VIII

CHAPTER VIII

MANOR OF DESPAIR

At the height of the steps to the tavern's first floor, Cloud came to a long corridor whose pale walls and watercolour paintings had started to reflect the varying shades of dusk. Sephiroth stood by the bay windows that lined the hallway, hands clasped at his back, his features melancholy as he surveyed the vista. Joining him, the teenage SOLDIER followed his captain's stare without sound, his eyes falling upon the distant Shinra Manor.

A once-luxurious estate owned by the Shinra Executive, the grand façade of the mansion had become dark and haunting. It was located north beyond the town limits, barely visible amid the foothills of Mount Nibel's slowly-increasing gradient. The building itself had always seemed to have a foreboding aura, its neglected redbrick exterior and lifeless windows as silent as a cemetery. Very few people had come and gone in the last decade, leaving Shinra Manor to wither and die in the long, sad passage of time.

"What're you looking at?" Cloud enquired after a while.

"This landscape…" Sephiroth said quietly, lowering his gaze. "That mansion… I feel like I know this place…"

"Maybe you were here as a child?"

"Unlikely." Frowning pensively, Sephiroth shook his head. He wore a curious expression on his sharp face, one that Cloud had not seen before. "No, it doesn't matter… I'm probably just tired. Speaking of which, we have an early start tomorrow. You should try and get some sleep soon."

"I'll do my best," Cloud muttered under his breath, absently twisting the leaves of the herb in the windowsill plant pot. "As long as that creepy picture in my room doesn't keep changing."

I swear I'll get to the bottom of that mystery…

"The Turks have hired a guide to take us into the mountains," Sephiroth informed him, peering once more at the towering peaks that dominated the skyline. "I'm told she's young. I hope we can rely on her…"

The wallpaper was a different tone of cream now, less aged, and the pots beneath the bay windows had been replaced by a porcelain cactuar. Ink-on-canvas portraits decorated the hallway, depicting half a dozen strange men rather than the Nibel sceneries he recalled hanging there in the past. Only the flame of a crooked wax candle afforded the landing any light; Barret had apparently disconnected all the Mako lamps before retiring to his chamber.

Outside, the horned spires of the range loomed against the overcast heavens, grim and ominous and a million miles from the comforting familiarity Cloud had wanted to find in them. A storm was sweeping in from the sea, the innkeeper had warned them, and the tell-tale signs of its preceding winds were already wrestling with the groves of spruce and elm that dotted the hills. Bolted shutters on most of the adjacent homes and shops indicated they would soon be battered by the squall.

Disconcerting as a night in this imitation of Nibelheim was, it made little sense to return to the Buggy in such conditions. There was much still to be investigated and, if the behaviour of the Shinra helicopters the previous evening was anything to go on, Sephiroth was somewhere in the region. They had to be ready.

The seven had reassembled at Gramps' Inn, the two-storey tavern on the periphery of the town square. In years gone by, it had been famed for the triple-bedroom annex that protruded above the entrance, and its courteous custodian, an elderly local affectionately known as Gramps. Despite retaining its name, the guesthouse seemed to have abandoned any trace of the old man, and with it the same degree of hospitality.

Especially towards outsiders.

Barret, Aerith and Yuffie had just finished a bowl of stew when Cloud arrived. Nanaki was warming himself by the smouldering logs of the fireplace, Cait Sith by his hind paws. They had been waiting for him in the open-plan lounge, occupying the leather armchairs and one of the quaint dining tables. Oak cabinets and shelves of ornamental vases hugged the walls, strategically arranged to best conceal the Mako piping. Behind the reception desk across the lobby, the manager pretended to busily review his records, subtly watching their every move.

The party was unsurprised by Cloud's recount of his exchange with the lady at his childhood home, but grew perplexed at his mention of the black-robed figure. They, too, had observed someone of a similar description shuffling around in the lanes that led from the plaza. The cloaked wanderers did not appear to pose any threat, but their presence was unnerving, and there was no denying their hoarse utterings sounded suspiciously like they were calling a certain name.

