A Night in Wolfe Manor
Wolfe Manor stood high on top of a hill in the village of Ballymahon. It had stood there for as long as anyone could remember, but no one now living in the village could remember anyone ever having occupied it. It had always been a dark, gloomy and imposing building. When the sun shone down on Ballymahon, it somehow always seemed to bypass the manor. It was as if even the mighty sun was too scared to disturb the creepy peace and quiet of the mansion and its sprawling, untended grounds.
Unusually for an abandoned building, no windows had ever been smashed by vandals at Wolfe Manor. No doors had ever been broken down, left gaping open like an untreated wound., the building then left to be the victim of the elements and the paranormally curious. Nothing, it seemed, had ever been touched, nothing moved out of place, no human hand ever gracing the fine furnishings and priceless art collection that was said to be inside the walls of Wolfe Manor. Not since the last unknown dwellers had suddenly left, so long ago.
Of course over the years, there had been many attempted expeditions to the manor. Drunken groups of the brave and the foolish all marching up the hill, the alcohol running through their veins giving them that false sense of security. That much needed coat of armour that was needed to venture anywhere near the mansion. The growing excitement of the moment always came to a cold stop when the groups reached the gates of Wolfe Manor.
All of a sudden a fear would trickle down the spines of each person; man, woman, boy or girl and they would literally run down the hill, sometimes falling over each other in their panic to get away from the frightening presence of the building and the undoubted presence of something else they could never quite put their finger on. Just a feeling that something wasn't right at the manor, a knowledge that they had not been alone, that somehow they had been watched.
Out of the hundreds of people that had nervously trudged their way up the dark and unpaved hill to the manor, and then fled back down in an ungodly hurry, not one would attempt it again. For them, whatever strange and eerie experience they'd had that night would stay with them forever, they would never escape it, it was now part of them.
Growing up in the village of Ballymahon, I'd had numerous opportunities to visit Wolfe Manor. Every Halloween a bunch of my classmates would begin to nudge each other in the playground, winking and smiling at each other in a knowing way. Tonight. The whisper would go round. Wolfe Manor will be ours. This was said so often that by the end of the school day there was a giddy excitement and more often than not a nausea in the stomach of every child in Ballymahon's National School.
As soon as dark fell on the thirty first of October every year, a little crowd of children, some as young as six would begin the long trek up the tree-lined road to Wolfe Manor. They would shake with every new step they made, some would cry, an unfortunate few would throw up. Each would wish that they had stayed at home. They'd picture themselves safe in their houses, drinking hot chocolate, and getting ready to go trick or treating.
As the harsh reality of the situation surrounding them began to sink in, each child would look at their comrades, then turn and run, until inevitably there would be only one soldier left; a headstrong, confident little man or woman, determined not to give in to the overwhelming panic invading their little body, wanting with all their heart to see this through, to be the first person brave enough to walk all the way to Wolfe Manor. But as the road got darker, and the only sounds to be heard where the tooting of owls and the trees swaying in the breeze, all courage would abandon them and they would scarper, vowing to return next year, when they were a little older.
I was never a part of any group that made the yearly attempted pilgrimage to the vast, empty mansion. I always managed to come up with some convincing excuse as to why I couldn't go, but the truth was simple. I was far too terrified. I suffered from nightmares as a child, the result of watching scary movies behind the couch, when I should have been in bed, and an overactive imagination. I hated Halloween. It was the time of year when the dimensions between our world and the next became blurred, anything could happen, and that notion scared the wits out of me for many years, until I finally convinced myself ghosts did not exist.
It was on my twenty sixth birthday that I decided to put my new found belief of no spirits, goblins or ghosts existing to the test, and took up my brother's challenge of spending the night in Wolfe Manor. He promised me that if I did it, he would let me borrow his car whenever I needed it, which, I assured him would be every day. Get ready to say goodbye, to that machine, I told him.
