text: [Themes: horror]
  
  Your sister can't have been taken, your parents would have contacted you, there would be a search. You decided that if you go to your parents house and see your sister for yourself, that you can write this letter off as a nasty prank and put it behind you. You put the paper with the symbols you wrote down and the letter into the pocket of your robes and head outside to hail a taxicab.
  
  It's pretty late to find a taxicab but after looking for ten minutes, you hear the sound of horses trotting down the road and flag it down. You pull up at your parents' townhouse after about twenty minutes and fumble around for the money to pay for it. After scouring every pocket you manage to scrape the change together but you're left with almost nothing now.
  
  You walk up the steps to the front door, noticing that all the lights appear to be off and you start to relax; if your sister was gone, the whole house would be in a furore. You ring the doorbell and wait for it to be answered, taking a look around the street whilst you wait. Nothing seems to be out of the ordinary and in this part of town, the street lighting is maintained well so you have a good view of the street.
  
  Eventually, the door opens and your parents' butler answers the door in his dressing gown and slippers and a sleepy expression on his face.
  
  "They're asleep." he says simply to you. Jones always was a terse man and being woken up in the night most likely made him rather grumpy as well, but this was important.
  
  "I just need to check on my sister." you say as you push past Jones with a stunned look on his face but he doesn't stop you.
  
  You take the stairs two at a time. You're sure your sister is quite fine but you have a great sense of urgency to check now that you're in the house. You fling open her bedroom door without even knocking and rush over to her bed.
  
  "Amelia!" you say as you approach the bed in the darkness. Jones is coming up the stairs behind you with a candle and you swish you'd grabbed it from him in your haste. As your eyes adjust to the darkness, you start to make out the bed. There's no sister-sized lump and the covers are in disarray.
  
  "No." you say, as you pull the covers off the bed completely. "No no no." you say and you fall to the floor and check underneath the bed. "No no no no no." you say as you look desperately around the room.
  
  Jones walks in carrying the candle and that's when you see the symbols on the walls which look like they've been written in blood.
  
  Jones drops the candle and lets out an almost inhuman cry. He rushes over to the bed whilst you scoop up the candle and start checking the room, still hoping to find your sister hiding in some corner of it.
  
  Before long, the whole house has been awoken and the uproar you expected when you arrived came to pass. Your parents are in a state of panic about your sister but they don't know about the letter you've received yet. It said to come alone and you're not sure if you show them, if you'll be able to stop them from coming as well.
  
  Do you show your parents the letter?
  
  > show the letter to your parents.
  You take your parents to one side, away from the staff, and show them the letter you received earlier that night.
  
  "These are like the symbols on the walls" says your mother.
  
  "Yes," you reply, "I think they might have put them onto the walls just so that I knew the letter was genuine."
  
  "God save us." your father says. "We have to go there."
  
  "No no!" you reply sternly. "It says alone, I'm going to go alone."
  
  "Not while I'm alive!" says your mother with more passion than you've heard in her for years.
  
  Your father leaves the room and you can hear him ordering the servants to assist with them getting ready to leave the house and you know it's futile to try and stop them from coming with you.
  
  You arrive at Langdown Hall in your parent's carriage. Your fathers asks the driver to keep the horses and carriage nearby but out of sight if possible and a minute later the three of you are stood alone in front of the gate to the grounds.
  
  "I guess we go in then." you say and push open the gate. It swings open with no resistance and an eerie sounding creak and you lead the way into the grounds of Langdown Hall.
  
  Langdown Hall is an old stately home which had been without an occupant for a number of years after the family who owned it died out and the distant relative they left it to wasn't able to pay for its upkeep. The stone of the building was black with ornate windows and rounded towers at the corners. Everyone knew the building but there were varying reports of the size of it inside. Whichever rumour you chose to believe though, the house was indisputably vast and imposing.
  
  "Do we knock?" your mother asked from behind you.
  
  "I guess we can try." you say and you cautiously approach the huge main door, grasp the iron doorknocker and crash it into the door twice. The noise sounds deafening in the silence of the night but no further sound comes from inside the house.
  
  "I think it's time we tried the handle." says you father, stepping forward and in one smooth motion, opens the door.
  
  The house is pitch black inside and you realise that none of you thought to bring any candles. You tentatively step inside the house and call out "Hello?" into the black void of the entrance hall.
  
  Your dark vision adjusts to the blackness of the room as you step further inside and you can see the outline of the stairs. Your parents are following behind you and once you're almost at the foot of the stairs, the door slams shut behind you and your mother lets out a scream of shock.
  
  "Probably the wind." you say to your mother, but you know it's a still night and your hands are starting to shake now. You start to climb the stairs, holding on to the banister in the darkness. You're not sure why you want to head upstairs but your gut is telling you that's where you need to go.
  
  When you reach the intermediate small landing halfway up the stairs, you look up the remaining stairs and you think you can make out a shadow which could be a person. "Hello?" you ask into the darkness again and this time you get a reply.
  
  "I SAID TO COME ALONE!" bellows a deep voice from the first floor landing and suddenly the entire staircase, is engulfed in fire.
  
  The light hits you first, forcing you to close your eyes, and the noise feels deafening in your ears, and then you feel the heat. You open your eyes to see your robe has caught fire and your parents have too. You know you need to get out of the flames as soon as possible and you shove them hard, so that they go tumbling down the stairs, to the hallway below which is free of fire.
  
  You start running down the stairs yourself but your robe is entirely engulfed in flames now and you can't feel anything where you felt the fire burning you before which you know is a bad sign. When you're most of the way down the staircase, your legs give way beneath you and you fall the last few stairs. You glimpse your parents on the floor at the base of the stairs, still on fire, your mothers neck at an angle it shouldn't be and both of them not moving before everything goes black.