Part 1
Every city in every corner of the world has that one place that no one ever goes. Homes that people never stay in long, hospitals closed down for dark reasons, abandoned asylums, trails through the woods, certain areas of parks… these are the places that no one goes but everyone has a story about. The places mothers and fathers warn their children to never even go near. Everywhere has that one place that everyone, whether or not they’re superstitious, knows is off somehow.
That one place where no one dares to tread.
“Blu says we’ll be having visitors within the next few days.”
“Visitors? Is it more ghost hunters?”
“You could say that… he says that he saw five children. If it comes to pass, it is probably their curiosity which leads them here… you know parents around here say never come near this mansion.”
“Curiosity… isn’t that how it always goes? The child gets curious and goes where mom and dad told them to never go… familiar story, huh? But I suppose when you say children you mean younger than we were.”
“Yes. He believes them to be somewhere between seven and ten.”
“They’ll be easy enough to scare off, then. If they even enter the house, anyway… Children that young get scared of storms, after all.”
“True. So we just go the normal route?”
“Yes. Though… maybe tone it down a bit. We don’t want to traumatize children, after all…”
“Of course.”
For as long as the children of Durmont could remember, they had always been told to never go near the old mansion on Lakeview Road. For as long as their parents could remember, they had been told to never go near the old mansion on Lakeview Road.
Their grandparents, however, could remember the day that house became… off. The day that the long-abandoned home went from being lonely and sad to being creepy and eerie, the day that it went from the house everyone ignored to the house everyone avoided. The day that stories started of a haunting; dim candlelight reflecting off of the windows, silhouetted figures staring down at the streets below, strange happenings around the property…
Maybe that was why Bonnie wasn’t sure why he and his friends were standing on the sidewalk in front of the gate, nearly a mile from their own neighborhood, and gazing up at the locked gate. The sun was just setting behind dark clouds and no one was outside, meaning no one was there to watch the five eight-year-olds.
“Let’s just climb it,” the fox suggested, staring at the iron bars.
“Bonnie can’t climb that, are you crazy?” the chicken shot back, crossing her arms.
“The bars are wide enough to slip through,” the brown bear stated as flatly as a child his age could, pulling himself up onto the gate’s bottom horizontal bar and sliding through. “See?”
“Cool!” his golden brother cheered, following his brother’s lead. Bonnie frowned as he watched his friends hurry to do the same and soon he was the only one left on the outside. “C’mon, Bonnie!”
“Guys, mom and dad said not to come here,” Bonnie told them, wringing his hands worriedly. “Let’s just go home, before we’re missed.”
“If you want to go home go ahead, but we’re gonna look around!” the chicken huffed, crossing her arms. “C’mon, Bonnie, do you really want to walk home alone?”
The purple rabbit looked down the darkening street. His house was more than a twenty minute walk from here… “N-no…”
“Then c’mon!”
Bonnie knew very well that he shouldn’t, but instead of saying he would wait outside, he grabbed hold of the bars and pulled himself up and through the gate. As he did so, hit foot slipped and he tumbled onto the cobbled walkway leading up to the old mansion. He looked up towards the building; from his vantage point, it looked like he was walking into one of those horror movies his big brother Shabby liked so much. It sent a shiver down his spine.
Then someone grabbed his wrist and pulled him to his feet. “Thanks, Freddy,” he thanked the brown bear, who nodded in acknowledgement. Then, without warning, the red fox darted away from the group and to the porch of the house. With a shout, the golden bear and yellow chicken followed suit.
“Don’t worry, I’ll stay with you,” Freddy assured the scared rabbit. Bonnie gave him a grateful smile and together they followed their friends up the uneven path. Bonnie hesitated briefly before climbing up the creaking stairs onto the even-creakier porch. Foxy was standing on his tip-toes with his hands braced against the wooden siding, trying to peek into the boarded-up windows, while Chica was trying to climb up onto the old guard rail.
“D-don’t do that, Chica, it’ll fall!” Freddy immediately protested, hurrying over to his friend. Bonnie turned his gaze to Goldie, who was pulling the rotted wood covering the door off.
“You don’t wanna go inside, do you?” he asked nervously, walking over to the golden bear. Behind him he could hear Freddy and Chica arguing.
“Well duh!” Goldie laughed, yanking enough of the wood off the uncover the large iron doorknob. “Help me, Bonnie. If I give it a good enough tug the rest of the boards will break with it.” Bonnie took one look at the door and saw the problem with Goldie’s idea.
“The door opens in, Goldie,” Bonnie pointed out, frowning. “You push it, not pull.”
“Oh. Well that makes it better!” he laughed, yanking at more of the rotted boards. “Just make a hole big enough for us and we can get in!”
Bonnie sighed and reached forward, helping his taller friend yank the wood away from the door. Soon enough they had peeled enough away and Bonnie realized the other three were standing behind them.