"Sephiroth… Sephiroth…"

When Tifa joined them an hour or so later, the enigma deepened. She had discovered Shinra memos referring to the hooded individuals as "clones", yet the nature of their existence or what they were actually duplicating generated more questions than the documents answered. The ethical ambiguity had Hojo's vile signature all over it. At the very least, the reports confirmed the obvious: Nibelheim had been restored after the tragedy five years ago to a near-perfect replica. Company protocol was always to erase evidence of misconduct, but this was far beyond anything the ex-SOLDIER could have imagined.

How much do the settlers know about the town's fate? What experiments have Hojo's cronies continued to carry out here? Are the laboratories below Shinra Manor still functioning? How does it relate to Sephiroth?

Processing the information was nauseating. Cloud's mind became a vortex of blurred memories and impossible futures. He looked to Tifa to be his anchor in this ocean of torment, living proof of the Nibelheim he remembered. But, as he peered into those large, brown eyes of hers, he caught a momentary flash of anxiety, even guilt. He wondered if she had perhaps found more at her house than she was letting on, though quickly dismissed the notion.

She had no reason to lie to him. He trusted her with his life.

One by one, his comrades had made their way to the annex bedrooms until only Cloud remained. As exhausted as he was, there was an itch at his core; it had been a tingle at first, slowly evolving into an urge to gaze upon the mansion. He had sought to quell the agitation by performing squats – an old habit from his days in the Army – but the burn in his quad muscles simply fuelled his need, and drew some bewildered stares from the innkeeper.

Now, as he stood by the windows of the first-floor hallway, on the very spot Sephiroth had once disclosed his own peculiar reaction, Cloud knew this building hunger would not be satisfied from afar.

It mattered not if his drive was trauma or instinct or basic curiosity; Shinra Manor was beckoning him to return to the origin of his nightmares. It was a summons he could not ignore; not if he hoped to defend himself from Sephiroth's customary mind games. Securing the Buster Sword to his back, he hesitated, casting a glance to the doors of each bedchamber. He would not wake the others, he decided, creeping noiselessly to the stairs as the gale began to howl outside.

They won't understand. This is something I must do alone…

Departing the tavern and crossing the square, Cloud jostled with the advancing storm, using the structures where he could to shield himself from the elements. His senses were scrambled by the deafening cacophony of wind chimes, and the bitter chill of winter offered no kindness. The streets narrowed with the incline, the residences flanking them growing less compact. He soon passed the remnants of what had been an orchard in his youth, currently a storage yard of construction materials. The trail was uneven and hazardous in the intensifying grey of dusk, but he was confident in the robustness of his military boots.

The shadows of the foothills stretched bleakly over the meadows on the town's periphery. Between the rising bluffs, a cleft at the head of the path led to the mountainside recess in which Shinra Manor was nestled. Nibelheim had been razed to the ground by Sephiroth's hand but, despite its role at the epicentre of his breakdown, the estate had somehow escaped the hellfires that night.

A cruel twist of the knife that was already buried so deep in Cloud's soul.

As he reached the gradient's crest, he detected a strange sound floating from the sharp thrust of rock nearby. It was no more than a murmur, a distorted whisper. He paused in his stride, scanning the darkened nooks of the cliff for a source. A sluggish dragging of feet; a scratch of fingernails on rough stone; heavy, raspy breathing.

"Se…phi…roth… is… call…ing…"

The outline of a cloaked female was fumbling along the crag, her features hidden beneath a cowl like the others. She groped aimlessly and without forethought, as if she was yet to realise she could not pass through the hillside. Her head was bowed, limp almost, bobbing unnaturally to her broken words of longing.

"Se…phi…roth…"

Whatever these clones are, they lack a human factor.

