Rancid Soil

HAUNTED

    Over the years the estate adopted a bit of a reputation for being haunted. Primarily due to the bazaar circumstances that surrounded and followed Mr. Linsington's life and death at the estate. Since William had no surviving family the house and possessions were eventually auctioned off by the bank to the highest bidders. Decades went by and the estate and property changed hands a dozen or so times. Each time it changed hands the new owner would change this or that. Some would sell off some of the outlying property or change the appearance of the mansion itself. However, no matter what you did to the outside of it, it never changed whatever was inside. After his passing the property lay empty despite the changing of hands and updates, No one would ever stay there for long, some complained of odd occurrences, others simply left never to returned.

    Things seemed to die down a bit, that is until the children in the near by town suddenly began to go missing. Many children in the small town began to speak of seeing small grey leathery creatures at night. They described them as extremely skinny with grey wispy hair on their heads and faces like a tired old woman of extreme age. They stood upright, about one and a half foot tall. They were very agile and the children stated they had observed them running upright and on all fours. They claimed they would come from the mansion on the estate. Their eyes glowed like hot amber and they had hands like a human with pin like nails. Their skin looked hard and tremendously wrinkled. When they communicated, the children could hear them only in their heads. All the children had to do was imagine what they wanted to say and the creatures could hear them, almost like a dream. They would come in the night and enter their rooms through the air vents, unlocked doors or windows. The creatures would then promise the children gifts and treasures if they would only come to the estate to claim them. Many children in the town had similar occurrences.

    The creatures would lead the children out of their bedroom windows and up to the old Linsington estate. The creatures would walk them right up to the massive wooden door, then they'd open mysteriously. Inside the mansions dark interior would be many pairs of the creature's eyes scurrying around in the darkness, lowly chanting some eerie inaudible mantra. That's when a woman would appear out of the darkness, beautiful and standing in the middle of the light provided by the open door. Just inside the mansion, looking as if she was in a trance. She'd look directly at the children and in a sweet soft voice she'd say, "You should have stayed in bed"... Suddenly horrid grotesque looking things began to burst out of the old wood floor around her. The holes in the floor begin to groan and wail as horrible indescribable things climbed out. The broken jagged holes in the wood floor began to quiver and mash together like the teeth in the jaws of a starved lion. The horrible things quickly surround and violently pull the beautiful woman to pieces in front of the children. They immediately began feeding the chunks of the woman to the holes in the floor which had become ravenous and terrifying. The floor devoured her so violently; it showered everything in a fine droplet mist of her blood. The horrible creatures seemed almost to dance, making a deeply disturbing barking sound as they snapped at each other and ate the scraps of the woman tossed on the floor just outside the range of the frenzied wooden jaws. The children become insanely frightened turning to run; they would wake up in their beds, screaming in a terrible panic.

    The parents often dismissed it as common nightmares or at its worst a type of adolescent mass hysteria brought on by the sudden disappearance of other children in town, not knowing how truly wide spread this had become. That wouldn't last long as the children began to realize just how similar there dreams were, they weren't  just similar, they were all having the exact same dream. talking more and more about the dreams and creatures the children soon became obsessed, Myth ran rampant amongst them and soon the children were making bets and daring each other to go up to the old estate at night. None of the children would ever go through with it. When someone would finally muster the courage, most of the time they couldn't even make it half way through the woods before getting spooked and chickening out as the road that led up to the mansion was extremely creepy and severely over grown. It  was also very difficult to follow through the woods, especially at night. The estate became somewhat of a legend in town again; yet ultimately the parents took it as nothing more than the urban legends and myths commonly propagated in adolescents.

    One night a boy by the name of Danny Marshall actually mustered the courage to do it. Having been bet five dollars and some baseball cards as well as the inherent admiration of his peers, as no doubt he'd become a local legend. He agreed to go alone. That night Danny gathered few objects, lit his lantern and off he went. Now you better believe none of the other children were going to make their way up there with him, so part of the deal was he had to bring something back from inside. Proving he'd actually went inside the mansion itself. It was only a fifteen or twenty minute walk from town, Danny headed off with a swift pace, the children watched as Danny walked out of view. The next day after his parents contacted the authorities about Danny's disappearance, it wasn't long before the local children explained to authorities about the bet with Danny Marshall. About the odd creatures that came from the mansion to visit them in their dreams, And the Woman in the mansion. After hearing all this, Danny's parents became understandably frantic, as the story of the dreams only fueled their efforts to locate Danny.

   The town band together, created makeshift search parties and the mansion and its grounds were searched high and low for weeks only to turn up nothing. After all that went on with Mr. Linsington, the missing children and now young Danny Marshall, the town began to fear that the mansion was some kind bad omen or at least a hide out for vagrants or even worse a killer. They decided the house should be boarded up and fenced so that no one could go inside or even get close. But that did not stop the creatures or the mansion. Danny was just the tipping point. One of the real estate companies that bought the mansion following Mr. Linsingtons passing added a bomb shelter to the mansion due to the instability of the time. It was connected to the basement and had a short tunnel that lead away from the house into the surrounding woods just in case a disaster destroyed the mansion the occupants of the shelter could leave... or even secretly enter the mansion. So the creatures began leading the children to the secret entrance in the woods. Over the next couple years the children began to vanish at a staggering rate. Curfews where put in place to make sure the children where home before dark. The children were heavily watched at all times and forbidden anywhere near the mansion or the woods. For all this the vanishings seemed to stopped and as time went on the town slowly forgot all about the mansion and the strange happenings.