“You know it’s likely locked, right?” Freddy told them with a frown, staring at the doorknob.
“If we can get a window open one of us can slip through and unlock it,” Foxy suggested as Goldie tried turning the knob with no luck.
“If the door’s locked what makes ya think the windows ain’t?” Chica snorted, lightly hitting Foxy upside the head and earning a small yelp from him. “We have to find some way else.”
“Or we can just go home,” Bonnie said nervously, playing with his left ear and watching his friends. “It’s dark and looks like it’s gonna storm and mom and dad are gonna worry...” he trailed off as it became apparent none of the others were listening to him. He narrowed his eyes at them but then slumped his shoulders; he really needed to learn to be more assertive like they were.
“Y’know, the door’s pretty rotten too,” Goldie observed, demonstrating by yanking the doorknob side-to-side in its socket. The wood around it easily broke away. “If we pull it hard enough I bet it’ll come right out!”
“Let’s try it,” Foxy agreed eagerly, reaching up to grab onto it around Goldie’s hands. Together, the two began yanking on the knob. As expected, the wood splintered and gave easily enough and the knob tore itself out of its place, the other side of the knob coming with it. They dropped the useless iron down on the porch and pushed the door inwards. Without its locking mechanism in place, it opened with a screeching complaint.
Bonnie’s ears flattened but he followed his friends through the hole in the boards, glancing nervously back outside before turning his gaze to the room around him.
It was oddly… not falling apart. All of the windows were boarded up on the outside, but inside thick black curtains covered them. It was dark and hard to see anything, but from the light filtering in through the open door he could see that the tiles were black and white and two grand staircases curved around the sides of the room and up to the first floor landing where two more staircases were set into the wall, out of sight. He couldn’t see the ceiling but he thought he could see a flicker of light reflecting off of a chandelier. He wasn’t really sure.
The doors off of the entrance room were closed, but the hallway beneath the landing and between the stairs seemed to completely lack a door and, therefore, was open. Bonnie couldn’t see down it, though; the hallway was shrouded in shadows and he just knew the room on the other side was covered in black curtains as well, blocking out any piece of sunlight that could make it through the boards.
“I don’t like this,” he decided instantly, his eyes trailing to the lightened curtains. There wasn’t a speck of dust on them. In fact, the only dust present was what was settling at their feet from outside. “Let’s just go home, guys…”
On the inside, it didn’t look very abandoned.
“No way, this is so cool!” Foxy protested, walking further into the dark room.
“Don’t go too far,” Freddy warned, taking a few steps after him. He seemed a bit nervous himself. “It’s really dark in here, you could get lost.”
“I’m a fox, the dark doesn’t bother me!”
Bonnie sighed and slowly followed his friends further into the room. His ears twitched, though, as he caught a noise that he knew wasn’t from his friends; it sounded like shuffling… from above them.
His head snapped up, looking into the darkness above his head. Of course he saw nothing, but the sounds did cease immediately. “Uh, guys,” Bonnie called out to his friends as they approached the left staircase. “Guys, we should really go!”
“Don’t be a baby, Bonnie!” Chica laughed, testing the bottom step. There wasn’t even a creak. “This is cool!”
Bonnie raced over to his friends, not wanting to be left alone in the front hall. “Guys, something’s here,” he protested, grabbing onto Freddy’s arm and tugging on it. “Let’s just leave, we’re not s’posed to be here!”
“Bonnie,” Freddy said calmly, watching his friend with concerned blue eyes, “it’s just a house. There’s nothin' here.”
“What if it’s a ghost?” Foxy asked, grinning mischievously at his friends.
“Stop it, Foxy!” Goldie called, frowning from where he was halfway up the stairs. “Ghosts aren’t real.”
“Yes they are!”
Bonnie squeaked and shook his head. “Please, Freddy, I heard something.”
Just as he said this, thunder cracked outside, causing all five children to jump. They were all silent for several seconds before Chica declared, “I am not walking home in a storm.”
“Me neither,” Freddy agreed with a slight nod. “You probably just heard thunder, Bonnie. Come on, we don’t wanna get lost.” He grabbed Bonnie’s hand and tugged him up the stairs, ignoring his rabbit friend’s protests.
When they were at the top, though, there was a sudden screeching and a slam. The five children whirled around, staring down wide-eyed at the now-dark entrance hall.
The only light came from the circular hole where a knob used to be.
“Just the wind?” Goldie suggested uneasily, laughing nervously.
“The wind can’t close a door from the inside,” Bonnie whimpered, holding tightly to Freddy’s arm. “I told you something was here!”
As Bonnie said this, the landing around them was suddenly lit up by candles in sconces on the wall and the chandelier twenty feet above their heads. The five children let out startled shrieks as they stared, wide-eyed, at the flames casting eerie shadows on the dust-free walls.
Every window, no matter how large or how high, was covered in a thick, black curtain that let no light through. Outside, the thunder rolled.
