Haunted House
Pedro Fernández
first person haunted house indigo past tense speed IF SpeedIF The Indigo New Language Speed IF walkthrough
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Memories, that fuzzy affair. You're never certain enough how true they are to reality. I can't clearly remember, just as an example, what rumours said about the McDaniel Mansion...

There was something about a stranger who came to visit on a cold Autumn day many years ago, just before the house got abandoned for decades.
And then there was the wild speculation about monsters in the basement...

But the thing I really remember from those summer holidays is our improbable and not quite balanced trio of friends. There was Doc. Brown-haired, thin, handsome, annoyingly arrogant every now and then, always the charismatic. Then there was Rose, shy, with the soft, delicate look under her golden hair. The three of us united by the bare fact that we were the only people of our age in that too quiet, too boring, village, wasting the best of our late teens during the early eighties.

"Now, Mike, I hereby declare you as our official Torch-bearer" solemnly joked Rose when giving me the switched off torch that dry, hot late summer evening when, just out of having nothing else to do, we decided to play kids and go to explore the ruined McDaniel site, as isolated from the rest of the village as the village was from the rest of the world...

So there we stood, at the entrance of the old mansion, just the three of us and a former elegant door which was as rusty as firmly closed.

I could see Rose and Doc there.
Inventory
I was carrying:
a switched off torch

"A stranger coming out from nowhere causing the house to be abandoned..." said Rose. "What an odd story!"
You examine door
On closer inspection, there was a crumpled piece of paper showing under the door. I wondered how much time it had been there and why no one had taken it before...

Doc asked "Where did that piece of paper come from?"

"What about those weird noises they say that can be heard from within..." said Doc. "As if a monster was buried somewhere in the basement?"
Rose and I looked silently all around and then at each other, trying to grasp any suspicious sound. Nothing. Just our own breathing, some far away tweeting bird, and... a howling roar coming from our back? ...
"Jeeez" exclaimed a livid Rose while Doc was laughing "You just gave me the creeps!"
"Well" he replied "How was that for a buried monster-like creature?"
About yourself
No, no, I didn't do that... Did I? I was too excited about finding a way into the house to care about my own appearance that evening.

Rose and Doc looked to each other and then at me, as if expecting my decision to move on... but I just hadn't a clue what to do next!

Rose looked puzzled at the paper...
You take the paper
Taken.
You read it
There was some handwritten text in the old paper. "Magic word, say: PL..." no... "PLE"... wait, "PLO"...
Damn, I couldn't understand that. The paper was so crumpled and the handwriting was so old-fashioned and weird...
Suddenly Doc took the paper off from my hands with a mocking remark "You! Silly Mikie, didn't they teach you to read properly? Lemme see "Magic word: say PL..."
I wouldn't allow that. I was used to his disdainful jokes in front of Rose, but enough was enough. I removed the paper from him with an abrupt gesture, and then...
... then, showing a side of herself neither Doc nor me had ever seen before, Rose took it away from me with an exasperated look "C'mon kids! Will you at least try to fake some mature behaviour in the presence of a lady! Let's see, Magic word: say... PLUGH"
...and then... PLOF!
...she just disappeared in a cloud of smoke. Before we could react, her scream could be heard from somewhere inside the house. Doc just kicked the door, which opened with a suspicious ease now, and hurried into the mansion, so worried to show he was in charge that he forgot I was carrying the torch. I followed, but could only be aware, to my regret, that the door violently had slammed itself just as we entered, and then... no Doc, no Rose, just me and the dark...

Overwhelming darkness all around me... as if I just was floating on an infinite sea of empty blackness... made me feel so little, so helpless...
You turn on torch
I switched the torch on.

