Suspend
The dim light permeated the room like a smog, casting faint silhouettes on the walls and what lay in its center, the sight of which sent Tommy's stomach lurching with revulsion. A decapitated male torso, one arm shackled to the wall, another traced vine-like by piano wire looped around the light bulb, swung as little as its binds allowed, its brown-encrusted entrails dangling to the floor from where its hips would have been. Tommy scrambled backwards up the ladder and rammed his elbows against the door, only to find it securely shut, despite not having a lock on either side. After it refused to yield despite his hard pounding upon it, he gave up, breathing heavily as he slumped down and made his way into the room, hoping to find an alternate route out.
Unlike the rest of the mansion, the cellar had a ramshackle appearance, as if having been part of a prior construct which the former was built upon. Flecks of congealed blood dotted the walls and floors, blotting over the creaky, rotted floorboards under the dark-skinned body hanging in the middle of the room. A glimpse of a now familiar motif brought his attention back to the corpse; it was the same owlish figure, an arrow pointing downward, disfigured and more crudely done than in the other bodies, trailing off as it stopped where the cadaver did. Tommy closed his eyes for a moment, not wanting to see any more of the carnage, but the image seared itself past his eyelids, burning into his imagination as a red-hot iron brand. It jarred his resolve to leave back into his mind, and he steeled his nerves; he had to press on to avoid becoming one of the moribund sights he'd come across.
Peering into the shadowed corners of the cellar, the glint of a copper handle caught his eye. He edged past the body and opened the door, leading to what appeared to be a simple hallway, as disturbingly elegant as the rest of the manor. Upon closer inspection, instruments of torture decorated the walls, and in a few small cutaways, larger implements – a rack, a spiked chair, an iron maiden, and many without names – the traditional met the esoteric in its assortment of torture devices, all crusted with the brick brown of blood and bodily fluids. A shiver ran down Tommy's spine, and he hurried his pace, reaching the end of the hallway and opening the door to enter a grand bedroom, larger than the one he'd woken up in. Opposite the door was the dressers-drawer mirror, upon which were yet more words scrawled in blood.
WARN THEM
Them? The dead people, perhaps? The body in the cellar did look significantly more decayed than that of the brunet and the Asian girl. But that was hardly something a psychotic murderer would write; who, then, was leaving these cryptic messages?
The shock of all he'd seen caught up with him, breaking his train of thought. Fuck the mysteries of the mansion; he had to get out. Rushing out of the room, he took in none of his surroundings as he blazed through the hallways until coming upon a decorated door, the windows beside it yielding a view of a mist-blanketed forest just beyond this final barrier. Giddy with relief, he reached for the doorknob, only to find his hand deflected by an unseen force. Panicking, he threw himself at the door and collided against the same force, crumpling with a moan of pain at its base, no more than a mere foot away from the outside.
He stayed there, immobile, for what could have been a few minutes, hours, or more – the lighting never changed, as though time itself had been paralyzed by the manor's malicious will. A voice echoed in Tommy's mind that to be killed is better than to wait in dread of death, but he refused to give it audience; when it rose in clamor, he forced it aside, gathering his wits about him. No way in hell was he giving up. There had to be a method of escape. He stood up, and dusting himself off, began piecing together all he'd seen. This was no simple murder, not even the work of a deranged mind, but of something otherworldly – the blocked doorway, the eerily suspended state of the manor, the apparition – all attested to its supernatural nature. Other people had been here; judging from the blood-writings, they had most likely managed to uncover at least part of the shroud of the preternaturalness of the house, and not only that, had endeavored to impart that knowledge upon anyone else trapped within.
But all the others had been killed before they could escape; whatever had killed them did not leave enough time for them to unravel the mysterious tapestry of the circumstances, and if how little he knew after hours of roaming about was any indication, he would not progress any further than they did before the killer dispatched him. Frustrated, Tommy slammed a fist against the invisible barrier over the door before storming off; planning was getting him nowhere; he'd be better off trying to find a second exit. Wandering the hallways, he neared what had to have been the main entrance – multiple hallways met at a central open space. Dashing towards it, his blood, icy, froze his heart from his veins and leadened his legs as he heard the dull, distant thudding of ax strikes.
The killer. The damned killer, blocking what must have been the only exit.
His breath stopped and bile rose in his throat, but he found the sense to slowly, carefully step away, breathing a sigh of relief when he heard no footfalls beside his own. Even so, after sufficiently distancing himself from the main entrance, he stole away and hid in what looked to be a lounge, which, despite the comfy chairs and easy décor, offered not even a meager sense of ease. Wearily, Tommy collapsed into a recliner, his hand coming to rest upon a notebook. It was a journal, its cover a happy, bubblegum shade of pink with embossed, floral borders that could not seem more out of place in such a wretched environ. Curious as to its contents and too tired to do much of anything else, Tommy opened it and began reading.
A/N: I'm not sure how to best execute the story from here. Y'see, it splits off into three scenarios, and I'm not sure whether to upload them one at a time, or to upload their simultaneous pieces individually.
My god, it's been so long since I updated anything! This chapter wasn't the greatest, but I had to do something to get back into the swing of fanfiction. I've been busy with homework and roleplays, lamely enough, but finally, something updated. Maybe I'll actually get to work on the other stories now, too! I'm guessing the people reading my stuff gave up waiting, though...