Chapter Two
He hadn't lied to the girl. Those damn doors had been locked up tight. He'd even tried to shoulder them open but the heavy wood had held fast. Then she just turns the knob and they open right up. It gave him an uneasy feeling. If he was being honest with himself this whole situation gave him an uneasy feeling.
The interior of the place was dim. The watery light fought to penetrate the dirty windows but it did very little to illuminate the space. They were standing in a huge foyer that could probably hold three houses the size of his. A massive chandelier hung above them and at the end of the room was a wide staircase. Doors branched off on either side of the wide space. He let out a low whistle. Even with cobwebs hanging from everything and dust and debris littering the marble floors, he couldn't help but imagine what it must have looked like a hundred years ago.
"I've been here before but it amazes me every time. Could you imagine this place at it's peak?" The quiet reverence in her voice had him glancing over at her. Wide blue eyes were taking in the room and he knew she was more than enamored with the place.
"It woulda been somethin' alright," he muttered, paying a lot more attention to her now. He had seen her around school plenty of times but he'd never really paid much attention to her. She was always with a group of other girls but one thing he did notice was that she wasn't much like them. She was quiet, almost bookish. But now that he was paying attention, he almost couldn't look away.
"The Winchester family started building this place five years after the Civil War. No one knows where they came from or how they had amassed their fortune. They were recluses but they were rich recluses so I guess that made it okay. There were all kinds of stories about the family. People claimed they could hear screaming at night. Animals disappeared from peoples barns. At one time it was said that every year or so, children would start disappearing. Snatched up right out of their beds, never to be seen again. Nothing like that had ever happened until the Winchesters moved in. It was rumored that they were into some dark stuff."
He watched her glancing around as she spoke in a low voice. "I'm surprised this place ain't been torn to shit then. Sounds like the type of place teenagers would come and wreck."
She shook her head and turned to meet his eyes. "I've heard that several groups of teenagers have tried since the house became abandoned."
He raised a brow, waiting for her to go on.
She shrugged. "The first time something like that almost happened was in 1956. A group of teenagers had the grand idea of coming out here and busting out the windows and getting drunk."
He frowned. "What happened to them?"
She shrugged nonchalantly. "Their car somehow crashed as soon as they hit the driveway. Three were killed and one, well, they never found his body. In 1962 a couple came out here to... be alone. The boy somehow fell over the banister," she pointed to a spot near the staircase, "and landed right there. His girlfriend was found in a closet, locked from the outside. She was taken to an asylum somewhere."
"Jesus," he muttered, staring at the spot she had indicated.
She nodded. "1968 a group of hippie types came here and planned on squatting. They wanted to turn it into some kind of psychedelic oasis. One of the members must have had a bad trip because he killed his friends. Fourteen people were killed in their sleep, blunt force trauma to the head. You'd think someone would have woken up but the reports say that none of them had seen it coming. They were all sharing a room up on the second floor. The boy that did it walked right into the police station, soaked in blood. He couldn't speak. He just wrote "Winchester Mansion" on a piece of paper. He never went to trial. I heard he was admitted to the same asylum that the girl had been admitted to back in '62."
"And you wanted to come out here?" He asked, scowling. "You ain't never wondered why the fuck everybody that seems to come to this place finds themselves either dead or crazy?" He was ready to get the hell out of the place himself. He would be the first to admit that he was a superstitious guy.
Her eyes widened. "Are you telling me you believe in ghost?"
He gestured around the room. "You tellin' me that you don't?"
"Of course I do. Why do you think I wanted to come out here tonight?"
He shook his head. "Great. Just great," he grumbled. "I'm gonna be dead before I even get my driver's license."
They both looked towards the open double doors as a clap of thunder shook the windows. "Damn it," she muttered, walking towards them quickly. "I thought I closed these."
He caught her wrist just before she was about to close them. He wasn't some pussy that got spooked easily but he had a bad feeling about the place. A very bad feeling. "Look, maybe we should just get the hell outta here. Daniels didn't show so it ain't like he can say much if we take off."
She glanced down at his hand that was still gripping her wrist lightly, her cheeks turning a soft shade of pink. He dropped his hand and took a step back. They both turned as another crack of thunder seemed to tear the seams of the clouds. Rain started coming down in sheets and a cold wind tore the door out of her hand, causing it to slam against the wall.
"Fuck," he growled. There was no way they could walk back home in this. She gripped the door and he helped her push it closed against the wind that seemed to come out of nowhere. Once it was shut they both put their backs against it and stood in silence for a while.