Under the dim torch light, the house seemed to scream its whole desolation all of a sudden. Everywhere I turned it was just an unrecognisable, deformed, amount of dust and cobwebs with some unidentifiable pieces of furniture beneath. I guessed I was in the foyer, and there seemed to be some kind of ways south, east and west.
You examine the furniture
Cobwebs and a thick layer of dust made a gallery of surreal forms everywhere I looked at.
You look under the sheet
No, no... I couldn't see any such thing there.
You search the cobwebs
I thought of all the possible unclassified lifeforms that could be lurking beneath the cobwebs... I'd better not get too close...
You go to the south
I began to move on... but I started to see all kind of blurry images. Iridescent snaps of Doc and Rose going frantically from one place to another. Fuzzy, nervous, fragmented shots of an unordered story I was witnessing as in a sci-fi film hologram. I tried to call them, but they wouldn't listen. I moved to reach them, but their images just would go through things, through walls, through me... As soon as they appeared they would vanish. Perhaps those were images of events that took place there, but not then, or they might have been happening then, but not there...
You listen
Silence... Everywhere it was so creepy silent...
You go south
Somehow I knew I was in the den, and then I retraced my steps when I saw Doc's image gangway through it... chased by a suit of armour. That was so crazy I thought I felt better when the vision just disappeared. I could go north, to the foyer, and east.
You go to the east
I entered a corridor... and suddenly, someone turned the lights back on...

No, no... it wasn't like that, was it? It took me a short while to realize... Until that moment, I'd been seeing luminescent visions of my friends going erratically around me. That time, I was inside one of the visions. A big one, indeed, as it covered most of the corridor I was suppossed to be in, its inner dim bluish light surrounding me. At the other side of the corridor, I could see Doc and Rose. They both were staring right at the spot where I was, as if they couldn't see me but were somehow aware that I could be there, watching them. They nodded at each other, Rose snapped her fingers, and they simultaneously drew away some curtains back them, revealing a huge elegantly framed painting with a family portrait...
I could see a wealthy couple, a few kids... but the whole scenario vanished before I could dig into any detail, leaving me back at a dark ominous corridor again.

Were they trying to show me something?
Had they figured out how that strange vision phenomenon was working? Was that a portrait of the McDaniel family?

I couldn't tell. I was just alone in a corridor where an impassable mountain of rubble and debris completely blocked the way south.

I could go east and west, to the den.
You look at the debris
It seemed the consequence of a massive collapse of part of the walls and ceiling. Going through it was totally out of the question, but there was a tiny gap I could use to take a peek into the other side. Scattered along the debris I could see the recognisable pieces of a richly ornate frame, but there was no trace of the canvas it could have contained.
You look at the gap
It all happened so fast...
I could see the huge hall of a wealthy mansion, some stairs leading to the upper floor, where a blue, unnatural light came from an open door. Silhouetted against it, the contour of a woman. She instantly ran away slamming the door, leaving the room back into utter darkness and my eyes with an inverted image of it all, black and blue, that lasted for a few seconds.
She was not Rose, that I knew for sure. So I realized, with a mix of hope and fear, that maybe I was not alone in the dark, haunted house...
Continue
Light from the torch wouldn't reach enough into the hall. I couldn't see anything at all.
You take the frame
No, no, I didn't do that... Did I? Can't clearly remember... Perhaps I tried but it didn't lead anywhere...
You describe your surroundings
I was just alone in a corridor where an impassable mountain of rubble and debris completely blocked the way south.

I could go east and west, to the den.
Go east
The layout of the place clearly resembled a kitchen. As soon as I entered Rose's mirage was walking to the middle of the room. A bucket of water stood there. In an instant, just like in a nightmare where you feel something horrible is about to happen for no reason, I knew she was going to drink from it. In an instant I knew, as if I had seen the whole scene before, it was deadly poisonous. I yelled at her:

"No! Don't do that!"

...and she stopped her arm, as if she had heard me. She looked everywhere, as if searching the source of the warning. Soon the whole image disappeared as before.

I was in the kitchen.
There were exits north, south, and west, to the corridor.
Go south
I thought I got it then... Rooms were actually indistinguishable from each other in that overwhelming dust and web mess, but somehow I clearly knew where I was, just like if... I really had that crazy feeling, the house itself was showing me around its well guarded secrets. I was in a breakfast room at that moment. Exits were north, to the kitchen and east.
You go to the east
I was in the servant's quarters. There was a closed cabinet in one wall. I could go west, to the breakfast room.
You look at the cabinet
It was closed.
You open it
I opened the cabinet... I saw a key inside... and then I almost had a heart attack!
I suddenly saw a shiny female hand just erupting from my own chest. It was Rose's image going through my flesh as if I wasn't there at all. She grabbed the key. I could see her curious gesture while examining it. She went away with it, her ghostly vision vanishing as fast as she appeared. Even when I was shocked to death, I couldn't help but have some warm feelings. Somehow she had just been inside me... so close...
You look in the cabinet
The cabinet was empty.
You look at the key
I was sure I saw a key inside the cabinet, but it seemed to have vanished with Rose's vision...
You move the cabinet
It was fixed in place.
You go west
I was in the breakfast room. Exits were north, to the kitchen and east, to the servant's quarters.
Go north
I could see the bucket of water again on the kitchen's floor. Behind, Rose's dissolved image was coming from the opposite side. She looked so different this time... decades older. Her golden hair turned into a silver untidy mane. She kneeled before the bucket and aimed her arm as if to pick it up. I screamed again:

