hauntstart | Betrayal at House on the Hill

[ When your eyes are opened, you will find you're not alone. There are others here- eight others. Some of you have been handcuffed together-- the metal inscribed with strange glyphs that hurt to look at directly. ]

[You've awakened in an unfamiliar place-- the floor of a Grand Entrance Hall. Or a formerly grand one, the tears in the silk wallpaper, the marble much abused. There's three headless statues, shattered pieces of what must have once been their heads in sharp white shards dashed across the floor. There's one final pedestal, probably meant for a fourth statue. But upon that stand is instead a note, sealed with an unfamiliar wax seal, the pattern of iron gates pressed into it.

Further down the hall a red carpet lolls like a tongue down a grand staircase. On the left side of the hall, there are two doors: mirrored across on the right side, there are two more. ]

[ You enter the ballroom-- In an alcove for a string quartet, the instruments sit in sad repair untuned on old chairs, with a piano against one wall, a bookcase full of sheet music. A great silver chandelier hangs above the dance floor. Near the door where you entered from the abandoned room is a small side table with a record player, and sleeves and sleeves of music.

But for all the instruments, you don't see any source of the music you hear. A waltz, soft but clear.

There's a door on each wall. ]

[ A chill wind blows in from the outside in the Conservatory. Strange spiny plants creep along the walls in here, overgrown. Between which, some recognizable plants still grow: pitcher plants, delicate orchids that have somehow grown despite neglect, roses with deep dark hues.

The breeze is coming from the glass wall, the ceiling-- some panes are cracked, others broken entirely. But there's not enough room between the metal to escape past, glass gone or not.

A murky fountain with lily pads burbles in the center of the room.

The only door is the one you entered through ]

[ The red carpet leads you up the grand staircase-- everything getting less grand as you go. The carpet disintegrates to ground in dirt and then to nothing but dust as you climb, scraps of red unraveling away.

When you reach the upper landing, the hall there is simple. Unfinished wood boards with cracks between them on the floor, one door against each of the four walls. Nothing else at all.

~~now you have to make a choice, yuma~~ ]

[ The stench reaches you the moment the door is open. Blood. Fresh, despite the dilapidated state of the rest of the house-- or at least, some of it. Beneath the newer splotches, there's old rusty stains warping and ruining the floor. It's splattered on a tufted armchair, a grandfather clock-- everywhere, like macabre paint.

Each of the four walls has a door. ]

[ There's nothing in here. Not anymore. There's no light, and in the darkness you can make out no silhouettes of furniture. With a flashlight perhaps you could find outlines in the dust, to find what purpose it once held. Perhaps. But now it sits abandoned. Empty.

(What happened here?)

There are four doors. ]

[ The door opens to a game room-- in both senses of the word. A bear pelt has been thrown on the floor, heads of big game mounted on the wall: elk with too sharp antlers in gleaming points, wild cats with gleaming teeth.

There's a poker table shoved up against one wall, three chairs-- two overturned, cards and chips still on the table, and an ashtray that overflows with old cigarette butts. It still smells like smoke in here. A game of chess sits in the corner, pieces scattered but all there. On the bookshelf, there's a few scanty volumes on card games. ]

[ A large pipe organ dominates this room, taking up one entire wall, pieces of scattered sheet music all across the floor. Six pews are in here, as well, a battered copy of the bible with half its pages torn out lies on one of them.

The pipe organ is playing itself, levels and pedals working, keys depressing as it plays a funeral dirge.

There is one exit to the north, one to the west. ]

[ You step into a cage-- it falls slightly with your weight, the scrape of rusted metal forced to move. Or no-- an elevator? There's a pulley. Up and down, just as there should be. And on all other sides, large wheels to allow it… side to side?

But there's no floor button-- and the doors are shutting behind you. ]

[ The Chapel is oddly peaceful, despite the rest of the house. It's calm. Your heart beat goes back to normal, and panic fades.

Away from you, up against the back windows there's stained glass-- angels in prayer in four of them, and in the center one with black wings, falling, falling from great height, golden spires beneath ready to spear him or accept him below.

An abandoned copy of the bible lies beneath one of the pews, closed on the stone floor.

The only door is the one you entered from, behind you. ]

[ The door opens to a hallway… dusty, aged, with lit candelabras lighting the way. The hallway is in a cross formation-- a door to the north, south, east, and west. ]

[ You enter through the first door on the left of the Upper Landing--

It's too dark to see.

...

Enter anyway? ]

[ A library awaits you. There are rows of book cases, with esoteric titles, only a fraction of them even vaguely familiar. A fireplace, cracking merrily and warmly besides wooden logs, and couches stained with tea and ink.

At first glance, it's comforting.

But the ink. . . The ink that dribbles down the table, ink that hasn't dried, ink that seems to be welling up from a book on a desk that looks like it's been stabbed through with a fountain pen, the book that won't stop oozing ink. Black ink, that has formed a messy puddle in the floor below the desk and chair.

