text: [Themes: Horror, haunted house]
  
  > 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.
  
  > 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.
  
  > 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.
  
  > 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.
  
  > 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.
  
  > 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.
  
  > 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.
  
  > 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.
  
  > examine the bed
  An old bed.
  
  > look under the bed
  Just dust. A lot of it...
  
  > examine the desk
  An old wooden desk. There was a closed drawer in it.
  
  > open the drawer
  I opened the drawer, revealing a pile of mail and a handful of press clippings.
  
  > 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.
  
  > 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.
  
  > examine the letter
  A love letter...
  
  > examine the clippings
  Society news from the mid fifties regarding Shirley McDaniel, heiress of the McDaniel fortune.
  
  > examine wardrobe
  An old wooden wardrobe almost covered by the continuous cobweb layer. It was closed.
  
  > open it
  I opened the wardrobe.
  
  > look in it
  The wardrobe was empty.