A/N: Alright, here it is! My first chapter to my first story on Fanfiction. Before I just post this up here, I'd like to say a couple of things. First, I'm totally new to story writing, so I really appreciate constructive criticism. But please don't just tell me I "suck". Sure, I might, but I'd also like to know how to improve. Next, I don't know if this will have relevance to the story, but my head-cannon Master Detective is female. Third... I realize that at one point the Detective literally takes a ladder. Yeah... oops. It's a Hidden Object game and I wasn't really sure how to work around that, so it might continue to happen depending on what items are needed in the game. Finally, I do not own Mystery Case files! It's just an amazing game series that I would totally recommend.
Wow, sorry, that was long. Anyway, reviews are appreciated, and I hope you enjoy!
_
"I must work quickly and keep my wits about me as I fear there is little time before his ghost discovers that I have returned to Ravenhearst!"
I finished my entry and closed my journal, stowing it in my black leather bag along with my quill and ink. The burgundy-brown logbook rested comfortably within, the gold letters proclaiming it a Case File shimmering up at me in the moonlight as if winking. At the moment, it was the only thing I was carrying inside the satchel. I severely doubted that this would continue to be the reality though, especially with the location I was currently daring to enter once again. Well, forcedly daring to enter that is. After all, it's not like I could go against the Queen.
The gates to the manor towered over me, wrought-iron spikes reaching skyward as if they were more a threat than a decoration. The letter R was at the highest point, in the center of the entryway. It was circled by the same blackened metal. As if the heart-shaped design woven throughout the entire structure didn't already make the owner of this place terribly clear. The surrounding stonework was topped with grotesque gargoyles holding lanterns, throwing the entire setting into eerie half-light. Like the mist and night time wasn't creepy enough. A rambling nest of half-dead vines and bushes littered the ground, crawling over the structure as if attempting to get in.
Speaking of getting in, that would be a problem. The gate, while imposing, was also frustratingly closed. Oh, and locked. Sighing, I moved toward the left side of the stonework. Stepping over an angel statue, crumbled and broken from years of neglect, I approached what appeared to be the mechanism to open the gate. A closed, bolted-on panel and a flickering red button greeted me. With a sinking feeling, I tried pressing it. No luck, of course. Getting in couldn't be that easy. I took a step back and looked at the plaque above the sealed wiring. A date marked it as being created in June, 1895 - more than a century ago. Below was "a testament to the everlasting spirit" of a woman named Emma, the Manor's namesake whom I had freed on my one prior visit. There was also some Latin, although what it meant I wasn't sure. On the bottom of the plate were numbers, apparently scratched in. 8-16-18-36-38, a heart with a circle around it, and 78.
No idea.
Well, I had tried all of the other easy routes. I might as well try this one. Stepping over to the gate I took a deep breath, dared to hope, and pulled on the handle. Predictably, nothing happened. I kicked at the ground in frustration - why could nothing ever be the slightest bit easier? Then I realized… my foot had hit something. I paused and looked down. Strewn around my feet was junk of all shapes in sizes that seemed to slip under the gate and continue to litter the other side. The pile amassed most underneath the bushes, which I walked toward to get a better look. There certainly was a lot of it. Everything from frying pans, to grapes, to egyptian statues. I knelt down and began to look harder - perhaps there was something I could use? Waving a spider away, my eyes came to rest on a wrench. Perfect.
Grabbing it in my hand, I stood and marched back over to the closed panel below the plaque. I quickly unfastened it using the wrench, removing it. I was greeted with four disconnected wires and a grid of four by five sockets, marked from one-upwards as you would a quadrant on graph paper. Great, now what was I supposed to do with this? Upon taking a closer look I realized. The wires were also marked, starting with the blue on the left. "2,2." I could hardly believe what I was seeing. I plugged it into the socket, hoping it would work. Also hoping that it would fry the lock on the gate, and not me. I proceeded to do the same with the green (4, 1), the yellow (1, 3), and the red (2, 1). Then, bracing myself I pressed the button.