"No, Rose! Don't drink from it!"

...and, for a few seconds, she looked directly to where I was, her eyes loaded with such vast, infinite sadness, as if she had been roaming the house for an eternity trying in vain to find an escape... all hope lost. She stared at me so firmly I hadn't a chance to notice she had grabbed the bucket and moved it to her mouth. She drunk the liquid inside it without hesitation. In a moment, her body softly fell without a sound, without a sign of pain. When I reacted, she was lying as a broken doll. When I reached her, she was no longer there...

Was that our true destiny? Had I foreseen the way it all would definitively end for us... for her?

I was in the kitchen.
There were exits north, south, to the breakfast room, and west, to the corridor.

I could see a crumpled piece of paper there.
You take the paper
Taken.
You read it
Now I could easily understand the hand written note "Magic word: say PLUGH"
Plugh
"PLUGH...!"
I could not say what I was expecting... Nothing happened.
About yourself
No, no, I didn't do that... Did I? I was too stressed trying to make sense of what was happening. The way I looked was so irrelevant in that endless dark...
You look at the bucket
No, no, I couldn't see the bucket of water any more. Perhaps it would be there in some future time, when Rose... No, no...
Go north
That had to be the dining room. I was surprised by a quick vision of Rose...
... alive...
... and as young as vital as she was at the house entrance not long ago, like a flash, writing something with her finger in the dust that laid over a big old wooden table.
Exits led south, to the kitchen, and west.
You look at the table
Written in the layer of dust I could read the word "UPSTAIRS"... Was Rose trying to send me a message?
You go to the west
I could figure out that was the living room. Right after entering there I had one of those strange visions again. That one was such a nonsense it could easily have been ripped off from a cartoon. It was Doc running while being chased by a levitating knife. Even in an eerie environment like that I could laugh at it, but then, I was so scared...
There seemed to be exits east and west, to the foyer.
Go west
I was in the foyer.
I could go south, to the den, east, to the living room, and west from here.
You go west
I was in a hall. It was huge, and it seemed I was in its east end. I could go north, east, to the foyer, and west.
Go west
That was the other end of the huge hall. Exits were north, south, to a door, and east, to the east end of the hall.
You examine the door
I saw the door. It was closed.
You open the door
I felt that warm feeling again. A light flowing out from myself as I saw Rose's ghostly hand unlocking the door with the key she took from the cabinet. Somehow I knew then that our fate was not sealed to stay in the house forever. It didn't matter how much we were apart in space or time, we were working it out all together. We would find a way...
Go south
(first opening the door)
Master bedroom
The master bedroom... I could see a bed. Exits were north, to the hall, and east.
You look at the bed
I wasn't sure what could have happened to it, the light was so dim and there was that continuous dust and cobweb mess... but it looked like it had been burnt a long time ago.
You look under the bed
Just dust. Burnt dust. A lot of it...
You examine the burnt dust
No, no... I couldn't see any such thing there.
You examine the dust
Cobwebs and a thick layer of dust made a gallery of surreal forms everywhere I looked at.
You move the bed
It was fixed in place.
You go east
OH MY GOD, IT BURNS!!!

I got paralysed when I heard Rose's desperate cry. Then I saw her brilliant image coming from the east, her clothes in flames! She ran blindly into the bed and then I saw the bed engulfed in a giant ball of consuming fire. Soon there was nothing but the darkness and the burnt remains of the bed.
Go east
I was too damn shocked to even think of doing something at all...
You look around
No, no... I didn't do that, did I? I just felt like sitting right there and let myself be consumed by the dark just like Rose had been consumed by the flames...
No, no... I had to find the strength to react. I had seen Rose die before in a weird, horrible way, so there was a chance it hadn't been for real...
Go east
Slowly I recovered my breath... I had to move on...
... so I tried going east.