I was completely confident that I would have no problem whatsoever in performing the task he had assigned me. However I was not crazy enough to think that I would be able to sleep in a place that was devoid of another living soul by myself, and so I asked my best friend Amanda to join me. She was reluctant at first, but when I told her there was a bottle of wine in it for her, if we successfully stayed the whole night, she jumped right on board.
On Halloween night, at nine p.m. Amanda and I set out for Wolfe Manor. Each of us had a backpack filled with essentials; such as torches, mobile phones and chocolate. We were prepared for a feeling of creepiness, after all the building was hundreds of years old, and even though I now had no belief in the paranormal, the creaking of wood and the cold draughts that were bound to be a part of our experience would most likely put us on edge. We pledged not too scream over anything insignificant and just have a laugh, we were only doing it for wine and the use of a car, neither of us was there to ghost hunt.
We chatted and laughed our way up the narrow, dark road that led to the mansion. Consciously avoiding the subject of the building that was ahead of us, the building that we still could not see, but that we somehow knew we were approaching rapidly. Though we were the ones that were walking towards it, there was an odd sensation that the manor was coming to us. As if, had we changed our minds at that stage, we still would have ended up at the manor, like it had caught us and wouldn't let us go. There was a sense of being drawn in , and as we neared closer and closer, Amanda and I fell into silence.
I used my torch to light the way, a steady beam of orange light guiding us through the fallen leaves, highlighting the occasional mouse that brought a little shriek from both of us. When we finally reached the gates of Wolfe manor, we were both shocked to find the temperature drop severely, so sudden a plummet into coldness that we each had to draw in breath, we felt as if the oxygen had been ripped from our bodies.
The gates to Wolfe Manor were shut tight and were covered in layers of rust. The years hadn't been kind to this flimsy protection of the manor, the padlock that had safeguarded the manor from intrusion for so many years, was now hanging uselessly to one side, and as I pushed at the gates they opened easily. The way was now clear for Amanda and I to continue our journey, but for at least two minutes neither of us made a move. In the dim light from the torch we looked at each other, both a little alarmed at the worry and fear etched into the others face. The night had not even begun and we were already as nervous as schoolchildren.
Amanda grabbed my hand as we finally began to edge further towards the mansion. We could make it out now, though it was just a big black shape, none of the gothic features had begun to appear yet, but we felt them, we knew that in a matter of moments we would be at the manor. We would be standing in front the one building that could instil a nightmare into many a local child and even quite a few adults just by the sight of it, and that was in the day time. Now for reasons I was fast forgetting, Amanda found ourselves at Wolfe Manor, in the pitch darkness, on Halloween Night, the night of the spirits. The time I got a tattoo of Homer Simpson on my arm was increasingly seeming like a very smart idea compared to this.
The torches that we had brought with us where proving to be inefficient. A little river of light was all that we could get out of them, and it wasn't enough to stop us from tripping over the many fallen trees and rocks that were scattered about the grounds of the manor. Amanda clung on tight to me, I could feel her shaking, I never thought she would be so scared, but then I never though I could be so scared. A walk in the dark would never have seemed like a heart stopping even to me, but tonight was proving that it could be.
Through feeble light the huge building began to materialise and it was a thousand times more terrifying in the night time then it was during the day. My whole body was attacked by shivers of fear, so strong that I thought I was about to go into convulsions. Amanda was just as bad. The view that was now in front of us was one that could inspire a hundred hammer horror movies; a very old, monstrously huge building, the windows with their black shutters, the giant solid wood doors, splinters and cracks showing from the years of Irish rain falling down on them. I prayed that I would not wet myself, an idea that I would have laughed at a half hour ago.
With every step we made around Wolfe Manor, Amanda's grip on my hand grew tighter and tighter and her shaking became more and more violent. I tried to soothe her by whispering that everything would be ok but I didn't believe my own reassurances. I was struggling to hold on to the belief that there was no such thing as ghosts but I wanted to keep going with this, I wanted to prove to myself and everyone else that there was nothing sinister at Wolfe Manor, that it was just a building, just a place.