CLANK! I stared, incredulous. The wires, it appeared, were not actually a mechanism for opening the gate. Or for doing anything to the gate at all. Rather they released a key from somewhere within the stonework behind the panel. A lot more ingenious than hiding it under the welcome mat, I must admit. Grabbing the key, I walked once more to the center of the gate. Inserting it into the lock I felt a chill go up my spine, but banished my thoughts before they could wander back to my previous cases. I turned the key and pushed forward, giving myself no time to reconsider. With a loud creaking noise, the gate swung open. I had made it in. No going back now.
Before I could take another step toward the twisted case that doubtless awaited me, a strange being shifted into existence near the gate. At first it looked like a foggy light, or perhaps a thick mist that concentrated itself between the gateposts. As I watched, it rapidly shifted into the outline of a woman, and then became more focused. She was barefoot, and wearing a tattered dress that might have once been a wedding gown. She had fair skin and black hair, though her eye color was impossible to tell due to how faint she was. As she spoke, her voice seemed to weave through the wind, growing louder and softer at its whim, the sound no more substantial than the body it came from. It was a voice I recognized from my previous trip to this awful place as belonging to none other than Emma Ravenhearst.
"Thank you for returning to this ominous place." The sound of my own heartbeat thudded in my ears at the sound of her voice, making it hard to hear as she continued to speak. "While my soul is now free, there are others who require your assistance. You must act quickly, before he returns."
He. While seeing the ghostly form of someone dead centuries past did not seem to get any easier the more often I did it, hearing that word spoken with such fear only seemed to grow more and more difficult as time went by. He. The manor's owner, who I had met only once prior. After he had nearly caught me last time I was at this horrible haunted house, he appeared like the ghost he had trapped out of the night at my next case. I shuddered. I had no wish to remember the strange and terrible carnival, belonging to the now-deceased Madame Fate.
"Find the secret passageway within the manor and free those who remain bound to him." The spirit continued on, seemingly oblivious to my fear. More likely she was only pretending to ignore it. How anyone could not be aware of such a dreadful feeling was beyond me. Also unknown to me was what she was referring to with "secret passageway". As if I hadn't dealt with enough locks, traps, and strange puzzles on my last visit here. This new phrase in the information I'd been given was enough to make me wish, if only for a brief moment, that I was able to back out of the case I had been assigned. That want was, however, quickly taken over by curiosity. What did she mean "bound"? I opened my mouth to ask, but she interrupted.
"Be warned, you are in grave danger." Words of caution that only made my apprehension rise… and a summons. "Come with me." She beckoned and turned slowly, beginning to step away before fading as suddenly as she had come. I sighed and allowed my feet to carry me forward along the dirt path. It was a safe bet to assume she meant the treatment she'd gotten, I supposed. Body preserved in an ornate coffin of some kind, soul linked to some sort of object, or perhaps the house itself. It just so happened these ones were hidden a bit more expertly. Yes, perfectly reasonable.
As I stepped forward along the road, it turned into stone. Moss and grass grew up between the cracks to seek sunlight that was currently absent from the sky. Steps carved of the same stone I now stood on lead up a hill, and the sides of the walkway were lined with more of the wrought iron. Now as fencing, it tilted crazily and disjointedly, leaning with the hill as if blown in a storm. Three stone statues had held it in place where they could. On the left, closest to me, was a woman. She was leaning back, her arms resting on something and her eyes closed. The next was on the right, what once might have been a fountain, with yet another winged creature atop it. The third was once more on the left, a serpentine dragon, wings fanned and maw opened to the path. In the distance, black, leafless trees clutched at the sky with their branches, surrounding yet keeping a respectful distance from the building itself, which was lit from behind by blue storm light.
It seemed to be built of old stone and wood, and had the look of a place that rambled within it's walls. I could attest to the accuracy of this from my own experience. The architecture was ornate, but jagged, with parts of the house protruding outward at strange angles. An overhang was built out from the top of what must've been the first floor on the left side to cover over an eerily dark porch. Triangular roofing jutted out in a similar fashion at the top of the mansion farther up, and on the right side it did so again, but this time to push out over a window. A tower was in the front and center of the uneven roof, rising ominously against the foggy dusk. Finally, windows of all different shapes and sizes accented the manor's front, all of them dark, and many of them apparently boarded up.
