text: [Themes: fan fiction, historical]
  
  With every step you take the rattling gets louder, yet carefully, step by step, you shuffle to the door. Small clouds of dust erupt from the carpet with every carefully placed step, leaving behind a fleeting echo of your path through this endless void. A floorboard creeks as you walk across it, its thundering sound resonating off the windowless walls, mingling together with the ghastly rattling.
  
  Finally, with your heart pounding in your chest, you reach the door. Even up close you can't see what's moving the knob, or what's tapping the door. Filled with fear and bursting with anxiety you extend your trembling hand towards the door. The closer you get, the louder the noise gets. But then, just as your clammy skin touches the cool brass, the noises stop altogether and a deadly silence falls over the shadowy hallway.
  
  You once more feel an ominous tingling at your neck, as if the shadows themselves are massing behind you, waiting for an opportunity to strike, and... You don't want to finish that thought. However, you can't help feeling that whatever's behind that door, you won't like it. Alone in the dark, you try to decide if you'd better...
  
  > Or brave your fears and enter the chamber.
  Taking a deep breath, you open the door. Tendrils of dust shine palely in the light of the full moon. A cold wave flows out of the room.
  
  As your gaze wanders across the room you see old furniture: a bed, a dressing table, some chairs and a small table, all cracked and worn with age, hidden poorly beneath an ancient layer of dust. Something about the sight of these old objects in the pale moonlight chills your spine, but what's most of all noticeable is the silence. No tapping, nor rapping fills the air, and the house, who's ceaseless creaking and cracking has accompanied you for whole your life, has fallen silent, as if in a deep sleep.
  
  Suddenly the air grows denser, as if perfumed by an unseen censor and before your mind's eye the room transforms, shaking of the years of neglect as if they were just a coat, ready to be taken off. Bright sunlight fills the room, bathing it in a golden glow. A woman sits at the dressing table, coming her hair with a bone comb. She's startled when she notices you standing in the doorway and with a teasing smile she speaks to you: 'What are you doing here, you know I don't want you to see me like this, I haven't even powdered my face yet.'
  
  You sit down on the corner of the soft bed, the woman's warmth still radiating softly from within the thick sheets. Smiling back at her, you say: 'Ah Lenore, you know I'll always love you, even if you're hideous looking, like you are right now.'
  
  With played indignation Lenore jumps up from the dressing table and throws herself at you. Laughing, she pushes you further unto the bed and starts hitting you with a pillow. 'So I'm hideous, am I? Well, look at you, you know pillow feathers don't suit you.'You can't control your laughing while this lovely woman is hitting you with a soft, white pillow.
  
  Your dream is cut short by the cry of a bird, and a cold wind sweeps trough the room, driving away your memories of a warm summer's day and bringing you back into the bleak December.
  
  > Continue...
  A chilling wind passes through the room, stirring dust and snow alike and blinding you with it's icy tendrils. Then you notice a window pane has cracked, opening the room to the elements. The grey, ripped curtains around it billow and wave as if they're the sails of some ghostly ship. As you approach the window to inspect the damage, that sound, that ghastly, gut-wrenching sound that awoke you from your memories, sounds once more.
  
  Suddenly other window panes start cracking one by one as the cawing continues. A shiver runs up your spine and your ear drums feel as if they are about to burst because of this dreadful noise. You feel madness and desperation bubbling up in your brain as this noise continues to torment you for an eternity.
  
  But then, like snow before the summer sun, the sound disappears, leaving the room in an eery silence. As you slowly regain your senses, you notice you are kneeling down on the ground. You have no idea when or how you got in that position and when you stand up, you notice a sharp pain in your knee, as if you've recently fallen. However, as your heart slowly regains it's normal speed, a shadow flies past the window, too fast for you to register any tangible about its shape.
  
  The windows shatters completely and the icy winter winds storm into the room with an almost feral ferocity, screaming and shrieking as they drag the various ornaments in the room along with them. This sudden assault of snow and wind is too much for you to manage and you flee towards the door. You manage to grab hold of the doorknob, just as a snuff box hits you in the back of the head. Yet though your head is throbbing, you manage to turn the icy doorknob and escape through the door.
  
  As you close the door, that ominous sound is heard once more. However, this time it sounds as if it's mocking you, as if it knows your dark secrets, and exposes you for the coward that you are.
  
  > continue with a pounding heart...
  You are once more standing in the hallway, panting and gasping heavily. Those sights, those sounds you encountered in that dreadful room have chilled you to the bone. The cold you are feeling now, however, does not solely originate from those experiences.
  
  The hallway, that dark and dreadful abyss has visibly changed. The dance of dust and shadows continues once more as a chilling wind blows through the ancient house. Small puffs of mist erupt from the frozen carpet as you carefully step into the darkness.
  
