And I've decided to just put it up on my blog so that people can read it. So, here you go: (by the way I just copied and pasted from the Microsoft word document so if there are errors, they are the mistakes of men.)
Winchester House
By Andrew G. Perazzo
Brandon Hilgriss walked down the empty quiet
hallways. He wasn’t quite lost, at least
not yet. He still had a generally good
idea of where he was going. Down this
hall, up a flight of stairs, take the first left… admittedly it became rather
confusing. Especially when most of the
stairs and doors didn’t even lead anywhere.
Brandon
nervously repositioned the item hidden in his jacket again, and started up the
stairs. It was just up here, he thought,
and—the stairs stopped. Brandon nearly collided with the wall that had
materialized in front of his flashlight. He stopped, and reached out his hand
to feel it. Yep, it was definitely a solid wall, right in the middle of the
stairs, blocking all movement forward.
Brandon
frowned. He was sure that this had been the way, but perhaps not. He headed back down the staircase again, the
light from his flashlight bobbing up and down as he walked. He didn’t want to
admit it to himself, but this posed more problems than one. If this wasn’t the
way, then he had no idea which way he should go. He stopped at the bottom of
the staircase and looked to his left and right.
He had come from the right, so he started off to the left.
Was it just him,
or was it colder in here than it had just been previously? He wasn’t exactly sure how many windows this
house had, but it was in the middle of the night, so any open window could have
let in a draft, which—
He felt
someone behind him.
He quickly spun
around, the flashlight’s beam cutting through the stillness. There was no one there. The empty hallway stretched on into the
darkness, nothing showing but the wooden floor and ugly patterned wallpaper.
Brandon
frowned again. He could have sworn that
there had been someone there, not really because of any sound or noise, but
simply because he could feel it
there. But he had been wrong. He
shrugged and continued on his way.
He had
called it a house. It wasn’t really a
house so much as it was a mansion, a vast complex labyrinth of doors and stairs
and hallways. He passed by an open doorframe and glanced inside as he passed.
Most rooms didn’t even have any furniture; they were just bare and empty, like
this one was. The rooms existed solely to exist, with no further purpose, it
seemed to him.
Brandon got
to the end of the hall only to discover that there was no door. Well, that was inconvenient. How was he supposed to get out of here if
there wasn’t any door? He turned around
and checked the walls again. Nope, no door here, but here—aha! There was one, on the left hand wall. He went up to it and opened it. Only to be met with a brick wall.
He swore
under his breath. What a stupid, infuriating house! This wasn’t the first time this had happened
to him tonight. He shut the door, and, growling under his breath, went back the
way he had come. This place was just
like a wretched maze.
Something
tugged at the back of his memory, something important. He brushed it off and turned back the way he
had come.
When he came
back to the empty room he turned into it.
It was an oddly shaped room. The doorframe he came through was set in
one of the four sides, but the other three consisted of stairs that went either
up or down, depending on the side. He
paused, and then headed for one of the ones that led downstairs. He was on one of the upper floors, so it was
logical to assume that the best course of action would be to go down, nearer to—he
felt the presence again.
He paused,
partway on the stairs. Most adults and
even the majority of children could sense when someone was looking at
them. It was this inherent sixth sense
that had nothing to do with sight or sound or taste or smell. It just simply was, this feeling. Brandon had this feeling right now. He could
somehow sense that someone was
standing behind him, looking at him. It
was a completely uncanny feeling coming from an empty house. He could roughly make out where it was
standing in the room, and strangely, its general shape. There was something wrong with it,
somehow. For the first second or two
standing there, Brandon couldn’t figure out what it was. Then the realization
came that the person standing there was abnormally tall—too tall, in fact, with
long slender arms and legs that seemed to not be limbs at all so much as giant,
muscular ropes that seemed to be reaching out ever so subtly. . .
Brandon
slowly, cautiously, turned around.
There was
nobody there.
Brandon felt
his heartbeat increase as he stood there looking into that empty room. He was not that superstitious, so the first thing that came to his mind was
that there must have been some sort of mistake in his senses. He was nervous, that was all. It was this blasted house and its stupid
blasted doors and stairs that led nowhere and everywhere at the same time. He turned and quickly made his way down the
steps, his flashlight and his gaze occasionally looking behind him to see if
anything was following.
Once he
reached the bottom, he did a double-take.
The room he was standing in was identical to the one he had just left.
He swung his flashlight beam back and forth, and sure enough, it was just like
the other, only now he was standing on the side where the stairs had been going
up instead of down. Brandon crinkled his
nose in disgust. Getting out of here would
be even more difficult if there were entire rooms that were identical to each
other.
He
readjusted the item underneath his jacket and continued forward, down the copy
of the stairs he had just come down.
But down
those stairs he didn’t have much luck either, just a hallway with two false
doors and a staircase that ran two flights up.
He turned around, went back up. He went through another door. Then another.
He ran into a false stairwell.
Then a few false doors. Where in
the world was he?
He stopped
midway down a hall to catch his breath.
How long had he been in here? Not
including the time before this place closed, of course. It had to have been an hour or two. What time was it? He glanced down at his watch. It was broken.
He cursed
and then, like a fool, tapped it a few times with his finger to see if that
would help any. It didn’t. He sighed and leaned back against the wall,
his flashlight searching out the darkness around him. Down to his left was another hall, which led
to a few more doors and stairways, and to his left was a few doors and another
room, which he had not yet explored. He
headed down in that direction.
