Harry finds the key to the House of Mystery
Harry finds the key to the House of Mystery
Every year the suburb of Little Whinging likes to coordinate their Halloween decorations. They do it for every decorative holiday. People who chose to live in a suburb of identical houses, don't like it when someone's decorations stand out. The people, of the suburb of Little Whinging, like everything to be the same, everyone liked normal, the status quo. No-one liked something different or abnormal.
This year they were indoctrinating their young into the evils of witchcraft. All of the good little girls and boys were dressed up as pilgrims and happily roasting marshmallows and smores on the bonfire they had built in the park. To emphasize that burning witches was the right thing to do, one of the town's artists had taken a tree trunk and had carved what appeared to be a woman in robes tied to a post. This wooden ‘witch’ was set upright in the center of the bonfire.
Every time the flames popped and leapt higher, Harry flinched. Harry was dressed up in a witches costume. The Dursleys had volunteered Harry to play the part of the witch in the children's reenactment. The idea was for Dudley's gang of ‘Pilgrims’ to hunt Harry the Witch through the streets, bring the ‘Witch' back to the ark where he would be put in the stocks while the ‘Pilgrims’ got to eat a hearty meal.
At ten years old, Harry had had five years of practice running away from Dudley's Gang whenever they wanted to play ‘Harry Hunting’. The only difference this time was that because of the festivities, he had had a very filling BBQ lunch to fuel his run and the promise of roast and dessert at the end. Harry's plan was to give the boys a good run around then let them catch him a few houses away from the park. They wouldn't be able to do more than ‘accidentally’ knock him over, if they were so close to all of the adults.
The plan went awry the moment Dudley threw the first stone. Literally. One of the things talked about earlier that day was the stoning of witches. Dudley thought this would be a fun addition to the adult sanctioned round of ‘Harry Hunting’ they were encouraged to participate in today. Due to the gang's fun pastime of throwing stones at streetlights, signs and passing cars, they were all pretty good shots.
By the time the second shot hit, Harry's plan now included getting back to the adults without his ‘huntsmen’. Dudley and his friends were all terrified of the cemetery that lay between Little Whinging, Surrey and Brookwood, Surrey. It was huge and extremely old. Harry thought it was beautiful and peaceful but Dudley and his gang were all terrified of ghosts, ghouls and ghasts that lurked in the cemetery.
To lose the ‘Pilgrims’ Harry chose to test their ‘Thrill of the Hunt’ v their ‘Fear of the Undead’ and made a beeline for the oldest section closest to him. What Harry didn't know was that at the edge of the cemetery, there was an old Victorian mansion. It wasn't there before and when it disappears, it will be as if it had never been.
Buildings feed on the energy given off by their occupants and generally radiate it for all to feel. People sensitive to their instincts can feel this. From stepping through a doorway and having to fight the desire to just turn around and leave to stepping through a door and feeling immediately at home. The problem with this is that a house with no occupants will starve. Without occupants to fill it with energy, it will begin to fall into disrepair. Pests will move in. Thieves, junkies, rats and other disreputable types will hide within the walls and the decline will only hasten.
This house was not like every other house. It was sentient. It was alive. It knew that if it didn't have a master, it would die. So, when the last master died, it began to search the world for a new one. Unlike a normal house that was tethered to a location, this house was tethered to a key. Its permanent physical location wasn't in this world. The House of Secrets, like the House of Mysteries, existed in two dimensions at once. The real world and the Dreaming. In the real world it can manifest anywhere the owner wants it to. In the Dreaming it sits across a graveyard from its brother house, the House of Mysteries.
The two houses belonged to the biblical brothers Cain and Abel. Both practically immortal, they don't stay dead unless they want to. For reasons we will probably never know, Able refused to come back to life after the last time Cain killed him. Maybe he will in the future, but for now, it leaves the House of Secrets without a Master and the reason it is currently in the suburbs.
Dodging a thrown rock, Harry ducked around the front of an old mansion and hauled himself over the rail onto the veranda. Through the gaps in the bars on the rail he watched Dudley and his gang run by, gasping and sweating with the exertion. Chasing Harry was usually their only form of exercise and they caught him by trapping him, rather than running him down. He had maybe two houses before they realized he hid and turned back, so, Harry turned to jump back over the rail and head back the way they came.
He stopped at the sight of the open door. Not the ‘not shut properly and blown in’ type of open. No. This was the invitingly open type of door. Before Harry knew it, his hand was on the doorknob and he had stepped inside. He closed the door and locked it behind him, so the gang couldn't find him, absently pocketing the key, before turning around and gasping at the treasure before him. To the left, folding doors open, was a huge library. It was so huge that it couldn't have fit in the house but Harry wasn't thinking about physics. He was thinking about books.
Dudley wasn't stupid so much as he was incredibly lazy and unmotivated. Due to Dudley's parents, Harry's Aunt and Uncle, thinking Dudley was the most special ten year old around, Harry got in trouble whenever he ‘made Dudley look bad’. This included getting better grades, eating any food Dudley wants (which is all of it) and Harry's personal favorite, what the Dursleys called Dudleys bullying behavior; Harry ‘provoking their precious Diddykins to violence’.
All of these expectations from the Dursleys mean that Harry wasn't allowed to get good grades. It didn't mean he couldn't read all he could while hiding in the school library. Harry loved to read. It didn't matter the content.
When the old grandfather clock rang out at the hour mark, Harry jumped from the comfortable seat he had sat in without realizing it and hastily put the book onto the table before rushing out the front door. He had made it down the steps and had taken two away from the house when he bumped into someone. He was at the edge of the park! How did he get there?
The person he bumped into turned and shrieked, pointing at his face. Harry tentatively reached up his hand to touch… dried blood from the rocks.
Luckily no one was mad that he had disappeared for half an hour. Everyone assumed he slipped turning a corner too fast, hit his head and the ‘Pilgrims’ hadn't seen him when they ran past. A local nurse patched him up and Harry sat down to dinner with everyone else. It wasn't until everyone had returned back to their houses and Harry was once again locked in his bedroom, the cupboard under the stairs, that he realized he still had the key.