Glowing candles lit the passageway, soft and calming against the pastel-pink walls. Cushioned rugs lay across the floor and creamy white beanbag chairs cushioned the curved edges of the circular retreat. The place looked worn yet new, homey yet starkly clean. It was the perfect place to take his repose in, Levi thought as he traversed the hallway, making his way from candle to candle as he came closer to the chairs.

He’d been offered this place by a friend of his, just for a day, so that he may rest. Levi would take a journey tonight, one that would be scary, but here, in this place, it was impossible to imagine that just yet.

He sunk down into one of the beanbags, sighing in contentment as it enveloped him like a fluffy cloud. The chair made him feel free, like a bird or a fish travelling in a blue expanse. He sighted a bookshelf next to him; in his leisurely state he had not seen it. He grabbed a book at random and read the title: it was Jane Eyre, a classic and one of his favorites. Smiling to himself, Levi wondered how his friend had known that he would be so comfortable here. Then again, they had known each other for ages.

The windows, large and curtained, hinted at sunlight. Reluctantly standing, Levi walked over and threw back the curtains; the light that poured through was the color of vanilla, thick and beautiful against his untanned skin.

Once he had made his way to his chair again, Levi decided to rest before his big night tonight, visiting the Harrow house. He had no time to think of this adventure, though, because in seconds he had fallen into a deep, restful sleep.

 

 

The floor screamed.

Levi jumped, feeling the dusty floorboards whistle and groan beneath him. The house was dark, very dark– a penetrating dark that went through your eyes and right to your soul. The whole place seemed haunted, though Levi had not seen a ghost. Yet.

The last of the sun’s rays had sunk beneath the window long ago, and no light but the flashlight carried throughout the blackness. No one had died here that Levi knew of, but he could not be sure. There was no blood, no smell of decay, yet the house seemed just as haunted as the ones in the movies. It was, from the outside, just like any other house– red brick and a grayish roof, slightly overgrown in the yard but well enough kept by the city government that it didn’t look terrible. The inside, however, was another story.

If Levi had been able to see the walls, he would have seen generations of faces painted along them, a name and a year listed below them. A date of death, not of birth. The inhabitants of the house hadn’t seemed to like life that much. The floorboards were nice hardwood, oak, to be exact, but they were weathered, worn, and coated in layer upon layer of dust. Old clothes hung in the closets that Levi had found, torn to shreds by raccoons and moths who came creeping in during the night. Levi had seem them too.

As he pushed open the door to the kitchen, the door squealed like a frightened animal. Inside the kitchen, pots and pans lay strewn across the floor. Knives glinted in their racks as the flashlight beamed upon them, and their blades, still razor-sharp after all these years, shone with an ethereal glow.

Across the hallway, another door creaked. Levi jumped as a wall began to move before him. A trapdoor activated by the kitchen? Then he heard a hissing voice, a voice as terrifying as the voice of Death himself:

“Who goes there?”