Chapter 3: Haunted Mansion
While Judy was busy investigating the West Wing of the mansion, Jim himself was pre-occupied with the East Wing. He entered a room decorated with paintings and a marble stone statue of a hyena goddess holding a water vase on her shoulder. He came up by the side of the statue and notice a piece of paper inside the vase, curious at what it was, he tried to reach it but alas, the vase was simply too high for him. He had a quick glance around the room and found a wooden case just tall enough for him to stand on. He pushed the case towards the statue, then stand on it to reach the piece of paper. Jim opened up the crumpled paper and found that it was a torn up map about the East Wing First Floor of the mansion. "Who would put this here? I wonder." Jim pondered in his mind, as he came inside a narrow corridor with his flashlight on, he found various art supplies lying around, some of them had drapes covering them.
"I think this is an art gallery. Someone must have loved their craft and other's works." But as Jim made a turn around the corner, he encountered a undead brown bear, slowly coming at him to devour his flesh. He backed away from the zombie as it continues to close in on him, just as the situation seemed desperate, Jim reached for an electric shocker on his belt and zap the brown bear by the throat, knocking it down for the count. Disgusted by what he had encountered, Jim coughed at the smoking corpse. As the polar bear kneel down to inspect the corpse, he rife through the pockets and found a piece of folded up paper. He opened the paper and it turns out to be an instruction on how to get rid of the corpses. "To all personnel within the compound, once a specimen has been decapitated, you are to incinerate the corpses with kerosene and fire.
Preferably a lighter or a match. To achieve this quick and efficient cleaning house method, several cans of kerosene have been delivered to us, use them at your discretion, but ensure that none of the corpses remain or they may (The remaining parts had been torn out, leaving the warning ambiguous.)" Jim knew right away that he must contact Judy face to face to be sure. He grabbed his radio and dial Judy right away to make a rendezvous with her as possible. "Judy, come in, Judy can you hear me?" Jim felt frighten as Judy had yet to report in and answer him. "I hear you Jim, what is it? Did one of them bite you?" Her voice sounded like an angel that lifted him up from the depressing paranoia. "No, but I found something I think you should know. Meet me in the main hall, hurry." Judy's voice gave Jim an assured "Roger." they both headed back to the main hall where Judy and Jim met up for a moment of relief. "Judy, did you find anything?" Asked Jim, as he holstered his sidearm.
"Other than I'm still alive in this madhouse, nothing. Still no sign of Nick." She sounded more somber than before, a combination of stress and fear in a place she had no prior knowledge. "I've found this, an instruction note for the employees around here. It sounds like they were trying to dispose all of the corpses before something can happen to them." Jim handed the paper to Judy and the bunny cop read it attentively, taking notes of every detail. She had a hunch that whatever the note was referring to, it was bound to be worse than whatever she had seen so far up until that point. "So what do we do now Jim? Should we head up stare?" Asked Judy, Jim nodded in affirmation of her question.
"I think we should. Maybe there should be some more notes upstairs, before you go, take this lighter with you. If you happen to drop any one of them, well...you'd know what to do." He handed to her a canteen of kerosene and a bunny size lighter, "What about you Jim? How are you going to manage yourself?" Jim gave her a small smirk, then he held his favorite magnum revolver in his paw, rotating the chamber and show off its shiny silver metal to her large bunny eyes. "Oh, don't worry, I'm comfortable with the buddy system I have here. I'm going to check the back yard of the mansion to see if there is anymore buried secrets." Judy then headed upstairs while Jim went to the backyard of the mansion to see if there were anymore dark little campfire stories to tell. Judy explored the corridors of the second floor with care, keeping her flashlight tight in her paw, she stepped lightly to avoid drawing attention from the various creatures roaming the halls. Judy came into another room on the West side of the mansion, she opened the door slowly, letting her flashlight beam its way into the room.
