Chapter Text
Night One
From the relative safety of this uncomfortable bed, the events of the past evening seem like something that happened to someone else. Though you can still clearly picture the terror you felt in those moments for now, you’re safe and you’re warm. Eventually, the sun will rise and chase away the monsters, and make them seem like nothing but dreams. Maybe tomorrow, if you’re lucky, you’ll wake up in the normal world and have a boring week in the mountains with your sour-faced cousin. It’s a nice thought, but deep down, you can’t help but worry that things will only get worse. You close your eyes and let sleep take you, letting your comforting denial pull you into sleep.
A sound from beyond your room jolts you awake. You sit up and listen, hoping it’s only Tabitha or Frou-frou moving around, a bit clumsier in the darkness of the Estate. Your heart is beating fast, but you breathe with a normal rhythm, only startled by the unexpected noise. When the sound happens again, your breath is cut short and halts. It sounds like a heavy footstep, much more so than any human could manage. There’s another pause before it happens again, and the pattern continues as something is getting closer to your door. With each step, a small part of you wonders if the weight is enough to cause the floor to cave-in beneath the being. You’re frozen in place as the steps finally make it to your door, and you exhale in relief once it’s clear it’s only passing by.
You look to your phone, it’s only a few minutes past midnight. You briefly consider getting up to investigate, but the fear that had gripped you is beginning to ease up, only leaving exhaustion in its place. You’re tired and wound up from the day’s events. It had to have been your imagination. As the sounds fade out and silence fills the space around you, you slowly close your eyes again. Maybe you can still catch a few hours without anymore disturbances. Otherwise, this long week is going to feel even longer. Yet you’re once again awaken—only a couple of hours later, according to your phone—by the same sound. It’s moving in the opposite direction now, passing your doorway again.
You sit up, a bit more groggy than you were before. Half asleep enough to not register what a bad idea it would be to investigate. Further removed from the real horrors you faced out in the woods, you stand up and make your way to your bedroom door. Something in you still has survival instincts because you wait for the sound to fully move past your door before you even touch the doorknob. Hearing the footfalls closer now, you can tell the heavy steps are straining on the floorboards, each one letting out a slow creaking noise. Once the being is a few feet down the hallway again, you slowly twist the knob and pull the door open.
You peek out into the hallway. Through the darkness, you can see a large, bulky figure. Its blue hue barely identifiable without light to distinguish it from the greys around you. Two ears sprout from the top of its head. A bunny costume? Before you can get a better look at it, every hair on your arm stands at attention. The costumed person stops walking, their head slowly turning around. You slip out of the doorway and push your door closed. It closes too loudly, you hold your breath and push your weight against the solid wood as the steps head back in your direction. Your skin is crawling as your heart pounds your ribcage. You’re trying to breathe as quietly as you can. The person stops at your door, and a hand brushes against the outside of it. But it doesn’t touch the handle. After a minute of terror, where you’re unable to move from your position, the footsteps creak back down the hallway.
You crawl back into bed, pulling the covers above your head. Whatever is going on, you don’t want to know about it. You have had enough fear for one life time. You stuff your head between your pillows and close your eyes. And you hope that thing in the hallway doesn’t come back.
You open your eyes. The sun has risen. The birds are singing. You are still alive, and for now, you are safe. Your eyes dart to your bedroom door, still closed, before your gaze wanders across the room to the window and the woods beyond. You wonder if the monsters are lurking there, right now, just beyond the trees, ready to pounce as soon as you leave the crumbling estate. You wonder if the person in the costume is in the hallway. A familiar unease settles into your gut, tangling into a knot of anxiety wriggling as the events of last night play out in your head.
You carefully approach the door and place an ear to it. There’s only silence on the other side. You still are slow to open it, cautiously looking out into the hall. When the coast is clear, you head downstairs to the kitchen. Nothing seems out of the ordinary, at least not compared to how everything looked the previous day when you were settling in. It seemed so long ago, the day and night both filled with terror. Your cousin is waiting for you.
“Hey,” Tabitha says, getting your attention. “You sure took your time getting up.”
“It’s like . . . eight AM,” you tell her. “Is that late?”
