Chapter 31: The Legend of Grimshaw Manor
The girls passed through the now opened gates, ignoring the lifeless bronze wolfhound statues standing on the pillars that guarded the entrance. Fighting them wasn't a waste of time, after being given three elixirs to protect their minds and will power from the evil enchantment that would have destroyed them if they had entered without it. Hopefully the elixir would last for a very long time all the way to the final challenge, whatever it is they were up against. The fearful thought of having their mind enslaved and corrupted by madness was enough to have them drink every last drop without stopping. As if on cue, a torrent of billowing thunderclouds rolled in to set an ominous backdrop behind the mansion's towering spires.
"Looks like a storm is coming our way," Maggie said, staring up at the darkened clouds.
"Doesn't look like a storm to me," Calloway indicated. "It must be the evil inside the mansion that knows we're coming, and I don't like it one bit."
"I'm still scared of going in there," Grace confessed, looking down. "Even with that stuff we drank, anything else could go wrong?" She tried to hold back tears.
"That's why we stay together Grace," Calloway replied, hoping to sound as comforting as she can be. "We have to believe that we can do this. Giving up is no option."
"And we can't let Willie scare us into giving up either," Maggie added in, nodding in agreement. "That's exactly what he wants us to do. Even to fight amongst ourselves. We're a team, so we must act like it and show him who we really are."
Walking among the weathered, cobblestone path leading up to the mansion, Maggie lead the way and Grace was close behind her with Mrs. Calloway following. With every step, the grim details of the mansion's exterior came into focus, no telling how many levels or rooms there actually were inside, despite how Willie described its grim history and how it was built. The worst kind of secrets they could ever discover could possibly be a dungeon or worse, a torture chamber where captives could have been tortured so graphically that to read a simple detail of it would be horrifying to the point of driving them mad or catatonic. There is no doubt that this mansion would not be without its many traps and guards, hidden behind every corner and in every shadow. For anyone who has ever lived here long ago and died within the mansion would already be aware of the most haunting thing about this domain, other than the wretched screams from the lost souls that echoed through the halls, were the black tendrils that grew out of the walls and out deep into the depths of the pumpkin cemetery outside. In fact, they grew all over this world which the girls never knew.
The pitted surface of the dark bricks, the blistered paint, the blacked masonry, and the black windows seemed to watch their every move, as if they were alive and had eyes like the other spirits lingering inside, having rotted away from decades of pain and neglect ever since the disappearance of the last Grimshaw family, trapped with no way out.
By now the girls advanced slowly as they made their way along the path to a stone staircase that lead up to the mansion's main entrance. Before going up, Maggie remembered the key they had retrieved from the pipe organ phantom and pulled it out carefully. Ascending the steps, the wind began to pick up, forming a ghostly choir as it whistled through the forest of dead trees and tangled vines that surrounded the entire property.
"I hope that's not the sound of ghosts awakening to stop us!" Grace cried, covering her face against the wind as she continued to step up the stairs. "They can't possibly try to harm us, can they?"
"Just keep climbing those stairs!" Mrs. Calloway shouted back. "A little wind can stop us. We have to keep going!"
When they reached the top of the staircase, the sound of distant thunder rumbled through the sky, sending a low, feral growl echoing across the clouds as the girls stood before the doors of the mansion, reading a sign nailed: Welcome to Grimshaw Manor, where spirits of the dead find no rest or release from their eternal suffering and sorrow. The history of this household is where dark secrets lie in wait for those who dare to explore its unhallowed halls. Once you enter, the doors will close and lock up until you learn to face your worst fears that dwell within the mysterious dark chambers below. You have until midnight before your souls join the restless spirits that haunt this world forever.
"Ok, we get it now," Maggie shook her head, trying to sound tough and confident. "You don't have to keep repeating this creepy vibe!" She shouted out to whoever was listening.
Hoping to get her mind off that eerie warning, Maggie withdrew the mansion key again and slowly slid it into the tarnished keyhole. She turned the key in the lock and the heavy door squealed open. None of them spoke a word or moved an inch as they stared into the bleak shadows that permeated the mansion's interior.
