The Mansion

by Peter Buckley

  Tony’s body lay at the foot of the large oak door motionless. Blood pouring from his now disfigured and splintered nose. The laughter became hysterical, until the man who had sat at the head of the table materialized from the swirling wind that surrounded the unconscious investigator. The man looked down at him and grinned; he then disappeared. The wind began to speed up and tighten its rotation around Tony’s body. A white glow began grew above him, its light becoming brighter and brighter until finally it exploded like a firework, silver glitter like sparks falling around him. When the last spark extinguished itself on the floor, all was dark in the corridor. The body of the investigator had disappeared, leaving only a bloody stain on the wooden floor.

  9

  Voices spoke from within the darkness. Young children and adults were having a number of conversations, but he could see no one. It was so dark that he lifted his hand up to where his face was but could not see it. He brought it closer until he felt his fingers touch his nose. His nose felt normal, and he ran his fingers down over his lip until he reached his chin. Again there was no pain, and all he could feel was the thick prickle of the stubble that had grown over the last four days.

  The voices suddenly stopped, and only one spoke. It spoke direct at him, calling him by name;

  ‘Tony, welcome. We are glad you have decided to join us,’ the deep voice of a man said.

  He recognized it as the man who had sat at the head of the table in the dining room.

  ‘Where am I?’ he called out.

  A number of voices began to laugh, and then the man spoke again.

  ‘You are everywhere. You are about to become part of the house. You will live forever between the living world and the next, able to travel wherever you want—to listen to all the people in the living world if you desire too.’

  Tony could feel his anger inside him begin to grow. He no longer felt fear, only anger. They had taken him away from where he wanted to be. He didn’t want to stop living.

  ‘I don’t want to be here with you!’ he shouted.

  There was more laughter, and then the voices began to attack his mind. They shouted and they screamed at him.

  He lifted his hands to his head and covered his ears, but the voices were relentless. They were passing the barrier his hands had made and still invading his head. The pain from his face suddenly returned, and he could no longer see his nose. The pain caused him to screw his eyes tight.

  He screamed, squeezing his eyes shut. He suddenly felt a sharp coldness on his skin that forced him to stop and open his eyes.

  He could see the light grey clouds above him. Snow lay on the ground and lightly dusted the branches of the trees. He tried to move but found himself unable to, his arms were tied back behind him around something. His fingers quickly began feeling whatever he was attached to. He could feel rope fibers and the rough texture of tree bark. He looked down at his feet and saw a pile of wood stacked up against the base of what he was tied to. He looked around him and saw four piles of wood. A body hung limp from a thick wooden stump in the center of each. He recognized each of the bodies as his fellow investigators. His attention was then drawn to the dark shapes that stood just beyond the pyres. A cold blast of air swirled around him and then the man and several children slowly appeared. The children all giggled, and the man smiled at him.

  ‘The mansion keeps us all alive, able to cheat death and enjoy the wonders of the world beyond,’ the man said.

  ‘But you are dead!’ Tony shouted.

  The man was about to speak when the voices of the children began talking in unison.

  ‘Our bodies may have died but our spirits live on. The adults look after us as we play. The mansion allows us to return to this world providing we give it what it needs.’

  Tony looked at them as they grinned at him. ‘What does it need?’

  The children began to laugh.

  ‘It needs a sacrifice—a sacrifice to allow us to continue to live,’ they responded.

  Tony’s attention suddenly shifted from the children to his four friends. A figure walked between each, touching the piles of wood with a burning torch. The figure stood back as if to admire his work once the wood beneath John had been lit. The light from the fires highlighted his features. The old man who had shown them around when they first arrived stood holding the burning torch.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Tony screamed at him, the damage to his nose causing him to shout with a lisp.

  The man stared at him and smiled.

  The four investigators suddenly came to life and began screaming. They struggled against the ropes that held them back, finally looking up to the cloudy sky and letting out a final blood-curdling scream.

  Tears ran down Tony’s face, running around the bone splinters that protruded from his flattened nose.

  The children moved closer to him and began to speak to him in an eerie, comforting tone.

  ‘Don’t cry, we want you to join us.’

  He managed to gather enough saliva and spittle in his dry mouth to be able to spit at the children out of defiance before once again all went dark.

  10

  When he opened his eyes, he found himself lying on his back, staring up at a ceiling. A red pentagram stood out against the black. He tried to sit up but found his wrists and ankles bound and tied to the floor. He looked at his wrists, and his attention was suddenly taken away from the rope that held him down and to the walls of the room. Skeletal remains were stacked up along the walls. The bodies of children and adults, some were clothed, others still had hair attached to the dry, green-colored skin of the skulls.

  He lifted his head and looked towards his feet, seeing that the same kind of rope that tied his wrists bound around his ankles. He craned his neck so he could look behind him and noticed that there was no door set into any of the walls—just human remains.

  He turned his head to the side, his cheek coming to rest on the cold, smooth floor, a floor that was white and stone. His eyes then focused on a green line that scored the white stone. He raised his head and followed the line as it curved around him. The straight lines that ran underneath him told him that he was lying on a pentagram, one that mirrored the one above him in red. He yanked at the rope that held his wrists and found them to be set within the stone and fixed so that he was unable to create space for him to slip his hand out.

