The Midnight Manor

The gravel cracked and crumbled underfoot as vapor escaped my lips to join the fog. This hallowed gray hour, that was no longer evening, and yet not quite the dead of night, passed slowly leaning closer toward the latter. The cold swept through the wind, like knives piercing through thick layers of coating straight to my bones. I allowed myself one last look back before getting in the car. As I got in, I let the clank of the door ring in that overwhelming silence, and sat hoping the past would always remain sealed and concealed behind a barrier of thick gray fog.

The silence was split open by the loud growl of the once cold and dead engine; being suddenly and unreasonably combusted into a burning smoke of life. A constant rhythm of road, engine, wind, and continuous trees kept my mind in a focused lull, but soon a weight born of many sleepless nights burdened my eyelids which when rocked by the rhythm of the road, broke like a dam flowing consciousness off into a dark nothingness.

I awoke seconds before death could have calmly claimed me. My car was in locked step with the rhythm of the road heading straight toward a sharp right turn. I pumped the brakes and swerved stopping the car just at the edge of the road. I got out to the smell of burnt tires though the smoke was lost to the fog. All the tires were stripped and one was flat. I weighed my options on this lonely stretch of road in the middle of a forest. One end stretched toward its destination, an unfathomable distance in the fog, and the other back to where I would never return. However I noticed an unnerving third option. One that I would never consider, yet too, in the back of my mind like cold liquid tendrils, this third option crept, and I couldn’t help but feel an unnatural attraction for it. There seemed to be a path in the woods in front of me. Just barely visible with the fog like a doorway, this path felt both inviting and intimidating. I began my walk down the first option, the second having never been an option, and the third opting to pull me in with a sick twisted curiosity. Every step I took away, I felt more and more the call from the path’s fog door. Reluctantly, yet enthusiastically, and almost without thinking I turned back to that path and entered through the fog door.

The woods stole an eerie glow from the ever-growing confidence of the full moon’s light bouncing off of the unrelenting fog. The glow was a tinge of silver with a green shade masking the forest in an illuminating shroud. I followed the path blindly led and absorbed by curiosity. Never once wondering where it ended or why I felt the need to take it. I felt a slow pulse emanating from the forest, a deep low growl that resided eternally within the bark of the trees. I walked feverishly without a break or a thought. Sensations came and went without being fully processed. I no longer felt the cut of the cold or the fatigue of walking. I was filled with new impressions that could only be discerned, because I had no name for them. I felt a vibration trickling in through my bones. There was a slight long strain that slowly repeated faster and faster in a continuous wave within my chest. Also, I felt a constant slow ring just beyond my ear, and several hands putting the pressure of their weight, without the sensation of actual touching, on my shoulder. In this state I continued until at last I reached the end of the path at my ultimate destination.

This massive mansion stood before me as though sprouting from the very ground with faded honor and full horror. Its walls made of a worn wood flaked by a paint of an indistinguishable color. Its cracked windows draped by vines and its thick unbreakable door stood ajar. I walked in with a feeling that this was always where I was heading, every step and stride in my life all culminating in this moment.