After a moment of silence, the girls couldn't waste any more time and without further hesitation, they accepted the grim invitation, boldly stepping into the shadowy domain. Grace and Calloway were quick to follow Maggie. If they had any real choice to make, they would have listened to a small voice in their heads to turn around and go back home, if this were happening in the land of the living. But only by the large doors slamming shut behind them, echoing out thunderously, they had no choice and this had to be done.
The girls found themselves to be standing in the entry foyer of the mansion, engulfed within an abyss and shadows of gloom. Hazy light filtered in through the narrow windows high above, providing dim illumination throughout the interior, for the three to see tarnished suits of medieval armor stood poised atop stone pedestals, flanking the sides of the foyer as it opened into the entrance hall. Their ancient armor and breastplates were etched in intricate scrollwork and each dark knight held a large poleax clutched within its steel gauntlet, giving the girls the feeling that these guys were standing watch and guarding over the entrance halls against all that dared to trespass into their forlorn domain.
"I don't like the looks of those guys," Grace whimpered, shivering and taking cover behind her friends. "I get the feeling they are looking down on us to make the first move and bring their weapons down."
"If they are alive Grace, we have our own weapons," Calloway whispered, "And we have each other. We can't let Willie win."
"Even if they are alive," Maggie whispered carefully. "We can take them. Metal armor is as old as this mansion. But right now, let's keep going, and don't look at those guys. They can probably smell our fear."
The two helped escort Grace passed the grim guardians, only to hear the sounds of the approaching storm growing louder and sporadic lightning flashes were followed by thunder strikes which sent reverberations throughout the manor. Grace felt ashamed to be afraid, as she shivered at the dark atmosphere surrounding them. She wanted to be braver than this, wishing it was easier when it came to facing what scares you the most. Surveying the immense room all around them, Grace saw the floor covered in dust and the cobwebs hung from the ceiling, draping the gloomy interior beneath decades of solitude and neglect. It was likely to be every house maid's worst nightmare that's for sure and take more than one human to clean it all up.
"Look, there's a sign on this wall," Maggie pointed out, whispering what it said as her friends listened carefully.
Darkness shrouds the interior of this once elegant mansion, former home of the Grimshaw family bloodline until the disappearance of Alistair Grimshaw and what was left of his family. For years no living soul has ever found a trace to their whereabouts to know what really happened to them. Only spirits and forgotten memories dwell in the air, forming a ghostly choir, and the halls guarded by the knights in shining armor.
"Well, at least we don't have to worry about those guys coming after us," Maggie said with relief, until she and her friends thought they heard the sound of metal clanking together. She and the other two turn around slowly to see four of the armored men standing side by side together in the entranceway, wielding their poleaxes, ready to battle the three intruders that have trespassed into the mansion, stepping forward like soldiers on a battlefield.
"I stand corrected," said Maggie, backing away in fear. "We gotta find a way to take these guys down!"
"But we don't know their weak points," Calloway debated, stepping backward with Grace. "How do we find that out?"
"I don't know, but we have to find a way fast because here they come!"
Frightened as they were, the girls stood their ground when the first knight came and swung his poleax at them, but with the motions of a cat, they ducked and dodged the weapon, enough for Maggie to make a last minute move to trip the knight and kick it right against the wall, its helmet falling off its shoulders, showing no head underneath.
Hurry girls; crush those helmets before they recover! Miriam's voice shouted out. The knights are powerless without them.
"Grab the helmets girls," Maggie said, gathering her confidence back. "Time to teach these guys a lesson." She quickly ran over to pick the rusted helmet and use her front right hoof to crush it real good, leaving the knight immobile, vanishing. "Hey you, big tall and ugly guy with the metal rear!" She headed toward another knight that was about to bring his poleax down on Grace, who had slipped on the floor and would have had no time to move out if Maggie didn't come to her aid, charging him against the other wall. "Didn't your mother tell you not to play with sharp objects?" She managed to pull the helmet off before the knight could get back up, and crushed it.