“It’s late for someone who was supposed to be at work half an hour ago. Like me.” She puts her hands on her hips. “I don’t want any repeats of last night. From now on, no running around in the woods after dark. It’s dangerous out there. You could fall down a cliff. You could get stuck in a hidden cave somewhere. You could get lost in the woods and never be found.” She looks genuinely concerned for a moment, though briefly. “Just because nothing happens here doesn’t mean it’s safe. I want you home by sunset from here on out.”
“Wait, aren’t you the boss?” you ask. “How can you be late to work if you own the mines?”
“Just because I own the mines it doesn’t mean that I don’t have responsibilities. If I’m late or if I don’t show up, then things aren’t done right.”
You consider moving on, but . . . no, you have to ask her about it. “I saw something in the hallway last night. It was kind of like”—as the words enter your mind and come out of your mouth, you feel a wave of embarrassment flood over you—“a mascot costume.”
Tabitha’s eyes narrow at you. “What?”
“I know it sounds ridiculous, but someone in a bunny costume was walking around the Estate last night!” you insist. “Someone with much heavier footsteps than you!”
“Look, if this is some kind of joke, it’s not funny,” she says. “I know Stella has gotten you all worked up, but this is far too ridiculous for me to handle. I’m late enough as it is. I’m going to work, and I expect to see you here at sunset.” Tabitha takes a few steps toward the door. “Sunset.” Your cousin huffily exits the kitchen. Her footsteps fade down the hall, ending in the characteristic creak then slam of the front door as it opens and closes behind her. Once again, you are the only human in the Estate.
There’s no way you’re staying in this mansion without any answers. Stella lives alone, maybe she can let you sleep over at her place for the rest of the week. You feel a sense of guilt already, before you’ve even asked, but one night is all you’ll need to know whether or not you imagined what you saw. You hurry out the door and into town.
Night Two
After the mine collapse, Tabitha doesn’t give you the space you need to slip away to Stella’s house. She drags you away, barely giving you enough time to tell Stella and Kaneeka, “I’ll text you when I get back!”
The car ride home is tense. You don’t really want to make conversation. Rosalina was severely injured, she probably won’t walk for months if she doesn’t lose her leg. You’ve almost forgotten about the horror that waits back at the mansion, but the figure of the rabbit creeps its way into your mind as you reach the top of the hill. You once again cross the threshold into the Estate, the musty stench of the decaying mansion greeting you with its undertones of mildew and wood rot.
“Well, this day was a lot more stressful than it needed to be,” Tabitha tells you, “and I’m sure it’s a precursor to a horrifically stressful week. I’m going to bed. I suggest you do the same.”
“Wait,” you say quickly, before she has a chance to leave you, “can I . . . sleep in your room? I’ll pull the bedding from my room and make a nest on the—“
“No,” she says irritably. “God, what kind of question even is that? You’ll sleep in the room I spent time preparing for you. There’s nothing wrong with it. Goodnight.” She quickly makes her way up the stairs to bed.
You hurry out of the empty, dark rooms of the Estate and lock yourself away in yours. Well, your door doesn’t have an actual lock, but you can fix that with the many boxes in the room. You try to move them but they’re quite heavy. They would be perfect to block your door if you could get them over there. Of course, then the issue will become moving them back in the morning, but that’s future you’s problem. After pushing one about halfway across the room, the door opens. You freeze, but it’s only the cat. Frou-frou finds a spot at the end of the bed and lays down. You’re pretty sure if you lock her in the room with you, she will let you know how displeased she is. What are you doing anyway? What if you did imagine the thing last night?
You crawl under your covers to find some group chat messages. Kaneeka saw some Ditchlings on her way home from the mines. You decide to lie in bed and wait for the sound of footsteps. If nothing happens, you’re sure you’ll fall asleep and wake up only feeling slightly embarrassed. If you do hear them, there should be enough time to close the door and finish pushing the box against it until morning. The cat would have to deal with it, it’s probably more ideal than her being out in the hallway with some creepy person in the mascot costume who definitely wasn’t Wayne, right? The miners seemed pretty sure that creepy wasn’t like Sam Wayne, but your experience had been otherwise. If you had more time to speak with him, maybe you could ask him if that thing was him. Then again, if it’s not, do you really want to know that? As your mind slips between topics, you eventually find yourself drifting into sleep. You close your eyes to rest for a few moments.