Studying the girl sent a cold shiver down his spine, and he left her to her fruitless search, following the road as it wound amid the cleft and towards the entrance of Shinra Manor. The wrought-iron gateway to the mansion grounds was padlocked and showed evidence of recent use. Deliberating for a moment, Cloud elected not to invite attention by damaging the metal, and instead vaulted the high wall in an effortless bound. He landed in silence, his deftness as a former SOLDIER aided by the dense grass of the lawns.

Dated Mako lamps spread around the manor's façade of redbrick, limestone and pinewood, but boasted little in the way of luminosity. A dozen or so windows over two floors leered at him with vacant, blackened panes, as unsettling as they had been when he was a kid. The fires that had decimated Nibelheim had not touched this place, yet still it bore terrible scars from its history, invisible as they were. His desire to return was insatiable, but he faltered nevertheless, every fibre of rationality willing him to fall back and flee this accursed town.

It's not that simple…

The ivy he remembered crawling up the columns of the portico had been chopped away, but the oak door was unchanged. Cloud tried the thick handle and discovered to his surprise that it opened without protest. Straining his ears, there came no suggestion of disturbance or alarm and, inhaling, he stepped inside the grand hall.

There was no flood of gruesome flashbacks or paralysing emotions as he had expected. The stale, dusty air that had greeted him five years ago was now sanitised. The mouldy wallpaper had been stripped completely, but the décor remained bland; the frail brown carpet had given way to a large, circular rug with designs of white on blue, set across the bare floorboards at the bottom of the staircase.

Careful to minimise noise underfoot, Cloud inspected the pair of doors to his immediate right: the first he recalled was a spacious store closet; the second was a corridor to the building's lower east wing, but it was locked. He sighed, but glanced up as he caught a flicker of light in his peripheral vision. It had materialised for an instant behind the twin partition at the rear of the foyer, beyond the sweeping staircase and portrait of the late President Shinra. Crossing the chamber, he gave a gentle tug on the dividers, the old wood shuddering as it separated.

A row of ornate windows lined the hallway, the glass stained with dirt and alive with raindrops. Cloud could just about make out an assortment of headstones camouflaged by the wild grass and bushes of the garden. He counted at least ten; far too few for the horrors the mansion had witnessed.

Assessing the passage, Cloud went left, trailing it to the lounge at its end. He had glimpsed the room before, but paid it no real heed. The floorspace exceeded the entirety of the house he had grown up in, an opulent retreat for the resident Shinra scientists and attending management. A grand piano dominated the southeast corner, and its keys had seen better days. Opposite this was a lavish sitting area, furnished with armchairs, a reading desk and an oval coffee table. There was also a minibar on the northern wall, partially shaded by the curtains draped from the bay window, stocked by a generous selection of liquors. The Company staff that Tifa had learned still worked here were treated well, it seemed.

No sign of movement, though…

Turning back, the ex-SOLDIER's heart skipped a beat, and he grasped for his sword as he saw the ethereal blue flame hanging in mid-air. Nibelheim's children had always shared rumours of hitodamahaunting the manor, but he had never been one for superstition. When you're dead, you're dead, he had believed unwaveringly – perhaps a consequence of losing his father so young – rejecting these stupid claims of lingering souls.

And yet such a burning orb was presenting itself to him, as clear and tangible as the living.

In a flash of motion, the hitodama disappeared through the ingress and into the entrance hall. Compelled to pursue, Cloud crept along the walkway, watching the ball of fire climb the stairs to the second floor. Its glow was enchanting and terrifying in equal measure; he could not take his gaze from it. The spirit waited at the height of the landing, oscillating gracefully as if instructing him to join it.

As much as he had been driven to steal away from Gramps' Inn by an inexplicable need to be here, this encounter felt different. Even so, Cloud was gripped by intrigue, and he began cautiously up the steps. The chandelier above reflected the soft radiance of the hitodama, casting an unusual spectacle across the giant oil painting on the wall. If he was not mistaken, it had once portrayed the spires of Mount Nibel, but now bore an elaborate formation of cave crystals.