Grace got back up, having enough of backing down and went to give Mrs. Calloway a helping hand with the last two knights in tripping them backwards to pull the helmets off altogether and be crushed until there were no more enchanted knights left to fight. Nothing but a pile of lifeless rubble littered the dusty floors.
"Not so brave and noble now are you?" Maggie proclaimed, kicking dust at the fallen knights, and looking back to her friends. "Where were we?"
"I think we were still exploring the entryway before the knights woke up," Grace replied, shoulders shivering from the scary encounter.
"Aw yes, maybe there is something else around here that can tell us about the Grimshaw family," Maggie said, turning back to take a look at the interior.
The design of the room was a remarkable example of Victorian Gothic architecture, withstanding the cruel decades to survive as a grim monument to forgotten memories that mankind wished to forget. Gothic columns supported stone archways that lead to wings on either side of the entrance hall, and a grand staircase swept upward to a landing, then split off to the left and right, giving the girls a choice to go up either one of them. Twin wolves, matching the ones that they fought with at the entrance gates, sat perched upon the banisters on either side of the main staircase, having tiny rubies for eyes. The stone beasts gazed across the hall; their glaring eyes locked onto the girls, as if ready to wait and strike like the knights.
"Where should we go?" Mrs. Calloway asked, wanting to get her mind off the creepy wolf statues. "Do we go upstairs or enter one of those halls?"
"Maybe we should explore one of the other rooms down here first before we go upstairs," Grace suggested. "We haven't done that yet."
"Then let's do it," said Maggie, staring up at the canopy of cobwebs that hung over their heads and gazed over at the archway that lead to the south wing. "I say we go that way. I heard once that mansions hold a dining room or a library."
Walking in that direction, Grace and Calloway followed Maggie through the arch and down a paneled corridor lined with oil paintings, grim faces staring out of those shadowy portraits, with creepy eyes that seemed to watch and follow the girls as they passed by, still walking down where the end of the corridor led to the dining room. Thunder echoed through the manor and lightning flashed through the room, the paintings turning from average to macabre versions of themselves. One example such as a young man in a suit transforming into a rotting, decayed corpse in withered rags. Another being of a middle aged man titled "The Monk" with his eyes growing wider and wider until only one eye covered the entire head. The other portrait revealing a skinny black haired woman holding a black cat, flashing cat like eyes and taking the appearance of a goat creature.
Grace turned away from the portraits, not wanting to know more about the rest as she stared straight ahead to the end of the corridor, hoping those wicked ghostly forms do not think of grasping them with their skeletal, ghostly hands, claws, talons, or paws from the werewolf man, gorgon, pirate captain, and the cat woman. Before entering the dining hall, a sign at the end read:
The portrait hall contains prominent deceased residents and guests from the land of the living that have died here and gone to an early grave, unable to complete their quest. There is always room for more.
"Unable to complete their quest?" A confused Grace turned back to the portrait wall, realizing that some of the painted portraits were not so old fashioned and Victorian, but contained facial designs of residents who were from the time period that the girls were living in now, trying to escape the portrait in vain and mouthing off words that nobody could make out. "They're alive!"
One look at the hall of portraits and the girls dashed into the dining hall doors and closed them up; using some old chairs to block whatever else is out there from entering.
"I don't know what those portraits were trying to tell us, and I don't want to know," Mrs. Calloway asserted, pushing one more chair against the doors. "It might be just another of Willie's tricks for all we know."
"But what if it isn't Mrs. C?" Grace implied, troubled by what the sign out there mentioned. "What if some of those paintings were trying to warn us about danger ahead? Some of them could be other gamers trapped inside who need our help."
"Even if they are, we can't do anything for them right now," Mrs. Calloway grunted, taking a break from moving furniture. "At least…not until we find out what we're supposed to do."
