text: [Themes: horror]
  
  You walk up to the door on the right-hand side of the corridor and you pause before you turn the handle of the door, was that a noise you heard inside? It sounded like a click, a familiar noise but you can't quite place it. You press your ear against the door but you don't hear anything again, maybe your mind is playing tricks on you.
  
  "Careful." whispers your mentor very quietly in your ear.
  
  You cautiously and slowly turn the handle and open the door a little, holding the candle to the gap and peering in. You can see something large in the centre of the room and you open the door fully and let the candlelight spill into the room fully.
  
  Most of the room is taken up with a large snooker table in the centre of it. The balls used are the more modern snooker balls and they are spread out across the table and you can see a couple of balls in the pockets. A single cue is leaning up against the table on the far side of it. You look around the room and see a rack of cues for the snooker table on one wall, various comfortable-looking leather chairs around the room and a small cabinet in the far left corner with three crystal decanters on top.
  
  You walk over to the cabinet and see that one of the decanters has an amber liquid in it and there is a matching glass next to it which when you look at closer has a trace of the amber liquid in it. You smell the glass and you recognise the scent of whisky immediately, something your father has always enjoyed. You open the cabinet and see two bottles of whisky inside it, both opened and partially depleted. You're a little tempted to have some yourself to steady your nerves but you're not in the habit of drinking alcohol and you're not sure how it would affect you, you need all of your mental and physical facets in full working order if you're to have any hope of finding and saving your sister.
  
  You turn around to look at the rest of the room and you jump when the light from your candle falls on a wall of spikes and tendrils moving towards you. You back is pressed against the wall when you realise that they're not moving, it was the candle which was moving causing the shadows to move, and they're not spikes and tendrils, they're horns and antlers; the wall is covered in taxidermied and mounted heads of animals.
  
  You stare at the wall of dead animal heads for a while before you're confident that none of them are moving. You manage to tear your eyes away from the wall of heads and back to the snooker table in the middle of the room and then you realise, the click you heard when you were outside the door, it was the sound of a snooker ball hitting another one. The solo cue standing against the side of the table now looks very ominous to you and you slowly start bending down to look at the one place in the room where there is room for a person to be hiding.
  
  "There's no-one here." whispers your mentor to you and you breathe a sigh of relief, straightening back up. "There was someone here though," your mentor continues, "and they had to have gone somewhere."
  
  What do you do now?
  
  > continue looking for an alternative exit.
  You have no idea why you had an urge to play the partially completed game of snooker on the table but that would obviously be an absurd thing to do, especially with your sister's life in the balance and you force yourself to look away from the table.
  
  "Here, I've found something." whispers your mentor from the side of the room where the animal heads are mounted and you reluctantly head over to them. "Down here." she whispers from below you and you crouch down and peer at the wall.
  
  Your eyes run along the skirting board, carefully not looking at the dead eyes of the animal heads, and then you see it, a line running through the skirting board and up the wall. You hold the candle closer and stand up, following the line up the wall. "You see!" whispers your mentor. "I think it's a door!"
  
  That would make a lot of sense, clearly someone was in here and they went somewhere; a hidden door was exactly the kind of thing you were looking for in these rooms and you would never have spotted it without your mentor's help, you feel a wave of gratitude towards her for coming on this dangerous mission with you.
  
  "How do we open it?" you whisper to her as you follow the outline of the door all the way around the skirting board again.
  
  What do you do now?
  
  > try to open the hidden door.
  You start to hunt around for a handle for the door but you find it very difficult to look past the animal heads, especially when you are very literally face-to-face with them.
  
  "Found it." whispers your mentor and one of the antlers of a deer suddenly snaps downward and the door click and swings towards you by about an inch. You reluctantly grasp the horn of another animal head in absence of any kind of handle for the door and gentle pull to open the door towards you.
  
  Behind the door is a dark, narrow staircase, absent of any kind of decoration or finishing that the rest of the house had until this point. You wonder if the owners even knew about this staircase. You look at where you believe your mentor to be, shrug and start walking up the stairs.
  
  When you reach the top of the stairs, there is a very plain, wooden door at the top. You're sure that someone must have gone this way when you entered the snooker room below and you're worried that someone may be lying in wait for you on the other side of this door; after all, they knew exactly where you were and if they'd wanted you to come up here, they would have left the hidden door open.
  
  As quietly as possible, you slowly turn the handle and push open the door. Nothing happens. You let go of the handle and give the door a little push, the door swings open and hits the wall behind it with a thud which sounds deafening in the silence. You hold your candle up and squint into the darkness at what you can see.
  
  There is a corridor stretching in front of you but it's too dark to see anything else.
  
  What do you do?
  
  > walk into the corridor.
  You walk along the dark corridor, candle held out in front of you, until you reach the wall at the end; the corridor continues to the right and when you peer down it, you can see there are some doors on the right-hand side of the corridor.
  
  Something which strikes you as odd is that there are no windows at all on the walls, even though you're sure they are outside walls, meaning that the only light is that cast by your candle, which you notice is getting quite short now.
  
  Where do you go now?
  
