Thought for the day – They need to release Brisco County Jnr on DVD. Why? Just because. Chapter 3

"Okay so what's up? You've been Mr Quiet and Broody ever since we came here." Buffy queried as she stepped off the staircase onto the first floor.

"Nothing." Angel replied succinctly.

"Wow a whole two syllables and here I was thinking you were going to be Mr Monosyllable all night." Buffy retorted, though her voice did not portray anger, something more resembling hurt, which was exemplified when Angel returned the comment with a hurt expression on his face.

"Please Angel tell me what's wrong."

Angel frowned and then looked at her intensely before looking away, seemingly absorbed in the wallpaper design, "It's just this house, it feels wrong and I feel wrong, as though any minute the demon will be in control again…" He turned back to her to gauge her reaction.

Instead of replying immediately she moved closer to him and grabbed his hand in hers, pulling him even closer. "I trust you to protect me." She commented softly, continuing to hold his hand.

Angel gave her a dispirited smile, but squeezed her hand in reply, letting her know how important her trust was.

"So what do you say we find Willow and Xander first before Giles does, so he can't put the fear of death or detention into them."

Angel smirked, "If I were Xander I would be more afraid of Cordelia."

Buffy smiled at her pseudo-boyfriend, "Oh yeah, scary angry Giles or even scary old house has nothing on a pissed off Cordelia."

They walked in silence for a few minutes walking down the empty seemingly never-ending corridor before Angel spoke up again. "Did you really want to come into this alone?"

Buffy chuckled beside him, "No, I was totally wigged from the get go, but I didn't want the guys to come. I was afraid they would get hurt or something would happen and well big surprise…" She then finished sadly, "I just thought if I came in alone I could be in and out real quick and nobody would be hurt."

"Did you tell them that?" Angel queried further.

"Yeah, more or less, they got the gist of it."

"What did they say?"

"That they didn't care, they had stuck by me this long and they weren't about to abandon me now to some slayer eating house." She smiled at the memory of the meeting the day before, "Well except for Cordelia her reasoning had something to do with preventing a sex orgy or something."

Angel gave a breathy laugh beside her, but jolted to attention when he heard a scream emanating from somewhere in the house. He grimaced as Buffy tightened her grip on his hand almost to the point of breaking, but he knew it was because she had recognised the scream as he had, it was Willow.

Picking the most probable source of the scream they both raced off in that direction.

As soon as Xander closed the door on her, Willow tried to open it again, not willing to leave him out there, however the door had other ideas, remaining steadfastly closed. Hearing the thing in the corridor getting closer, she started to bang on the door calling out to Xander, scared for both herself and him, mostly for him though. The thing quickly reached the door; she could see the darkness through the edges of the door and she held her breath as it passed. There was no sound from Xander, as it kept moving past, the only sound was that of popping light bulbs as it continued down the hallway. She tried the door again but found the effort to be in vain as the door would not open.

Tentatively putting her ear to the door she called out, "Xander…Are you there?"

Getting no reply she knocked softly on door, there seemed to be something shuffling outside. Putting her ear to the door again she whispered, "Xander?"

Instantly the light in the room went off and something slammed into the door shaking the foundations and causing Willow to reflexively scream in shock. She stumbled backwards in the darkness and kept moving in that direction as it happened again and again. Quickly switching on the lantern she still carried, she moved to the other side of the room looking for a way out. Noticing the window she looked out, it had bars across it and of some concern was the fact that she could just make out in the darkness that she was now on the third floor. She moved quickly around the room searching for a way out as something continued to slam into the door. She came across a narrow door next to a wardrobe and tried the handle, the door swang open to reveal a narrow descending staircase. Looking back at the door she realised it was no longer being hit but instead had started to rattle consistently. She entered the stairway and as soon as she did the rattling at the other door stopped.

"That can't be good." She whispered to herself nervously.

