Inheritance

"You can't just leave me here alone with them! I'm coming with you."

As the two reached the door though, something seemed off. The air felt stiff somehow, and the only noise the two could hear was each other's breathing. As Sage placed her keys in the door lock and twisted it, she reached for the cold silvery doorknob, covered in fingerprints from all of its uses tonight. As she turned the knob, nothing happened. She turned it again, only to get the same result.

"Hold on, let me try that-" Em went for the knob and twisted, but was cut off by her own shock at the door's seeming inability to move. The pair ran back to the gathering room. "Try and bring as many as you can back to the gathering room! We can't just search for the inheritance when we're all stuck in here!" Em nodded, agreeing with Sage. The two ran to opposite ends of the house.

The family had all gathered into the gathering room, all of them obviously annoyed.

"Try opening the windows," Em instructed them, to which, surprisingly, they actually reluctantly, checked the windows and doors. None of them opened.

"And the point of this was?" asked Matilda. "Let me get this straight-we're stuck in here, and you don't care?" "Why care, Em, my dear? We might as well be stuck until we get that inheritance!" Nothing and nobody could have said something more frustrating than this, except Mathilda, because she began to giggle as if they weren't actually stuck, and the two were playing some silly little trick or something of the sort. Before anybody could say anything further, a piercing scream was heard from across the house.

Just about everybody ran to what seemed to be the source of the noise, only to find Mathilda's husband on the floor, a pile of steel on the floor next to his body, and a freshly bleeding indent on his head, most likely caused by the pipe.

Mathilda screamed and ducked down to check if he was dead. "Em, we have to keep track of everybody in this house. It had to have been one of us."

"Alrighty then."

...

Back in the gathering room, Mathilda tried cleaning her face up the best she could but still had makeup dripping from her face from crying. A grim expression on everybody else's face and a sullen air lie around the family. Sage then spoke up.

"The killer must be one of us because we're all locked in. I know that it wasn't Aunt Matilda, Em, or I because the three of us were trying to get her to care about our situation, but I don't know about the rest of you."

The other relatives who came, Sage's grandmother, aunt Laurel, uncle Richard-

Sage thought that there were more at first, but it appears she was mistaken. Must not be something to worry about, then. Just means fewer people who could be the killer.

"I was sitting right here just before the murder." Grandma Mary said calmly, despite the circumstance, from one of the chairs placed around the room.

"I was on the other side of the room looking at an antique," Laurel said, a little defensively, though it didn't show much.

"I was just in the hall looking at the paintings," Richard replied flatly.

"Everybody should try and stick together, then. If there is a killer, they definitely wouldn't go for an entire group." Sage proposed, to which everybody but Laurel nodded, as Laurel just grunted something under her breath.

Just then, a thumping noise, almost like somebody was trying their hardest to stop as loud as they could, echoed throughout the room. Em, eyes wide, asked something along the lines of what the noise was, but jumbled her words.

"How should any of us know? We were all here doing nothing the whole ti- wait. Where did Laurel go?" Everybody looked to Richard who asked, then all of them frantically scanned the room. Clack-thump. Clack. Clack-thump. The sounds got louder somehow, now sounding as if somebody was trying to stomp as loud as they could while wearing shoes with some sort of metal on it.

"There are hardly any windows, but they're definitely are some, so let's all get something heavy and break them down!" Mary had to shout to be heard over the sound, as it was now extremely loud. All of them grabbed the heaviest chairs they could carry and ran out of the room, all following Mary. As they traveled through the house, something felt terribly wrong to Sage, and she had no doubts everybody else also felt that odd tension. None had even appeared to realize the loud clacking and thumping had stopped.

Soon, they realized no room had windows, though Mary had insisted on seeing one.

"Maybe," Richard began, "the room with the inheritance has a window or exit?"

It was crazy, no doubt. But something was needed, as they had to have some sort of plan.

"Alright, let's go find it, then," Em responded extremely quickly, most likely because she just wanted to get out of there.

First room-no. Second room-no. Third room-no. Fourth room-no. This cycle continued endlessly as all tried desperately to find any way out. The house was abnormally silent, except for the nervous breathing coming from all three-three? Sage turned, only to be met with the faces of just her grandma and Em. "Where did Richard go?" She immediately was met with silence, but the other two's eyes bulged. The three sprinted to each room, looking to see if he had found a room with an exit because he had to have if he wasn't with them anymore.

Then, they came upon another room, but somehow, this one felt different. The air felt stiff, and the house somehow seemed to be even quieter in this one spot. The door seemed normal, and so did the walls. Too normal. This house was incredibly old, and great-grandma never wanted to change or clean up any part of the house. Thinking about it, the whole house was oddly clean. Sage reached for the knob, which was warm, despite it being metal and nobody else who was known being in the house. Maybe this was Richard's way out? Sage slowly creaked the door open, a putrid smell filling the air. She looked inside.

Nothing? How? She beckoned Em to step inside with her, while Mary kept lookout. Nothing seemed off. The two then turned to the corner of the room that was out of their sight and screamed. In that corner lay the bodies of their deceased family members, all appeared to be killed in the most efficient ways possible. They got to Matilda?! How did we forget about her?

"Sage." Em was able to get out a single word. Sage turned to her, and Em directed Sage's gaze to the door. Grandma was gone. The two ran back to the hall as quickly as possible, but something was off about the hall, too. It was now a bright-golden-color, no longer silent. It sounded as though somebody was now running toward them at full speed. The two could do nothing now but breathlessly run. THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP. The sound echoed through the house, beating into Sage and Em's ears. "Closer, closer." it sounded as though whatever was chasing them whispering into their ears, despite not being visible. The hall then split out of the blue, and the two accidentally went different ways.

As Sage was running, the footsteps grew quieter and quieter, and she stopped. She realized a door was directly in front of her. She stepped inside. Inside was just a table, small and wooden, with nothing special about it. She walked toward it, and on top, lay a letter and two dollars. She opened the letter.

Dearest Sage, congratulations, you have found the inheritance!

...

Em, at the end of her hall, heard a shriek after the footsteps went quiet. She then found a door. Anxiously, she turned the knob and stepped in. Inside the door was a room, in it, a wooden table, just a table, small and wooden, with nothing special about it. On it lay two dollars. On the floor in front of it lay an open letter. She picked up the letter.

Dearest Em, congratulations, you have found the inheritance!

...

Was that all? Em looked up, a door standing just a few feet in front of her. She opened the door and stepped through it. She found herself in the gathering room, except nothing was in it. No windows, no chairs, no doors, and only a single dimmed light in the center of the ceiling. In front of her, two dollars.