When he
entered the room he noticed that it had furniture this time, a table and chairs
and bookshelf and fireplace. Near the
center was a sofa on a nice rug (despite the fact that it had an ugly pattern
on it). On the rug was a side table, and on it sat an expensive looking crystal
figurine.
Brandon
unconsciously touched the item underneath his jacket again as he swept his
light across the room. He clicked his
tongue against his teeth. This room was
nearly identical to the first one he had stolen away to tonight. Once again, a duplicate room in a completely
different part of the house. It’s as if
the designer had gone mad.
The memory
that sat in his mind struggled to escape again; it was there, important, essential, tugging at the back of his
mind.
He ignored
it again and went on through the room to another door. Here and there he could see columns that had
been installed upside down, stairs that would go down seven steps and then rise
up entire stories, rooms that seemed to serve no purpose at all but simply
ended in a dead end. Brandon felt
himself going faster, although he kept telling himself that there was nothing
to worry about, that he would be gone before sunrise.
He was just
traversing a hall for what felt like the tenth time when he felt the presence
again. He paused in the middle of the hall and almost looked back. No, he told himself, it’s just your
imagination. If you look back you’ll be
encouraging it. So he stood there facing
forward.
The thing
moved a step closer to him.
In a panic,
he turned himself around, thrusting the flashlight beam out down the hall. Nothing was there. He chided himself for his foolishness, and
set out once again, but then stopped.
While before the presence had simply disappeared, here and now it was
still oddly present. Yet he couldn’t
quite put a finger on it. While he felt
something near, he couldn’t tell from which direction or how far away it
was. A drip of cold sweat dripped down
his neck, which he quickly wiped away and reprimanded himself for being so
superstitious. He continued forward.
Left, right,
left, left. The halls seemed
endless. A few false doors here, a few
there. Staircases that led to nowhere. Hitting one of these, he turned around and
started back down, acutely aware of the presence surrounding him. He tried to
ignore it, forget it, which would have been easier in other circumstances, but
this presence seemed… harmful, in a
way. It wasn’t just the neutral feeling
you get when someone’s staring at your back.
It was darker somehow. And it
didn’t help that his flashlight was slowly dying.
Brandon made
another turn and wished he had thought to bring another set of batteries. But then again, he wasn’t supposed to have
been in here that long. This job was
only supposed to take ten, fifteen minutes, tops. If he had known that this horrible place was
set up like some sort of crazy maddening maze, he would have prepared
better. He paused in the middle of the
hall, and looked around.
He
recognized this place. Wasn’t this where
he had separated from his tour group?
His heart jumped and he quickened his pace. Yes, they had come down this hall here, and
turned down that way, while he had slipped out through this door. The item in his jacket seemed lighter than it
had as he retraced his steps. They had
entered this direction, so all he had to do was simply go back the way he had
come, right? As he did so he went over
what the tour guide had said.
The Winchester house was famous for its odd
history, he had said. The designer, Mrs. Winchester, had gone mad
by the time she designed this house.
Brandon went
through one doorway, then another. His
heart raced.
She purposefully designed this house to be
particularly confusing. Doors that lead
into walls, stairs that go nowhere at all, secret passages. All of this was for one purpose, or so she
said in her maddened state.
He turned
down a corridor and then paused. Two doors were before him, and he couldn’t
remember which one led out. Heart
thumping, he strained to remember the way they had come. He had to remember it. He had to. He turned
around suddenly; he had felt something there.
Nothing. He cursed and looked back at the doors.
They are coming for me, she had said, over
and over again. They are coming for me
they are coming for me they are coming for me I need to escape I need to trick
them. I need to trap them I need to trap them them them them.
Then, the
all-important memory that had been pushing its way into his mind finally
surfaced to the top, in all its horrific, terrible glory.
I need to trap those evil spirits that seek
to abolish and destroy.
Three things
stared hungrily into his back.
Brandon
screamed, raced forward, plowed through the doorway. His flashlight shot back
as he briefly turned his head to reveal, of course, nothing. He stumbled down the hall, cut into the
nearest door way.
They were
there.
He turned
around, raced back the way he had come. He flew down the hall, up a flight of
stairs, down another corridor, through a door.
They were nearer.
“Get away!”
he shouted, dashing down another hall.
The room he entered: he knew it too. There! There on the table! He reached into his jacket, removed the diamond
statue, threw it onto the carpet. He
didn’t stop, kept running, kept moving.
“I gave it back! I gave it BACK!”
he screamed, as his hands flew wildly in front of him. He turned, in his
momentum he didn’t stop soon enough, his side hit the wall, he stumbled, he
kept going, the things nearer and nearer.
Whenever he turned back he could see nothing there. He was frantic now, racing, moving, dodging imaginary
cobwebs in the air right in front of him. Which way had he come? Which way had
he come!? He moved forward, blindly, vaguely aware of his surroundings. The
things were in the same hall.
He tripped, sprawled forward; the flashlight
flew out of his hands. Without missing a
beat he scrambled up, dashed forward, grabbed it again, scooped it and grasped
it in his hand. Through another
door. Into another room. The things were
in the same room.
With a cry of terror upon his lips he
doubled back, crashed into the doorframe, kept going, down the hall, up the
stairs. Up and up: there was no top.
With sudden revulsion he realized it was a trick stairway, its top blocked by a
wall. He turned, tripped, fell down the stairs. He crashed onto the floor,
landing on his hands and stomach.
The things were upon him.
He turned over, looked up, and let out a
blood-curdling scream.
Three days later, in the paper, a notice
went out for a missing person by the name of Brandon Hilgriss.
