The Madness Within ✓

I.

„There it is," I mumbled under my breath with a light smile on my face as I stopped the car in front of a building. It was a house that was located in the middle of a large, seemingly neverending forest.

The house was fairly tall, almost reaching the top of the shorter trees, with long, wooden stairs leading up to a porch in which stood the main entrance. The exterior of the house suggested that the house must be really cozy inside, which definitely made up for the fact that it was in the middle of the forest, surrounded by tall trees, prickly bushes and what-not with nobody else living nearby. There was however a smaller village a few kilometers away, but I wouldn't assume that anyone has ever visited this house from there.

The house that I was standing right in front of used to belong to my late grandmother. She passed away two weeks ago. For some reason, the police refused to give us any information about the cause of her death or the state that they found her in. Apparently, the people that knew her hadn't heard from her a few days before the police found her dead. She was found in the forest, not too far away from her own house.
The whole situation was a complete mystery, nobody knew what happened and why it happened. And nobody has even seen her before her last moments on Earth.

They later brushed it off and called it a suicide, though I don't believe that's true. My grandma was always so full of energy and she was always so happy. Was she really hiding so much pain behind that smile? Why wouldn't she tell us what was bothering her, then? It didn't feel right.

Grandma was a kind soul, but she was always full of mysteries as well. My family and I never got to come over to her house and visit her, since she was always the one that came over to us. When we asked her if we could go and visit her instead, she refused. She never even gave us her address!
„Oh, stop it. You wouldn't want to stay there for no longer than a second, trust me," she would always say with an innocent smile on her face, followed by a chuckle. Then she'd always end up changing the subject to something else, like the cooking books that she recently bought, or the things she saw while on her way over to us on the train.
I was always curious what her house looked like, and while I did not expect it to be in the middle of the forest, why would grandma think we wouldn't want to be here? Is it really just because of the location of the house? Or is there a different reason?

But well.. now this house belongs to me.

After a lot of discussion, the house was forwarded to me, so now I'm the rightful owner of it. My parents have decided that as the youngest one in the family, owning grandma's house would benefit me the most out of everyone. I can either keep it, or sell it to someone and then use the money for whatever I might need. For example a new house, just in a different location.

So let's take a better look at it, shall we?

I stepped out from the driver's seat and opened the trunk of the car, where I'd put my grey, heavy suitcase along with a few smaller bags that contained most of my belongings before leaving my apartment. I took everything out of the car and made my way over to the main entrance of the house. A loud clicking sound could be heard from beneath me with each step that I made up the tall stairs. The wind blew through my shoulder length brown hair and my long, tan trenchcoat also waved along with the wind. To be honest, it kind of made me feel like a detective, who was about to solve a case about the mystery of her own deceased grandma.

I'm the new Sherlock Holmes, watch out, culprit.

But I probably shouldn't joke about this, I thought. I missed my grandma a lot and I really hoped that whoever did this to her would get caught. If it turns out that someone actually did it, of course..

When I arrived at the door of the main entrance, I reached out to my pocket for the keys and took them out.
Now.. which key was it?

I searched through each individual key from the stack of keys to try and find the key that belongs to this door lock, but after a while I gave up and just tried putting each key in the keyhole to see if it's the right one.
I really should've labelled all the keys..

After a few failed attempts, an audible 'click' came out from the keyhole and the door was unlocked. I turned the doorknob and opened the door, then walked inside the house. I found myself in a hall that lead to multiple doors and smaller corridors. On the other side of the hall was a room that contained a wide fireplace surrounded by two closed windows covered with extensive burgundy curtains.
I took off my coat and put it on the wooden hanger next to the door, then walked closer to the room to inspect it better.
There was a wide rug with all kinds of colors and geometric patterns in the middle of the room that covered most of the floor in the area.
On one side of the room, by the fireplace was a soft and expensive-looking maroon couch with a matching armchair next to it. In front of them was a short coffee table with a glass top, covered with a dark red tablecloth. A few brand new aromatic candles were sitting on top of the table, along with old, outdated newspaper from a month ago.

On the wall against the table and couch was mounted a black, flat screen TV. It looked fairly new and unused. When and how did grandma get this in here? Where did she get all the money for all this modern furniture?
I was truly happy to see such amazing and brand new furniture, but something about this felt off. Why did grandma hide all of this from us? She said we wouldn't want to be here, but so far the house looked like a dream house. Did she get all of this illegally, perhaps?

I don't know what she was hiding from us all this time, but I will find the truth.

I put the suitcase and bags on the ground by the couch and sat down. I couldn't wait to explore the rest of the house, but it will have to wait.
I took out my phone from the pocket of my jeans and dialed my mom's number, then called it and held the phone by my ear. After a few rings, she answered the call.

„Clara!" a joyful voice exclaimed from the phone's speaker.
„Hey mom," I responded, „I've arrived."

The relationship between my mom and I was always really good. I couldn't have wished for a better mother than her. She was always by my side whenever I needed her, and she took amazing care of me.
My father, on the other hand..

„So, how does it look?"
„It looks very nice so far. I haven't looked around much yet. I'll probably have to unpack first before doing anything else," I explained and looked around the room once more to adore the decoration that the room was covered with. There were a few pictures hung on the wall. Some were photos of flowers and the garden, others were photos of the village. There were also many photos of the forest and other photos of nothing but nature.

But something about the photos caught my eye.

„That's great, Clara! Please call me tomorrow and tell me more, I have to go help our neighbor with her cleaning duties. Ms. Willson has gotten weaker recently and she can't handle all of the cleaning alone."
„Okay, goodbye mom," I mumbled a response to her, my eyes and mind still focused on the pictures on the wall.
„Goodbye, dear."

The call ended. I put the phone down on the coffee table and stood up, then walked towards one of the pictures; a picture of the forest. There were a few tall trees on the pictures with a sign on the bottom right corner of the framed photo. The text on the sign was almost unreadable, but it definitely said something along the lines of 'Deerwood Forest.'
The whole area in the photo was covered in snow, so the picture must've been taken somewhere during winter. That means it could've been taken years ago, but it also could've been taken weeks or months ago from today.

What caught my attention though made me hope that it was taken a very long time ago.
The pictures seemed normal if you looked at them at first, but when you looked closer, there was something else in one of the pictures. Something unnerving. Something terrifying.
Each tree created a tall shadow under it due to the bright sunny weather, but one of the trees' shadow was different from the rest. Five long, thin and sharp fingers also protruded from one of the shadows. The fingers didn't look human. It didn't look like anything that I've seen before. The sight of it sent a chill down my spine.