“Boss,” Iris said as she leaned up against the walls. “Can we stop for a while? My hooves are killing me.”
Oatberg looked at his watch. “I’m afraid that we have to. It’s already past ten.”
“H-Hold on,” Lost Scroll objected. “Are you saying that we have to sleep here?”
“I’m afraid so,” the director sighed as he slumped to the floor. “We have no idea where in the house we are Mr. Scroll. If we try to go around, we might end up losing the much-needed energy to find the foyer.”
“But we’ve left our sleeping bags and the gas stove in there.”
“But we’ve brought our blankets at least,” the unicorn mare pointed out. As she said this, she went over to the table in the center of the room. Raising a hoof, she drew a line across the paper, taking notice of the clean line on the layer of dust. She eyed the planchette, waiting there. “I can safely say that we shouldn’t touch this thing.”
“Why’s that?” Scroll raised an eyebrow.
“Don’t you know? In every horror story, movie and urban legend ever made, every time somepony uses anything resembling an Ouija board, something bad happens. Every, single, time.”
The historian looked at the table. “Except, if you noticed, there’s nothing on here expect a blank piece of paper… Wait a sec…” Scroll put a hoof to his chin, “I just remembered something I said earlier, about how Harriet would hold séances to draw up plans for this house. I think this is exactly how it was done every night. And considering that all the blueprints have come from this thing, it explains a lot.”
“I think that Ms. Iris is right in one aspect,” the director said as he unloaded his saddle bag. “This place is technically a historical site, and I don’t want to touch anything that is personal belongings that we happen to find. This thing,” he pointed to the table, “is most likely one of them. If what you say Scroll is true, then I think that might be Mrs. Harriet’s. So all of you, don’t touch that table. Let’s try to get some sleep while we still can.”
The three of them set out to do just that. They unloaded their saddlebags, pulled out their blankets and huddled together in a corner of the room so that they could keep warm. After putting out the last of their lights, while the wintery cold leaked into the room, all three of them tried to sleep. The room became pitch black dark, so much so, that Scroll couldn’t see his own hoof in front of his face – even with his glasses were still on him.
In the bitter still cold, the three of them waited for sleep while the wind still howled outside from the windows. Here and there, creaks and groans could be heard from the ancient wood. Iris lay her head down on the floor, trying to fall asleep among the noise that came now and again. But her ear, still pressed against the floor she thought she picked up on something. It was muffled and distant, but she could have sworn that she heard a little foal crying.
“Guys! Wake up!”
This was the call from Lost Scroll that jolted the two other ponies awake. Iris and Oatberg blinked and rubbed their eyes from the bright light from the windows. “Ugh, what is it?” the director grumbled. After his eyes adjusted, he found the historian over by the table.
“Did any of you go near the table last night?” he questioned.
“What are you talking about?” the unicorn mare asked getting up. “We just woke up.”
Scroll’s eyes narrowed, “No seriously, who was it to draw this on the table?”
That compelled the two ponies to look at the sketch. While the planchette remained in the same position as it was when they went to sleep, the paper underneath was no longer blank. The drawing showed blueprints of a single floor. It was detailed in its labyrinthine design from the twin kitchens to intertwining hallways that coil like a snake. It told us about where windows should go to installing a door right into the floor.
Oatberg looked at it in disbelief. “Did either of you make this?”
“How could we?” the unicorn question. “The place was pitch black, and by the looks of this thing, it might have taken somepony hours to draw.”
Lost Scroll looked at her with a raised eyebrow, “So both of you are saying that you didn’t do this?”
“I can’t draw to save my life,” the mare said.
“And I only draw stick ponies,” Oatberg admitted. “So I’m guessing you didn’t draw this either?”
He shook his head, “I just woke up myself,” the historian looked at the plans again. Taking out the copies of the map he had, he examined both of them for a moment. “This looks like an expansion of the fifth floor – as if it has been enlarged three times over. But who could have drawn all of this without waking us up?”
“More importantly,” Iris asked, craning her neck, “Why draw it up at all?”
The Pegasus director, meanwhile, was reaching out for the camera, turning it on. “Whatever the reason,” he said, “We still have a documentary to make and to find our way back downstairs. For now, let’s film the next scene in here before we move on. Scroll, do you have the script for the next scene?”
“Yeah,” the earth pony reached into his saddlebag for the scraps of paper. “It’s here.” He gave it over to the mare to look through them while staring at the blueprints lying before them. Scroll shook his head. “What is going on around here?”