"Afraid Calloway has a point Grace," Maggie agreed reluctantly. "We only just took down those metal buffoons and we still don't know what we're up against. All we know is that we're likely under attack by a dark force none of us is familiar with. Our only option is to keep looking for clues until we figure it out."
Forgetting the portrait hallway, the girls gazed around the grand hall, a large banquet table filled the center of the room and ten high backed chairs lined the sides of the table. Two tall candelabras rested on the table, covered in cobwebs, amidst a bouquet of long dead roses. A fireplace adorned the center of one wall and a large oil painting above the mantel depicted Grimshaw Manor back to the early days when it was first built as an ordinary mansion long before the curse had befallen upon the household, a sad testament and bitter reminder to dreams now lost and destroyed, along with the lives that once flourished within these walls now infested with the restless dead.
"This is certainly every house maid's worst nightmare," Maggie said, disgusted by the cobwebs and mold that stained the furniture and dinnerware. "Who would want to eat here now? Not me of course."
"Not even if you were a ghost?" Grace implied, taking a good long look at the portrait of the mansion above.
Maggie shook her head. "Not even if I were a ghost."
Outside, the girls nearly jumped at the sound of the storm now fully overhead, rain pelting the leaded glass windows and the sound of crashing thunder split the sky. Looking out through a tall bay window, Maggie saw a bolt of lightning rip across.
"That's no ordinary storm out there," She elaborated. "Calloway was right. It feels more like the mansion letting us know it is alive and watching us. But we came well prepared for whatever it throws at us." She turned over to Grace. "Grace, do you still have the flashlight?"
Grace nodded in response. "Sure do." She took it out and turned it on.
Mrs. Calloway then took out the map and placed it on the dining table, seeing that it had now transformed into a map of the entire mansion, a red dot pointing out their location, and revealing the rooms and floors. Right now they were still on the lower floor and in the dining hall as the red dot pointed.
"It looks like we now have a map of the entire mansion you two," she specified. "Since we are still on the ground floor, we'll keep exploring here and working our way up. And to make sure none of us gets lost and thinks of wandering off alone, we stick together. No exceptions. Is that clear?"
"Clear as crystal Mrs. C," Grace replied, with Maggie nodding.
Mrs. Calloway placed her hoof on the map. "According to this, the grand hall should be in the next room, right through those doors. Since there is nobody here to tell us anything, we'll see if we find anyone there."
Putting the map away, the girls moved out of the dining room as they made their way along the next dark corridor, their footsteps creating sights and sounds that played tricks on their imagination. Eerie chattering noises echoed around them and dark shapes of ghouls and monsters appeared to stir and move in the distance. None of them said a single word, too nervous and scared to say anything, even Grace who didn't feel like singing at a time like this, not wanting to attract the wrong kind of attention in this dreadful mansion.
They made their way beneath the arch that lead to the north wing, following where the map said to go, and stood before the entrance to the grand hall. Twin doors made of dark wood were carved with intricate filigree that twisted around the framework in a serpentine design, like an entrance to the underworld of no return. Altogether, the girls pushed the doors open.
The immense chamber was a lavish testament to Grimshaw Manor's decadent past and former grandeur, taking the form of a decades old, cobweb infested ballroom. Cobwebs draped across the ceiling, covering several crystal chandeliers hanging and swinging slightly above and cascading low into the hall.
"What happened here, did Cinderella not make it in time for the ball or what?" Maggie asked, creeped out by the eeriness and silence of what she couldn't believe used to be a ballroom. "If this is the ballroom, where is the music?"
"Don't give the spirits any ideas Maggie," Mrs. C whispered harshly. "They might still be listening."
"Hey look there," Grace pointed out in a whisper. "Isn't that a fireplace?"
