15.
When they approached the house, Stevie saw the front door was once more partially open. Was it inviting the two friends to enter? Angie noticed it, too.
"They even left the door open for us," Angie said. She slipped into an old fashioned southern accent. "Right neighborly of 'em!"
"Why don't we take a look in through the windows?" Stevie suggested, hoping that would satisfy Angie. His voice wavered, though he tried to hold it steady. Not wanting Angie to think that he was a complete chicken, he said, "Follow me."
"Bet that stuff growing in that fountain would make Ms. Flecher dizzy with excitement," Angie said when they walked past the disgusting marble fountain in the center of the circular driveway. Ms. Flecher was their science teacher, and neither Stevie nor Angie liked her very much.
"Can you really imagine Ms. Flecher dizzily excited about anything?" Stevie asked.
"Good point."
They walked around the house clockwise, starting from the entranceway and circling to the rear. This took some time. The mansion was even bigger than Stevie had realized, with a second wing jutting out from the back.
Angie gazed up at the bronze tower and the high dark windows that had so disturbed Stevie on his first visit. "This place is amazing. Can you imagine living in a house like this?"
Stevie shivered. "No way."
"I don't mean now, but when it was new. I bet it was the talk of the town."
"No way," Stevie repeated. "Can't you feel it? There's something wrong with this place."
"I think it's kinda cool. I bet this thing will still be here hundreds of years after our popsicle stick houses flake and fall apart."
Many of the windows, especially in the back of the structure, were high off the ground and the friends couldn't see inside. Others were broken, and shards of glass stuck out like teeth. One in the back even had a tree limb, untrimmed for decades, smash its way through the glass and grow into the second story of the house. The tree itself, a giant black and twisted thing, looked like it had since died.
Does everything that touches Harcourt Manor wither and die? Stevie wondered.
After returning to the front porch, they peered in through the windows there.
"It's been gutted," Stevie said. It was dark inside, but he could see a fireplace in an empty room. A filthy and stained Persian carpet was folded and pushed up against the wall, revealing black and white marble floors discolored by muck and grime.
"Gimme your flashlight," Angie said.
Stevie kept a small LED penlight on his keychain. He handed it over, and then turned back to the window.
"Nothing left inside," he said. "No furniture or decorations or anything."
"Maybe everything went to auction after Virginia died," Angie considered. "Or maybe people looted the place. Mr. Stark said the Harcourts were really wealthy."
Stevie couldn't help but think of the voice from the night before. RETURN THAT WHICH WAS STOLEN! He quickly pushed it from his mind and said, "Well, nothing's in there, so there's no point going inside."
A loud crash sounded to his right, and he spun around. Angie stood by the front door. It was wide open now, and she held the outside doorknob in her hand. The inside half must have pulled loose and fallen to the marble floor.
"Sorry," she said. "I guess that's why the door was open. Latch is busted."
Before Stevie could protest, Angie stepped inside.
"Angie," he hissed, moving over to the doorway and looking in at his friend. Her shadowy figure stood inside, waving the flashlight around the entrance foyer. A sweeping curved staircase led up to another level, and there were heavy wooden doors in all directions. They were all open. "You heard what Mr. Stark said. This place is dangerous. Those supports under the floors are probably full of rot."
Angie slammed her foot down a few times. Dust clouded around her shoe.
"Sounds solid enough. Come on. Let's look around." She didn't wait for Stevie to answer, and moved through the closest door on the right.
"Angie!" he called again, but she was gone. He hesitated a moment, nervously peering into the shadows in the corners of the room and the hallway at the top of the grand staircase. He didn’t want to go into this place, and yet, how could he leave Angie alone?
Stevie squared his jaw, clenched his fists, and followed her through the door and into what appeared to be a study or library. The walls were dark wood paneling covered in mold—he could smell the musty dampness in the air. Recessed into the walls were many bookshelves, but they were all empty.
Quickly they moved through the house. The floors in all of the rooms except the entrance and tiled kitchen were wood, warped and rough from years of neglect and moisture, but still sturdy enough. Their footsteps on the boards echoed through the house with loud thud, thud, thuds.
They opened cabinets and drawers, peered into dark closets and up staircases, and knocked on the walls, searching for secret passages. Angie looked in every nook and cranny, while Stevie spent most of the time looking over his shoulder, certain that something would be sneaking up behind them.