It turned out to be a bedroom with lavish decoration, a wooden bed with curtains around it, a book case separated the wooden cabinet and cupboards, at the end of the room were a table and a pair of wooden chairs. She closed the door behind her and head inside, snooping around to determine who once inhabited this room. She found a journal on the table, the pages had worn out from years of neglect, she picked up the journal and read a few pages from it.
"July 17th, 1964, I just got handpicked by Mr. Hamish to renovate the old mansion on the Island. It's an honor to serve someone as esteem as him, but my wife and daughter are a bit superstitious about the place. My wife, Elena said that the Hamish Clan's Mansion is cursed ever since it was built by the clan's ancestor when they first colonized the island. But I'm not going to let something like that get in the way, first off I'm going to renovate some of the older areas of the mansion, namely the those strange looking rooms with all sorts of decoration on them. (Judy skipped over some of the pages about the renovation period) August 25th, 1978, Mr. Hamish has been pretty hush hush about why did he ask me to renovate the mansion in the first place. I managed to steal some of the blue prints for the renovation, to my horror, the mansion right from the get go was filled with booby traps to prevent anybody from getting into the clan's secrets. My wife and I did a little research in the island's library the other day and it turned out the Hamish clan wasn't exactly just another clean house aristocrats. The most prominent member and founder, Antonio was convicted of dabbling in the occults and he had some weird mannerism that made the islanders want him gone. I was a fool to helped Hamish."
Putting the journal down on the ground, Judy felt the intensity of the situation both past and present, worse still, the diary of an engineer, implied to had been kidnapped, was just simply too much for her to stomach. "My god, what had they done to him?" She continued her search into the bathroom next to the bed, the furniture inside consisted of a bathtub, a sink and a toilet. The bathtub in particular, was filled with murky water, the color was a darken brown color and not to mention, Judy could smell a foul stench emanating from underneath the water surface. She reached her bunny paw into the tub and unplug it, the water flushed down into the drain and revealed a rotting bunny corpse, the undead gray bunny's paw struck upward, causing Judy to jerk herself backward in reaction.
She cowered on the ground as the zombie crawls out of the bathtub, with every ounce of strengths it had left, it tried to corner and feast on Judy's flesh. In her panic, Judy stomped her feet in a lighting fast manner, so fast that the zombie's head got knocked off of its body and the remains fell limp in a moment. Disgusted by what had transpired, she hurls into the toilet and cough up hard. She reached for her radio and call Jim to check on his status just to take her mind out of the macabre that she had to endure. "Jim...come in...Jim. Please come in." Just as she was getting desperate, Jim's voice came through letting her know that he was still alive and well. "What is it Judy? You're alright?"; "Aff...affirmative, I...I just got jumped by a zombie. A rabbit no less. What about you?"; "I'm inside what appears to be an underground catacomb. There is a coffin chained up on the sealing, this place would definitely win a horror game setting award.
Also, there are some stone carvings on the wall, looks like I can put a set of four masks on them. You're good?"; "Yeah, I can continue. Thanks Jim." As Judy hung up on Jim, the polar bear examined a book with purple cover on it, a title printed in a blood red font that said "The book of curses". Not the one to believe in superstitious nonsense, Jim picked the book up and examine it closely, he found a locker keeping the book's contents unreadable.
He remembers that earlier, he found a piece of locket with a rectangle shape, it looked like an ornate silver key without the rod. He picked the locket up from one of his pouches. "What could you do to help me?" He pondered as he examined the object and one of his digit fingers happened to press a button on it, a rod extended outward into his palm and fully unfolded into a key that sit nicely into the locker. "Well, what do you know?" Jim twisted the key in a clockwise direction, and the book open up, its pages flip at Jim's fingers dances around the surface of the book. A handful of words can be found on the pages and all them sounded very ominous. "The four masks. A mask that sees no evil. A mask that speaks no evil. A mask that hears no evil. And a mask that neither speaks, hears nor see no evil."