Deformed shelves suggested that was once a library. Leaning against a wall, a wooden ladder reached into a gap in the ceiling which once belonged to a working trapdoor.
You examine the ladder
A wooden ladder leading upstairs.
Go upward
I carefully began to step onto the ladder when Doc's vision entered the library. He dropped a rope right under the hole. It magically raised itself to the ceiling while he cheerfully exclaimed "TA-DAA, beat that, silly Mikie!" and quickly began to make a skilful rope climbing exhibition.
I knew he wasn't actually there, but couldn't help answering "Now, Mr. know-it-all, what's so wrong with using a ladder to go upstairs?"
He was talking to himself, but  the timing was so surprisingly precise that I could swear he was addressing me while both of us were reaching upside "Yeah, yeah... I wonder who the hell was the moron who screwed the ladder..."
...
...Oops! I realized then that the wooden ladder was so rotten that it was on the verge of collapsing under my weight. I desperately jumped towards the ceiling hole, miraculously reaching upstairs in the last moment before the ladder turned into a pile of shreds on the lower floor... That was close...!

I was in a dimly lit room upstairs. Some light entered from the corridor to the west, but it still wasn't enough to move without the torch.
Exits led east, to a door, west, to a corridor, and down.
Go west
I entered a corridor... and then hell broke loose. It all seemed a scene from a medieval fantasy film. I saw... that was it... an army of ghosts. They were just an indescribable legion of formless shadows I could just refer to as ghosts. At the other end of the corridor Doc stood defiantly carrying a shining sword "Now, minions of hell, you're going to taste my ghost slayer blade" and with a barbarian-like howl he charged against them all... smashing them apart while he kept running. "Wait..." I thought. Perhaps he got too carried away, as he didn't stop in the corridor and entered the room in an unstoppable rush which lead him directly to the trapdoor hole...
"Yiaaaahhh...!!" CRASH!!
"Ouch... That must have hurt!!" I thought, and looked into the hole to see Doc's shiny vision lying on the floor below... in time to see Rose's fuzzy image running towards him...
"It's okay, it's okay" he said "It's been just some scrapes... You're not to worr..." But she wouldn't let him finish. Giving away a side of herself I would never have wanted to see, she embraced him tenderly until they both merged in a long, passionate kiss.

And I knew then, being the unnoticed witness of their privacy, that as certain as there was a real world outside of the house, any wish, any hope I had concerning Rose would never, ever, fit in it.

Their images vanished again as I realized they were stuck downstairs, and if there were an exit to the house it was on my side, so it was up to me to find it and eventually come back to their rescue.
You go to the west
I was in a corridor. Light entered from a near balcony.
I could see a bedroom to the north, a dimly lit room to the east, and a balcony to the west.
You go to the west
I was in a balcony. Couldn't say whether it was day or night, as the cloudy sky colour was just... unnatural. I gazed down to see Rose's corpse impaled at the iron gate in the house entrance. Horror made me jump back to the corridor in a reflex move.
You go to the west
I didn't want to see. But I had to be sure. I stepped onto the balcony once again and... there were two corpses of Rose impaled at the iron gate. Two different dead bodies in different dead postures. I went back again.
You go west
Then I saw three impaled Roses and one Doc hanging from a nearby tree. I blinked... and suddenly all surrounding trees were full of hanged Docs. Gruesome. I entered the house again.
You go to the west
I was just losing my mind, as I went onto the balcony again and again until a mountain of dead Roses and Docs filled the horizon. Suddenly the horror was gone, as I had the strong feeling  that somehow the house, or whoever was inside, was just doing its best to suggest to me that jumping from the balcony was not a safe way of leaving. Well, black humour was also to be considered.
You go to the north
I was in a bedroom.
I could go south, to the corridor.

I could see a bed, a desk and a wardrobe (closed) there.
You examine the bed
An old bed.
You look under the bed
Just dust. A lot of it...
You examine the desk
An old wooden desk. There was a closed drawer in it.
You open the drawer
I opened the drawer, revealing a pile of mail and a handful of press clippings.
You look at the mail
Lots of invoices and receipts dated up to the mid fifties addressed to some Shirley McDaniel. Last envelope seemed to be a handwritten letter.
You examine the letter
A yellowing handwritten letter dated November 1956.

