Chapter 3
Angel, Andrew, Sandra and Matt stand in front of the Hardy Mansion. Only the dim moonlight is the only light they see. The mansion looks old and like it's going to come alive. Angel looks up at the ivy covered walls in front of her and expected to see a ghost in the window.
"Are you the only ones coming?" the voice startles Angel and made her jump.
She turned to the caretaker and says "No we've got other friends coming they should be here soon."
"Well they'd better be here cause I don't want to be anywhere near this place at midnight." The caretaker says a bit spooked.
"What happens at midnight?" Angel asks intrigued and curious.
"I don't know and I don't wanna find out." The caretaker says coldly.
Angel opened her mouth to ask the caretaker something but the caretaker had left to go open the gate for Jeff, Adam, Terri, Christian, Stacey and Chyna. They all drive up and stop their cars by Angel's and Matt's cars. They get out of their cars and everyone goes inside the house. The caretaker shows them the five rooms they have to sleep in.
Everyone one decides to pair up and takes room. Sandra and Jeff took one room, Angel and Andrew in one room, Adam and Christian in one room, Terri, Stacey and Chyna in one room and Matt in his own room. All the rooms were connected. The order of the rooms are: Angel & Andrew 1st, Sandra & Jeff 2nd, Matt 3rd, Adam & Christian 4th and Chyna, Stacey & Terri last.
Then the church bells down the road chime eleven times and the caretaker literally runs out of the house. Then everyone goes down stairs in front of the main staircase and they decide to split up into pairs to figure out what is all in the house.
The pairs are as follows: Angel and Andrew, Jeff and Sandra, Matt and Terri, Chyna and Stacey, and Adam and Christian. Andrew and Angel take the attic, Jeff and Sandra take the rec. room and the parlor, Matt and Terri take the kitchen, Chyna and Stacey take the library, and Adam and Christian take the basement.
Adam and Christian head down the dark wooden stair case to the basement with only two flashlights for light. When they reach the bottom of the stair case Christian sees a mannequin in pieces and for an instant he thought it was a dead body. Adam looks around expecting a rat or a bat to come out and scare him.
"Why don't we look at opposite ends of the basement?" Christian suggests.
"Ok." Adam says.
Adam goes to the right side of the basement and Christian goes to the left. Adam walks past shelves and shelves of boxes. Then against the far wall he sees an Iron Maiden. He thinks it's extremely cool so he looks at it closer. As he looks at it he can see ancient writings on it. They look like symbols of some ancient culture. He also notices that the hinges are rusted and that some of the writings are engraved and filled in with dried blood. He sees a rusted lock on the right side of the Maiden.
The lock is open and rusted that way. Adam takes the lock off of the Maiden and opens it. He sees over 500 1-inch thick blood stained spikes sticking through the door side of the Iron Maiden. He touches one and realizes how sharp they are because he stuck his finger with one and he started to bleed really badly.
He sees the back of the Iron Maiden and sees the bloodstains and the nail scratches on the back. Adam steps closer to the back of the Maiden and, with his non-bleeding hand, runs his fingers across the nail scratches. Then Adam hears a creak, like a rusty hinge and the door of the Maiden closes with him inside. He screams in pain but only for a second because he was dead.
Christian hears a short but loud scream comes from the side of the basement by Adam. He runs over there but trips on something. He gets up and realizes that he tripped on a mannequin head. He tries to run over to where Adam was but he realized that he twisted his ankle badly so he had to hobble over to where Adam was. He hobbles down the path were Adam was and he sees an Iron Maiden with blood seeping from all the cracks.
Christian hobbles over closer to the Maiden he slips on the blood and lands on his ass. He gets up slowly and can't put any weight on his ankle. Christian opens the Maiden and sees Adam's body with 500 puncture wounds all over his body. Christian slams the door to the Maiden closed and tries to make it back upstairs to get help.
Matt and Terri walk into the kitchen. They could hear a creaking noise like a rusty hinge.
"I'll go check the refrigerator." Matt says as he heads for the huge walk-in refrigerator.
"How did I know that?" Terri says as she flips on the light switch.
The kitchen is like any kitchen. The creaking gets louder as Terri walks on the linoleum floor, her high heel shoes making a clicking noise as she walks. Then Terri steps on her heel wrong and she falls flat on her back. She looks up and sees a huge rack of knives above her. Then she hears something break and see the knives falling towards her. The first two knives fall pining her down on the floor. Terri screams bloody murder as the rest of the knives fall cutting her scream short.
Then Matt walks out of the refrigerator and sees Terri with 20 knives sticking out of her body. Two knives pinning her to the floor, one knife in her throat, one through her heart, five in her stomach, one in her vaginal area, six in her chest, and four in her head. Matt looks at her, drops his chicken leg and Pepsi and runs to find somebody.
Angel and Andrew walk the hall of the second floor and find the hatch to the attic. Angel reaches up to pull the cord down but can't quiet reach it. "I'm too short, can you grab it?" Angel asks Andrew. He just smiles at her and pulls the cord down and with it comes the stairs leading to the attic. Angel starts up the stairs to the attic.
"Angel wait for me." Andrew says as he starts up the stairs after Angel.
Angel got up there first and she turned off her flashlight and moved out of Andrew's light beam. Once Andrew gets up into the attic Angel jumps on his back and wraps her arms around his neck from the shadows.
"Hey what the hell?!" Andrew says as he tries to shine his flashlight on Angel then she can't help it any more and busts out laughing.
"Angel! You little bitch." Andrew says as he reaches around his back and grabs Angel around the waist and pulls her off his back.
"You know it's not very nice to scare me like that?" Andrew scolds her like a he's scolding a child.