The doors of Wolfe Manor had been long shut, and in the unknown years that the mansion had been empty it didn't look like they had ever been opened. There was green mould growing all over the wood, and weeds had covered the bottom of the doors making it impossible to open them without a giant struggle and some kind of cutting tool to clear the weeds. None of the massive windows were open at all, none even smashed to the extent that we would be able to slide through and get access to the building that way. It seemed that our little sojourn had come to a premature end.
Let's go, Amanda, there's no way in, I whispered. Amanda nodded in agreement but never took her eyes from the mansion. She seemed to be transfixed by it, her shaking had stopped and she was now in a state of calm. I looked at her, confused by this transformation. Not five minutes ago Amanda had been a quivering wreck, now it was as if she had taken some kind of sedative.
Amanda? I was still whispering, though there was no reason too, there was no one else around, I could have screamed a the top of my voice if I'd wanted to but the atmosphere surrounding Wolfe Manor demanded quiet. Amanda made no response when I called her name, so I tugged at her hand.
She didn't even turn her head, didn't even blink, just kept staring up at the manor, a dreamy look beginning to show on her face. No matter how many times I called her, or how hard I dragged on her arm, she wouldn't move. I began to get worried, and very scared, hoping that this was some sick joke that she was playing on me.
In desperation, I raised my arm and slapped Amanda across the face. She looked at me with pure anger and shouted, What the hell did you do that for? I breathed a long sigh of relief and laughed. You scared the life out of me! Amanda shrugged and let go of my hand. It's a beautiful building, I think we should explore it.
I looked at her as if she was mad, I'd felt like we'd had a lucky break when we discovered that we wouldn't be able to go inside the building. We could return to the village with out heads held high, we hadn't run away in fear, it wasn't our fault there was no access to the manor. Now Amanda wanted to override the good fortune we had and keep going with this eerie task.
She walked away from me, quickly, as if trying to lose me. I held my torch and shined it on her retreating back. Without warning she made a turn and disappeared, leaving me alone in the dark, and panicking. I tried to run after her, but slipped on some wet, decaying leaves and fell, my torch falling out of my hand as I dropped, my backpack thankfully breaking my fall.
I lay there in the total blackness for a few seconds, before the survival instinct kicked in and I forced myself to sit up, feeling the wetness from the grass soak into my trousers. I lloked for my torch and was relieved to see it only inches from me, the light still weakly shining, but facing away from me, and pointing directly at one of the imposing doors of Wolfe Manor. Unlike earlier though, when the mould and the weeds had changed the colour of the mahogany door to a dark green, it was now completely black. It took awhile for me to realise that the door was not black, it was instead wide open.
My first thought was that Amanda had found something big and heavy to force the door open with when she'd left me, but then I realised that for that to have happened, Amanda would have had to walk past me, and I hadn't seen or heard her since she'd disappeared. I was still praying that she would come back soon, I really didn't want to go into the manor by myself, I didn't want to go in at all, but it would be a lot easier if I had Amanda with me. I reasoned with myself that I could just go home, pretend to everyone that there had been no way in to Wolfe Manor, but there was still that raging curiosity inside me; I had to go into the mansion, just to find out once and for all, that there was nothing there, nothing but a lot of spiders and maybe some mice.
I retrieved my torch from the ground and pointed it directly at the open door. The doorway itself was large and reminded me of a tunnel, there was no light at the end of this tunnel though, nothing but blackness and I was more than a little nervous about climbing the stone steps leading up to it, and entering into Wolfe Manor for the first time. I knew I had to do it though, and after a few deep breaths I started to begin the short journey up to the door, keeping the light of the torch in front of me the whole time, and using all of my willpower to not look back.
When I reached the top of the steps, I felt an odd sensation of my feet becoming instantly wet and looked down, taking the glowing light from the torch with me. The little landing before the door was covered in old leaves, and though it hadn't rained in awhile, they were all soaked through, clinging to the moisture, feeding from it. I kept walking, unwilling to stay and find out why it seemed as if the leaves were moving, why as I stood there, did it feel like the leaves had been trying to wrap themselves around my ankles.
