“Do you guys think this place is really haunted?”
Lost Scroll and Iris Lens looked up at their director. By now, they had returned to the foyer to camp there for the night. In the very center of the room, the three ponies were gathered around a tiny stove that provided both the means to cook a late dinner and to warm up. Nearby in the icy room where their sleeping supplies and their equipment they’ve brought with them.
“What,” began the writer, “You mean those noises we’ve heard in that ballroom?” His boss nodded, “I’m sure it’s probably nothing,” Scroll shrugged while rubbing his hooves over the only source of heat. “I mean this place has been neglected for roughly eighty years. Who’s to say that something had fallen off, or it was the pipes or something?”
Oatberg looked around, “I don’t know… Does it strike any of you as odd of that very fact that it has been neglected for that long that it’s still in one piece?”
“But we’ve only explored a small part of the mansion,” Iris pointed out. “Sure, what we saw was well preserved, but who’s to say that the other floors are like that? It makes me kinda nervous, to be honest about going upstairs.”
“How come?” the earth pony asked.
“If this whole place is made out of wood, how do we know that termites haven’t eaten a good chunk of the house? I’m kinda scared of stepping on the wrong floorboard and falling through several stories crashing through. Or trying to walk up a staircase that instantly turns to dust.”
“She’s right you know,” Scroll added. “Maybe that’s what we’ve heard earlier that it might be pieces of the ceiling falling onto some floorboards.”
The director shook his head, “But that doesn’t explain one thing though.”
“What’s that?”
“You all saw how I’ve put my ear to the ceiling?” they nodded, “When I did that, I swear that I’ve heard somepony whistling.”
The dusty foyer became quiet for a minute. “Are you sure?” Scroll inquired.
“Tune and all. Like the kind that somepony was going to work or something like that.” He looked up at the vaulted ceiling. “So… What if there’s somepony else in the house?”
“This again,” Iris groaned.
“Now wait, hear me out on this,” Oatberg said, adjusting the blanket around him. “I’ve been thinking this out for a while now. And I’m starting to wonder if somepony really had gotten in, like a Pegasus that found an open window-”
“In this weather?” Scroll raised an eyebrow in a deadpanned expression.
“What can I say? Pegasi have a somewhat higher tolerance for the cold when we’re flying up there.”
“Even so,” Iris said, “Even Pegasi have their own limits of how long they could stand in a freezing environment without shelter. Heck, you’re a Pegasi and here you are by a gas stove wrapped in a blanket.”
“Then again…” Scroll mused. “It might not be a far off explanation. After all, that town we’ve come from to get permission to come here is roughly five miles away. It could be someone going to or from there just got caught in the blizzard and found this place.”
“It would be nice to know if that were true,” Oatberg muttered. “I’m going to go to bed, so I suggest the rest of you do the same. I think we’ll start heading up to the second floor tomorrow.”
“Just a thought,” said the mare. “Do you think that we ought to pack this stuff and take it with us, just in case we don’t get back to the foyer tomorrow night?”
The director snorted, “Remember the wire I’ve brought? It’s not like we’re gonna get lost in here.”
By morning, the three of them packed up their filming equipment, food, and water to venture on the second floor. Oatberg made sure to tie one end of the wire reel to the railing posts of the staircase before they began to venture off. As they went deeper, they’ve noticed that unlike the ground floor, the second was indeed more maze-like. All the while, they walked carefully as every board creaked and groaned underneath them. Hallways that bend and turned at sharp corners, rooms big and small lead off to other places of the house, and even for the most part, lead them to dead ends.
Lost Scroll at one point opened a door, only to find that it was walled up and covered in wallpaper. Iris Lens was about to descend a staircase, only to find that it leads to nowhere. And Oatberg was perplexed of finding a skylight build into the floor.
“It’s starting to be like walking through a fun-house,” the director said as he went up to a door. He opened it to find a bedroom with half a ceiling missing. “Hey, Scroll, was Mrs. Harriet her own architect?”
“As far as I know,” Scroll told him as they continued down a hallway. “I think that she was. There was a story that as soon as she bought the property, she would hold séances every night so that she would allow the spirits to sketch up blueprints to give to her workers the following morning. I had dismissed it was just rumor, but how this is turning out…” he looked down into a hallway that turned into a walk-in closet. “I’m beginning to think that she was losing her mind when she built this place.”
“That’s easy to believe,” Iris muttered as she peeked her head through an archway that leads to a tower of a spiraled staircase.
“Let’s try to keep together,” the director called out. “I can’t afford to lose anyone in this place.”
The three of them followed the pegasus, weaving through crooked hallways and across rooms that baffled rational thought. From a library that has its floor and ceiling is made entirely out of mirrors to stain-glass windows that have no light whatsoever being shined in. They’ve also found many bedrooms in which no two designs were alike. In one, the bed was well sunken through the floor while in another all the furniture was screwed sideways on a wall.
“Hey, look at this,” Oatberg pointed towards a hallway that, unlike most of what they’ve seen, this hallway was unfinished. The entrance to it looked like it was once a wall that was knocked down, still leaving the small wooden planks for plaster sticking out of it. It was also very dark, as it had no windows or doors for the gray light to come in. Turning on their flashlights, the three of them entered the space of unfinished walls, visible beams overhead, and as they went in deeper, they found to their surprise, tools lay scattered about.