A chill ran up my spine upon seeing the place again, in all its macabre glory. I began to climb the steps, stopping at the old-fashioned stone well just to my right. I gave the crank a little tug, but to no avail. It seemed stuck. No matter, I really shouldn't be wasting my time with it anyway. Then, taking care to not trip over any of the errant vines that slipped down a stone wall and came to tangle in my path, I continued up toward the porch.
Despite it's age, the mansion was in remarkable condition. The wood of the steps, railings, and deck appeared to have shrunk only slightly over the years, and even seemed recently stained, despite the impossibility of it. The planters at the foot of the stair railings were unused and overgrown with creepers, which tangled over their engraved faces, but to the sides of the deck, small plants thrived. To the left there was even a rose bush, the pink standing out strikingly in the gloom. A rocking chair was positioned on the deck, creaking eerily in the slight breeze, and a pair of wind chimes hung from the overhang to the left of the steps, tinkling softly.
The attention to detail of the entire front of the house was impressive. Engravings twined around the tops of the pillars that connected the top of the stair railing to the overhang. These went on to form a pattern of swirls that decorated its underside, casting strange shadows onto the front wall of the manor. Most eye catching of all was the picture that decorated the front of the extension. More raised, looping engravings came to form a heart, where underneath, words were printed. "House That Love Built", they read. How twistedly true that was.
I was also not the only living thing in the vicinity. Apart from a raven resting on a nearby branch, there was also a cat. It sat just above the steps, black fur shining slightly in the light, it's golden eyes staring at me intently. When I got nearer, I saw it held a key, but it hissed at me when I attempted to take it. I ought to give it something else to play with.
The good repair of the place and animal visitors notwithstanding, it was obviously uninhabited, barring the dead that were apparently tied to it. Debris had fallen down from the underside of the roof to rest on the boards of the porch, and cobwebs hung where the fallen materials used to reside. The circular window to the right of the door was grimy, and the door itself, as well as the larger square window to the left, were boarded up. I stepped closer to read the notice on the door.
A City of Blackpool condemnation notice, to no surprise of mine. Up close, I could see that the door window was broken slightly, cracks spider webbing haphazardly across it. The doorbell seemed loose in it's casing, and cobwebbed over as well. Not to mention all of the clutter that rested atop and around the boards. Things were carved into the wood, and it was littered with everything from puzzle pieces and grapes to rings. I grabbed a typewriter key ("V") from among the mess, seemingly out of place where it currently rested. I also noted a paper that was pinned to the upper left of the door window. It had a moon drawn on it, an equals sign, and then something that looked like a Z with a loop at the bottom. Figuring it could be a clue, I wrote it down in my case file. Then, finished with the door, I turned left and looked along the deck.
It appeared mostly unremarkable. It appeared much the same as the front of the house, dirty but in good condition. I could see a hanging planter ahead, over the side of the deck. It appeared to hold a black rose. The boarded up window now toward my right, I stepped forward to investigate. A floorboard creaked under my weight, and I looked down. It was clearly loose, two of it's nails popped up from the wood at a slight angle. Still, I couldn't get under it to investigate with my bare hands. I filed it away in my mind for later, and started across the deck again, making my way toward the far corner where I could see a large chest, lid slid off and clearly brimming with potentially useful things.
After giving the items a quick once-over, I picked up a brick, figuring it could be useful for smashing my way into places if I had to. It was looking like that would be the case more by the minute, with everything boarded up like it was.
Turning around completely, I headed toward what would have been the right of the deck, were I once again looking at the house straight on. On this side, a mouse hole disrupted the even boards of the front of the mansion, and I made a mental note of that for later on. After all, the black cat might like a mouse to play with. Also present was a ladder, which I decided to take with me as well. You never know when it could come in handy.
Most notable of all was the window. While locked from inside when I tested it, no boards barred it's glass from the onslaught of weather. Or, in this case, me. Readying the brick, I took a deep breath, and swung. Small cracks began to wind their way through the window. I swung again. The cracks were larger now, more prevalent. Mustering my strength, I swung one final time, sending shards of glass scattering throughout the inside of the house. A curtain flapped outward, drawn by the draft I had let in. Carefully avoiding the broken glass, I let myself in with it.
Upon stepping inside, fear raced through me at a sudden warmth I felt on my skin. It came from a fire, burning merrily in the ornate fireplace. One that was surely not lit by the imprisoned dead.
I was not alone in Ravenhearst Manor.