"Okay, I know you don't want to be here but we are here and we aren't going to be able to leave for a while. We may as well get started," she said, stepping away from the door and turning to face him.
He leaned the back of his head against the wood and stared up at the heavy chandelier. "I 'spose that's all we can do."
She grinned. "That's the spirit. And if it makes you feel any better, the ghosts here probably won't kill us. We aren't here to hurt the house. We're here to help it."
He snorted. "If you say so. Where the hell do we start? This whole damn place is fuckin' filthy. It'll take a lot more than us to get it back in shape before that society comes to sniff around."
Shrugging she led him towards the stairs. "I say we start on the second floor and work our way down. We may as well tackle the hard stuff first. The third floor is mostly storage and the old servant quarters. All the supplies should already be up there."
He nodded and then followed her up the stairs. As soon as they were on the second floor she hit a switch and the light fixtures that lined the main hallway came on. "This place has power?"
She nodded. "This place was actually lived in until the forties. That was when the last surviving member of the family died. Sara Winchester."
The fixtures were dated and dim and the artificial ambiance did little to dispel the spooky look of the place. If anything, it made it worse. He expected to look up and find a set of creepy looking twin girls in blue dresses staring at him. This was definitely a Shining moment.
"Spooky, huh?" She asked, eying him.
He shrugged. "Not really."
She grinned then and motioned for him to follow her. There was a T at the end of the hall and she turned right, leading him to the room at the end of that hall.
"Jesus," he muttered when she hit the switch, chasing some of the shadows away.
"This was Sara's room," Carol said excitedly, grabbing his arm and pulling him further into the space. Initially he had the urge to yank his arm out of her grip and tell her to back the hell off but he held back and then discovered that the feel of her hand on him wasn't a bad thing. She looked up at him, her eyes bright even though the light in the room was dim. "She hung herself in here. I figured this would be a good place to start."
"Anybody ever tell you that you're morbid as hell?" He asked, holding her gaze.
Her smile fell and she dropped her hand from his arm. "I'm not morbid," she muttered, her voice soft. "It's just the history of the place is pretty fascinating if you think about it."
He hadn't meant to hurt her feelings but he knew just by the guarded look on her face that he had hit a nerve with his remark. He didn't want her to think that he was mocking her and he wasn't used to caring regardless. He didn't really know how to do damage control but he wanted to. "Morbid ain't a bad thing. It beats the fuck out of being like those prissy chicks you usually hang out with at school."
She glanced up, a small smile playing around her lips. "Most people I know would much rather be stuck with one of those girls than with me. People think I'm weird."
"You are weird," he stated, glancing around the room, not wanting to meet her eyes anymore.
"So are you," she countered. "You never talk to anyone and you still manage to get in trouble all the time. You cussed out Mr. Daniels but you stick up for the kids at school that don't seem to want to stick up for themselves."
He smirked. "Not talkin' to anyone sure beats the hell outta hangin' with a bunch of snobs that don't give a damn about me."
She pursed her lips together and shook her head. "It isn't like they're my friends or anything. We've all just gone to the same school our whole life and when we were younger we were interested in the same things so I still kind of hang out with them."
He made his way to the corner of the room where there was an array of cleaning supplies on one of the narrow tables. "That just don't make a whole lot of sense to me. You don't really like them but you still act like you're friends with them."
"It beats being alone all the time," she said, reaching for a dust rag.
He watched her closely. "Actually it really don't." He grabbed a rag of his own and went to the window, pushing the heavy velvet drapes aside so he could get to work on the window. He could hear her grumbling behind him. He was smiling to himself when he looked down over the yard and saw two sets of headlights pulling around the circular drive.
He cursed to himself. The rain was still coming down but he could still make out two guys as they stepped out of the first car. At first he thought that it must be Daniels with some more volunteers but then he realized that he recognized the second car. He felt a heavy sense of dread. He knew the guy that owned it and knew that this wasn't any volunteer. The guys name was Ralph Webber and he was Merle's age. Merle had actually hung out with him a few years ago and the guy was pretty out there. Even Merle had deemed him to fucked up to run around with and that was saying a lot. There were eight people total, pulling something that looked like a cooler out of the trunk.
He stepped away from the window, letting the curtain fall back over the glass just as one of the guys looked up. Glancing over his shoulder he met Carol's eyes from across the room.
"What's wrong?" She asked, dropping the rag onto the bed and eying him worriedly.
Before he could answer the sound of glass shattering reached their ears and then the bedroom door creaked open. Neither one of them were near it and it had been firmly shut just seconds ago. "We got trouble," he muttered, grabbing her hand on his way past her and leading her to the hallway.
