The Curse of Dreadgrave Manor

CHAPTER SIX - THE SEARCH PARTY

Max walked over to the farthest wall and started knocking sharply all over it.

"What are you doing?" Kris pulled a confused face.

"Shhh!" He hushed. "I've seen it done in the movies plenty of times. If we knock all over the wall and a certain part sounds different, then that usually means there's a secret passage behind it."

"Oh, I guess that makes sense. It's the best idea we've got." Kris followed his lead and started knocking on the wall opposite the window.

"It's no good." He declared a few minutes later. "These walls are absolutely solid. There's no secret passage anywhere." "Hey Max, what about this?" Kris was brushing away at a layer of dust in the corner of the room. She revealed an elaborate metal grate about the size of an envelope mounted low down on the wall.

"Well, there's no way he would ever fit through there!" Max exclaimed.

Kris rolled her eyes. "I know that! But what if it leads to where Lewis is trapped? Maybe the screaming sounded as loud as it did and like it was coming from here because it was echoing through the vents? That means he must be somewhere else in this house."

Max squirmed uneasily. It seemed like a logical explanation, but it didn't explain a couple of glaring inconsistencies that gnawed away at him.

"But we saw him standing in this window! The handprint is still here smudged into the glass. He has to have been in this room within the last hour."

Kris stuck out her bottom lip deep in thought. She always did when she was concentrating, and Max knew better than to interrupt her.

"No, Max. We saw someone. Neither of us knows if it was

Lewis for sure."

Max paled. Kris was right. All he had seen was a silhouette.

"It has to have been him. He's the only other person in the house."

"That we know of." Kris countered anxiously, not liking where her trail of thought was leading her. "But for argument's sake, let's assume that it was him for a minute. If he saw us, he must have left the room to come and meet us and got stuck somewhere along the way."

"All he had to do was walk down the hallway and then down the stairs. We would have seen him!"

"I don't have an answer for everything!" Kris snapped angrily and threw her hands up in exasperation. "Either way, there's one thing for sure. I don't like what's going on here."

"You're right." Max calmly replied. "If we don't find anything in the next ten minutes, we'll get out of here, go home and call the police."

Kris nodded in agreement. They left the room together and meandered down the narrow corridor, at last able to properly inspect their surroundings. Discoloured paintings of landscapes lined the walls, alternating with wrought-iron wall lamps. A row of identical oak doors ran along the eastern side of the hallway for as far as they could see. As they reached the part of the corridor that overlooked the main hall, they gasped in awe at the grand crystal chandelier, suspended from a chain that led into the ceiling rafters. Their gaze was transfixed as they walked down the stairs and watched as the dangling crystals caught the lessening daylight from the windows and threw it to the farthest corners. The main hall was devoid of any furniture, except for a striking blackened fireplace inset in the eastern wall. Hanging above it was the portrait of a strict and angry-looking man in a tarnished gold frame.

"That must be Montgomery Dreadgrave!" Kris gasped, taken aback by the severity of the Count's painted scowl. "He's giving me the creeps!"

Max nodded. The intense, hypnotic stare of the Count burned deep into him.

"Forget the plan." Max shuddered, tearing himself away from looking at the painting any longer. "We should just get out of here now. Something isn't right."

"I can feel it too. We should just go." Kris crossed her arms tightly. It was as if the house had just suddenly got colder.

Max strode over to the front door and yanked hard on the handle.

"Oh, no..." He mumbled.

"What's wrong?" Kris asked, not liking how uncertain he sounded.

"The door's locked." He pulled as hard as he could, but the door refused to budge. Max turned to her, his face frightened. "We're trapped, Kris! We're trapped in Dreadgrave Manor and worst of all; no one knows we're here!"