You regain consciousness to the sounds of pots and pans being played with in the kitchen. The house is so empty and old that the sound carries through the halls and into your still cracked door. Frou-frou has moved from her spot on the bed to the corner of the room. Her hair is on end and her back is arched. She doesn’t like something on the other side of the door. Then you spot it, two glowing white eyes in the darkness. Not like Wayne’s yellow ones, these ones are colder and piercing through you. You freeze in place and don’t move a muscle. For whatever reason, it either hasn’t noticed you or hasn’t decided to come after you. Not yet. Maybe if you continue to not move, it will leave you alone.
Seconds feel like hours, dragging on and on as the staring contest between you and it builds a suffocating tension in the room. Even Frou-frou doesn’t dare move from her spot in the corner, her guard never lowering. Sweat begins to dot your face, and you consider grabbing your phone for the flashlight. It would draw attention, but clearly this thing is waiting for something. Anything would have to be better then sitting there and waiting for it to make the first move, some deep instinct within you telling you it’s first move will be its only move.
Then, the sounds in the kitchen stop. The eyes pull away from the door, and the creature moves on. It’s familiar, heavy footsteps walking past the door. The second there’s silent, you jump to your feet, stumbling across the bedroom as you push the boxes up against the door and close it. It clicks, and Frou-frou lowers her posture. She stares at you until you crawl back into bed. She places herself in the far corner, away from you and away from the door. You check your phone. It’s one AM. You can feel your heart pounding in your chest as you realize that thing was real and possibly a threat. How does Tabitha not know this thing is wandering around her house? What was the sound coming from the kitchen? Surely there’s not a second one of these. You consider texting the group chat to see if the other two are up, but then another idea crosses your mind.
You grab your phone and cross the room. You sit down against the wall beside the door and wait. And wait. And wait. It takes a long time before you hear footsteps again. These ones sound different somehow. They’re still far heavier than your cousin sounds walking through the mansion, but they’re lighter than the other ones that you’ve heard. You open your sound recorder and place it at the bottom of the door. You sit there as the steps walk up the hall past your room. Then you continue to wait for them to pass your door again. You’re about to turn off your phone and crawl back into bed, satisfied with your evidence and barricade when you notice it. There are two sets of footsteps now. They’re both faded, far down the end of the hallway, but they’re overlapping. One being the footfalls from the rabbit and the other from the one you got a recording of. You keep sitting there, too terrified to move or stop the recording. You wait once more as the footsteps walk up the hallways and back down again. The sound of pots and pans is muffled through your closed door, but you can hear the shuffling again. Once you’re certain there’s nothing nearby, you pick up your phone and return to the safety of your bed. You crawl beneath the covers and hide, though you don’t know if you’ll ever sleep again.
Waking up the next morning is harder. You have no idea how long you were able to sleep. Every time you thought your heart rate had slowed back down enough to get some shut eye, there would be a new noise in the hallway. It continued throughout the night until six AM when it finally seemed like it was over. Of course, by then, the sun was beginning to rise. The sky lightened and you remembered your cousin’s irritation at you waking up so “late” the previous day. You crawled out of bed just before seven and went to take a shower. The entire Estate had been dead silent for almost an hour, so you figured it would be safe to leave. Frou-frou certainly had no complaints when you pushed the box out of the way and opened the door. She jumps up and sprints out of the room. All you can think about in the shower is your close encounter the night before, the white eyes staring at you through the dark. You scrub feverishly to get all the anxiety out of your system, but you’re tired. And today you’re supposed to meet Reese and go ghost hunting. It’s going to be a long day. You send a quick image to the group chat and head downstairs.
You enter the kitchen to find your cousin in the midst of devouring a pint of banana chocolate chunk. She isn’t alone. Frou-frou glares at you from her usual spot on the counter as a red-headed woman busies herself trying to tidy as best she can. Tabitha’s gaze swivels from the woman to you, her glare intensifying. You turn to your cousin and raise your phone. “I have proof,” you say.
Tabitha takes one last spoonful of ice cream, then discards the empty contained, turning to you with her trademark scowl. She says, "That's nice, but I've got an errand to run in town, and every time I've left you here alone something terrible's wound up happening, so you're coming with me." She turns to the red-headed woman. "Janey, lock up when you leave, please. And don't go rearranging anything, I'll know."
“Will you just listen to it?” you ask.
