𝗽𝗵𝗮𝗻𝘁𝗼𝗺 𝗼𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗮 ➪ 𝗮𝗻𝘁𝗵𝗼𝗻𝘆 𝗹𝗼𝗰𝗸𝘄𝗼𝗼𝗱

𝗳𝗶𝗳𝘁𝗲𝗲𝗻. 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝗱 𝗿𝗼𝗼𝗺 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗲𝘃𝗶𝗹 𝗮𝗿𝗺𝘆 𝗼𝗳 𝗺𝗼𝗻𝗸𝘀

THEY WERE WALKING INTO
the staircase, they took careful steps.
"sense anything?" Lockwood asked his companions.
nothing.
"if this is a screaming staircase, it's being very quiet." Lucy shuddered.

"well, who knows...maybe it's just shy." Agnes commented.
"maybe it's taken the night off." George suggested.

"like we should have done." Lucy closed her eyes, each step she took she regretted it.
"well it's too late now." Agnes was on the third step of the second staircase. she glanced at Lockwood who had stopped in the landing.
"you coming?" he whispered an yeah, following the blonde girl.
"everyone ready?" Lockwood didn't look at them as he asked.
they had entered the Red Room, a room Agnes feared more than she'd wish to admit.
it was empty, no furniture. they'd entered cautiously. pulses of energy filling their senses.

"there's bad energy in these walls. a lot of bad energy." George commented, his hands on one side of the wall and Agnes's on the other.
"well no shit, it's to be expected from a house that belonged to devil worshippers." Agnes shivered, flinching at the screaming sounds of tortured souls she was forced to listen.

"there's screaming. chaos. there's too many voices." Lucy added.
"agreed." the voices overlapped, bringing agony to the listeners.

"it's not very red though, is it?" George mused.
"Agnes, help me with the chains. George and Luce, secure our retreat.
Anthony and Agnes laid the chains out on the floor, George counted the plummeting degrees and Lucy went to help Agnes fix the chains.
"six degrees and falling." he counted.

"whatever's here, it's getting closer. there's no sign of any sources yet though. strange." Lockwood was right, no sources were identifiable yet.
"George, didn't you say you suspect there's hidden rooms?"  Agnes asked, the boy who had been studying the plans obsessively since the day before.

"from the plans, it's highly likely."
"we'll look for evidence. you stay here, watch our backs." Agnes, Lucy and Lockwood went in the search for anything that could help find the source.
"look for cavities, false walls. anything that could be concealing sources." they'd grip onto whatever was tangible on their sight.
"judging by the number of death glows, a lot of people died here."

"so do we think it's in here? the source of the primary haunting?" George questioned, flashing his torch on every wall.

tapping.

"temperature, five degrees."

"wait." Lucy called out, passing her fingers on the wallpaper from one of the walls, Agnes went to her side since there was absolutely nothing on the perimeters she searched.

the tapping got significantly louder, the whispering becoming evident as well.
"shh!  stop tapping. I need to listen." Lucy put her ears closer to the wall, Agnes mimicking her actions.
"no one's tapping." Lockwood replied. the beeping from George's tracker was excessively rapid and loud.
"GET BACK TO THE CIRCLE NOW! SOMETHING STRANGE IS HAPPENING." the three colleagues ran back to chained circle, unsheathing their sword in different directions.