Where Grace was pointing at, a magnificent fireplace hearth was set into the far wall between two tall windows, with the mantel supported by twin caryatids sculpted in the form of devilish lion heads with their fearsome faces roaring with glee as their heads clutched the heavy stone mantel above them. The floor was made of black marble, and it was hard to make out any of the designs in the thick coat of dust under their hooves. Grace used the flashlight to see if there was anything inside the fireplace to find, desperate to rescue more lost soul stones and wanted to keep a close eye out. While still looking, another sign on the wall next to the fireplace caught Maggie's attention to read: Gilbert Grimshaw was a very wealthy and successful man back in his time. Holding parties and banquets were a way to celebrate his victories. Having no knowledge to the dark secrets of the chamber below, they all loved to dance and kept to themselves, unaware of the invisible seven-pointed star that adorned the marble floor. Eerie melodies continue to echo and linger throughout the grand hall. Now it is said that the ballroom dancers are lost in a state of endless celebration, having no memories of their former lives and never wanting to leave, cursed to dance the halls forever.
Before Maggie could say anything about this, Mrs. Calloway shushed her.
"Shhh, listen," she interrupted. "Do you hear that?"
"Hear what?" Maggie asked quietly.
"Just listen."
As they turned around from the fireplace to the grand hall, the faint sound of music seemed to emanate all around them, and the fireplace lighting up!
"What's happening?" Grace backed away from the fireplace in a panic. "Who turned on the fireplace?"
"The question here Grace is who turned on the music?" Mrs. Calloway corrected.
They listened closely to the rhythm of the ghostly melody that sounded close to a waltz.
"Look at that!" Grace cried, directing her flashlight beam toward the center of the room where they took notice of a pipe organ with 12 pipes, a bat shaped headboard with outstretched wings, and two lit candelabras. And sitting on the stool was a phantom dressed in a cape and top hat, playing a macabre waltz with eerily floating tiny skeleton heads twirling above pipes.
And if that wasn't creepy enough, a misty vapor began to materialize in the middle of the ballroom, appearing to be little more than a wisp of dark smoke, but quickly increased in size and density, taking the shape of something they couldn't make out. The girls watched in silence as the shapeless mass floated in the air a few feet above ground, seeing it now take on the form of what looked to be a mustached blond haired man in a grey suit with a golden haired woman in a white ball gown, dancing around to the organ music. Soon afterward, another dancing couple appeared, and another, and another. In a matter of minutes the entire ballroom floor was covered by forty dancing couples.
"I think we might have awakened the dancers," Grace whispered to her friends, not knowing what to do in this case. "Should we move out so we don't distract them?"
"I don't mind taking that option," Maggie answered, showing her friends a balcony framed by an ornate marble railing circumventing the upper area of the ballroom. "Let's take the stairs and watch the ball from there."
Ascending the curving staircase, the girls stood atop the balcony and gazed out over the ballroom floor to watch the ghostly dancers twirl around. Only judging by the way, they were following one couple after the other, appeared to be forming a star like pattern and a circle outside of it.
"What are they doing now?" Mrs. Calloway implied, confused by what she had seen.
"I'm not quite sure," Maggie answered, scratching her head thoughtfully. "Maybe it's another clue to follow, a symbol of some sort. If only I had fingers to draw this out and take with us."
"Well we do know it's some kind of star with seven points," Grace acknowledged. "Most stars only have five. And look, something is coming our way."
A ball of mist slowly began to rise, drifting toward the girls, moving closer until it hung suspended in the air above them, looking like a writhing cloud of smoke, nearly three feet in diameter with tendrils of dark mist swirling around its shifty form. Gazing up at the eerie smoke cloud before them, the girls thought that they could sense a feeling of sadness and despair sweep over them. And then the mist drifted off toward the outer wall, pausing before a set of double doors at the rear of the balcony, and then fading from sight.
Grace was unsure in what to make of that floating mist. "Should we open those doors? I mean, we won't do much by standing here until our time is up."
"We might as well give it a try," Maggie shrugged her shoulders. "I've had enough of the ballroom floor. Let the spirits dance the night away."
The doors were open, suddenly seeing the same spectral mist once more, slowly floating down the second floor hallway lined with more portraits of macabre settings, transfiguring from normal to eeriness. By the very end, the mist dissolved into the surrounding shadows.