“In the car,” she says.
As you ready to leave, Janey approaches from the far side of the kitchen. Tabitha remains between the two of you, impatiently tapping her foot. "Oh, before you go . . . I heard about what happened last night," she tells you. "I mean, I heard about it before Miss Tabitha mentioned it just now, and then I heard it again. I just wanted to say that I'm so sorry you got caught up in that. I'll be prayin' for Oscar and poor little Rosalina, they're such sweethearts. Couldn't have happened to nicer people."
"Thanks, last night was a lot," you say.
"If you ever need to talk to anyone, my husband is the local pastor. He's a gentle man, and always willing to lend an ear," Janey says. "He's actually been going a little stir crazy every since we moved here, what with nobody really attending sermons. It'd probably do him a lot of good to talk you through your worries."
"That sounds wonderful, thank you for the offer."
"Of course. He's always ready and willing to talk to people, so feel free to stop by the church any time, the door it always open."
She may not be here often, but you figure there's a possibility Janey has come across the costumes that seem to haunt the mansion at night, even if they aren't actively moving around. "So," you say, "if you clean here, have you seen the mascot costumes Tabitha has?"
Your cousin's face turns sour, but Janey looks more surprised. "Oh, I don't believe I have, but Miss Tabitha doesn't let me really clean much other than her kitchen. I didn't know she even had such a thing."
"I'm going to stop the two of you right there," Tabitha says, her glare pointed at you. "I'm busy and not in the mood to stand around waiting while you play Nancy Drew with my cleaning lady right in front of me. We're leaving. Bye Janey."
"Alrighty then, be safe out there, you two!"
Tabitha practically drags you from the Estate, one hand clasped firmly around your arm. She continues to drag you all the way into her car. As the car pulls down the mountain road, you play the sound recording for Tabitha. She seems unimpressed with what you caught. The quality is not that great, the vibrations from the heavy footfalls stepping on the old floorboards has not done it any favors. “I don’t even know what I’m listening to,” your cousin says.
“It’s the footsteps of those things in the mansion,” you say. “One’s a rabbit and I don’t know what the other is. It was messing around in the kitchen. Didn’t you hear it?”
“No,” she says flatly. She does not speak again.
“What will it take for you to believe me?” you ask.
“I don’t know, maybe something more than some bad audio recording,” Tabitha said. “I’m sure Stella will love that, though.”
Sure, you think. I’ll show Stella and she’ll have to let me stay at her place. Or she’ll insist on you sneaking her into the Estate to capture evidence of these things. You consider that either option will be better than dealing with those alone again.
Night Three
Plan Stella is a bust. After being puppetted by the spirit of Charles Shaw Jr., Stella bails and you don’t know where she went. You showed her the creepy audio on your walk over to Reese’s, and she definitely wants to investigate whatever is happening, but she also agreed to let you spend the night at her place after ghost busting. Your mascot costume problem would be dealt with the next day. However, with her taking off, you’re stuck going back up to the Estate for the night. What’s worse is you gave up years of your life to that ghost. It made Wayne angry, and you thought you were finally forming a bond with the strange man. He helped you through the maze the entity created, but you couldn’t bear the thought of Rosalina being homeless after having lost her foot. This isn’t something you can worry about now. You feel dizzy and tired, and while Sybil stops occasionally as you make your way up the mountain, you can feel the lack of sleep and losing a decade taking its toll. How are you going to be dealing with the threats within the mansion in this state?
You open the door to the Estate as quietly as you can only to find your cousin anxiously pacing in the foyer. She’s been waiting for you. “I see you finally decided to drag your sorry ass back here,” she says before assessing you and your new condition. Her anger melts. “And you look like hell warmed over. What did you do to yourself?! I’ve told you so many times to stay out of trouble, to keep me posted about where you are, to come home in a timely manner . . . What’s the point of saying it all again? Clearly you don’t care how your actions affect me. Clearly you don’t care how your actions affect yourself. What happened out there?!”
“I lost years of my life to an angry ghost our family wronged,” you say wearily. As the words leave your mouth, your body shivers with age and exhaustion. The stress of talking to your cousin about tonight’s events is on the cusp of overwhelming. Whatever you have to say, it’s best to say it quick.
