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Author's Chapter Notes:
Fur Elise (kitten on the keys)
Shades wandered among more of those dark corridors and rooms of spooky paintings that all seemed to stare at him no matter where he was standing.

Though some appeared to be portraits as generic as some of the landscapes, there were several recurring figures among them. There was an older, balding man, who tended to look fairly stern when depicted alone, but the aloof, patrician woman Shades presumed to be his wife always made him look the softer of the two when pictured together. The older version of her portrait almost seemed to glare daggers at anyone who dared to meet her gaze.

There was also a younger couple, consisting of what appeared to be the older couple’s daughter, and a man who was never depicted without her. She, on the other hand, seemed to have portraits ranging from childhood all the way to motherhood herself. A couple of them shown with a baby, later a girl with dark hair, who clearly took after her mother, but bore her father’s sea-grey eyes, as well.

Certainly the infamous Rigby family that once lived here, and he found himself wishing he had the opportunity to ask around about their family history.

The palatial size of this place, combined with the seeming lack of any reason or rhyme to where some of the halls even led to, left him deeply concerned about whether he could actually begin to find his way back out. Even if he found Melissa. Fearful that the great hall really might have been his last chance to leave this twisted place.

Naturally, he’d been turning that horrifying ghostly replay from down there over in his head, even as he struggled to remain focused on the task at hand.

He had given it no small amount of thought earlier, as he browsed what appeared to be a wing of servant’s quarters, poked his head in various rooms up and down the halls. After all, this thing, whatever it was, just demonstrated the power to kill at will. If so, that just left the question of why it didn’t just reach out and strike him dead where he stood, as it had done to Sister Leta years ago.

Why settle for using that macabre mirage as a warning shot?

He could think of a couple possibilities. One was simply rooted in nature, that most creatures don’t like to risk fighting unnecessarily, which left imposing questions of just how much he could get away with, this deep inside the entity’s territory, before he finally provoked it to more drastic measures. As well as whether he necessarily represented the same threat level the Sisters of St Lucy might have. The other thing he could come up with was that something that direct required some effort on its part, that the House’s energies were mostly tied-up, invested in something else, and simply didn’t have it to spare right now.

Thus the scary display downstairs.

Of course, wondering what else it could be doing wasn’t very reassuring, either. Leaving him with the ominous feeling that he was running out of time, and so was Melissa, certain he didn’t want to find out what for. Only the impression that the House was gathering its strength for something.

Earlier, he heard those chimes again, marking off the time to some unknown event, a ticking time-bomb whose timer he couldn’t see. Just when he was getting to the point where he was no longer tensing up at every creaky floorboard. The closest thing he could make up in the way of a plan was to grab Melissa, if he ever found her, and run like hell.

As he passed by a bank of rear windows, he happened to glance outside and notice a vast chessboard, formed of alternating squares of light and dark stone. Or at least something akin to chess, at any rate, as the massive pieces set out upon it stood in mid play, only some of them bore any passing resemblance to the traditional forms from his own world, some whose shapes and moves he could only speculate. Still, they were similar enough that, combined with the grid board, it was clearly a game of strategy that likely had similar rules and objectives.

Then it was back to the dark, dusty halls of old-fashioned doors and fixtures. Switching on his flashlight again, trying not to dwell on the how the functionality of these devices seemed to be directly proportionate to one’s proximity to haunted places. Mentally crossed his fingers and hoped that these later-gen lights would buck the trend and prove reliable enough to see him through this.

A little farther down the hallway, he spotted a door already hanging open. Hoping it might yield some clue to Melissa’s whereabouts, he shined his light in, revealing some sort of office den. Shelves of the sort of leather-bound volumes few owners actually read, a couple high-back chairs, and a small end table, all tied together with a woven rug, the whole room dominated by a massive, ornately-carved wooden desk.

Even as he moved to examine the scene further, an old-fashioned telephone on the desk started ringing, and he nearly fumbled his flashlight as he gasped in unabashed startlement.

He slowly approached the phone as it continued to ring, feeling as if his feet had gained even more autonomy than they had when he first made his way to Vineholdt. Feeling more than ever as if he was immersing himself in a horror movie, and that he was not the main character, but merely a bit player, doomed to die while doing one of the hundred-and-eight foolish things he always muttered at characters for doing in these sort of tales. Yet here he was, watching his own hand reach out and remove that black, polished handset from its cradle.

As he lifted it to his ear, he could hear the muffled sounds of a storm, accompanied by heavy breathing and some sort of rustling.

A voice picked up, saying, “Nine-One-One dispatch. What is the nature of your emergency?

My name’s John Doe,” the heavy-breathing voice spoke up, and Shades nearly dropped the handset in his shock at its familiarity, a voice he had not heard in many moons, “and I’m calling to report a break-in.”

Is the place you’re in being broken into?” the dispatcher asked.

No, it’s the place next door,” John told him. “I don’t know the address, but it’s in Lakeside…” He seemed to fumble for a moment, then: “Don’t call me… Dexter! Dexter MacLean is missing!

Shades would later suspect his eyes widened to the point that it could be seen from behind his opaque lenses as he listened to this surreal phone exchange unfold.

“John!” Shades finally found words. “It’s me! Shades! I’m not missing! John?”

But no one seemed to hear him, and the call continued.