As I entered, the floor shrieked and startled me. I awoke from my trance and finally considered all that had passed. Fear engulfed my body, but I noticed that there were candles lit, allowing for the most minimal amount of light. I realized that someone might be living in this mansion, and through the thousands of immediate thoughts, I only wanted to ponder about the possibility of a spare tire or car. I allowed the other more insidious notions to pass unconsidered. I stood for a moment listening to the low continuous gasp of the manor breathing as wind entered and exited unseen. Almost hidden under the manors breathing, was a low continuous sound like a thud. I spoke out and my voice echoed through the mossy halls. While wandering from room to room the only response I received was disapproval from the floors and that faint thud that followed me. The kitchen covered in grime. The sink was filled with partly broken plates, still wet from the dripping brown sludge leaking from the faucet. The variety of rooms was awe inspiring and the level of decay was dreadful. There was a room with a deep indoor pool. The bottom of which appeared to move in the darkness swaying in waves of what I only know not to be water, and for once I was thankful for the low light not wanting to know what manner of creature might be scurrying at the bottom of the manor’s indoor pool. There was a game room in which one of the walls was completely torn down and probably belonged more now to the inhabitants of the woods rather than the inhabitants of the manor, if there was indeed a difference between the two. Its billiard table in disrepair, yet eternally set for a game that is ongoing. Broken cues and chess pieces strewn about. The basement was the epicenter of the spider’s infestation throughout the manor. The webs appearing practically like a maze of silver stringed blankets seemingly deserted, but I was not fooled because I could hear the spindly long legs silently and delicately preparing for their dinner only just a whisper above the dead silence no louder than the thud trailing behind. The more I roamed through the creaks and scrapes of the darkened halls, the higher a slight sense of dread arose inside me. A panic began to slowly set in as I realized I was lost in this strange vast manor. I was somewhere in the upper floor when I turned down a hallway that seemed to have a dead end. At least it was the first time that I couldn’t see the end of a hallway because it was completely darkened. There was a room to the right just before the light gave out, and since the fear and dread had yet to overtake my morbid curiosity, I decided to go in. The room was small. As I entered the first thing that caught my attention was the enormous window, shattered with vines seeping in like the fingers of a child trying to open their toy house. Below the window was one sad broken bed. The window’s wall was bare and cracked. I walked in only looking forward. I didn’t notice the three bookcases next to me. As I walked to the center of the room, I wondered at the audacity that in a house of such decayed decadence there could be such a simple sad corner of rotten memories. As I turned, I suddenly noticed the 300 blank shiny eyes staring at me from the bookshelves. The dead stares of row upon row of dolls, of all shapes and materials, lining the shelves were piercing through my very soul, and I stared back at each and every one of those soulless black beady motionless pools of thick aether from which all creation and death springs. But one set of eyes stood out among the black mass. Two wide rich yellow eyes stared at me not blank and lifeless but with a vibrant and vivid hatred; an anger of ages that I, even if I had lived all my years, could never come close to realizing. Its form shrouded in the shadows of its peers with only its eyes visible, and as I mindlessly stepped forward those eyes leaped at me with the furious feathered intent of the night owl ready to snare its prey. Its leap revealed a monstrous carnivorous bird. I ran out of the room hearing a crash behind me, and without thought or direction, I ran right into a long ancient gothic grandfather clock. It stood like the very manor that held it, a proud visage of horror. I realized now that the thuds following me were actually the deep menacing ticks emanating from this clock. Its spindly long hands slinking across its luminescent yellow face and meeting at the top. Then a low thunderous bell struck the midnight hour with such an intense clamor that the sound reverberated through the floor, walls and ceiling. At that moment I was convinced that the whole manor was about to crumble under the weighty bellows of the bell. I turned and ran without thinking, looking, or breathing. And everything was blank.

By the time I regained consciousness I was running in the forest. I couldn’t find the path that I had followed before but I didn’t dare stop or look back, still hearing the growl of the bell and the ticks from the clock. I continued running wondering how long it had been since I blacked out. The forest was still its sickly silver and green shade, but now hints of orange and red trickled in. I ran past tree after tree after tree chased by the thudding ticks of the grandfather clock which echoed into the pulse of the forest, and as I ran forward the fog evaded me only to reveal more trees in its wake. I continued running for what felt like hours in that endless forest when suddenly at the break of dawn, I noticed the entrance to the path. The fog door was starting to dissipate and I had a sudden and illogical springing fear that if I didn’t make it through that fog door before it dispels, I would be stuck in this endless forest and summoned back to that malevolent manor as another set of lifeless eyes for all eternity. And with that strange irrational fear I leapt with strength born of true desperation, straight through that entrance, and it felt like I had finally caught that fog. I rushed back to the car and sprung that injured mare to life, and forward we continued with the rhythm of the road trying to lull my mind into that familiar focus. But I could not completely shut out all that had happened and with the horrible sound of that bell still ringing in my ear, I couldn’t muster the courage to look back.