“What . . . What?! I thought Sybil said something along those lines on the phone but I thought she was joking . . . Please tell me the two of you are pulling a prank on me. Did Stella put you up to it?” She looks genuinely worried about you.
“It feels so much worse than I thought it would,” you confess. “I thought it would be this abstract thing, but it’s so real.”
“Yeah, you look terrible,” Tabitha says. “At least you regret it, but the damage is already done! There must have been another way. How could you ever give up something so important?”
“You don’t understand. That ghost was torturing people. It was torturing Stella.”
“I . . .” Tabitha goes quiet for a moment before her hard exterior returns, a mask she’s wearing to deal with the situations you’ve both for yourselves in. “Tell me about things before you do them. Is there anything else I need to know? Ugh. Just asking that question is giving me a migraine.”
“That’s pretty much it,” you say.
“Great. Then I’m going to bed.” Your cousin walks off, leaving you alone.
Once in your room, you find you don’t have the strength to push the boxes in front of the door. Tears of frustration begin to well up, but you choke it down. As long as your door is shut, it will be fine, right? You crawl into bed, buried under your family’s musty covers. It’s Wednesday night. Nearly half the week has passed since you first arrived in town, and a little over half a week remains until the bus comes to take you home. The spirit of Charles Shaw Junior has been put to rest, at the expense of unknown years of your life. The spectre of the night’s events will linger over you for every day you have left, a grim reminder of the price you willingly paid for the crimes of a family you never met. Maybe it’ll be easier in the morning. Maybe your joints will ache just a little less than they do now. Maybe you can still right the capsized ship of your now broke life. Or maybe things will only get worse from here.
Tap tap.
You slowly open your eyes, dizzy and with crust on your eyelids. Your head is swimming, and you almost brush off the haunting noises around you. Then you see the door has been pushed open. It’s only a crack, but it’s enough for the sounds in the hallway to flood into the bedroom. The footsteps around the mansion are faded, either on another floor or further down the hallway, but another sound catches your attention. It’s closer and faster than the other pairs you’ve heard. Running footfalls fade down the hallway before the sound of a curtain draws closed. You push yourself off of your bed, your body shaking from the strained effort. Your breathing becomes heavy and you’re already exhausted by the time you get to the door to push it closed. Why was this happening, why did the door open?
You remember that Frou-frou had been able to push it open the night before. It must not latch properly. Any slight force can cause it to creak open, and something had been tapping on it when you woke up. You look to your phone on the nightstand, but you slide down to the floor. You’re too weak to do much more than sit against the door to keep it closed. A few violent shutters are sent through your body once you’re on the ground, signs that you desperately need to be in bed for the rest of the week. Maybe for the rest of your life. You can’t be dealing with this right now. You need to be resting and recovering. What was even out there in the hallway?
You pull your legs to your chest and rest your forehead on your knees. It’s not comfortable, but it’s easier than sitting up. You listen as footsteps walk past your door. The shuffling of pots and pans softly leaks through the bottom of the door. Every now and then, something sprints to your door and taps once. Not two taps like what woke you up. The one that sprints feels the most threatening. Even if you grabbed your phone and began recording—all you really can do at this point—you’d be worried the sprinting entity would catch you. But you also start to realize there’s a pattern. Sitting on the floor with nothing to do but wait, you can tell it all happens in intervals. The heavier footsteps walk by while something else is in the kitchen. Then, the lighter footsteps walk by. The heavier and lighter footsteps make another round before the sprinting comes to tap on your door. Then it repeats. There’s a little variation in the timing, but it all occurs a total of four times before everything goes silent. The second everything falls still, you lie down on the hardwood and fall back asleep.
You’re awoken again by the buzz of your phone on the nightstand. You open your eyes. It’s a new day. And you feel like shit. You feel just as drained as when you dug yourself out of that shallow grave. The restless night once again pushing you closer and closer to sickness. Your limbs are heavy, and your heart struggles to keep up with your movements. You feel like you’ve lost something that was important to you. You know what you’ve done. You sacrificed years and vitality to appease a raging spectre. Who knows what would have happened had you left it behind to fester. Then again, who knows what will happen to you now that you’ve lost a part of yourself. An involuntary shudder runs down your spine.
You finally make it off the floor to check your phone. It's Kaneeka, and Stella is still missing. Your morning plans are in order, you don't have the option of resting at home. It's time to start your day.