  He felt the coldness of a breeze race over his face. It made his nose sting, which was the first time he noticed the numbness of his smashed nose. It hadn’t even registered that he had stopped breathing in through it.

  The breeze got stronger and stronger until the dust that covered the skeletal remains began to rotate above him. The skeletons didn’t move; they remained in their fixed and intertwined positions.

  Tony could feel his heart begin to pound against his chest as the wind increased and tightened until a spinning vortex of dust spun above his chest, the top of it connecting to the center of the red pentagram. The tightest part of the tornado began to push into his solar plexus; the pressure as it pushed down made the investigator take short deep breaths.

  The red pentagram began to glow brighter, the spinning winds turning red as if the color were being sucked from the ceiling and becoming part of the tornado. Tony struggled again against the ropes that held his wrists. He began to fight back against the probing, spinning winds that pushed harder into him. He looked at his left wrist, hoping that by looking at it he could see some kind of difference. What he did see forced his eyes to bulge.

  The green pentagram he was lying on was glowing, its bright rays of light slowly reaching up like a sail being hoisted up into place.

  A number of voices began to laugh, and a mixture of adults and children’s voices began to speak.

  ‘Join us, become one with the house.’

  The tornado that pushed down on him began ripping his clothes from his body, the fabric disintegrating and joining the now red and green spinning winds.

  Tony watched with his eyes wi
de as his flesh began to burn as the friction of the winds and debris cut into him. The twister pushed further and further into him until it finally penetrated his layers of skin and fat. Blood began to spin from his body up around the swirling winds until it engulfed the mini tornado. The now red fluid spinning vortex pushed deeper into his body.

  Then he could feel the probing finger-like end of the tornado; he took one final deep breath and let out a scream.

  Deep within the walls of the snow covered mansion, within a windowless and door less room at the heart of the building, a scream pierced the silence.

  11

  The sun rose slowly, the thick grey clouds cloaking its bright rays. A man began to unlock the doors of the mansion and entered. He moved straight through to the dining room, where he began to unplug and remove the equipment that had been placed there by the paranormal team. He loaded it back into the vehicles that the team had arrived in before taking them one by one to a large lake on the estate that was hidden by a barrier of thick conifer trees. He drove them down the small dirt path until he reached a steep slope above the lake. He placed them in neutral, released the handbrake, and let them roll into the cold waters. The light frost that had turned the lake to ice gave way easily and the vans slowly sank beneath the surface, joining the several other vehicles that lay on the bottom, cars and vans that spanned different generations of design. The old man then walked back to the house and removed any other evidence of the group's presence. The four piles of burnt wood and chard bones were cleared from the back garden, the remains of the four paranormal investigators were taken to one of the statues that lined the long driveway and buried beneath them, joining the several other skeletal remains that had been placed there over the years.

  He returned to the dining room one last time, bowing towards the large deer antler sculpture. As he left the house, he paused at the bottom of the stairs and looked up. Standing on the staircase were three children. They smiled at him and waved.

  ‘Thank you for bring us someone to play with,’ one of the girls said without moving her lips.

  The man smiled back and then left the house, locking the doors once more. He walked slowly to his car. Before getting in, he looked up at the windows of the bedrooms; a face looked down at him.

  The face looking out at the man standing by his car was that of the lead investigator, his spirit now trapped within the walls of the mansion.

  ###

  About Peter Buckley

  Peter Buckley is a British Horror writer who has wowed readers across the globe with his visual and descriptive writing, something he is quickly being recognized for. He enjoys painting a vivid picture for the reader and jabs at their emotions throughout his stories that build and build until their climatic finale. With several more titles due for release by the end of 2016 he is busy writing not just novels but also several film scripts. When not writing he often spends time painting, or playing guitar. These creative activities often helping him create ideas and visions for his next story.

  For further information about up and coming releases, visit:

  www.peterbuckley.info

  Follow him on twitter:

  http://twitter.com/@PBuckleyBoH

  Other Titles by Peter Buckley

  The Burning – Supernatural Tales Book 1

  A band of marauding cowboys leave death and destruction as they travel the plains of the west. Tonight a soldier who fell victim to them while protecting the woman he loved will be resurrected by a Navajo chief, to exact a painful and personal revenge on each of the seven.

  Driftwood - Supernatural Tales Book 2

  Jane Mellows and her daughter Megan had escaped the city to start a new life in the picturesque harbor town of New London, Massachusetts. Out in the dark waters of the bay an ancient evil stirs. It has risen from the depths, its blood lust so great that it will stop at nothing in its quest for revenge against the town that had tried to destroy it centuries earlier.

  Fields of Blood – Supernatural Tales Book 3

  There was a reason why the corn fields never produced any crops, the earth around the farm has seen nothing but death and someone has opened a doorway for the dead to walk among the living.

  Supernatural Tales Volume One

  All four of the Supernatural Tales books in one volume.