"Friend or foe, I only hope that mist is not a diversion to distract us from the real clues," Mrs. Calloway said doubtfully. Then she looked around when her nose caught something. "And by jolly, do you smell flowers around here?"
Maggie and Grace turned their heads to face various directions, knowing that Calloway was right that something here smelled like flowers, or lavender as Willie mentioned. But if it wasn't lavender, it had to be something else. To make sure of that, they inhaled deeply.
"Hey, do you remember what Willie said outside the gates?" Maggie asked cautiously. "He said something about the presence of a lady in red nearby. And the smell of…"
"…lavender!" Grace and Calloway finished altogether.
"She must know where here already!" Grace feared, shivering in the corner. "What if she's not a friendly spirit? What if she wants to hurt us?"
"And what if she's trying to tell us something, wherever she's at," Maggie responded, trying to find the right words to calm Grace as she scanned the paintings that surrounded them. "I don't see her anywhere. Maybe the floating mist we saw must have been her ghost and she led us here for a reason. We don't know that yet, but that's my lucky guess."
"Anything in these paintings that might give us another clue?" Mrs. Calloway implied.
As the girls stood amidst the portraits that hung on the walls, the somber faces of elderly men scowled from the shadows of pitch black canvases, and beautiful women the same melancholy expression, gazed out from beneath veils of cobwebs and dust. Perhaps the paintings were of past residents and family members of the Grimshaw bloodline that used to live here and nobody knew what happened to them. Maggie stopped before the painting of a middle aged man with a stern look into his dark eyes, with a bronze plaque set into the bottom of the frame, inscribed with the name "Alistair Grimshaw".
"I think we found the man of the house," Maggie pointed up at the painting of Alistair, intently staring at the portrait to see if anything about it held further clues to the mansion. "According to the plaque, this is the guy Willie mentioned that disappeared without a trace along with his wife, son, and daughter, and since then, nobody has lived in the mansion afterward. No wonder it's in really bad condition."
Mrs. Calloway lowered her voice. "I dare must say that I don't blame any humans for wanting nothing to do with a house of evil, or wanting to put their mortgage into buying the entire estate. Not only that, but ever since we stepped in here, I've been getting a bad vibe of some sort. Like there is something else in this mansion, and I'm not talking about the ghosts either. Do you feel it?"
Maggie looked all around the corridor. "I think so. I may not be an expert in the supernatural, but if it has anything to do with the evil within, its presence here sure is heavy like a barrel of stones. Who knows, it might become heavier the closer we get to it."
With nothing more to say about that uncomfortable feeling, the girls were suddenly drawn to a door at the end of the hall and felt the need to investigate the chamber, not forgetting that the misty vapor brought them here. Grace was the first to peek inside to discover what seemed to be a child's room. Two plush beds were framed by an exquisite hand-carved headboard adorned with Celtic styles. Dark velvet curtains were drawn over the windows, blocking all the light from outside. Paintings of bats hung on either side of an ornate mirror attached to a vanity table.
"What do you see Grace?" Maggie whispered carefully. "Anything unusual?"
"It looks like a child's room," Graces answered in a low tone. "There's a rocking horse, a vanity mirror, a rocking chair, and several dolls."
"That must be where the children used to sleep."
The girls stepped inside to examine things more closely and see if any of those forgotten, neglected items held any important clues. A small perfume bottle rested on the vanity shelf, covered in dust, leaving Grace wondering why something like that would be in the child's room instead of the other where the parents used to sleep. Unless one of them must have swiped it and snuck it in here without them knowing. There was no liquid in the bottle, and no trace of scent in the least. Wiping the dust off, the label was hard to make out with some of the letters faded and scratched out. But the first words started with an L and the second with an A, leaving the rest all faded. Whatever it said, maybe that is what the cows smelled in the corridor.
"I think I found the source of the smell," Grace said, pointing to the perfume bottle. "Maybe it wasn't the Lady in Red coming our way. Maybe it was from this room."
