Group 4's horror story, Alpedrete

There was always something fishy about Wellington Manor. It lay abandoned for years on the misty moors, a place the sun never seemed to shine. Shrouded in clouds it loomed ominously on the outskirts of Alpedrete. I avoided it as best as I could. It gave me shivers.

When Caroline went missing the whole town went crazy. Every night we had a search party. My mother and father fell apart, and I spent most nights lying awake looking at her empty bed. She was my big sister, and she was everything I had ever wanted to be. Everyone in school liked her, so much so that the meaner, older students left me alone…even though they didn’t like me very much.  Caroline always said that I was too shy.

When she went missing there was not a single person who didn’t want to help search for her, I used to wonder if they’d be like that if I had disappeared instead. For a week, everybody looked all day and night and then they gave up. Even my (Our) parents gave up.?? I think my mother had a broken heart.

And Wellington Manor sat untouched. It was a wonder nobody thought to search there, it was like something kept people away, or the whole town got the same shivers I did. People seemed to put it from their mind, pretending it didn’t exist. It was what, at the time, I considered complete luck that brought me there.

In the shadow of Wellington Manor, a glint of silver caught my eye. How I happened across this part of town in the first place was a mystery, it was almost as if I had walked there mindlessly, somehow drawn to a place I took such care to avoid.  And yet, this tiny flash of light from the pavement broke me from my trance. I bent down to pick it up. When I saw what it was, I got a rush of excitement, followed by a sense of utter dread as I looked towards the Manor, shrouded in fog. In my hand, I held my sister’s locket. It was something she never took off, and she was surely wearing it the night she disappeared. She had been here.

I turned my attention from the manor to the locket. I opened it, to make sure it was hers. But the picture of us together was no longer there, instead I saw a new picture of Caroline! She was in a big, old fashioned armchair, and she looked like she was in pain! I put the locket around my neck and took a deep breath. There was no time to run for help. My sister was in trouble. She needed me.

“I’m coming for you Caroline,” I said. I walked towards the Manor.

Fear gripped me with every step, the Manor was terrifying. It was dark and isolated, and hard to see through the thick mist. I got to the front door, it was huge, and the black paint was peeling off. I opened it and stepped in. It swung closed behind me with a loud bang and I was covered in darkness. Then suddenly, lights on all the walls turned on. They were not very powerful. I could see that the old wallpaper was covered in spider-webs. This place hadn’t been cleaned, nor touched, for centuries. The air was dusty.

The floor below me was tiled in a chessboard pattern, but it was sticky. It reminded me of blood.  There was some furniture, an armchair and a small table, covered in a smooth white layer of dust.

The whole hallway stank. It was a damp smell, it came from all corners, but somewhere in there I got a hint of…roast chicken? No, surely I was mistaken. My mind was playing tricks on me. I heard something…i wasn’t sure where it was coming from. I wanted to run, faint, cry…anything! But I needed to find Caroline. I moved forward.

The floor spoke. I screamed.

“Forward,” it said. I turned to run out of the house, I was terrified.
“FORWARD!” the floor shouted. I obeyed this time. I continued forward through the hall.
“There are many mysterious things about this house,” said the floor. “But be careful where you step, you might have a nasty fall…”

I shuddered and kept walking. I reached what appeared to be the dining room. The walls were thick with spider webs, and were lined with paintings of old people looking serious. When I walked past these paintings, the people in them suddenly appeared much younger from the new angle.

Broken ceramic was all over the floor, the damp smell remained, but this time it was mixed with the smell of food from a giant table that stood in the middle of the room. There was a lamp with a bulb, but inside the bulb there was an eye. It could see me. I froze with fear, suddenly the smell of the food changed…it turned to rot. I gagged, it smelled like the fart of a dog who’d been eating from the street.

“Forward!” said the floor.

Suddenly the ground started to rumble and open behind me, trying to swallow me whole. I ran as fast as I could to the end of the room and the floor stopped rumbling. There was only a wall in front of me…but I could hear something. I pressed my ear against the wall.

I heard a number of things, all of them strange, and very mysterious. I heard voices whispering in another language…I heard laughing, running water, the sounds of fingernails on a chalk board…a…a baby’s cry? The roar of a tiger?! What is going on in this house? I thought to myself. I was horrified.

And then the wall opened, and I fell through. When I got up, I saw a staircase.
“Forward!” roared the floor.

I went up the staircase as fast as I could.
“Caroline!” I cried. “Are you up there?

I got to the attic and realised my hair was full of dust and spiderwebs, I shook it out in a panic. My vision steadied and I saw that I was in a small attic. There was a small window and a broken curtain. Broken glass littered the floor and the wall paper was peeling from the slanted walls. There were paintings, I noticed one of a man with no arm. It made me feel uncomfortable. A huge red carpet covered the floor. The room smelled like rot, like the rest of the house. I suspected that a fungus was growing behind the wall paper.

I took a step forward onto the carpet and the floor opened up and swallowed me! I screamed as I fell through every room in the house until I landed hard on my back. My vision was blurry. The first thing I saw was the hole in the ceiling where I had fallen through. It closed in front of my eyes! I got up. My back hurt.

The air down here was dense and dry, it forced my heart to pump faster. The floor beneath me creaked with each footstep. It was wood, and carved with shapes and symbols. I was trapped in a labyrinth of old wooden shelves. They were rotting away, thick with spider-webs and disgusting insects…big old dusty books lined them. The floor seemed to move as I walked on it, I was worried it would suck me up again. I made my way through this terrifying library until I got to what I thought was the middle of the room.

My sister was there, sitting, slumped over in the same chair I had seen in the picture in the locket.
“Caroline!” I shouted. I ran over to her and shook her. “Wake up! Oh please, don’t be dead!”

My sister opened her eyes, a wave of relief came over me. That relief turned to terror as I realised that her eyes were glowing red. She screamed a high pitch screech that filled the room and nearly burst my eardrums. Something hit me and I was sent soaring across the room. I crashed into a book case and I saw her float upwards out of her chair. Her face changed, her skin turned grey and her teeth turned sharp. She screamed again.

I got up to run but she swooped down and grabbed me…I could feel something, something evil radiating from her. I felt it…a spirit…entering my body.

“JOIN US!” My sister screeched.

And then the floor opened up, and swallowed us both.