She held the lantern out in front of her, her hand shaking noticeably and she gulped in fear as the staircase door swung shut slowly behind her. Moving down the stairs slowly, she started to wish desperately that Xander had not left her alone and that either Oz or Buffy were there now.  Trying to see how much further she had to go she realised the stairwell was starting to spiral slightly and she still had a fair way to go. The door out of here could not come soon enough, of course then it occurred to her that there may not be a door out of here and she started to hum a tune to stead off her fear, but it came out as off tune noises as her voice started to crack. Moving still downwards she realised the lantern was starting to dim, shaking it to try and get more juice from the batteries did not affect it and it quickly dimmed to nothing. Willow stopped humming and the only sounds in the darkness were her raspy breathing and the sound of her thumping heart in her ears, until a voice started to whisper in her ear and she stopped breathing altogether. When something touched her shoulder however she screamed again.

"Damn which way?" Buffy demanded stopping abruptly.

Buffy and Angel stood at the end of one corridor and looked at their choices as another corridor ran perpendicular to it, stretching to the left and right.

"It could almost be impossible to tell, the house could be shifting as we move." Angel returned morosely.

Buffy was getting agitated and started pacing, she was annoyed at having to stop when one of her friends was in danger, "Come on Will…give us a sign."

Right on cue another scream sounded, both of them turned to the right, then looked at each other to confirm the direction and to query at the uncanny timing before racing off again in the direction of the scream.

Oz stopped and cocked his head to one side, sure he had heard a scream, more specifically Willow's scream, but he could not hear anything else and let it slip as mere imagination. Ahead of him and on the other side of the corridor, Giles and Cordelia walked stopping to check doors along the way, to see if they would open and looking in the rooms from the doorway if they did. Oz continued on his way doing the same thing on his side of the corridor. He could hear that Cordelia had started questioning Giles on the history of the house, something that should have surprised him but somehow did not.

"So this house was built at the turn of the century right, by a bunch of settlers?"

Giles was surprised by the question, but noticed the slight timbre in her voice indicating she was nervous and was trying to occupy herself, so he indulged her curiosity.

"Yes, there was a group of them, it was in 1902, they decided to pool their resources and build a large mansion, a sort of communal home, so the chores and such could be spread among the 12 families and they were less vulnerable as a collective group rather then being spread out over the area. Given the stories back then, they believed they were safer that way." Giles sighed as he recalled the error of that thinking.

"Believed?" Oz queried from across the hallway.

"Yes, as it turned out they were wrong." Giles replied frowning, he looked to Cordelia, who indicated he should continue, "Well they were found by one of the people from a nearby town, all of them slaughtered, the records show no one was left alive."

"Let me guess, the person was from Sunnydale" Cordelia remarked off handily.

"Yes he was actually, he went back and reported to the law there, the incident was investigated but the case remained unsolved and the house lay empty for three years."

"And then it became a hotel?" Oz queried moving along to another door.

"Uh, yes, well more of a half way house for people travelling west. The mayor of Sunnydale decided to use it as a place for people to settle and get everything organised before moving into town, or people could use it as a stop off before moving to the coast."

"Let me guess everyone died and it closed down." Cordelia theorised, a disgusted look on her face, she was walking around in a bonafide death trap.

"Well not everyone, though there were quite a few unexplained disappearances from the place, but that was not what caused it to be closed down. Attitudes changed, cars became more prominent and nobody really saw the need for the place anymore. So the place was sold in 1940 to a wealthy English council" Giles explained looking through the last doorway as they reached the end of the corridor.

"Who?" Cordelia questioned Giles as he started to look over the house schematics.

"The Watcher's Council." Oz replied meeting them at the end of the corridor, as Giles considered which direction to go.

"Huh"

"Indeed." Giles remarked returning to the conversation, "They knew of Sunnydale and thought it would be a good base of operations and well a nice holiday spot."

"What happened?" Cordelia queried morbidly.

"They decided it could double as a vault, but something went wrong when they put the protective wards in and the place was considered uninhabitable."

"What kind of wards, we haven't encountered anything and if they were so bad, I would have thought we'd have by now." Cordelia questioned apprehensively.

Directing them left, Giles answered forebodingly, "Give it time, I'm sure we will."

The other two followed him into the new corridor, Cordelia with a distinctive frown of anxiety and Oz a look of thoughtful speculation.

To be continued…