Could you please calm down,” the dispatcher pleaded. “We’ve been very busy tonight…”

I’m sure you have, Shades thought, numb to his own senses, if it’s the night I’m thinking of.

What the”” John blurted.

The voices on both ends of the line wavered and distorted as an eerie sound washed over him, one he still remembered from that dark, stormy night.

Hello? Hello?” the dispatcher called out, but Shades already understood John was no longer in that room to reply. “Is anyone still there?…”

Shades dropped phone on the desktop, backing away slowly, leaving some hapless emergency dispatcher from another world, another night, babbling at no one as he stepped out into the hallway and shut the door very firmly behind him, cutting off the faint dial-tone.

He continued backing away into the dark hallway, mind reeling, struggling against a moment of lightheadedness.

Wondering if that really was what happened that night. If his old friend really had broken into his neighbors’ house to call for help. So far as he could recall, they were on vacation at the time, so it was at least possible.

Shaking his head, somehow already understanding that that phone wasn’t going to give him any straight answers, no matter who he heard on the other end of the line. Trying to pull himself together as he resumed his exploration. Already chiding himself for letting his guard down.

After standing alone and aloof from Pickford for so many years, it was hard to say what was true, and what was just hearsay about Vineholdt. Only that there was at least some truth, no matter how much embellishment it may have been seasoned with. The Woods alone were proof enough that something eldritch had been unleashed within this place, and his current experience only corroborated that much of the house’s grim reputation.

Along those lines, he found the nonsensical meanderings of this sprawling manor even less reassuring, in light of other places he’d visited that turned out to be bigger on the inside. He could see from the exterior that this mansion was big, but what he’d walked so far was simply beyond its scale, halls and corridors that kept getting him turned around.

While he was sure the Harken Building was more substantial, physically, than anything he’d encountered in here thus far, he felt as if he had only one foot firmly planted in the mundane world, the other slowly sinking into the world of nightmares. And unlike the Woods, where one could wander haphazardly in and out of the eye of the storm, he was not so sure he could pull his other foot back out so easily from here. That he might well get dragged all the way into the nightmare if he lost his footing for even a moment.

As he cast about, his light happened upon one of the fair number of family portraits dotted around the house.

A painting of the little girl, the granddaughter, with dark hair and grey eyes, wearing a very stiff-looking formal dress. But still looking very much a child in spite, or perhaps because of, this precocious presentation. Sitting in her lap on either side was a pair of fluffy black kittens, and while they both looking similar at first glance, there was just something about the one sitting on the left, though it took him a moment to figure out just what.

The kitten seemed to be smirking at him in a manner that didn’t seem quite feline, as well as the creepy intuition that it might just reach out and slash or bite his hand if he was foolish enough to put it up to the canvas.

In the corner, he also noted a signature: Nemo. No One, or Nobody, as he recalled, wondering what artist would sign himself off as such.

In the midst of his morbid musings, he started to hear what sounded like strains of piano tinkling. Wondering what spooky surprise this might herald, he turned and headed in the direction the sound was coming from. Though he doubted Pickford harbored any classically trained pianists” or many musicians of any sort anymore” he still refused to believe that any kid wandering around a place as creepy as this would just stop to play a piano simply because it was there.

As he drew nearer, he still couldn’t place the tune, though it did vaguely put him in mind of Für Elise, with its melancholy tone and similar ambiance.

At last he stood before another door, just slightly ajar, but as he reached for the knob, the notes came to a jangled halt. Holding his breath, he listed for a long moment, instead hearing what sounded like a kitten prancing around on keys, plinking random notes. Even less sure what to expect, he finally reached out and opened the door.

In the center of the room was an ebony concert piano, but the bench in front of it stood empty. He looked around the room, finding it as deserted as any others he’d explored. Just a few tables and small table off to one side.

As he crossed the room to a large bank of windows, a rare exception to the tall, narrow frames in most rooms, which appeared to overlook the back of the estate, the thought crossed his mind that perhaps the House was merely toying with him, conserving its energy with distractions, rather than fighting him upfront.

His thoughts trickled to a halt as he looked out those windows, though, spotting that same chessboard from earlier. It was not so much the gameboard itself, as it was the disconcerting impression that all the pieces were in completely different positions than the last time he looked at it.

“That can’t be right…” he mumbled, wondering if this was just some sort of hallucination. It’s just because I’m seeing it from a different angle, that’s all

Yet the stubborn intuition hung on that they were indeed in different places than before, and told his rational mind that if he believed it was just different angles, he also had a famous bridge to sell himself. Decided that unless he actually saw Melissa, or one of the other children, out there, he was staying the hell away from that thing. Trusted those game pieces about as far as he could throw them, if even that far.

Questioned if he should even trust the image of anyone out there in the first place.

There just seemed to be some sort of natural law, he reflected as he turned back to resume his search, that these sorts of crises could only happen under a blameless blue sky. Thought about how, if this were an abandoned mansion from his own world, it would be fun to go up to one of those towers and wave at everyone. Especially to piss Travis off.

Though, aside from the cellar, he quickly concluded that was about the last place he wanted to find her, could all too easily picture her being menaced by something just out of his mind’s eye’s picture, some unhallowed thing his unsettled imagination couldn’t quite settle on a definitive form for, that would push her right over the parapet, and onto the steep roofs just below…

That image only served to renew his sense of urgency as he pressed on.