  You suddenly step into a pool of water that is emerging in the carpet. Feeling your balance shift you grasp at the wall, trying to regain your composition. How you wish you wouldn't have. As soon as your hand touches the flaking wallpaper a shriek pierces the house, a soul-shattering female voice, sending a chilling wind through the empty corridor.
  
  Your spirit sinks into the darkest depths as you run through the hallway, both body and mind thoroughly chilled. As you reach the door of the library, a soul-piercing wail shakes the walls and floors of the sleeping house. Gathering your last ounces of bravery, you creep towards the landing. But as you reach the top of the stairs, a wail erupts once more below you, sadder and louder than before. Trembling from your head to your toes, you decide to...
  
  > Retreat to the library.
  With your heart pounding in your chest, you pull the doors of the library closed behind you. That ghastly noise, those ghostly images have taken their toll of your mind. You are scared, you don't want to admit it, but you are scared. Your knees are trembling, your heart pounds inside your chest. Icy tendrils of fear try to worm themselves even further into your mind.
  
  Well, not only in the philosophical sense. As you manage to regain your composure a bit, you look around you. The library is cold, the embers in the hearth having died down. As snowflakes lazily drift past your eyes, you direct your gaze at the shutters in front of your windows, that are supposed to keep the dark winter outside.
  
  And there, on the floor, in front of the hollow framework that was once your window. You see the shattered remains of your shutters, lying broken in a pile of wood and glass. You sigh, having at least found an explanation for the chills running up your spine. 'Ah, as even the titans of old slowly withered with age, so too this house must once fall apart. I only wish it chose a better season to do so...'
  
  And so you get up to clear away the remains of your dying house. But when you look closer at the wooden library floor, you notice something else, drifting in the snowy winter gale: a single feather, as black as the darkest night.
  
  Your heart misses a beat at that ominous sound. You feel your spine tingling, writhing beneath your skin, as if the cold, winter's air has penetrated your very being. The flutter of wings sound above you, shifting rapidly from corner to corner within the shadows of the ceiling's darkness. As you gaze around you, you feel a further shift in the library's atmosphere. The large bookcases, guardians of ancient wisdom, now loom towering over your feeble self. The purple curtains by your windows, now silken sadly, uncertainly rustling in the icy breeze, fill your soul with an illogical terror, the likes you've never felt before. Above the mantle, the portrait of your love, ever soothing your restless soul, now stares at you with icy eyes, never breaking their attention.
  
  That sound. That ominous, dreadful, mind-shattering sound that has been tormenting you, has returned. Even while covering your hands with your ears you cannot bar its dreadful echoes from your mind. Feeling the tendrils of madness tugging at the fringes of your soul, you despair. Why has this demon come to torment you? Is beast or devil flying around, lurking, luring you to the black abyss?
  
  There it is again, clawing at your mind. Within the iron cage of your mind's despair, you barely register yourself falling to the floor. As the fog of madness starts to cloud your vision, you catch the last fleeting sensations of your surroundings. The hardwood floor beneath your knees. Icy snowflakes now turning your hair white. The tome your were reading now lying broken, spineless beside you. And high above you, the portrait of Lenore.
  
  Lenore?
  
  From within the ruins of your mind, a light glimmers. That name, Lenore, wakes something within you. A longing. A deep, insationable longing, fringed with sadness and desolation. Gathering the broken remnants of your mind, you focus on that image. That ghostly, sad, and shining image of your long abandoned love. Feeling a faint shadow of strength returning to your mind, you turn to your surroundings once more. Your library, your broken sanctuary, now defiled by that dreadful shade. In the corner of your eye, you see the painting of Lenore, smiling sadly, yet looking harshly upon you in the cold, winter's light.
  
  This time your were expecting it, this time your were prepared. And when that dreadful sound assaults your senses once more, you feel...
  
  > A cold, soul-shattering despair entering your very being.
  You were prepared for it, you truly were. Or at least you thought you were. Yet you now find yourself face-down on the ground, crying bitter-cold tears. The embers in the hearth, the dancing shadows on the floor, all fade away as the cold winter's night creeps into your fallen sanctuary. As swiftly as it appeared, a shadow flew through the shattered window, leaving the ancient house for evermore behind it.
  
  Not that you really noticed it, that is. No, you have retreated back into the deepest recesses of your mind, the fog of insanity clouding your vision, creating a maze of your own emotions. You cannot find your way out, you do not know where you are. In that dark, lonely despair, your only companion is yourself, and your own thoughts. Though you could swear you heard distant, taunting laughter every once in a while. A bird, shrieking its mocking song in the distance.
  
  How long you have been here, you do not know, nor how long you'll stay. You are outside of time. Past, present, perhaps your future, all shoot past your mind's eye, yet never of your own volition. Only once, in that deep, dark pit of despair, have you seen a glimmer of hope. Once, you saw a woman in white, a fleeting glimpse of a life that could have been, that should have been. Yet you fear that, in this dark forsaken place, even she will visit never- nevermore.