Diary of an Inventor

The journey towards the Hollow Shades was long and tiring, leaving Twilight exhausted. She pulls a book out of her backpack and looks at it to try and get her bearings of where the mansion might be. She looks up and notices a trail that wasn't there before. Vines hung downwards above it. The book said something about a moving trail that led to the mansion, but as soon as one walks onto the mansion's land, it will disappear and never will return. She shuts the book and puts it back into the backpack and gets up. As she walks to the path, the air gets colder and light dims around her. She continues the path, mushrooms and thick green shrubs grew on the sides, reaching out for her. The mansion comes into view from the path, its large yard is lit by the moon's rays. Rocks were scattered all over the yard, green moss grew on each one. The path ends suddenly, and Twilight steps off of it onto the land. Just like the book said, the path disappeared when she turned around. Strange, but I must continue as there is no time for me to think about it. She thinks to herself. Nothing but foliage and trees were behind her. She looks up ahead and notices some clouds forming in the distance.

The wind gets stronger and it gets suddenly colder as Twilight begins to run past all the mossy rocks to the front door to escape the incoming storm as the wind whispered words of despair to her as she nears the entrance. She comes to a complete stop in front of the steps leading up to the looming mansion, a beautiful work of architecture. She feels rain drops on her head, signalling that the storm is about to begin. She walks up the steps to the black door which was unlocked and cracked open. Twilight walks inside and takes in her surroundings, or what she can see from the light of the moon coming from the windows and open door.

There's a staircase to the right, pictures hang from the wall going up the stairs. Most of them are scratched out and in tatters. To the left there is another stairway leading downwards where at the bottom of the steps complete blackness. Up ahead is the living room, couches and tables are overturned and broken with the fireplace in the center of the wall in pieces while a sledgehammer lays next to the rubble. To the left is the kitchen, all the cabinets are wide open and empty. The wall has a few cleavers stuck in it with some blood stains on the counter beneath them. The doorway leading to the room to the right is covered by boards with notes all over it, each one saying Stay Back. Twilight decides to check out the living room to see what is going on with the broken fireplace. She walks over to the rubble and examines it, looking for clues about the reason for this abandonment. She notices something underneath a few bricks that lay on top of the pile. She throws the rubble off of the object and picks it up. It is a book with the cover designed with gears and clocks. She opens it to the first page dated almost 30 years ago. The writing is still legible and clearly written. "It seems to be a diary of some sort, maybe the owner of this residence wrote in it?" Twilight asks herself. She gets up and reads the first page.

This new house is a strange work. The location of it is very unusual. Plus at night, I feel it has something else other than me living in it. Every night seems to get colder and darker with every passing day. The fire can't keep me warm anymore and the flames die easily, as if some force is putting them out to plunge me into the darkness. Maybe the reason for these events are just the weather or maybe I'm just being crazy. Tomorrow I might continue to work on the automaton to see if I can get it to move correctly instead of it falling over. It might need some new gears anyways.

Twilight closes the book and looks around to see if there is any more clues. She walks over to the white couch stained with more blood and looks underneath it. A ring is laying in a pool of slightly wet blood, it glistens catching her eye quickly. Twilight reaches to grab it when she hears a noise from downstairs. Her breathing slowed and her heart begins to race. She listened closely to see what the noise was. It was the sound of metal grinding against stone. It suddenly stopped and nothing was heard. Twilight stayed silent for a few minutes to make sure the noise was completely gone. When she is sure it stopped, she let out a light sigh and grabbed the ring. It was a light-gold ring that was stained with blood that seemed to be fresh, the coppery smell made her feel slightly sick. It has engraved writing on it which read 'Love doesn't die'. She cleaned and put the ring in her pocket and got up. She walked out of the living room to the kitchen to investigate the bloodstains and cleavers. She looked at the bloodstains that were below the cleavers stuck in the wall. It was dried up and some of it seemed to have gotten on the floor as well. She looked up at the cleavers that were deeply dug into the walls. She tried to pull one of them out but it seemed to have been plunged in by some sort of incredibly strong force not human.

Her mind was trying to process a lot of information that seemed to have been dumped on her, but the one she was trying to get over was the amount of blood there was. Bloodstains are all over the counter and furniture, too much for me... She thinks to herself as she walks out of the kitchen and looks at the stairs leading to the lower floor. Maybe I should find out what that noise is. It could be another person. She thinks to herself as she stands above the steps leading to the darkness that beckons her to join it. She looks around and sees a lamp on top of a small table against the wall. She takes off her backpack and pulls out some matches. Twilight strikes the match, lighting it up. She walks to the table, opens the hand-lamp, and puts it into the lamp. it ignites and the lamp begins to provide a decent amount of light for Twilight. She walks back to the stairs, breathes in and out. She begins her descent into the darkness of the mansion slowly. The storm's raging noise becomes quieter with each step she takes down, until nothing but her breathing is heard. Here we go... She thinks to herself and walks into the dark's comfort.