Chapters Chapter 1 | Into the dark...
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.
Chapter 2 | ...To search for a Light...
The darkness is all around Twilight, the lamp lights a small area around her. Nothing is heard except her footsteps and breathing. Earlier the steps she had walked down led to a hallway that continued for quite some while until it opened up to a large room. There was a bloody table in the center of the room and a cart that held tools on it was next to the table. A lamp was flickering above the table that lit up the table and cast a small amount of it on the walls. The stone floor had a bloody trail that led from the table to a door that was on the right side of Twilight. She examined the tools and the table where she found an old note laying underneath a scalpel. Twilight picked it up and read the note, but some of it was covered by blood, blocking some of the note's contents:
The subject had survived the surgery, but he is in extreme pain due to the loss of his ---------------- and replacement of his ----------------. Now there is a -----------------that keeps him alive. Since he lost his -----------, we won't have to worry about him dying during one of our experiments anymore. I will just have ------- take him into the holding cells until we get around to said experiments.
Twilight looked away from the bloodied note and towards the door that the bloody trail led to. She walked to the door and cautiously opened it. The hallway was lit up with lamps that hung from the walls, it had multiple doors on each side of it. As soon as she stepped into the room, the door shut behind her and a locking noise was heard. She stood in the hallway as the lights slowly went out until she was plunged into darkness. Now she walks down the silent hallway, hoping to be able to escape from the dark. Twilight stops in the middle of the hallway, listening for something. She turns around and sees at the beginning of the hallway that one of the doors on the side of the hallway had opened.
"Someone there?" A male's voice came from the door that had opened.
Twilight froze, her heart instantly stopped. She stood in the silence waiting for something else to happen. Moments became minutes, time passed by slowly as she waited in the darkness. Twilight finally gathered up the courage to answer the voice's question.
"He-Hello? I'm Twi-Twilight Sparkle, who are you?" Twilight responded, her heart beating.
"I... don't know..." The voice said. Metal scraping across stone was suddenly heard from behind the door. A grotesque creation walked into view, it was half-human and half-metal. Its right leg was replaced with a thick metal cone. Its arms had been replaced with large rectangular blades. His head had been mixed with metal, his left eye bear lenses that moved back and forth constantly. "You're not one of us... We must help you.... shed that old frail body...... and become one of us..." It walked slowly towards her, its cone foot dragging along the stone floor.
"No..." Twilight managed to mutter, her heart beating faster.
"Come.... we shall help you." It began to walk faster.
Twilight's lamp suddenly went out, leaving her in the darkness. She heard the incoming danger and began to run away towards the end of the hallway. The door on the other end of the hallway opened, light pouring out of it. Twilight is in a full sprint trying to make it to the door. She can hear the creature right behind her, its foot dragging across the floor. She enters the room and turns around, slamming the door as the creature nearly makes it into the room. She lays against the door breathing hard, she closed her eyes to try and think about what she had seen. What was that thing? Twilight thought to herself. She got up and looked around the room to soak in her surroundings. In the center of the room was another table, but this time it was clean with no traces of blood on it. There was a large hammer on a cart nearby that was stained with blood. On the walls hung pieces of metal and gears lay strewn across the floor. What is this place? Twilight thought to herself. She went over to one of the tables that was against the wall and found a notebook on it. She set the lamp to the side and opened the book.
We have created another failed creation. His model number is CL34V3R or just Cleaver for short. He was meant to be a butcher to replace some labor but instead we created a psychopathic creature. We were forced to lock him up deeper in the mansion to keep him from escaping. Cleaver's brother, Eric, came by yesterday to ask if we had seen him. We told him we haven't and invited him inside. Benjamin had kept him distracted while I came up from behind with a club. The same procedures were used on him and the same experiments were done to him as usual, now he is just our "collector" for other humans. Too bad he brings them back to us dead and with a missing body part, but we can pull them back into the world of the living easily.
