Those Who Dare: Book 1

Episode 6: Happy Day

Bianca wasn't sure what she expected from a haunted house, but this was not it. The dilapidated mansion seemed to be made of nothing more than broken stone and scorched wood, a few torn curtains abandoned by the windows they once guarded. A lazy trail of smoke could be imagined from the crumbling chimney, and the front door barely hung from its warped hinges.

She turned to the children next to her. "This is where you lived?" she asked gently, concerned.

Briar's grip on the elf's finger tightened gently as he also grasped his sister's skirt. Rose nodded as she rubbed her brother's back. "The monster destroyed it when we ran," she explained. "Now, there are ghosts there."

Bianca hummed thoughtfully as she turned back to the old house. "How long ago was this?"

Briar shook his head. "I don't know," he admitted. "But the monster ate Papa and Mama."

The elf observed the building warily from beyond the gate. The once high-pillared entrance resembled a drunkard's cabinet five drinks in, only the doorway left with the holdfast and sill attached. The corridor seemed made of gilded marble, and a stairwell to the right was fashioned from granite slabs. Were it not for the less-than-subtle crack along the face of the marble, Bianca would have entered immediately. That was when she heard her friends approach from behind.

"So," Omar commented, his head shielded behind by his arms and his steps brushed away by his tail, "this is the haunted house?"

Rose and Briar turned to him and nodded.

"The foundation might be cracked," Bianca explained.

"It isn't," Rose replied instantly. "Briar and I always come by, and we're fine."

"There is a difference between you two and the four of us," Jethro explained as gently as his indifferent tone would allow.

"It'll be fine," Briar insisted. "We'll show you."

Then, before Bianca or Uriah could react, the two children raced across the threshold and disappeared behind a decapitated statue. The elf turned to see her friend roll his eyes before his pursuit.

"I'll find out how serious the damage is," he said. "No one enter until I get back."

As Uriah traveled around the ruins, Bianca felt Jethro's heavy hand gently grasp her shoulder. She turned and quickly registered the concern and sorrow behind his otherwise indifferent frown.

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Uriah frowned as he continued around the building. The hole behind the statue was too small for him to fit through, regardless of the shadows.

He walked along the withered yet overgrown path around the mansion until he found a shattered window into the basement. It still wasn't quite big enough, but at least he could see the ground. The detective flared his trench coat and, the moment the shadow covered him entirely, the dark swallowed and spat him out on the surprisingly rotten floor.

Once his jacket settled against his back again, Uriah could do nothing more than gaze at the decay and carnage before him. What he believed to be concrete squelched into a carpet blanketed in a grey ichor, which also coated the rest of the floor. The mangled corpses scattered in a malformed ring around him had rotten into black-boned skeletons, but the torn cloaks and darkened spots on once-formal garbs spoke of the cause of their demise. One of them, a slightly thicker-boned male with a dagger in his right hand and his wife's arm in his left, wore a gold-plated crest now trapped within his rib cage. Upon further inspection, his frown fell a little deeper as he saw the faded image of a multi-tusked boar with a spear through the snout.