By the time Cloud had scaled the staircase, the flaming entity had vanished into the upper west wing. He stopped in his tracks at the landing, a sense of foreboding washing over him. There was a strong smell of mustiness here – the kind only found in historic buildings – that triggered a fleeting memory. Their Turk contact, Samantha, had been pretty freaked out by the manor during their assignment five years ago, and had admitted to hearing manic laughter when she was alone in the archives.

Had she experienced something paranormal, too? The thought made him uneasy.

At the end of the second-floor hallway, the hitodama hovered outside a small botanic conservatory Cloud knew from previous visits. Empty as it had been in the past, the extension currently thrived with a plethora of exotic plants and herbs, no doubt utilised in whatever potions and remedies the researchers of the facility were concocting. Adjacent to it were a couple of guestrooms and a defunct library of Professor Hojo's less controversial experiments.

Peering down the corridors of the east wing, Cloud fought the sudden urge to disregard the ghost and investigate that side of the mansion. It was more than an urge, in all honesty; it was a yearning, the very essence of what had lured him here. He could feel it in his bones.

That was when he heard the rattle.

Muffled and sporadic was the noise, though unquestionably evident. It was coming from the direction of the hitodama, but not from the orb itself. Taking no chances, Cloud drew the Buster Sword from its magnetic holder and inched along the passage, listening intently. As he approached the conservatory, the hitodama drifted through a nearby doorway to the archive, inviting him to follow.

The chamber was uncharacteristically dark, its windows concealed behind heavy shutters. As his Mako eyes adjusted to the dimness, he identified the outlines of the bookcases, study desks, filing cabinets, and bulky cast iron safe at the centre of it all. The spirit appeared to be focusing its attention on the strongbox, and it was from this that the clattering originated, as if something inside was desperate to escape confinement.

Frowning, Cloud reached out and flipped the switch for the overhead lamps, causing all hell to break loose.

The hitodama screamed as the light instantly revealed its true form. Where the hypnotic orb had been, a disfigured pumpkin now floated, its leathery orange features warped into a devilish grin, with a dozen or so razor-sharp fins propelling it on the air. The kids of the town had various infantile names for these fiends, including dorky faces, jack o' lanterns and shadow monks, but despite their usual secretive nature, they had been known to seriously poison anyone straying too close to their territory.

In the moment it took Cloud to register all this, the dorky face had already belched a toxic mist at him. He reacted instinctively, ducking below the putrid purple gas, and slashing his greatsword upward in a devastating blow. The Mythril-infused blade tore cleanly through the vault's combination lock on its way to relieving the monster of half its head, spraying globules of blood across the ceiling. As chunks of pumpkin flesh splattered on the rug, the door to the safe swung clumsily open, and the distressed cactuar that had been trapped inside darted past to go hide among its botanical kin.

Cloud stood perfectly still for almost a minute, his mind jarring as it tried to make sense of what had just happened. His pulse began to slow again, but his bicep stung where the foe's acrid breath had caught his bare skin. He glared irritably at the mangled mess on the floor, pausing as he spotted an old key that had fallen from the strongbox. A metallic tag hung from its copper shaft, reading 'Coffin Room' on one side, with a handwritten sticker on the reverse:

Right 36, left 10, right 56, right 97

Probably the codeto the safe…

Gazing at the demonic image engraved on the bow of the key, Cloud was reminded of the strange doorways in the manor's underground caverns. The days preceding Sephiroth's final descent into madness had seen he and their Turk contact monitoring the dark tunnels. He recalled their discovery of a clandestine escape route into the town's sewers, and the chilling shrieks of its sahagin tenants. Yet it was the series of sealed chambers that had generated the most questions; he would never forget the gargoyle decor of those locks, nor the creepy sounds emanating from within.