The entry in the notebook was dated over a few years ago, but it seems to have not been affected by time at all. Twilight was about to read another entry when she heard the door creaking. She closed the book, grabbed her lamp, and got underneath the table. The same grotesque monstrosity walked into the room, stopped, and looked around, its lenses still moving back and forth. It walked around the room while dragging its foot around. It stopped a few feet from where Twilight was laying, she clearly saw stitches on its left leg and the large bolts that kept the cone on its right leg. She saw the blades that were stained with blood from where she was laying, in fact, she thought she smelled fresh blood on it. Had it killed someone else earlier? There are so many questions but no answers to any of them... Twilight thought to herself, her heart beating so much she thought it might hear it. The creature began moving again, this time away from Twilight and towards the door from where it came from. As it went back into the darkness, Twilight looked for an escape.
She saw a vent that was open above some bookshelves in the corner of the room. Maybe I can reach it quickly enough without that... thing... noticing me. Twilight got out from underneath the table and quietly crawled towards the vent. When she was near the bookshelves, she got up and began to climb them when she knocked out a book. It fell and hit the floor, loudly. Within seconds the creature was running full speed towards her with its right blade held above its head. Twilight screamed and climbed on top of the shelves and into the vent before she heard the blade strike, missing her completely. It had broken the shelf in half with the creature staring straight at her. "Come back to me... I only want to help you..." It said, trying to lure her down.
"No.. I am going to get out of here... Alive!" Twilight responded, crawling away from the creature.
She heard it let out blood-curdling a scream as she left it. The vent went on for quite a while until she came to a fork where she decided to take the left direction, thinking it might lead her towards the exit. It began to slope upwards and took a sharp right when it straightened out. This must be apart of an underground complex of some sort. Twilight was thinking to herself about the possibilities of the idea when she noticed another bright light. She began to crawl a bit faster towards the light, hoping that it would lead her to safety, or better yet, answers to this insanity.
Chapter 3 | ...That brings Hope...
Twilight reaches the light, revealing what it was. From what she saw behind the grate was a clean bedroom with a large chandelier hanging in the center. No one was in it and time seemed to only affected the pictures that hung above a desk that was against the the north wall. The grate she was located in was above a simple bed. It was like out of a dream for Twilight because she saw no blood or any violence in this room. She pushed the grate as it hung from a single rivet on the corner. Twilight crawled out and landed on the bed without a noise. She pulled off her backpack and pulled out the diary she had found to see if she can find out more about this place:
My brother Benjamin had told me of an underground complex that this mansion held. At first I was skeptical about the very idea until he uncovered a hidden stairway directly across the stairs. It went on for quite a while until it opened up to a simple room. There was another door to the right which held a hallway filled with other doors, maybe it was some sort of holding cells for sick people? At the other end was yet again another empty room. It was the perfect place to conduct experiments on sicknesses and diseases without disturbance, but then again, we are in the middle of no where. We also expanded the first hallway, adding another door that lead to a storage area. There is also a staircase that leads to some lower levels in the first room, but we will explore that later. There are also vents that lead to different areas in the house, one is in my room right above my bed. This discovery of the underground complex brings a new hope for science and probably can help us cure some illness! I cannot contain my excitement for the future!!
Twilight closed the diary and put it back into her backpack. She looked up at the grate and saw she had left the lamp in it just sitting on the end. She stood up on the bed to try and reach it, but only managed to push it back farther into the vent. She let out a sigh and sat down to think about the mansions history. Maybe the notebook has answers about the owner's experiments in the complex. Twilight reached into the bag and pulled out the notebook. Within a better lighting, she saw it was stained with blood and had writing on the cover. It read Notes #3 . Twilight opened it to the second entry to see what it held, but it was missing from the book itself. Twilight sighed and read the third entry:
From the experiments with hearts we came to the conclusion that if we replace the normal heart with a mechanical one, they will have a lower chance of dying during the procedures. We also found that creating a cast of metal or even completely replacing the limb will make the subjects more durable to pain and infections. We still have not found the reason for this, but we will continue to search for the answer. Maybe it has something to do with the loss of their very body and humanity, sacrificed to the metal and gears of science... maybe the metal is also alive and it is growing inside of the subjects body? This is what we are doing... For science!
She turned the page and saw no words, but diagrams of the procedures. Each one had to have something removed from the body such as the arm or even all the limbs. The diagrams also showed the surgery procedure which involved the opening of the subject's chest. The organs were to be completely replaced with mechanical versions and some were even removed permanently. The next diagram showed the brain and the frontal lobe being removed carefully. Next to it was a note saying Remove to keep them from being an individual. . Twilight shut the book and threw back into her bag. She put her head in her hands thinking about what happened to those poor people. They take their personality and individuality away from them and force them to do horrible things to others...