  > go into the first door on the right.
  You push open the first door you come to along the dark corridor and the candle lights up a very drab bedroom. There is a single bed with a metal frame, a lumpy looking mattress and no bedding. A simple wooden chair stands next to a small, square, wooden table which looks as though it would break as soon as you tried to use it. Other than that, the room was completely bare and felt very small compared to the rest of the house. You crouch on the floor and look underneath the bed but there is nothing to be seen in this sparse room and you decide to leave it and return to the corridor.
  
  Where do you go now?
  
  > go into the second door on the right.
  You push open the second door along the corridor and find that this room must have been home to two people at some time as two single, metal bedframes are on either side of the room. The mattress on the right hand bedframe is bare and looks very uncomfortable. The bed on the left hand side though, looks to be made with fresh linens and looks positively inviting.
  
  You look around the rest of the room and see a small table with two simple wooden chairs either side of it and you put your candle down on the table. Between the two beds is a nightstand which has a large bowl with a jug stood inside it and when you walk over to it, the jug is full of piping hot water.
  
  There is something about the water which seems very inviting and you pour it out into the bowl and submerge your face in it. The water feels like it's refreshing you, like it's washing away your worries and your problems.
  
  You pull your face out of the water and look down at the made bed. It looks very inviting and you really are feeling tired, you should have been asleep for hours by now.
  
  What do you do?
  
  > take a nap in the bed.
  You feel really tired and the bed right there just looks too inviting. You're sure that you'll be able to help your sister better if you're not dead on your feet. You kick your shoes off and climb into the bed. "What are you doing?" your mentor hisses at you, but you're too tired to reply. Your head sinks down into the soft pillow and the blankets covering you feel warm and cosy. You close your eyes and in a few seconds, you're asleep.
  
  You open your eyes and you can't remember where you are. You seem to be lying in a bed and you're hugging yourself, you must be cold, but you don't feel cold. You move to pull the covers back but your arms don't move. You try to look down but the covers are in the way and you can't see why you can't move your arms. You try harder, struggling with all your strength but your arms don't move at all.
  
  Then the world goes white. You close your eyes as you are blinded by brilliant light and you hear the sound of a door opening.
  
  "Good, you're awake." you hear a voice say.
  
  Slowly you open your eyes just a crack and you see a woman standing in the doorway. She's dressed in white and she's holding a small tray.
  
  "Who are you?" you ask the woman.
  
  "I'm Nurse Hannigan." she says patiently. "You need to take your medication."
  
  You look around the room as far as you can see lying on the bed and you can clearly see that this isn't the room you went to sleep in; the walls are white and seem to be covered in fabric, the floor is tiled and the light embedded in the ceiling is electric, a florescent tube.
  
  "How did I get here?" you ask groggily, your eyes almost open fully now and you try to sit up but Nurse Hannigan pushes you back down again.
  
  "Not again." sighs Nurse Hannigan.
  
  "My sister!" you cry out, suddenly remembering what had happened before you went to sleep in that terrible place. "I need to save her, she's been taken!" You swivel your legs around off the bed and half stand up this time before Nurse Hannigan pushes you back down again.
  
  "You need to take your meds." replies Nurse Hannigan calmly, but she is holding your firmly by the shoulder with one hand so that you can't easily stand up, especially with your arms immobilised.
  
  You look down at your arms and find that they're inside a white jacket but the arms are wrapped across your body and round the back and they must be fastened there as you can't pull them back.
  
  "My arms are stuck." you say to Nurse Hannigan as you continue to try to free them.
  
  "It's for your own safety." replies Nurse Hannigan.
  
  "I need my arms!" you say, starting to panic a little now. "I need to save my sister!"
  
  "You don't have a sister and you need to take your meds." replies Nurse Hannigan, starting to sound a little impatient.
  
  "I do!" you cry, "She's in danger, they're going to hurt her!"
  
  "Calm down." says Nurse Hannigan firmly and she holds out a little paper cup to you.
  
  "No! I have to get out of here!" you yell, knocking the cup out of her hand when you use your shoulder to knock her arm to the side and you stand up and run towards the door which she left open when she came in.
  
  "Security!" yells Nurse Hannigan and before you reach the door, a large man in a white t-shirt and white trousers is filling the doorframe. A logo on his t-shirt reads Arkham Asylum and you just have time to think that sounds vaguely familiar before you barrel into him to knock him out of your way. What you actually manage to do though, is rebound off his immoveable form, falling backwards and without your arms free to balance you, you fall down to the floor onto your behind.
  
  He reaches down, rolls you over and holds your face against the floor with one hand and holds down your body with the other.
  
  "I've subdued the patient." says the hulking man, sounding like he's reciting a phrase he has been taught.
  
  "Good." replies Nurse Hannigan, walking over to you as you kick your legs wildly but there's nothing for your feet to make contact with. She bends down, putting her face next to your head and says "You need to calm down." and you feel the pinch of an injection in your arm.
  
  Your eyes feel really heavy and you close them before you even realise that you feel sleepy.
  
  "You'll feel better after your treatments." you hear Nurse Hannigan say just before you lose consciousness.