"Why not? You do it to me?" Angel says innocently.
Andrew opens his mouth the say something then Angel kisses him long and hard. She is all wrapped up in his arms and all she can concentrate on is his tongue in her mouth and vice versa. He pulls her close but she moves away.
"And don't you ever call me a bitch again." Angel says quietly but fiercely.
Then suddenly Andrew drops Angel flat on her ass.
"Ow." Angel says quietly as Andrew turns on a light.
"Sorry, but you deserved it." Andrew said as he tried to help Angel stand up.
But she refused his help and got up on her own.
"Come on we should start looking for something." Angel said as she headed for a pile of books.
She goes through about ten books until she comes across an old leather bound book with "Hardy Family History" on the cover in faded gold letters. She sits down on the floor in front of the stack of books. She opens the book to see a family tree on the first page. It starts way back in the 1500's and goes through every Hardy that ever lived.
She scans the page and her eyes go down each name one by one reading the year and date born and the date of death. Then she came across the name of Matt and Jeff's great-grandma and great-grandpa. At first she thought it was just a coincidence then she sees the names of Matt and Jeff's entire family that she knows. Then she sees Matt and Jeff's names with October 31st, 2003 as the date of death.
"Oh shit. Andrew you'd better come see this, now!" Angel yells over her shoulder.
"What is…. Holy shit" Andrew says as Angel shows him what's written in the book.
"There's more in here too I'd guess. This is way too weird." Angel says as she looks up and Andrew who's completely dumbfounded and just staring at the page.
Angel flips through the yellow pages of the old book and comes across an old faded black and white picture of the mansion with a couple in front of the mansion. Written underneath the picture in fated handwriting Janice & Matthew Hardy. Angel's jaw drops, as she looks closer at the man in the picture. The man named Matthew looks like Matt and the woman in the picture named Janice looked like Sandra.
Angel turns the page to see a long fated handwritten journal entry from October 30th, 1703. Angel quickly read the whole thing as Andrew looked at her and asked, "What did it say?"
"Well basically about 300 years ago Matthew and Janice were accused of being witches by the Copeland family and were found guilty and sentenced by Judge Nathaniel Pfeifer, my ancestor. And I bet that the Copeland's who accused them are ancestors of Adam's. Also the Laurer family helped with the execution. Then on Halloween morning they were both buried at the stake in their backyard, behind the garden….." Angel explained as she stared off into space, too lost in her own thoughts to explain further.
Andrew takes a second to take in everything that Angel just told him about Matt and Jeff's family history. Then questions start to pop into his head but before he could ask Angel any of his questions she starts talking again.
"I remember that my grandfather used to tell me about my ancestor Nathaniel and how he was forced to try an innocent family of being witches. How they admitted to it and tried to tell the town that they never harmed anyone but they wouldn't listen. So Nathaniel had to choose between sticking up for the Hardy's, who were his friends, or siding with the town and keeping his respect in the community. And I guess you can tell what he chose. I don't see why he did what he did but I can't change it I guess." Angel says in a daze as if she's recalling an old forgotten memory.
"What does Sandra, Terri, Christian and Stacey have to do with any of this?" Andrew asks curiously.
"Well Sandra resembles Janice. Um I think that Terri's and Christian's families were part of the community that accused them and with Stacey I don't know. It doesn't make any sense. It's strange how all of our pasts are connected even before we were even born, or our parents." Angel explains still half-dazed.
"How the hell do you know all this shit?" Andrew asks suspiciously.
"Stories, and the journal entry in this book." Angel says snapping back to reality.
"How the hell do I come into this?" Andrew asks confused.
"From what the journal entry says there was a pastor in town whose last name was Martin. He was the pastor who said the last rights as the burning took place. Why don't we go tell everybody else what we've found?" Angel asks looking up at Andrew.
"Yeah. I think Matt and Jeff will really be surprised to find this out." Andrew says meeting her eyes.
" I wouldn't be surprised if they were. Come on." Angel says standing up.
Chyna and Stacey walked in to the library. It's musty and the walls all have bookshelves from the floor to the ceiling, and every shelf filled with books.
"This is one big library." Chyna said breaking the silence.
"Yeah, good thing Angel didn't see this we wouldn't be able to get her out of here. She'd probably try to read every book in here." Stacey said trying to sound funny but it came out seriously.
"That's probably true. You know her she's a book worm. Come on lets see what's in here." Chyna said as she walked up to the nearest bookshelf. Stacey walks to the bookshelf on the opposite wall. Chyna's looking at books when one title catches her attention. She tries to pull the book off the shelf but it wouldn't come off of it. Then the whole bookshelf on that wall moves to reveal an old wooden door with rusted hinges.
"Hey Stacey come here a second and check this out." Chyna says signaling Stacey to come over by her over her shoulder.
Stacey turns from the bookshelf and walks over by Chyna.
"Whoa. Come on let's check it out. Don't tell me you're scared of a little adventure?" Stacey says bravely and curiously.
"Oh I'm not scared come on let's go." Chyna says as Stacey opens the door.
Stacey walks straight into the room, which is as dark as well midnight. Chyna turns on her flashlight and points into the room. It's just a plain room with four white walls and the door. Chyna walks into the room and suddenly the door closes behind them. Stacey and Chyna turn to the door and try to open it again with no luck.
"Um Chyna is it just me or is this room getting smaller?" Stacey asked as she looked around the room.
"I … yeah it is. Oh my god! We have to get out of here, now." Chyna said as she turned back to the door.
But it was already too late the door was already gone and the room was only big enough for them to stand back to back. Then in about thirty seconds Chyna and Stacey squished, with nothing but blood left behind.