Tʜᴇ Pᴀᴛʜ Tᴏ Hɪɢʜɢᴀᴛᴇs

Tʜᴇ Mᴀᴅʜᴏᴜsᴇ

Cʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ 5

You stood tall as the doors opened, a gaping entranceway staring down your eyes, a monochrome welcoming to what would soon be considered Bedlam to your modern mind.

The soldiers led you in, and your eyes widened at the architectural peculiarities.

Everything was disproportionate. Quite like mirrors in a carnival, the hallway was so tall the walls themselves were leaning forwards, almost curved at the strenuous labour of holding up the house. The doorways were twice the size of you, towering over you and leaning in your direction, like they were trying to whisper something in your ear. Though the ceiling of the hallway was so high up, it was almost like a church laying so far above you. The hall was freezing, or freezing enough to let some involuntary shivers slip from your skin.

The walls were wooden, with no wallpaper to brighten the dark brown panels lining the elongated walls. Everything about the place felt cold and lifeless, like no one really lived here, or if someone did you were sure they must have lost their minds wandering these bitting desolate halls.

You grip your shoulder strap firmly, you could feel Salem squirming around in your bag like she was trying to get comfortable.

Eyes of portraits stared down at you, ladies and gentlemen dressed in finer clothing than Marie Antoinette lined the endless walls. You noticed the pictures were noticeably high up on the wall, like whoever wanted to see them had to place them to correspond with their height. A few tables were standing against the walls under the portraits, holding flowers or a book of some kind. They were rather intimidating to walk past as the legs were nearly at your neck, they too were bent out of shape, and looked too unstable to hold anything, let alone vases of flowers.

You passed other hallways and locked doors as you followed the soldiers. Footsteps were echoing all around you, probably a direct effect of the darkly elephantine walls, further adding to your unease.

Who exactly lived here? The outside looked so inviting but the inside was frozenly bleak. Did they enjoy this emptiness? Or do they not feel its contagious pull?

It was only as you wandered further through the winding halls did you hear warmness drifting towards you in the form of laughter and conversation.

In multiple languages you couldn't fully understand, you could hear chatting and laughing, seems like whoever called this place home didn't let its inhospitable nature dampen their hearts.

As you turned a corner you saw a light on the left of the hall, a door with a blurred glass panel was closed but alight from the inside. As you approached you realised the laughter was emanating from the room, though what they were laughing about was beyond you.

The soldier in front of you stopped by the door, glanced back at the other soldier, then knocked on the wooden panels.

Immediately, the laughter stopped and the house was dead silent. You didn't dare breathe in that moment in fear of your breath being the only sound within a ten-mile radius.

After what felt like an eternity, a deep, faint, 'Komm herein', sounded through the door.

The soldier took a breath in, placed his hand on the doorknob, then twisted it. As the door opened, a wave of thick smoke blew out the room and wisped around the soldier before he stepped in, making a gesture for the other soldier to follow suit.

You were pushed forward ever so slightly by the German behind you, causing Salem to hiss at him, but you ignored her and obeyed the soldier. Watching the smoke with caution, you step into the room and lose all inhibition about the excessive smoke. Instead, you feel nothing but fear at the, things, sitting maybe a meter from you.

They all looked male, with faces bearing flags you recognised from your classes. Even sitting down they were tall, huge even, sitting in seats taller than you and larger than an armchair. The men took up more space than you'd ever used in your life and had drunk more between them than there were bottles in an alcohol store.

They were staring down at you with curious white eyes, quite like the men in the cart only there was no friendliness to be offered by these men. Fat cigars hung from their mouths and smoke billowed out their teeth, the smell of alcohol reeked from all of them, though they looked sober enough to keep themselves upright.

Three men were observing you, but only two pairs of eyes were on you. One of the men had eye patches covering both of his eyes but he still had his head in your general direction. But there was a fourth man at the table. He was exceptionally tall and seated directly in front of you, his back to you and the soldiers, seeming uninterested in what his companions were gazing at.

"Kaiser, wir fanden etwas... seltsames." The German soldier declared nervously.

The man in front of you snorted like he wanted to laugh but wasn't entertained enough to. From behind him, you could see the man had his head down, appearing to be looking down at something he was holding, which appeared to be a sheet of paper.

"Und was würde das sein?" A deep, German voice erupted from the man, from his voice alone you could almost guess he was a chain-smoker.

One of the other men at the table smirked slightly, his eyes looking you up and down, seeming to enjoy your presence.

"Обърни се и виж." The man looking at you croaked with a smirk as he glanced around the table.

The man in front of you looked at his companion, placed the sheet of paper down, then slowly turned his head to look behind him, his body turning as he did. That's when you got a good look at him.

His head was rectangular in shape and had black white and red horizontal stripes colouring his face. Unlike the others, he had small white eyes that seemed to dissect your every move and take in every inch of your body, and to your discomfort, no mouth.

You immediately felt uncomfortable under this man's watch, his beady white eyes seemed to resonate with some sort of primal fear. The kind of fear that would kick up your fight or flight response.

The man's eyes looked you up and down, admiring your body from his seat before he stood up, revealing why the house was fitted for such massive occupants.

Calling the man tall would be an understatement, he must have been way over ten feet tall. You didn't even stand at his chest height, your neck had to bend at an awkward angle just to keep eye contact with him.

The man looked over at the two soldiers, allowing you a break from his steady gazing eyes.

"Du kannst gehen."