They only had the one flashlight, so they stayed close together. Stevie wouldn't have it any other way.
"Wow," Angie said, as she slowly pushed open a door on the second floor. It made a long, creaking sound as it moved on hinges that hadn't been disturbed in years. "Virginia's room."
"How do you know?" Stevie started to ask from behind her, but when he saw inside, the words died on his lips.
Wide eyed, they entered. Like the rest of the place, this room was covered in many decades' worth of dust, dirt, and grime. Through the window pushed the gnarled branches from the massive black tree they'd seen outside. Vines, long dead, crawled from the branches and slithered like unmoving snakes around the room.
Unlike the other rooms, here the furnishings remained untouched. A chest of drawers and a dressing table with a large mirror stood to either side of the doorway. Small bottles of dried-up liquid—perfume maybe—sat on a silver tray on the dressing table. On the floor, a broken hand mirror and oval ivory hair brush lay beside a small overturned chair. Many dolls wearing faded and torn clothing were scattered around the room—seated on the floor or tables. Most of their bisque heads were cracked or broken.
But the most disturbing thing was the large four poster bed up against the far wall. The canopy was shredded, its remains hanging down from the wooden frame overhead. A large, dead vine had crawled from the tree branch and twisted around the canopy. Dark stains covered the center of the mattress, and on the headboard was written the word "Murderess!" It looked like it was written in blood!
"Whoa," Angie exclaimed, stepping into the room.
"I wonder if this is where her uncle killed her!” Stevie said.
"Yeah." Angie looked around the room in wide-eyed wonder. She gestured at the dressing table and overturned chair. "I mean, was she right here brushing her hair when her uncle burst in? Did he write that on the headboard in her blood?"
Stevie didn't know. He stepped in behind Angie and looked around the room. A gentle breeze pushed through the broken window, and the long scraps of the tattered canopy that hung on the frame over the bed waved in the ghostly air.
"This reminds me of every horror movie I've ever seen," Angie said.
"Yeah," Stevie agreed. "The kind where you're yelling at the actors not to go in that creepy room because you know something horrible is in there."
"They always go anyway," Angie said, walking cautiously towards a closet on the other side of the room.
"Just before they get hacked into tiny little bite-sized pieces," Stevie added.
The door creaked shut. Both friends turned and gasped. On the back of it, a plea was written in black letters over and over again, covering the entire door. At the top it was neat, written in an old-fashioned swirly script, but as it continued on, it grew sloppier and sloppier.
Forgive me for my trespasses! Forgive me for my trespasses! Forgive me for my trespasses!
"Anj, let's get out of here," Stevie said.
"In a sec," Angie said. "It was just the wind." She continued toward the closet, flashlight in hand, though sunlight came in through the window.
Suddenly a creaking sound came from underneath Angie's foot! Her heel sunk down into it, and she quickly jumped away. A floorboard had splintered and crumbled!
"Careful!" Stevie cried. Would the rest of the floor collapse and send them plummeting to the lower level? Maybe even down to the basement?
Angie turned around and knelt down. "Hold on, this piece is different from the rest."
Stevie carefully moved over and knelt down beside of her. The wood was charred slightly. He prodded carefully at the other floorboards, but they felt sturdy enough.
Angie pulled on the piece of broken floor, and the short board—only about a foot long—easily came free. An old photograph, yellowed and frayed around the edges, rested inside the small, hidden compartment below the floor.
Stevie reached in and pulled it out.
"Careful," Angie said. "It's probably really brittle."
Stevie nodded and laid it gingerly on the floor beside the hole.
The photograph was about five inches by seven and black and white. It showed a family sitting portrait style in 1940's style clothing. The family consisted of mother, father, daughter, and a baby cradled in the mother's arms. They all looked at the camera, except for the young daughter. She stared down at the baby, and her eyes looked completely white. Stevie supposed it could have been a reflection from the flash, though it didn't appear on anyone else in the picture.
"What is that?" Angie said, pointing to a shape on the wall behind the young girl. "A stain?"
Stevie leaned closer. At first he couldn't tell exactly what it was, but as he examined it, the form became clear. It wasn't a stain. It was a shadow. The girl's shadow!
But the shadows cast by the parents were small and vague in comparison. This one was tall as the ceiling and almost stood away from the figure of the girl. It had long arms with clawed, reaching hands.
Hands that reached for the baby!