The blackness confronting me was deeply unsettling. Shining my torch into the vast emptiness I could see nothing. The darkness was so thick that the light from the torch didn't seem to be able to cut through it. The urge to turn and run was becoming greater as I desperately looked for something familiar in the darkness, a picture, a toy, a chair. Anything that would tell me that human life had once existed here.
I began to edge my way into the hallway of the manor, my heart beating very fast, the mantra; there's no such thing as ghosts running over and over in my head. Just as I stepped into the darkness and was about to surrender myself to whatever may happen inside Wolfe Manor an icy hand landed on my shoulder and I screamed, the sound echoing through the cavernous building surrounding me.
Hey! Amanda said. There's some really creepy places round the back. My heart felt like it was about to explode as I turned around to face her, a look of pure innocence on her face, she seemingly had no idea that she had just nearly killed me with fright. I looked at her in disbelief, not being able to find the words to tell her just how much she had scared me, until finally she scoffed at me and said; Don't be such a baby. She then marched straight past me, confidently entering the cold blackness of the mansion's hallway as if it was nothing more than a Disneyland ride.
I instinctively followed her, my legs shaking and heart bounding, not even thinking to ask her where she had gone, and why she'd had that strange look on her face as she'd gazed at the old building. I was weak to the core with unease but so relieved to have her back that even if she had told me she'd discovered a cemetery around the back of the manor, I would have taken it on the chin. Nothing was as bad when you had someone with you.
With the beams from two torches now slicing their way through the darkness we where able to pick things out from the shadows. There where family portraits hung all over the walls, gigantic chandeliers were suspended fro huge ceilings, their once shiny glass now completely covered in cobwebs. Magnificent cabinets, chairs and occasional tables lined our path deeper into the mansion. None of them where tattered or in disrepair in anyway, just darkened by deep layers of dust.
There seemed to be no ending to this first hall. It was wide and tall, crammed full of the luxuries of yesteryear. Walking through it, neither Amanda or I felt any kind of bad atmosphere, despite the darkness and the overwhelming silence, the happy faces of the painted gentry that adorned the walls seemed welcoming, almost as if they were glad that someone was finally visiting them.
That all changed as soon as we got to the end of the hall and found ourselves in a grand, open space, that we assumed was probably the ballroom. Just like we had noticed at the gates of Wolfe Manor, there was a definite change of temperature in this room, as soon as we entered it we immediately cuddled closer together, the icy cold seeping through our clothes and covering our skin in goose bumps.
The light from the torches showed us that no smiling faces hung on the walls of this room. The whole place was bare, apart from the odd chair and broken table laying here and there. This room had been abandoned and neglected for a long time. Cobwebs and dust where everywhere. Each time we took a breath we tasted dust. It was so thick that it felt like a fog enveloping us. I wanted to leave, I had a very bad feeling, a feeling of not being wanted, in this room, and with that suffocating knowledge, my thin hopes of nothing sinister or frightening being present in Wolfe Manor evaporated. I was now truly and deeply scared and all I wanted to do was go home. Amanda had other ideas.
Her new found confidence led her straight to the middle of the ballroom, a large, beautifully tiled area of the floor was in the middle of wearing carpet, and strangely this one area of the room was spotless. The many patterns and decorations of the tiles where pristine, a sharp contrast to the dirt of the surrounding carpets. It was here that Amanda chose to set up camp. She emptied her backpack of all its contents right in the centre of what must have been the dance floor, years ago, and looked impatiently at me. Get over here, you wuss, she said with a snort.
I couldn't understand how she was being so brave. When we were younger, Amanda had been almost as much of a scaredy-cat as me. We had been known as the scream twins in school, because any mention of anything even a little bit spooky would set us off. But now Amanda was sitting in the middle of a centuries old ballroom, one that had an unmistakable bad energy in it, calmly eating some chocolate and flicking through a magazine.