Lost Scroll picked up a dusty hammer from a wooden toolbox that had a mark burned on the handle of it. “‘Iron Brothers, 912…’ Wasn’t it that a company that went bankrupt in the fifties?”
Iris, meanwhile, was looking around with her horn glowed brightly. Looking up at the beams and noticing the nails that were still sticking out of the wood. “It’s all unfinished, isn’t it?”
“Huh?”
“Look around you. There are tools everywhere, this hallway looks far from finished, and just up here, the nails still haven’t been hammered in.”
“I see what you mean,” Oatberg nodded. “It was like the workers suddenly dropped whatever they had and never came back.”
“You sure about that?” Scroll asked, and the other two ponies inquired what he meant. “I mean, look at this hammer. Sure, it’s defiantly old, but there’s no rust on this thing,” he looked into the toolbox. “Or any of these tools either. Even in a place like this, you would think that anything made out of iron would have some rust on it. But this stuff, while clearly used by the scrapes here and there, only it doesn’t show any signs of rust.”
Oatberg went over to another toolbox and picked up a saw with his wing. “This has no rust on it either…”
“Something fishy is going on around here,” Iris muttered. “Question here is what?”
The director hummed, “I would like to film our next scene, but let’s get out of this hallway for light.”
“Are you sure this is the way we came?” the unicorn mare asked with growing concern. “This doesn’t look familiar to me.”
“Of course it is,” Oatberg said was he wound up the reel of wire.
“But wasn’t there a hallway back there?” She looked up to a dusty, simple chandler overhead. “And I’m sure that Chandler wasn’t there before.”
“It might be your mind playing a trick on you,” Scroll suggested.
This he received a stern look from the actress. “Not funny Lost.”
“I’m being serious. In a place this huge and confusingly designed, it must be easy to get disoriented. Like for example, picking up things that you haven’t noticed before and such, I’m sure that we haven’t noticed some of this when we first walked down here.”
Iris raised an eyebrow, pointing her hoof to a stain-glass window that was designed like a spider’s web. “How does anypony miss something like that?”
“Hey, cool it you two,” their boss called out, “Let’s just focused on getting back to base and a cup of hot chocolate. I know it has been a long and weird day, but we can relax once we…” he trailed off as he pulled on the reel, only to find it suddenly ends. “Wha… What the?” He looked at the severed line, with thin metal wires curl and unwinds from the place it snapped from. “Oh no…” he went around a corner. Only to find it walled up. He rushed up to feel that it was indeed solid. “What…? What’s going on!” He looked frantically around, “I know that the staircase was right there but… who put up a wall?!”
Lost Scroll picked up the broken end of the wire, “Looked like it snapped.”
“Except that it can’t!” Oatberg said frantically. “That thing is strong enough to lift fifteen full grown ponies! It can’t just snap!” He returned his attention to the wall. “No no no no no no no! This is really bad you guys.”
“Boss!” Iris spoke out as she went over to put both hooves on him. “First of all, calm down. And second, don’t you think that it might be possible that you’re mistaken too?”
“What?”
“To be fair, some of the hallways do look alike, so who’s to say that we came out from there,” she pointed towards the wall. “Maybe the stairs is nearby. And if worst comes to worst, we could always find another staircase to go down. We may be a little lost at the moment, but I’m sure we can find a way back to the foyer.”
“Uh… hey guys,” the two of them turned to the blue earth pony that was holding up a white feather in his hoof. “I think there might be somepony else in the house after all.”
Iris lit up her horn to pluck the feather from his hoof. “Huh… It makes me wonder who this belongs to… Still, it’s evident enough that there aren’t any ghosts in this place.” She turned to her boss, “So, do you want to go look for the foyer, or whoever’s feather this belongs to?” After taking some calming breaths, he responded that they should try to figure out where the foyer was. “Fine by me, I’ve seen a staircase nearby, so let’s see where that leads to.”
They followed the mare back through the halls to the tower of stairs when she looked around confused.
“What’s wrong?” Scroll asked.
“Funny, I could have sworn that I saw steps leading downward. But there’s nothing but a solid floor here. And the only direction this goes is up.”
Oatberg walked into the center of the tower, looking straight up. “Doesn’t it feel like that the house is purposely directing us somewhere?” He asked as he filmed a few seconds of what he was looking at.
Scroll snorted, “C’mon Boss, listen to yourself. You’re making it sound as if this mansion is alive or something.” He started to ascend the steps. “Maybe if we go to the next floor, we might be able to find some stairs leading downwards. It shouldn’t be too hard, right?”
The three of them climbed up to the third floor in which a platform that only led to a wall with hooks on them. The kind where one would hand their clothing onto, and as they counted, they were thirteen in all.
“Don’t tell me that it’s going to be like this all the way up,” Iris groaned.
“Hold on a sec, something seems off here,” Lost Scroll went up to the hooks for a closer look. At one of the hooks, he noticed that some of the paint has been scrapped. Upon further inspection, he looked closely at the paneling of this hooked wall, particularly towards the edges. “I think this is a door.” He took hold of the hook, and after pulling it towards the direction of the scrape, did he find that he was able to push the wall open.
Curious, the three of them entered a small, blue room with white paneling. In the very center was a small, round table with a simple dark blue cloth on it. What gave all of them a pause, was on this table was a planchette that had a pencil in it, which was over a large piece of paper.
“I think that it’s safe to say,” The director began, “that we just found Mrs. Harriet’s séance room.”