“Can we leave now?” Bonnie begged, tugging at Freddy’s arm. “I don’t like this!”
“Oh come on, someone’s just playin’ tricks!” Chica complained, frowning. “I bet the candles aren’t even real. Come on, now we can see where we’re going!” With that she whirled around and marched down the hallway, her bare feet making a steady click click on the deep brown floorboards.
Foxy followed without hesitation and, exchanging a nervous glance, Bonnie and the bear brothers began walking after them. Bonnie didn’t let go of Freddy’s arm.
It wasn’t long, though, until Bonnie saw something in the corner of his eye. He jerked back and whipped his head around to stare at the shadowy corner, straining in the flickering light to see. “Did you guys see that?!”
“See what?” Freddy asked, frowning in concern.
“Something moved!”
“You’re seeing things, scaredy-bunny,” Foxy called from several feet ahead, grinning as he turned around to look at them. However, his grin fell off and his eyes widened as he stared above their heads. Then he let out an ear-piercing shriek, causing the others to whirl around.
There, on the ceiling, was a gruesome, grinning thing, hanging down and staring at them with empty sockets leaking a strange black liquid, dripping down onto the wood. Its skin, for lack of a better description, was thin, brittle, blackened and what wasn’t peeling away clung to its skeleton like a shroud. From the grinning maw that made up its mouth they could see a circle of razor sharp teeth and a long, bloody-red tongue flopping uselessly down over what might have once been described as a nose.
The other four let out terrified shrieks of their own and turned on their heels, running as fast as they could down the hallway and away from the grinning figure.
“Mangle! He said tone it down, not make the most horrifying thing in existence! They’re gonna have nightmares for weeks!”
“What?! No one told me that!”
Freddy grabbed both Goldie and Bonnie’s hands, wanting to make sure neither of them got separated as they ran. However, all five of them skid to a halt before even reaching the large, curtain-covered windows at the end of the hall. Standing before them was a pure black mass of what looked like ink- or maybe it was blood. Bonnie shivered and took several steps back. The melting black shadow-like thing opened two bright red eyes and then followed suit with its mouth; it was even blacker than the creature’s body.
With yet another shriek of terror, they whirled around and began running the other way again. However, the thing was still on the ceiling, so Goldie abruptly took a right down a narrow side hall, pulling Freddy and Bonnie along. Chica and Foxy followed without hesitance.
They kept running even when they came upon a narrow set of stairs. They kept running even as the stairs led them further up to the third floor of the old mansion, and they kept running when they saw what looked like the hem of a black cloak flick around a corner, out of sight.
They kept running as the thunder shook the house.
Bonnie tried not to look at the shadows; every time he did, he could see things in them. Eyes staring back at him, shifting shapes darker than the vacuum of space, flashes of fangs and tendrils of… something.
He was scared.
When Goldie, who was now leading all of them, skid to a stop, he nearly tripped over his own two feet in his effort to stop without running into Freddy. At the end of the hallway was a large, ornate door. It looked much too heavy for any of the children to open, but maybe- maybe- if they worked together they could manage.
From behind them there was a low moaning accompanied by squishy footsteps. Without hesitance, the children dashed for the door.
“No! They’re going the wrong way!”
“What did you expect them to do, run towards that monstrosity you created?! Crap, we gotta warn S- they’re going in! Dammit, did someone forget to lock it?!”
“How are they opening it? It’s twenty times bigger than them!”
“...Guys, I think the charade is up.”
Bonnie was almost shocked at how easy it was to push the heavy oak door open. He supposed their fear must have made it easier. Together, working as one unit, the children turned around and shoved the door closed again, just barely getting a glimpse of the dripping, slimy creature chasing them before the door slammed into place.
Freddy reached up and twisted the lock, but even after the lock clicked into place none of them moved from where they stood, braced against the door as if they were strong enough to hold it closed.
There was absolutely no sound, now; no sound of dripping, heavy footsteps, no sound of groaning, no flickering of shadows, nothing. Just the sound of thunder.
It was Goldie who noticed it first. The room did flicker, but not with the shifting firelight of candles. It briefly lit up white barely a second before the thunder crashed… and a shadow accompanied it. Blue eyes wide and full of terror, he slowly turned around towards the windows at the end of the room. The others did the same, backing up against the door.
The room looked like it may have once been a large office, but now it seemed to have been turned into a bedroom. Five four-poster beds, with curtains of varying colours drawn tightly shut, were spaced out, three on one side and two on the other, each with an individual wardrobe and dresser sitting against the wall beside it. That wasn’t what caught the children's eyes, though.
They stared, wide-eyed, at the curved floor-to-ceiling windows. It had curtains but they were wide open, revealing the view of a sprawling, unkempt backyard and the lake lit up only by the brief flashes of lightning.
Standing in front of that window was a solitary cloaked figure, its back turned to them as it stared out into the night.