the words wrote them self in the air before tapering off in to a thin silver thread. Her name sounded whispered on the wind so faint she could barely hear it, her given name her real one. That was all it had took to make her decision. Grabbing her over filled pack from the ground she left following the thin silver line until she came across the manor.

"to those seeking huh?" her pace slowed for but a moment as she pushed past the dense shrubbery to reach the gates. Oddly although the line extended past them they were barred tight causing her to throw her bag over the before following aided by a lone birch that grew beside the wall. Finding a place to drop had proved a problem as it was a higher drop than she felt comfortable with to uneven ground. It resulted in her backtracking a way across the wall before she had found a suitable spot to drop it recovering her bag.

She walked up the rubble path aware that the direct approach was odd for her, but she had the feeling that it would make no difference whether she concealed her self or not as she approached the towering manor. "17 18 19" she gave up counting the windows when ever she thought she had got close to counting them all another set would catch her eye almost as if taunting her.

Making sure her hood was tightly secured she stepped on to the long wooden porch her foot steps immediately echoed in the empty space below it. "hello?" her voice sounded oddly loud and she looked on the door for a knocker but found nothing but a long word carved in to the door, she spent a minute trying to read it but did not recognise the characters. "huh." She pushed the palm of her hand firmly on one of the doors, and they both swung easily open along with a blast of stale wind. She found her self in a massive hallway, oak panels and grand stair cases towered off in all directions while armour and vases lined the walls but most interestingly to her in the centre of the room the silver line ended in a large ball of light, she approached it tentatively, extending a hand to touch it, and just as she did BANG. The room went pitch black as the doors slammed shut, the orb of light extinguished as it never was there was silence.

That had been three hours ago and after nearly quarter of an hour pummelling the doors to try and get them open again she had finally given in taking one of the massive stair cases up to the higher floors. (t was immediately apparent to her this was no ordinary manor as passages extended in all directions and out of sight. sighing to her self she chose one at random and followed it in to the semi darkness.

shadow stalker

Date: 2011-02-14 17:35 EST
The corridor extended unto hall unfathomably long, reaching out to the far corners of being and beyond that. To the netherworld and stranger places that dared not be discovered. Every door was ornately carved or built and beyond lay that which only time and fate knew. She traipsed down the corridor, into the reaches of the manor house, beyond the knowledge of any human or animal or spirit alive or in metaphorical and metaphysical existence. The reaches that begged no mentioning. Every door looked exactly the same and yet every door was unique. Leading her through to another possibility, to another question to be lived. Perhaps the Gothicism of the place had affected her mental stability or her latent imagination. For, all she could now imagine was a great and grande and rather squat Grandfather clock ticking away the seconds she lived, walking within the house. It's ebony body and ebony hands ticking upon a pale and pallid clock face of roman numerals. Her every footstep turned into the ticking of the clock, her every heartbeat and the pulse of the fluctuating shadows beating or ticking, surrounding her and placing her in a recumbent daze from which she sought no salvation. For, this provided an escape to the question of why she had been walking for half an hour straight and not turned a practically razor corner and not practically sleepwalked herself into a surprisingly robust wall. But, then she did. Straining her vision, she could make out a door standing in front of her. It stood there with all the snobbish tendencies that a higher class man or woman may quite intentionally radiate and display when provided with an adequate lower class drain cleaner. Which meant of course that, the door seemed to have an adequate air of wishing to acquire more of the stimulating and bewilderingly luscious company with which it felt most comfortable. It seemed to invite her into its quarters as if to say, worst scenario considered, we do have some very big drains.

blice

Date: 2011-02-14 18:17 EST
She couldn't justify it, the feeling that drew her towards the room. No more could she shake the feeling that in doing so she dogged her own footsteps. It was an odd sensation. Reaching out for the handle she could swear the door almost seemed satisfied groaning in content as it was pulled to. Of course as these things always do, the scene she was confronted with shocked her, in all scenes of the word.

Inside the door a storm was brewing, dark clouds covered the apex of the room throwing long forks of lighting to the floor, infect this was what caused her main shock the lighting striking but a foot away from her toe crackling with laughter or electricity. The clock fell silent her footsteps stilled, for but a second, a second that signalled the drums. For if it was once the gentle or consistent ticking of a clock , then now it thundered like drums as she ran though the room. A rational mind may have thought, "hell you know what? I will turn back" but what good story ever writes its self of a rational mind?

She ran as if the rest of the world was in slow motion. Every path the lighting would take registered in her mind a split second before it stuck. Science would describe this as an obe but she knew better, ignoring the neurology and for lack of anything other she had put it down to sheer dumb luck. Her footsteps took her to where the door should be, and where the door was not. As a split moment later (these being quite comment after experiencing an out of body 'well' experience) she had tumbled over the edge and in to an open oblivion, landing, with a heavy thud on a royal red thickly carpeted floor.