"My dearest, my sweetheart, my love..."

... Uh, that was... I nervously skipped from one line to another without any order...

"...time of our most difficult choice, let the world know I'll allow no one to stand in the way of our one dream, our true heart desire..." "... convince you to take that little step, I promise you, my dear, that you'll never be afraid any more of whatever people say..."
"... fulfil my deepest wish... devoted to you beyond any hope..."

It was all about not being afraid from scandals, about finding a way to live together, about pure love agony... the way just old styled love letters could do. I felt I got it then. Somehow I knew what was all about with that stranger who came to visit a cold Autumn day many years ago, just before the house got abandoned... Somehow I just knew what was going on with all that madness... As in response, I could hear the door in the near room with the hole on the floor creaking open... as if the house was inviting me to a rendezvous with its final inner secret.
You examine the letter
A love letter...
You examine the clippings
Society news from the mid fifties regarding Shirley McDaniel, heiress of the McDaniel fortune.
You examine wardrobe
An old wooden wardrobe almost covered by the continuous cobweb layer. It was closed.
You open it
I opened the wardrobe.
You look in it
The wardrobe was empty.
You describe your surroundings
I was in a bedroom.
I could go south, to the corridor.

I could see a bed, a desk and a wardrobe (empty) there.
Go east
I was in a dimly lit room.
Exits led east, to a door, west, to a corridor, and down.
You go to the east
Then something difficult to describe happened. With my first step, I was entering into an attic room, with the next, it was just like the room itself was entering into my head. It was hard to discern whether I was in two different locations at the same time or having two totally different perceptions of a same place.
One was a dark room where I could hardly distinguish a window that, for no reason, I thought led the way to the landscape of another world. I was afraid to look into it, thinking that just gazing there would get me lost forever. Other than that it didn't matter where I turned the torchlight to, it was all a deep hole of inscrutable blackness.
The other one was a sea of shining blue where I just couldn't measure any distance or have any reliable notion of location. Simultaneously in both of them, or somewhere in between, or just floating around me, a pale blue presence. When it somehow spoke to me, the amount of shocking sensory nonsense went far beyond my coping capacity: I think I lost my consciousness for a while...
When I came back I was greeted by a female voice...

"Hello there... you're an unwelcome guest, and my name is Indy".

I was so shaken and exhausted after all the previous sequence of surrealist nightmares that I just wasn't aware, or couldn't care less, if I was taking it too casually given the circumstances.

"Indy for Indiana? Indy for independent? Indy as in..."

"...Indigo"

And I was still surrounded by the dark, but it was just like her voice made the whole room change its colour.

I could see a window and Indigo there.
You examine Indigo
I looked at her, and just like she could read my mind she answered to what I was thinking...
"No, I don't know what happened to Shirley McDaniel. I just came here after she and her lover flew away. As far as I know, their love story could have ended tragically, or perhaps they are now happily spending the best of their old age as a de facto couple on an exotic island. Dunno. You know, we just search for empty houses."
"We?" I was surprised...
"No, no, it's just me here" I thought she was smiling "I meant my people tend to settle in abandoned places 'cause they are the best to give time a chance, to forget, maybe forgive, whichever happened, whatever they did to us..."
And I didn't see it, but I could sense her finger pointing close to my nose while she firmly stated "And-don't-even-think-of-asking-me-what-it-was."
You ask Indigo about the plugh
I tried to... No, no... I couldn't tell what happened first, could I? I got paralysed. Darkness got darker than dark. The air around me suddenly disappeared, and somehow I felt, though I couldn't exactly see, Indigo's furious face insanely jumping towards me at an impossible, inhuman, speed...
... and then I instinctively tried to cover my face, but lost my balance and fell backwards, yelling like a child and shaking frantically arms and legs in panic... until I heard her voice in a tongue in cheek tone saying...

"...PLUGH!"