Minutes passed as Twilight sat on the bed with her head in her hands. 4 years of searching and investigating things like this yet she cannot get used to the sight and smell of blood. It makes her feel uneasy and sick to her stomach whenever it is mentioned. Even so, she pledged her young life to investigating disappearances, the paranormal, and strange occurrences. Sometimes I wish I still kept the library instead of leaving it. I miss my friends already and I might never see them again... Twilight put her head up and clenched her fists. No... I need to keep doing this, too many people fear the unknown and I must bring them the knowledge of the truth, even if it hurts. This will be my last case and after it I will return to my friends! She jumps up, grabs her backpack and leaves the room through the door to the left. It led to another hallway that had an elegant carpet going down the length of it. Twilight looked both ways and took the left direction. It led her to the mansion's main room where she had entered it from. I'm back here? She thought to herself, relieved that she didn't need to continue running from the creature.
Walking down the stairs, she noticed something different about the room. The boarded up section was gone, no traces of it anywhere. Twilight got to the bottom and peeked around the corner into the room. It was a simple room that held artistic supplies such as empty canvases, painting pallets, and a stretcher that the canvas would be put on. She walked towards one of the stretchers that sat in the corner of the room. It held a painting covered by a cloth, it smelled like it was just painted a moment ago. Strange... Very strange indeed. Twilight thought to herself. She had heard nothing while she sat in the bedroom and no one was around the house at all. She grabbed the cloth covering the painting. breathed in and out, then pulled it off. What she saw startled her and caused her heart to race. It was a painting of her sitting in an empty room, her head in her hands and her hair messed up. Blood was depicted all around her, but not touching her at all. Twilight put her hand to her mouth and cried, the painting was still drawing itself. In fresh blood, the painting wrote Hope is lost behind the painted wall Twilight sat in front of. The coppery smell was making Twilight sick, her vision was becoming darker. She fell to the floor, her breathing became slow. The moon's light shined through the windows, casting a spotlight on the unconscious body of Twilight.
Chapter 4 | ...But even as it fades...
Twilight's dream pulled her into the middle of someone's home, a home that looked frightening similar to the mansion. The man was sitting in the living room writing in a book, when another person walks into the room.
"Hello there Benjamin, how are you this fine morning?" Said the man walking in.
"Still tired, last night was long and one of the subjects died in his cell. I had to have Cleaver dispose of him." Replied Benjamin.
"Quite a shame... Yes, quite a shame indeed."
She couldn't believe it, she was inside of the original house and she saw the owner, Benjamin, who was one of the scientists, but who was the other man? The man went and sat across from Benjamin who was still writing in the notebook. When Twilight looked closer, she saw that the notebook was labeled Notes #1 . The man got up and walked into the kitchen and suddenly screamed. A metallic sounding moan came from the room and a thudding noise was heard. Benjamin remained calm and just lifted his head up from the book. "Cleaver, take the new subject down into the basement, I will see to him later." A strange creature emerged from the kitchen while dragging the man's corpse. The creature had a large cleaver about the size of a baseball bat and it was completely encased in brass, the metal also stained with blood. It looked at Twilight and groaned a metallic noise while running towards her with its arm raised, poised to cleave her in half.
Twilight woke up suddenly, the room was dark. She was breathing hard and trying to make something out of what she had seen. That thing saw me, even though I wasn't even there. . Sitting up, she tried to gather her thoughts. Her goal was to disprove what the book had said about the mansion and not to be stuck in a literal nightmare, but it happened anyways. Twilight felt like she was being watched by someone, but no one is around at all. The people here had experimented with something and ended up creating those things. She had thought that she gathered enough information from those obvious clues but there might be more to dig from upstairs and maybe try to look closer inside the main rooms. Twilight got up and walked out of the room and looked upstairs. There might be answers up there, or just more questions, but either way I must not leave a spot unexplored. She nodded to herself and walked up the steps, each one creaking as she stepped. Once at the top, she took a left and walked on. Most of the doors were locked, but in the middle of the hallway, one of the doors was creaked open and light was pouring out of it. Twilight walked through the door and saw that the room was a small library, only holding about six bookshelves and one table near the corner. The bookshelves were all against one wall that was opposite the table. She automatically walked towards one of the shelves and pulled a book down. The title read Anatomy of The Human Body and had a diagram of a body. She put it back and pulled out another book, this time it had a piece of paper sticking from the top.