The memory implored him to pluck the key from the rug, stuffing it into the pouch on his utility braces. Whether he wished to accept it or not, he knew in his heart of hearts that he was bound for the basement, and this unexpected acquisition did little to allay that.

Retreating to the main landing, Cloud advanced carefully into the upper east wing, the floorboards groaning beneath his boots. As he passed, he peered through the ingresses of the guestrooms, noting the linen on a handful of beds seemed relatively fresh. There were also a few glass tumblers resting upon the oak desktops, soiled by milk or liquor residue, and even a white laboratory coat tossed over the back of a chair. The old oil lamps were unlit, casting the corridors in an unwelcoming gloom, but the ex-SOLDIER could navigate this place with his eyes shut.

He had spent many a nightmare inside the macabre abode…

The study at the end of the hall was predominantly unchanged. Its thick curtains of ashen lime were drawn, obscuring the grey precipices of the Nibel Mountains, and the tartan carpet was thinning but recognisable. Several leather-bound volumes on the bookshelf had been rearranged, and the ornaments had made way for curious scientific instruments. It may all as well have been invisible, however, for Cloud's sole focus was the segmented wall of curving brick: the hidden entrance to the underground.

Inhaling deeply, he stepped forward and pressed on the camouflaged hinge. The grinding of cogs and scraping of stone reverberated eerily in the shaft beyond as they had done so many times before, and a sizeable cavity was unveiled. He learned to his surprise that the stairwell spiralling down into the tower had been reinforced, its rickety planks now buttressed by steel framework. The decline remained poorly lit, but the stench of decomposed meat that had so mercilessly greeted him on past visits was absent, replaced by a sterile fragrance that stirred an uncomfortable sensation in his gut.

Venturing through, Cloud was once again conscious of just how little self-restraint he was showing. He was alone in an evacuated Shinra facility, the threat of a disarming flashback lurking around every bend, with no real clue what security system might have been installed in recent years. Guard Scorpions and Black Widows were common sentinels of larger complexes but, for all he knew, there could be a chain-gun-wielding custom sweeper waiting for him.

And yet the allure of answers was too much.

Swiftly and quietly, he followed the wooden staircase below the foundations of the mansion's lower southeast corner. The subterranean path at its base was lined by small Mako bulbs, swathing its earthen flanks in a ghostly purple hue. Wandering the passageway beneath the estate's gardens, he emerged at last into the expansive cave network he used to patrol while Sephiroth pored over every page of every report in the basement library. There was no roboguard in sight, but the bloodbats in the nooks of the vaulted ceiling complained grumpily at his arrival.

Down here, the overwhelming smell of bleach had all but masked the sewage, and it took Cloud a second to realise the extent to which activity at the manor had impacted on the upkeep of the caverns. Gone were the rusting iron links draped from the rotund stalactites, as were the unidentifiable bone fragments strewn across the ground; in their place were Mako cannisters and storage units for a variety of apparatus.

Weaving his way further into the shadows, his eyes warily scanning back and forth, he found himself entangled in a psychological tug of war. The draw of the laboratory was almost palpable, the seeping radiance of the green lamplight within attracting him like a moth to a flame. Nevertheless, a buried voice pleaded for him to halt, to flee, nor could he not conquer his desire to inspect the mysterious chamber on the far side of the cave, his feet carrying him determinedly in its direction.

The copper key felt heavy in his pouch, weighing on him as he neared the secluded recess. Whatever lay behind the old oak door was concealed by a brickwork divide, closing off what had once been a natural hollow in the rock. The gargoyle lock was caked in dust and bat droppings, and had clearly not been touched for some time. Exhaling, Cloud ran his fingertips across it, clearing the grime from the narrow keyhole. Slipping its counterpart from his braces, he gently inserted it and turned, his pulse quickening as a dull clunk granted him access.

Let's see what secrets Shinra are keeping in the Coffin Room…

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