...Damn ghostly girl, she had just booed me. No, she gave me the fright of my life. No, no, she frightened the death out of my very own soul and then hammered it a bit. And I fell for it like a kid in the nightly camp fire after the scary tale-telling run...
When I got my breath back I noticed I was lying on the floor while she was also sitting on it a few yards in front of me. We stared a each other for a few instants, and then I tried to speak... but her answer came before I could articulate a single word...

"Yeah, you've made all the way up here, watching the many deaths of Rose and... the other guy, and now here we are, just chatting like long time friends having tea beside the stone fountain in the beautiful garden and..."

...and I felt like I was in one of those dreams when you're close to a warm, comfortable, company and would like to stay like that forever...
You examine the window
No, I dared not...
You look around
I was in the attic.

I could see a window and Indigo there.
You ask Indigo about Indigo
Even before I finished thinking of it she interrupted me:

"...Plugh again?"

...and  I could hear first a tiny laugh... then I could feel, though again I couldn't exactly see, her smile... and it was all so contagious that in no time we both couldn't help laughing out pretty loud until we lost notion of time...
Plugh
No, no... I didn't do that, did I? Perhaps I tried to, but I was so mesmerized under Indigo's presence that the only thing I could do, or the only thing I felt I wanted to do, was examine her intensely.
You examine Indigo
She was a formless blue shadow, but I felt I could visualize her the way I wanted. I thought I could think of her as an attractive woman. At that point, I realized that what I saw between Rose and Doc had struck me harder than what I would like to recognize. I felt miserable. She noticed.
"Your friends have suffered no harm at all. We use to play tricks with unwanted visitor's imaginations to make sure they don't even consider coming back. Other than that, everything was real..."
...
"Ow, sorry..." She added on realizing I didn't want to hear that last one.
You look at Indigo
I tried to discern a form in her formless shadowy blue image. I noticed then that, if I focused hard enough on the spot she seemed to be, I could move without my head getting dizzy for the space strangeness all around me. I advanced towards her, and then, even as she was just like a cloud, I could hear her nervous step back on the floor. I had the craziest of all ideas. I extended my arm. I wasn't aware of how rude, mindlessly I was trying to breach into her privacy until I could sense the anxiety, the loneliness... and then the cold, the death...

...and then, for the very first time in my life, I was slapped by a ghost.

Not only slapped as being hit in your cheek, but also as being grabbed in the air, literally kicked in the ass, and thrown away through a closed window.
First I panicked, about the other world sighting and that stuff. I closed my eyes, but soon I couldn't help opening them again and I saw I was landing into the entrance of the house, where some very puzzled Rose and Doc, eyes wide open, were just dumbstruck watching my free fall from the first floor.
...CRASH!

"..Ouch! That must have hurt!"
Rose's comforting voice received me before Doc's strident comment ruined it all.
"Oh! you silly Mikie, I thought you would throw yourself out of a window just if you were ordered to do so, now I know you would do it even if no one told you to!"

And that was all about the house mystery: there was no mystery at all, at least not the way I thought about mysteries since then. The mansion was abandoned when rich heiress powerful dumb airhead Shirley McDaniel fell in love with a married man. There were no monsters in the basement, but I met a ghost in the attic. She happened to be just a random squatter called Indigo, and was there for the same reason ghosts like to roam quiet isolated places. They are empty, giving them time to heal whatever wounds tie them to the wrong side of the after-life... alone...

Rose and Doc helped me to stand, each to one side of me, while my leg hurt like hell, just a bad sprain. I enjoyed that brief moment in the centre of our improbable friends trio, whose balance, I knew then, was as close to an irreversible end as summer itself...
The following days we had trouble discerning real events from ghost pranks. At first, we talked about it all as an actual  series of weird, strange, supernatural events... or so I think... Later, it was just a scary trip into an old mansion where we got lost in the dark and had to struggle to come back, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened in between, or no one dared to mention... It's tempting to believe that's what the ghost-girl wanted... Did I ever tell my friends about her? Can't clearly remember...
In the end, it was the day we went into an abandoned house, Rose and Doc started their intense and short-lived relatioship, and I fell off a window...

Now I'm not sure which part of it all is a real memory and which my own recreation. Teenagers are known to make up stories to calm their angsts just like ghosts searching abandoned houses to ease their own, immortal pains, aren't they?
Unexpectedly, I still keep with me the crumpled paper. Sometimes I just say "plugh" to see if something happens. Of course, it does not.