There are two doors in here. ]

[ The gymnasium is nothing unexpected— a punching bag suspended from a chain in the corner, boxing gloves nearby. A bench, free weights. Jump rope, medical tape.

But the lockers-- all up against one wall, one of the lockers looks beaten in. There's scratch marks on it, something that had furiously tried to open it up, dented it badly, but to no avail. A large barbell has been thrown, lodged in the wall as the result of insane tantrum.

Near the unopened locker, another has had its door torn away. Inside, scattered, are small pills, and a blood and sweat stained towel hangs from what remains of the hinges. ]

[ It's difficult to wedge the door open to enter-- the room is overflowing with junk. Shattered china, chairs with broken legs, a rolled up rug with obvious cigarette burns, paintings with the faces slashed out, old heavy trunks. Chairs with legs sawed off. Busts where a palette knife protrudes from a carved eye. Doll parts. A lot of doll parts. ]

[ You fall to a heap on the basement floor-- stone.

A coal shoot drops down here, from above, a pile of coal beneath it, while soot and black ash discolor the walls. There's some wood boards here too, fallen down from above— a long long drop.

There's no stair back up. Only four doors, and the plume of sooty air you kicked up falling from the chute that fills your lungs with polluted air. It's almost impossible to breathe easily in here.

There's four doors to leave through. ]

[ Inside, an Operating Laboratory awaits. A bucket full of stained gauze sits beside an operating gurney where leather straps hang, broken. Beneath a stained dirty sheet, he can see the contours of a body reclining.

A victorian's surgeon kit sits open on the counter nearby, a bloody handprint beside it.

The countertops are filled with more intruments, some rusty, some pristine, and jars of specimens, very well preserved.

There is a door on the wall adjacent to the one you entered through. ]

[Sure is spooky out there, right? You could probably use a breather. Maybe come downstairs, search the walls for hidden doors or windows? Maybe that's just me.]

[ the door swings open to a room badly charred. There's remnants of a bonfire held in the middle, chair legs thrown in the pyre and old newspaper in fragmentary singed scraps, and the walls and floor blackened as evidence of a long ago fire.

But you can still tell it was a sitting room, once. ]

[ The door opens to a store room-- one forgotten sometime in the 1930s. It's all neat, organized. Waiting. Crates. A grandfather clock, perfectly still, no passage of time marked in this room. Rolls of rugs. Two tufted couches. Candelabras, matte but unrusted. Empty cabinets. Empty trunks. Empty portrait frames.

A wardrobe, doors thrown open— this one thing, different than all the rest. There's claw marks on the door, like someone had tried in vain to get out, trying to catch any attention they could manage, force it open. Some of the scratch marks are rusty with the remnants of old blood. ]

[ You enter a long narrow corridor, the floor between one end and the other lined with statuary. Monsters from myth: all carefully defanged. Medusa, recognizable only by the stone snakes that surround the shattered heap that once was her head on the floor besides her pedestal. A hell hound's statue, muzzled with leather carefully placed over its mouth. A basilisk, rooster feathers and blood poured on its stone. And many, many shards of statues destroyed entirely litter the floor.

There are two doors here: the one you entered through, and one at the far end of the corridor. ]

[ The servant's quarters were less grand even in their day— you could expect that they are now the very definition of run down. But no, not really.

From the hall there are smaller rooms offset, each with a smaller single bed, a night stand, rickety drawers that must have once held their daily wear.

These servants quarters still feel lived in. There's bed slippers besides the bed of one, like someone had just settled in. A newspaper on the night stand of another. Nothing here is broken, nothing here is dusty, some drawers are left open, a half-filled cup of water next to one of the beds.

But surely no one lives here now. ]

[ Something is wrong. With the air you breath, with the stale atmosphere of the room as you step forward into a room thick with malice. Thick with the scent of blood. Chalked on the floor is a giant pentagram, blood stains… a trunk lying open, scratch marks on the inside. Rope, tossed carelessly aside.

The candles all around the room flicker to life when you enter ]

[ You enter a room, cold as the rest of the basement has been. There's soot ground underfoot in the crevices between the stones, dying the stones black, dirtying the walls, all from the coal that heaps everywhere. A shovel lies where it was tossed aside, before a great steel door that hangs open on its hinges. The furnace's entrance gapes wide. ]

[ The door opens to a bedroom— there's queen-size bed meant for two, but the room shows signs of this not being a happy coupling. Books are flung across the room, a vase shattered. A shared wardrobe has had most the women's clothes removed, and shoved into a trunk that lies open near-by— a dark stain splattered atop.

There's a desk against one wall with a type writer, a half-written letter still set in it, and the waste bin beside it looks like many previous attempts have been torn up and shoved inside.

The window above the desk is open, curtains fluttering in the breeze. ]

ENTRANCE HALL - GROUND LEVEL