Hours later, the three of them did everything they could to ignore the hunger in their stomachs. What food they had was decided to be eaten only sparingly, to ration it out until they were able to find a way back down. But so far, it was as if the icy house would not let them. They went down shadowy hallways and confusing rooms without finding a single staircase to take them to the second floor (much less the first). The layout was confusion to the group for just as they thought they had it, suddenly, it would seem as if the architecture does a somersault and hits them in the face of their sense of direction. Somehow, the third floor was worst the second for it had no sense of symmetry, geometry, or even proportion because the three of them had to squeeze through doors that were almost too small to go through.
It was almost as if the house itself were mocking them for the very act of navigating their way out. Even when they tried to go down through any of the windows, they found that they were sealed shut from the ice outside, making it impossible for any of them to budge open. And the chimneys were too small to crawl up through the ashy pipes. Even more frustrating still, even when Oatberg had used one of the reels of wires to tie a line from where they were to the séance room, they again found that connection snapped.
Eventually, the director called for a rest by having the three of them sit on a couch that was nailed to the wall, suspended several inches above the floor. Oatberg was hunched over, burying his face in his hooves. “Ugh! What is up with this place?”
“I know,” Scroll moaned, “I swear we’ve gone down this hallway three times now.”
“Something is definitely wrong here,” the director said as he looked up. “But I just don’t understand what is going on. We went that way to the left but ended up here, then we went right and came back, and even when we went backward we run into this same spot! It’s like… Like the rooms keep shifting every couple of minutes or so.”
“How?” the historian questioned. “Did Mrs. Harriet install some giant machine to switch rooms at a whim and somepony forgotten to turn it off? Even if that were the case, we would have heard some… I don’t know… gears grinding or rumbling or… something.”
“Said the stallion that doesn’t believe that the house is moving,” Iris pointed it out, she rested her chin on her hoof, looking down the hallway they just came from when she noticed something on the floor. “What’s this?” she got up and off from the couch and walked over, picking up a white envelope with her magic. “Hey, guys? Was this here before?”
The two other stallions went over to her to examine the envelope. “That’s weird,” Scroll pointed out, “this thing looks new compared to the rest of the house. Even down to the stamp in the corner.”
Oatberg looked up and down the hallway and spotted two of them from opposite ends of the hallway. He flew to both ends to see even more letters that go into other rooms. “Guys, this is a breadcrumb trail. Somepony else really is in here!”
“Great!” Iris said, “Let’s follow it to where it leads.”
“Yeah,” Lost Scroll agreed. “We may either find whoever else is in here or a way out.”
“Let’s follow the trail then,” the director said with gaining confidence. And so, the three of them went from one letter to the next, leading them from room to room, hallway to hallway, passageway to passageway, and stairs to stairs. Like bloodhounds catching promising sent, the navigated through the freezing house, determined to find the end or beginning of the trail. Envelope by envelope they followed until they came into a hall that had nothing in it except for thirteen fireplaces and a low iron basket of old firewood. And there is a corner of the room was a shivering pegasus in a blue uniform, curled up into a ball with a disregarded, empty mailbag by his side.
“Oh Goddesses,” while Iris and Scroll went up to the cold stallion, Oatberg started filming. The mare touched the stallion’s coat, “This guy is freezing. We’ve gotta get him warmed up.” She pointed to the iron basket. “Scroll, Oatberg, use that to start a fire and give me your guy’s blankets.”
And so, the three of them spent nearly an hour to not only light a fire from one of the many hearths but trying to get their stranger to warm up – all the while, they took notice of who this stallion was. By his uniform and obvious trail of letters, it was clear that he was a mail carrier. His coat was as white as ice and his wings were shaking uncontrollably. The stallion’s cutie mark was a compass.
By the time the stranger was able to open his eyes, the first thing he asked was shivering, “A-Am I d-dead?”
“No,” Oatberg replied. “We just found ya not too long ago and we’re trying to get ya warmed up.”
“What’s your name?” Scroll asked.
The white pegasus looked around in the hall before replying. “W-Way F-F-Find-der.”
Iris dug through her bag and pulled out a still wrapped granola bar. “You hungry?”
Nodding, the postal pegasus was given the spared ration and immediately devoured it. “Th-Thanks,” he said. “I h-haven’t e-e-eaten in d-days.”
“Days?” the director’s eyes widen in surprise. At the same time, he glanced at his writer with a ‘Told you so,’ look. “I guess that might explain what we’ve been hearing in the past few days.” Unexpectedly, the three of them heard a sob coming from the mail pony, finding that tears were running down his face. “Hey, hey there,” Oatberg patted the crying stallion on his back. “It’s fine now, why are you getting upset about?”
“I-I’m n-never g-g-gonna go h-h-home,” he wailed. “W-We’re n-never are g-g-etting o-out of h-h-here!” But before any of the group could say their words of comfort, Way Finder let out something that startled all of them when he said with his quiet voice. “T-They d-don’t w-w-want us t-to go.”