You open the door and it swings out on well oiled hinges— a bit too quickly as you'd expected it to be rustier and stiff. It bumps against the wall with a slight crunch of old wood breaking.
The room inside is black as pitch save for the narrow band where moonlight shines in from behind you. Thankfully, your time spent walking in the half-light of the halls has given ample time for your eyes to start adjusting to the dim and it's not as dark as it could be. You can just barely make out vague shapes in the shadow. Lines of bars and surfaces that clutter the space and make it hard to tell where one thing ends and another begins. After a few seconds of determined thought the shapes slot together in your mind. Shelves and racks- an old storeroom?
You move further in, but not before wedging a piece of broken wood under the door to hold it open. Even with your supreme confidence in your ability to handle any kind of scare this room might throw at you, you've read enough Daring Do to know that you never let a door shut itself behind you. Not unless you're trying to spring the obvious trap.
The light from the door casts a faintly lit path within, just enough to show off that the tiled floor here is in much better shape than that in the hallway.
"Hello?" you call out. Starlight said there were no actors in this haunted house, but that could have been a lie. Easy way to trick you into letting your guard down. Not that you'd fall for such an easy scheme. And even if there aren't any ponies around, whatever spells she's cast might be sound activated.
A minute passes as you wait silently on the threshold for something to happen. But there's nothing. No monsters, no jumpscares, no mysterious fog. The door hasn't even tried to force itself shut.
You're starting to wonder if maybe this isn't even part of the event at all. It could genuinely be just an old larder. And wouldn't that be great? Out of all the spooky rooms you just happened to wander into the one that doesn't have any extra frights in it.
Feeling a little braver, you step to the side, into the darkness so your shadow no longer blocks the meager light.
Something crunches underhoof.
You hesitate and slowly put your hoof down again. No crunch, but there is a slight squishiness. More curious than afraid—after all, what could be in an old storeroom?—you raise your hoof and give it a cautious lick.
You recoil away almost instantly, spitting and sputtering. It's bitter, acrid. Just your luck to go and step on a jar of forty year old rancid jam. You're going to need a gallon of spiced holiday cider to wash the taste out.
Without you to stand in the way, the little light from the door traces all the way onto the far wall where, at last, you see something that looks intentional.
On the wall farthest from the door, perfectly captured by the light, is a small pedestal. If the rubber Nightmare Night decorations wrapped around it aren't evidence enough that it's part of the event, then the lantern on top with a big red arrow pointing to it certainly is.
You relax and let out a breath you didn't realize you were holding. "There's nothing scary in here at all, is there?" You feel more comfortable talking out loud now, now that you know you're alone and nothing's going to jump out at you. You don't even feel embarrassed to voice your thoughts from a fear of looking silly. "I guess the lantern is, like, a reward for solving some puzzle in another room, but I just got to it out of order."
Feeling relieved, you easily trot the rest of the way over to it. Sensing no traps, you reach down, grab the handle with your teeth, and pull.
Much to your surprise, not only is the lantern bolted down, but the handle still gives way. It comes off the main body, held on only by a thin yet strong cord. Instantly, the room is flooded with light as the apparently enchanted lantern is activated at full strength.
You wince, squinting as you let the handle go in surprise and fall back. So much for your night vision.
Everything is bright, too bright, far too bright to see.
But you can hear.
You can hear so much.
From above, from below. From behind you and the front. From every side comes a horrible hissing noise. Loud and jarring and dissonant, like a thousand angry cats. You spend your few blind seconds frozen in place and when your vision returns, you really wish it hadn't.
Spiders.
Spiders the size of housecats scattered across every surface, every wall, everything the light failed to touch. Nimble black bodies with dark purple bands and fangs dripping like melting icicles. The sight of a glob of black and green goo by the door makes you suddenly feel quite ill.
That was not rancid jam.
A sudden ticking noise breaks you from your shocked stupor. The handle you pulled from the lantern is retracting. Tick, tick, tick. The string gets a little shorter with each demarcation, and the light a little dimmer.
A timer.
That part of your brain that registers important information while flying estimates that you have about a minute before you're back in total darkness with more spiders than there are ponies on the weather team.
Time for a decision.