Master's Bedroom
You put the lantern on the floor between your feet and stretch your arms. You then place your hands on the two cold metal rings, one in either hand. You can feel the weight of them as you lift them away from the door and pull down. The sound of rusty metal scraping against each other tears your eardrums. You endure the screech as best as you can and keep pulling down with all your strength until you hear a click. You then push the door open with your body before letting go of the rings. They snap back to their original position with a long clang. The mighty door slowly slides back, unveiling a massive dark room.
The light of the lantern has hardly enough range to uncover the secrets that lie inside. Strangely, the light from your lantern is not the only light source in the room. You notice a speck of light emitting from the far left wall of the room and hurry over to investigate, ignoring everything else. A massive pair of royal red curtains with a fabulous rope at its side covers the entire wall. You grab the rope and without any hesitation, tug down hard on it. The curtains roll to the side to reveal a grand mosaic window. You hold your empty hand over your eyes to block the bright colorful lights and back off until they are no longer directly on your face. The window is too thick to see outside of, but it is relieving to know the sun still exists. It is still saddening that you cannot see through the glass.
You take a good look at the mosaic. It is an assortment of purple, red, blue, and green colored tiles. The shapes are messy and it is hard to discern a picture from it. After staring at it for about a minute in various angles and positions, you are still unable to make anything of it. It appears to be an abstract piece and nothing more. You finally turn away and close your eyes for a moment to clear the white circles in your vision.
The room is big enough to jog around in and it is rather empty for its size. There is an oversized bed in the center of the room with neatly made purple sheets and a fluffy white pillow. Lying down in it may be dangerous. It looks comfortable enough that once you slip into it, you will never want to leave. On both sides of the bed are weapon racks, lined with swords, resting pleasantly in their polished scabbards. The person who lived here must have had quite a few uninvited guests visiting in the night.
Aside from the mosaic and bed, there is nothing else noteworthy in the room. A few statues here and there, none of which are close to as impressive as the ones downstairs. You walk to the desk which has a mountain of parchment paper stacked to the ceiling. You carefully pluck one out randomly from the stack and gloss over it. The document is written in a very old language but you can make out what is it about using the words you know and filling the rest in with guesswork. It is from a merchant and it is asking for a loan for a failing business, promising great returns. From a few sentences in the paper, you get the context that this is not the first time the merchant has asked for loans as the person who wrote the document is claiming to repay the previous debts ten-fold, an outlandish statement, especially after the fact that the merchant has is still asking for money after all this time.
You look at the desk and find some books, scholarly works, and a pocket-sized diary. The diary is filled with entries dating back to nearly two centuries ago. At the start of the dairy, the entries are short and very bland. It appears as if the writer did not know what a diary was for and was writing in one for the first time. The later entries are much longer and contain a lot more much-needed detail. The story describes a wealthy noble and his family. He was respected by everybody, happy, and had few if any trivial problems in his life. However, at some point, the diary takes a darker turn and begins to voice the writer’s concern about his son who seems to have gone mad.
The noble’s son, renowned for his intelligence was slowly losing himself. The noble believed it to be an illness and summoned doctors and other practitioners of medicine from every place imaginable, but none could cure his son. As the days went by, the son’s madness began to infect his father as well. The noble stopped his daily activities and locked himself in this room, allowing no visitors. Paperwork came in but none were ever returned. The noble dedicated himself to finding a way to fix his son... Fix, not cure.
The noble ordered countless books to be brought in to aid him in his desperate search. He looked for anything that remotely mentioned something that even slightly resembled a symptom. Even that did not bear fruit. Growing more restless by the day, the noble reached his breaking point and demanded his son be brought before him. The servants, guards, and even his wife tried to calm him down, but he lashed out against everyone and anyone who dared challenge his authority.
This far in the diary, the handwriting has become nearly unreadable and is almost just meaningless scribbles. A few more pages in, the writing has transformed from incomprehensible to actual scribbles. Circles turned spirals, traced so many times that they crease the pages under. As you flip through the pages, the spirals converge back into a circle again but something starts to appear in the center. A smaller circle in the circle. A line stretches out into a slit. You feel cold sweat fall down your neck and back and your hands are shaky but as if you are possessed, you continue to sweep through the pages of the diary until you find an eye staring right at you. You jump and drop the book on the desk, startled by what you anticipated would appear.
You inhale deeply and take a moment to cool down. You pick up the book again and turn the page, ridding the creepy eye. It is blank. You turn another page. It too is blank. You keep turning until the dents caused by the drawings disappear off the pages entirely and continue even after that until you come across words. There is a single line of words running up and down like a roaster coaster. The sentence is written vertically so you have to turn the book on its side to see what it says. The words, “I see them too,” are what is written.
You turn yet another page only to find it blank. The page after that is torn out. The next, blank. The one after is torn out too. This pattern repeats itself until the last page which has a single word scribbled on it. “Devils.”
You flip the page to check if there is anything on the back. There is nothing, but there is something on the inside of the back cover. Cryptic symbols are scattered all over the cover in random positions and angles. Next to each of them are tiny descriptions of what they mean. These translations may be needed later so you put the small diary in your pocket. You keep around the desk to find something else useful. You pull open the drawers and find each of them crammed with thick books. You notice that one of the books has a small gap in the pages and question why.
You flip open the book and find the cause to be a key. The key is squarish and has no words or symbols on it. The teeth on the head are all the same height which is an extremely daring choice. After looking at the key some more, you come to the conclusion that the key is not actually used for anything important but rather, just for decorative purposes, and was serving as a bookmark. You put the key back where you found it and take the lantern up again. Just as you do, you feel a wave of cold air on the back of your neck. With a jolt you spin around and what you see has you stunned stiff.
A tall skinny man looms a foot over you. He is wearing all black and is holding a wicked dagger in one of his hands. The man has no eyes. His mouth is wide open, showing off two rows of crooked yellow teeth. For what feels like an eternity, you stand completely frozen before the man. You glance to your side and see the weapon rack. A sword is within arm’s reach. It does not seem like the man knows that you are there, and if he does, it is better to take matters into your own hands than to wait for him to do something. You can feel tension swelling up inside of you, thick enough to suffocate. You consider picking up the sword.
It is too risky to try to fight the man. Besides, the man already has a weapon in hand. And if he can somehow sense you reaching for the sword then it can end up really bad. You toss aside that idea and try to think of another way out. You look back at the dagger in his hand and that is when you notice his bone-thin legs. It should be more than feasible to outrun the man. The dagger is useless if it cannot catch you.
You stay calm and reevaluate the idea. The man's arms are also toothpicks but they are inhumanely long. His arms are more or less as long as you are tall. You decide that this approach is too risky to try and pull off as with the other options. In a moment of suspense, you let out a soft noise in the back of your throat- a gulp. The man snaps his head sideways at the sound and begins to quiver uncontrollably. He closes his mouth and his eyebrows arch down, making an angered expression. You instinctively stumble back, worried that he might attack but he stands there quivering until. A dark gray mist envelopes the man. His body crumbles bit by bit into that very same mist until nothing is left of him. The mist lingers and spirals like a whirlwind for a few seconds, then disappears.
You rub your eyes, wondering if what you just saw was an illusion. Were you maybe going insane after being in this mansion for so long. Is it the book? Did reading that trigger some spell? You have so many questions but no way to get any answers. Perhaps it is better to not ask any questions and move on. You calm down and check yourself for any injuries or curses or the such. Nothing seems wrong with your body. You breathe a sigh of relief and walk out of the haunted bedroom.