I joined her after a few seconds, it was better off being near someone who seemed to be in control of her emotions, then standing by myself, the darkness closing in around me, and shaking like a leaf. I sat beside her, and tried to copy her. I took a piece of chocolate, ate it without tasting it and tried to read the latest Hollywood gossip. I had just about managed to fool myself into thinking that everything was normal in this great big building when we heard scratching noises from overhead. I immediately jumped up and shone my torch towards the ceiling, frantically looking for a spider or even a bat to blame for the sounds but the ceiling was bare. Amanda pulled me back down beside her and told me to relax. It's just mice, she said.
I sat down again, praying that Amanda was right, but I couldn't go back to pretending to read a magazine, instead I sat staring up at the ceiling, waiting for the scratching to resume. A few seconds later, it did. Only this time, it was more persistent. It seemed louder and more aggressive. They are some bloody mice! I exclaimed in a breathless whisper. Again I stood up, scanning the ceiling with the light from my torch, searching for any sign of a natural being causing the noise, but finding nothing. Amanda giggled at me. Will you just reJesus!
The remainder of Amanda's words were lost as an enormous crashing noise came from the second floor of the building, directly over our heads. It sounded like a wardrobe had fallen down, and hit the floor above with an almighty thud. It's just the wind, it pushed something over, that's all. Amanda whispered in a shaky voice. Shining my torch briefly on her, I could see that she had gone white as a sheet. There's no way the wind can get in here Amanda, all the doors and windows are shut tight, remember?
She looked at me, all hope fading fast from her eyes, then said with a wary smile, The front door is open, you idiot, we got in that way! I couldn't argue with her there, and though it hadn't been windy as we'd made our way up here, earlier, there was no reason why it couldn't be blowing a gale outside now. I forced myself to relax, and sat down again. Do you think we should go and see what it was? I ventured. Amanda shook her head vigorously. No, it mightn't be safe, the floors could be rotted.
Another crash from overhead, and both Amanda and I jumped to our feet, grabbing each other's hands and holding on tight. We didn't bother to shine light upwards this time, instead we trailed the torches around the room, looking for some prankster to jump out from some dark area and tell us what fools we where. There was nothing but emptiness.
We couldn't even try to fool ourselves into thinking that the wind had knocked down another wardrobe, especially not as the thud was in the exact same place as the last one had been. Whatever was going on upstairs was being purposely done, we just didn't know by who. Amanda and I stood in the centre of the ballroom for several moments after the second crash, not sure what to do. Apart of me desperately wanted to know what had fallen up there, but a bigger part of me just wanted to get away from Wolfe Manor, as quickly as possible. We held on to each other, both of us feeling the violent trembling from the other. Deep breaths did nothing to stop our racing heartbeats. Another crash, this time from another area of the room upstairs, then the scratching started up again. Either there was an army of super-mice up there, or something was trying to tell us our presence had been noted.
When heavy footsteps began to pound around in circles from the room above us, we silently agreed to get the hell out, and turned to run. The footsteps got louder and more intense as we scrambled for our backpacks and then just to give us another scare, they suddenly stopped moving in circles and sounded like they were moving in one direction. A glutton for punishment, I directed the beam from the torch at the ceiling and followed the steps across the room. My worst fears where confirmed as the light and the steps reached the end of the ceiling, and a big, wide open door revealed a flight of stairs.
We've got to go now, Amanda. Right now. I couldn't disguise the panic in my voice as I grabbed at Amanda' s clothes, desperately trying to convey the importance of getting out of the building as soon as possible. But Amanda had also followed the steps across the ceiling and noticed the stairs and was now frozen to the spot. Her hands were clamped around the torch as if it was her last source of life, her eyes were glued to the open doorway. When I tried to pull her, she wouldn't budge. Her body was rigid, her mouth hung open in a silent scream. I had no idea how I would get her out of this room but I knew I had to.
I was near tears as I tried to move Amanda; I pulled at her, slapped her across the face, shone a light in her eyes, nothing would awaken her from whatever state of shock she had entered, and all the while the footsteps were drawing nearer. They moved slowly down the stairs, heavy and loud, but achingly slow, almost as if the unseen walker was teasing us. Letting us know it knew we were there and it knew we were stuck, but it was taking its time all the same.
