What Lies Beneath The Clearing

3.7

"A year ago, I was...exploring," 

"You mean breaking and entering." 

"Do you want to hear the story or not?" 

Jay put his hands up in defense as she watched him, continuing when he puts his hands down in his lap. 

"I found this house. I couldn't tell you the address, it's like you only find it if you get lost you know? But it's this big...old, manor house in the middle of nowhere. I thought it was cool, so I convinced the group to come with me. After a few visits we got this...puzzle, a riddle I guess, it showed up at the apartment one day, Skye found it. We thought it was some sort of mystery that we had to solve, it talked about the history of the house but I did research and I couldn't find anything." 

"What do you mean?" 

"I mean the manor doesn't exist. I've looked everywhere. My phone doesn't even register when I open the map, there's no satellite images of it, I even went to the library to look some old paper maps I couldn't find anything, but it's been empty for years, the place is practically in ruins inside, like it was abandoned." 

"So where did the note come from?" 

"Exactly, that's what we never figured out. So we gave up on the puzzle, because we didn't think anything of it, we thought someone was just playing with us, you know? Squatters or something. A week later we get another puzzle, talking about how everything started must be completed or there'll be consequences. We ignored it, but weird things started happening to us. Caleb started getting night terrors. Sasha would be out of it sometimes, like she'd been hypnotised, she'd be normal one minute and the next she'd be standing out in the pouring rain like a robot and she'd remember none of it when she came to. Kaila had the note stuck in her head, she said she started hearing whispers repeating it to her, over and over again, and Skye had her own reflection talking to her in the mirror."