The paper had revealed to be the missing page from a notebook, most likely Notes #3 and had information about the subjects themselves. It told about how being no longer able to be a individual makes them easily manipulated to do horrible things to their own human brethren. The subjects weren't allowed to speak so their tongues would be cut off and the subjects would be held captive in the holding cells. But why was the one creature who attacked me able to speak? Twilight thought to herself as she folded the note and put it in her backpack's side pocket. She walked out of the room and went back to the main area. She went into the living room and looked around to see if she had missed something. Twilight noticed a picture that was face down. She walked over and picked it up to reveal a woman sitting down in a chair. Her face was beautiful and her eyes were light blue, her silvery hair flowed downwards. She looks like she may have been the wife of the last owner. Twilight put the picture back down and returned to searching the home.
Even though she had read and trained herself to be a good detective, it seemed to have not mattered here because of how confusing the disappearances appeared to be. The wife is no where to be found and Benjamin also can't be located. The subjects are all gone and only one remains, or so it seems. So much seems to have happened but Twilight has had no luck in completely solving this one. Okay, I will need to search each room carefully in order to not miss a clue. Besides, I do not want to go back down there any time soon. Twilight thought to herself as she continued searching the living room. She double-checked the bricks laying on the floor, looked inside of pots, and even underneath picture frames. She sat down and continued to think about where clues may be hidden. As she sat, she saw that one of the floorboards was loose. Twilight got up and immediately tried to pull the boards off with her own hands, but it didn't move much. It seemed to have been hastily nailed back into the floor to obviously hide something. She grabbed the sledgehammer that was laying next to the pile of bricks and smashed the board in half. What was hidden underneath it was another strange item, a knife that was completely silver and sharp. The handle was apart of the blade itself and the blade had two blue diamonds embedded in it. Strange, seems to be a ritual knife of some sort. It might come in use later... She got up and held onto the blade, just looking at it. So beautiful, who would leave something like this underneath the floorboard? She gripped the handle tightly and looked around the room. Her mind seemed to have been playing games with her because Twilight saw something move out of her view and into the kitchen.
She rushed into the kitchen to find that it has been cleaned partially, the blood was gone and the cleavers were also gone. Twilight walked around to try and find some sort of reason for the kitchen's cleanliness. What had cleaned the room was the part that frightened Twilight. She walked to one of the cabinets and opened it to see that it was completely filled with cans of food. She heard something behind her, something metallic . She quickly turned around and saw another creature behind her who flung cleavers at her. She was froze with fear, unable to move from the sight of the monster. It flung a cleaver that was heading straight for her head, Twilight screamed as it made contact.
Twilight's eyes opened quickly, she was standing in the doorway to the kitchen, it was still in the same mess she first saw it in.She seemed to have had a strange hallucination that was maybe caused by the events she went through. My mind is slowly being corrupted by the scenes here. Twilight needed to solve this case quickly or it might just bring her down into insanity. She quickly, and as efficient as possible, she searched the kitchen. Nothing was to be found except the cleavers and unknown blood on the counter. She walked out and decided to search the outside for clues. The moon was still out and it still shone brightly through the windows. Twilight went to the door and grabbed the handle, but it was shut tight, almost as if it was boarded up. Well there goes that option, I wonder where else there is to explore other than that basement. Twilight walked back into the painting room but immediately walked out. She had felt a strange cold as soon as she walked into the room and a sense of being watched. I guess the only option is to see what is down there. Hopefully I do not run into that thing again down there, or anything at all.
Twilight is standing in the surgery room, right before the holding cells. She looks around at all the tools and jars filled with blood. Walking around the room in search of clues , she found a small switch hiding behind a jar of a green fluid. Twilight flicked the switch and heard a noise coming from the back of the room. She turned and saw that it had opened up a spiral staircase going straight down. It was dark and had plenty of space for two people to walk side by side on it. Twilight went back to one of the tables and picked up a strange lamp, it was fueled by oil and cast a cone of light in front of her. She went back to the spiral staircase and walked down them, her steps into the abyss growing quieter, her mind slowly fading from the presence of the haunting dark.