After the fifteenth slap to Amanda's face, she finally blinked, and I could feel the stiffness leave her body. She looked at me, her eyes full of fear, but I could tell she was back, and just as eager to leave Wolfe Manor as I was. Let's go. she said, and we both turned for the door, hand in hand, when the light form our torches went out.
Oh God, oh God, oh God! I had never known fear like I experienced at that moment. It was like time had stopped, and I think I actually stopped breathing for several seconds, as the darkness of the ballroom wrapped itself around me, and I felt Amanda's hand slip from mine. The torch was still in my hand, and as soon as I got my breath back I pushed at the on/off switch and banged the contraption with all my might, but it would not work. I was alone in the pitch blackness of Wolfe Manor. For all I knew Amanda was still beside me , and in her fright had just let go of my hand, but I couldn't hear her rapid breathing, or smell her perfume and I just knew that she was no longer in the ballroom. I hoped that she had found a way out, that somehow, through the darkness she had been able to set herself free.
I stood there in the middle of the room, until the sensible part of my brain kicked in, and all my survival instincts told me to move my body. It didn't matter that I couldn't see where I was going, I just had to move, I had to get out of this room. I began to walk, reaching out my hand as I went, trying to feel something to cling on to , some furnishing to help me guide myself out. There was no point in running anymore, I would only bump into something and if I fell and knocked myself out, who knew when I would escape from the mansion.
After the light from my torch had been extinguished, the menacing footsteps that had stomped down the stairs had stopped. In an odd way this was more frightening. The absolute silence felt like a cheap game, I knew the footsteps would start again, I just didn't know when.
My eyes wouldn't adjust to the dark. I could see no more now than I had when the light had first went out, and I felt like I was blind. As much as I walked I couldn't find anything familiar to hold onto, to give me some peace of mind that I was nearing the exit, that there was some hope there for me.
It seemed to me that I had been walking for hours, though I'm sure it was only a few minutes when the already freezing temperature in the ballroom dropped again and stopped me in my tracks. The footsteps started again. I had no idea where I was in the ballroom, but I could tell that the phantom steps where no longer on the stairs but in the ballroom with me, and getting nearer all the time.
The steps came to a stop directly behind me and I thought that I might pass out from the fear at that point. I refused to turn around, to face whatever it was that was now beside me, making me shiver with the cold and terror. I bit my lip to keep from screaming as I felt strands of my hair being played with. I couldn't say that it felt like a hand running through my hair, it was more like an energy. A movement that had no substance, no solid form to be able to touch me, yet could somehow still make me feel touched.
Turn around. The disembodied voice made my heart stand still. I had to make myself draw breath. It was like a human voice, but sounded like it came from far away. It was faint, but still had some amount of strength. The gripping of my hair grew rough the longer I refrained from turning my body to greet this unknown being. Whether I liked it or not there was something here that was stronger than me, I felt that however was the owner of the slight voice and heavy footsteps would be able to make me to whatever they wanted.
I slowly turned round, stupidly keeping my eyes shut even though I was in the dark. I felt the pulling of my hair stop as I made my way to the direction the voice had come from, and I opened my eyes to see nothing standing there. I had expected some kind of apparition to now be in front of me, I had thought I would be face to face with the proof that there was life after death, but the was only emptiness.
I began to wonder if I was losing my mind as I stood there. If the banging and the scratching from earlier on had shaken something lose in my brain and I had just imagined the rest of this nightmare. Then from somewhere deep in the manor a clock began to strike twelve. With each echoing boom, the ballroom became brighter. I stood, baffled, as the room that was so dark and empty when Amanda and I had first arrived, with each passing second, filled up with furniture. The broken and cracked chandeliers that hung above, where now gleaming and glowing with light, and as I continued to stare, figures of people materialised in front of me.
As hard as I tried I couldn't understand this, I was sure I must be hallucinating. But even if all this was not really happening and was just my imagination acting out from terror, it was still unsettling, and I wanted to go. Before I could even turn around to make for the door, that disembodied voice spoke again, and that cold energy snaked its way through my hair. The voice was deeper now, more like it was coming from a living, breathing soul. You should have left after the first crash. it said.