Her two friends came over to inspect the perfume bottle and tried to sniff it out, but could smell nothing in there.
"But Grace, I don't smell a thing in that bottle," Mrs. Calloway said, "So how do we know it wasn't the Lady in Red nearby?"
"I don't know, but the label starts with an L. It must be lavender. Only why would it be in the children's room is the question?"
As Grace stood contemplating this theory, Mrs. Calloway thought she noticed an odd bare spot in the dust on the vanity table, finding that questionable when everything else is covered in dust. Someone or something else must have been in here and taken an object from this room, possibly to hide it.
"Grace, Maggie, I think we should leave here now," she whispered anxiously. "Call me crazy or paranoid, but I get the eerie sensation we are not alone in this room. Let's go before it jumps out at us."
"But I don't see or hear anything," Maggie contradicted. "What makes you say that?"
"Trust me on this, we better leave. Don't ask again."
The other two glanced around the room one more time curiously, seeing nothing around that would make Calloway edgy. However, just when they were on their way to leaving, Grace thought that she spotted a pair of two eyes across the room, using the flashlight to see what it was behind the thick layer of cobwebs where the other dolls were, at first startled by the sight of what was watching them, sitting on the second bed, which none of them remember it being there before. Even though Calloway protested when Grace got a little closer, she too wondered what that thing was. And to their surprise it was a child's doll, fashioned in the likeness of a little girl.
Grace turned to her friends and whispered. "It's only a doll. But it's not like the others."
"Just leave it where it is Grace, and let's go," Calloway warned.
"But it might be another clue."
The doll's pale white face held an expression of sorrow and its unblinking eyes glistened with an eerie red glow as it reflected the light of the flashlight. Brushing aside the cobwebs, Calloway kept silently protesting and tried to urge Grace away, but the blond heifer kept going, and identified it wearing a dark blue velvet dress, and its face, hands, and legs covered with fine cracks. It's long curly black hair was tied with a blue, velvet ribbon on top to match its dress. Grace then moved the flashlight down to a book beside the doll titled Book of Nursery Rhymes.
"What is that Grace?" Maggie whispered over, moving back in slowly.
"I don't know," Grace replied, "It's like the doll itself wanted to show us something."
All Calloway could do was stand at the door nervously, silently pleading for her friends to get over and out of there, the bad feeling growing stronger when she could have sworn the doll was glaring at her friends with those evil red eyes, possessing a form of consciousness. Grace pulled the book toward her to flip through the dusty pages, seeing at it contained the rhymes she heard about long ago like Rock a Bye Baby, Rub a Dub-Dub, Baa-Baa Black Sheep, Mary-Mary Quit Contrary, Ring Around the Rosie, Pop Goes the Weasel, Lucy Locket, Row-Row-Row Your Boat, Lavender's Blue, It's Raining It's Pouring, and Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush. Grace continued to flip through the pages to where a scarlet bookmark held a page with a notice, and a key tied with a green ribbon.
Maggie and Grace flattened the paper on the dusty bed to read the contents: There comes a time in every child's life where they grow up and learn that the childhood rhymes go back hundreds and hundreds of years ago, and don't know of their disturbing origins. Why we continue to sing them to our young generation remains a mystery, whether it means chopping off someone's head or falling victim to the bubonic plague, or even instruments of torture, it is quite clear that such things are not healthy for the children to hear. Take the key to the library located on the first floor. I know it will be in good hands.
"The key to the library?" Maggie held the key in her tail. Then she and Grace jumped at a voice from behind the corner.
"GET AWAY FROM THAT DOLL!"
AN: Boy this chapter took longer than I expected, having read so many inspiring stories, tales, movies, and books about haunted places, mostly fictional ones that contain deadly, dark family secrets that discuss something about a curse holding spirits back from moving onto the next life. It wouldn't be much fun if I just dumbed things down or rushed everything without explaining as much as I could. Now that the girls are halfway across where they are at, I wonder who could it be that tried to tell the girls to get away from the doll. We'll find out in the next chapter.