"Oh man, this is the perfect place, don't you agree?" "Dude, I think it's been abandoned for a reason."
Antonio and Gilbert had left the motel they were supposed to stay in early in the morning for a good reason: they were sick of the place. "I swear to God, if another cockroach runs over my face, I will pack my shit and get out of here," Gilbert had exclaimed in the middle of the night. A few hours later they had already put their suitcases and themselves into the rental car and were on their merry way. They had driven for some time when they finally stopped just outside of town. Antonio had noticed a grand mansion on top of a cliff and ignoring all signs forbidding entry and warnings of rolling rocks and such, they drove to it. Having stepped out of the car, they gazed the house in both awe and anxiety.
"Looks top notch. Seems fancy and it's definitely cheap," Gilbert said and started to walk to the front door. "D-don't!" Antonio yelled, his voice echoing back from the valley and the mountains. The other man looked at him with a shit-eating grin, as if he knew what the Spaniard was so afraid of. "Oh, I see how it is," he chuckled darkly. "You're afraid of ghosts, huh? Booo!" He jokingly mocked Antonio who was growing ever more frustrated. "No, I'm not! I just dislike the idea of spending my holidays in a God-forsaken place like this!" he smacked Gilbert against the head. Praying to Ave Maria and kissing the small silver cross hanging around his neck, he went in front of the Prussian inside the house, just to show how brave he was. Rolling his eyes and grinning like crazy, the other man followed him.
The inside was just like something you'd expect from a place like this. Well furbished and grand in its days, it now had been left to collect dust for a good 40 years or so. Looking just as if a scene from a horror movie, the grand stairs in front of them and even the whole interior was in shades of dark grey due to the only light coming from the small crease in the front door; the big windows that supposedly opened to the magnificent valley-view behind the house were nailed shut. "Like a real mansion of death, huh?" Gilbert whispered and nudged Antonio between the ribs, causing the latter to yelp and jump from the surprise. "Shut up!" he exclaimed, his whisper sounding ever so loud in the morbidly silent building. "Don't do that!" Gilbert started walking towards the stairs, Antonio closely following, when he suddenly stopped. "Feel the draft?" he asked, looking around suspiciously. "I said DON'T," the Spaniard shuddered and tugged onto the other's sleeve. "Let's just go. I feel like we're being watched or something." "Alright, stop whining, wimp," Gilbert snapped, although also growing slightly anxious, and left the mansion with him. "Let's go get the others as well and then come back with the whole lot. Equipped with all kinds of stuff like crowbars, flashlights and food, of course," he smiled once back in the car. Antonio wasn't too happy about the idea, though - he was only willing to come to that dreadful sleepover if they brought a ton of salt with them for protection from all sorts of supernatural beings.
Once back in the motel where they had left their two friends, they learned from the receptionist that the two were already gone. "Great," Gilbert grumbled, clearly unhappy of being abandoned just like that. "Maybe we should have answered Francis' calls?" Antonio asked when they were back outside, sitting on sandy stairs in the shade from the burning Sun. "Maybe," the white-haired man only muttered and continued to whine how he'd like a nice cold beer at the moment.
At the same time Francis and Arthur were enjoying themselves and had in fact forgotten about their two renegade friends. They had accidentally hopped onto a tourist bus filled with Korean elderly and were on their way to the Sugar Loaf mountain, all the while eating some delicious yakwa and playing bridge. "Look!" Arthur exclaimed in awe and pointed out of the open window towards the extraordinarily shaped mountains and the huge statue Cristo Redentor. "We're honestly going on top of those?" Francis asked, swallowing hard at his imagination of what the transportation trolleys there would look like. It's not like he wasn't good with heights or anything; he just liked to stand on safe, non-wobbly land. "Can't wait," the Brit smiled and continued to listen to a small elderly woman ramble on about the heat. Francis took a lot of photos that day, keeping Arthur in mind: he wanted the happy memories hanging on the walls in his office overweigh the not-so-happy ones even more than they already started to do.