The shadowy figures continued to evolve in front of me, at first they had appeared quite non frightening but as I watched them form, I noticed that each wore a black hooded cloak, that made it impossible to tell if they were male or female.
As the clock finished its last chime, all the figures turned towards me. They raised their bowed heads and looked at me, and with horror, I saw that each face was misshapen, morphed into something not quite human. All the features looked like they had been put in a blender and fused together, except for the eyes. The eyes of each monstrous being were big, pure black and full of hate. As they glared at me, I felt a wave of nausea rise inside my stomach, and I was sure my knees where about to buckle.
Those heavy footsteps that I had heard from upstairs so long ago were now hundredfold, as each hooded figure made their way towards me. The unseen energy that had played with my hair now pushed me towards the mass of black, to the centre of the ballroom. The place where this had all begun. The beautiful patterns of the tiles had not changed, but now, instead of backpacks and magazines lying on the floor, it was Amanda.
I muffled a sob as I looked at her. Her pretty face, surrounded by long blonde hair was now a pale blue, and I realised that her hand slipping away from mine when the lights went out was because she had died. The fright had been too much for her, her body had succumbed to the shock. I was grateful that she could not see this, I wouldn't wish this experience on anyone.
I looked around at the hooded figures bearing down on me, their soulless eyes seemed to be full of glee. I couldn't take anymore and made to run. Lifeless hands clawed at me, dragging me back to the centre but I kept running, kept fighting, kept tearing myself from their clutches. I couldn't let myself die here, I might become one of them.
The adrenaline soaring through my body surged me forward, breaking through their unnatural strength. My heart jumped with joy as I saw the door Amanda and I had come through. With all my energy I ran towards it, fighting the evil that was doing all it could to take hold of me.
I didn't stop running as I made it to the door, I wasn't sure if they would be able to follow me or not. The ballroom seemed to be their source of energy, the hallway was still in darkness, it wasn't as cold as it was in the ballroom, and as I ran as fast as I could through it the feeling of dread and doom began to clear.
Through the darkness I ran, exhaustion clinging to my limbs, but I would not stop, but as I made it to the main entrance of Wolfe Manor and I saw the huge wooden door begin to close, I almost gave up. The evil of the hooded figures had reached outside the ballroom, and they were trying to keep me here. I couldn't let that happen, I summoned up every last ounce of energy I had left in my body and dashed the last few yards to the door, just making it outside as it slammed behind me with a resounding thud.
I didn't stop running after escaping Wolfe Manor, I blitzed down the winding road in a daze. Not noticing anything around me, my only goal was to get back to the village. I had to tell everyone what happened, what was going on in the mansion, I had to think of some way to get Amanda back.
I thumped on the door of the first pub I reached. Though it was after closing hours there was still a crowd drinking away inside. I blurted out everything that had happened that night, and even though I was shaking and barely able to stand, no one would believe me. They told me to go home, I must have a fever, I would feel better after a rest. In shock, and exhausted I trudged home and passed out on the couch.
The next day, knowing that my story would never be believed, I told them that Amanda had died from the fright of spending the night in Wolfe Manor. They accepted this and told me that Amanda had always had a weak heart. Though police and firemen tried everything to get into the manor and recover Amanda's body, no door or window would budge. Even when they tried smashing the windows open, the glass remained intact, a mystery they weren't willing to investigate. They would try again, they said. But they never did.
Two weeks after Halloween, I made a return trip to Wolfe Manor. This time it was in broad daylight, and I had no intention of trying to enter the building. On this journey instead of carrying a backpack containing torches and magazines, I carried a can full of petrol and some lighter fluid. I didn't care if anyone caught me, I didn't even care if I went to prison, I was going to burn down that evil place, and make sure that it would never claim another innocent life.
I watched as Wolfe Manor burned to the ground, a village landmark gone forever, but a living nightmare that would never leave me.