The boy continued to move through the halls with brisk steps while his eyes shifted left and right, trying to capture everything in his field of vision.
'Sigh ... I can't do this without my mobile's flash… dammit, I should've charged it completely.'The boy lamented for a moment, then opened up his mobile, turned on the flashlight, and continued to move.
'I've seen enough creepy movies where the mobile's battery is the antagonist and not the ghost.'
The now illuminated hall was painted in a maroon red with withered windows on the left, through which the entire manor could be seen.
The manor was two-floored, with the central plaza surrounded by rooms in a rectangular shape. At the topmost floor, the ceilings of the building rose like a mountain's peak, just like some ancient traditional Japanese buildings. It looked like it was made of wood, or was it tiles… He couldn't see that clearly from this distance.
He shook his head and continued to move forward with cautious steps.
After arriving at a corner which went left and a room just ahead of him, he cautiously reached for the handle of the door and opened it slightly.
The door creaked and opened with a layer of dust falling. He tilted forward and peeked inside the room.
Seeing nothing unusual in sight, he quickly shuffled his way inside the space and looked around.
Stepping into the middle of the room, his gaze fell on an ornate full-body mirror, which was shattered into large chunks. Illuminating it a bit, he saw a myriad of his reflections looking back at him with an unblinking, terrified look.
His lips rose into a faint, mocking grin as he examined his countenance.
"Still as charming as ever… yeah, maybe not."
Focusing on one of the more brightly reflecting images, he could almost see faint red strings in the background. He blinked, and the image reverted to normal.
'Am I hallucinating now?'
"Whatever, I should try to record all this in case I get lost in this place."
Opening his mobile's camera, he set it to recording mode and started to mumble in a low voice.
"Umm… what I'm about to say might sound crazy, but I found myself knocked out cold in this creepy place around that direction," he said, pointing to the place he had just come from.
"Uh… I don't know how I got here, nor do I remember what I was doing before that. Every time I try to recall what happened before, I get a splitting headache, like someone's trying to open my skull from the inside."
He grimaced, remembering the last couple of minutes, and slapped his cheeks lightly.
'Focus!'
"It's currently 12:09 in the morning, and this is looking more and more like some kinda horror movie set."
"This is just in case… huff just in case something happens to me, this video may find itself in the hands of anyone who could do something about this whole situation and save my a*s."
After narrating the current situation for some moments, he continued to point the camera at every nook and cranny of the place, trying to look for anything that might help him in this situation.
"This place is too old… and it looks like some rich person's secret evil lair where they tried to reanimate freaking Dracula."
"This is the first floor, and the whole place is surrounded by shrubs downstairs; there's a stone-paved wall about a few dozen meters away, and it's just a goddamn forest after that."
"Even if I tried walking out, I might get lost in the woods, plus the freezing wind will lower my mobility. I'm not a fan of freezing to death either. At least here I might not get eaten by whatever's out there in the woods or get frozen cold."
After thoroughly checking the room, he tried to move out.
But at that moment, some faint whistling of wind caught his notice, and he strained to listen properly… it sounded like someone was whispering something from the hall he had just come from.
He turned the flash off and gently tiptoed to the slightly opened door he came from. The whispers seemed to be getting closer at a steady pace. The hair on his neck rose as he gently tried to close the door, and with a slight creak and a faint click, he finally managed to close the damn door.
It sounded like a chorus of people were trying to talk at the same time, with their voices mixing in an eerie rhythm.
He backed off from the door and tried to breathe as slowly and faintly as he possibly could.
The whispers gradually faded after a minute or so. He sighed in relief and slumped down on the mildly wet carpet.
Finally catching his breath, he tried to stand up, leaning on the wall. He looked around the room, and the faint reflection he had caught sight of earlier came into his mind.
He looked back at the shattered mirror, and when he saw one of his reflections looking back at him coldly without any hint of emotion, his blood ran cold.
His heart beat violently against his chest, and he nearly had a heart attack. After furiously blinking for a second, the image reverted, and nothing seemed out of place.
"I… don't think my heart can handle this situation well. If sh*t like this keeps happening, I might just die out of shock."
After leaning closer to the shattered glass once more and looking at his images again, nothing seemed out of place, but at the same moment, everything seemed wrong.
Shaking his head, he tried to forget what he had just seen, for the sake of his sanity.
After huddling down at the corner of the room, he tried to catch his breath, looking at the time. Only 10 minutes had passed since he had started recording. He stopped the recording and tried to look at the tape.
Surprisingly, there were no sounds and no whispers on the tape, only his voice narrating what he had been doing just now and sneaking around the room and shutting the door.
"Fu*k, it seems I'm really going insane."
*Author's note* - I can do two things about the chapter update
1. irregular updates (might have a couple of days' break)
2. completed story after some time.
Choose as you wish and I'll do so, if not the irregular schedule it is.