The End of the Dream

Chapter 2

Unease hung over you like a heavy shroud.

That, you feared, would be your constant companion for a long while yet. At least until you found your footing and gleaned some solid answers.

As to the rest, though, a hot shower had done wonders. You felt at least halfway human, instead of like a zombie.

The mirror in the bathroom didn't haunt you like the one in the foyer, though you had flinched away from it initially. But when it remained inert, an innocuous, inanimate surface, you took the time to study yourself closer.

It was... a face. That was all you could say, really. It bore no familiarity, nor fostered any fondness. You may as well have been looking at a stranger.

Your body was the same. Nothing was offensive about it to you, but nothing was familiar or comforting either. The only notable feature were the scars on your side—a set of three wide, jagged, claw-like gashes, from navel around to your back.

Those were new. They matched the ones on the body you had woken up beside, and all logical reasoning decreed they had been acquired at the same time and in the same manner. Only yours had—unnaturally, impossibly—healed. There was only raw, shiny, somehow sickly skin stretched over the site of the wounds now.

That was a mystery in itself, but not one that connected to who you were, or who you had been in the past.

As much as it bothered you—and it was unsettling, utterly adrift with no memory, no sense of self, not even a name to call your own—the present was a higher priority.

Were you even safe here? In the Manor. With Mark.

Forget who you were, who was he?

There was only one way to find out.

You donned a set of the clothes that had been left for you, picking out a white button-up shirt and pair of simple black slacks from the options that had appeared in your assigned bedroom at some point whilst you cleaned up. They didn't fit right either, but it was still an improvement on being soaked with blood.

Your hand hovered over the door handle as you sucked in a long breath.

Was it even... safe, to go out there? Something was very, very wrong about the Manor. And the last thing you wanted was to encounter whatever had been present in the foyer.

But Mark had told you he would be in the drawing room, before he'd left you to your own devices. An implicit invitation to join him.

You would have liked to think he would not suggest you could make your own way there if the possibility of getting ripped to shreds along the way remained. You were far from certain of it, though. One thing you did know, you did not trust Mark.

Pushing aside your wariness, you opened the door and stepped out.

For all your worry, it seemed there was nothing untoward about the Manor at all. It was a little outdated, perhaps, and the corridors a little convoluted, but otherwise it was clean, and airy, and unforeboding. Extravagant, but tastefully so—mostly. A mile away from the horror of the foyer.

Doubt began to sink its claws into your chest. Had you read everything wrong?

A river of cream carpet carried you across the landing and through a winding maze of doors, before depositing you in the drawing room.

Like the rest of the house—foyer incident aside—it wore the appearance of being open and inviting. A long table served as the centrepiece, rich, dark-stained oak buried deep beneath sheathes of papers and folders. Cabinets and bookshelves of matching design line the walls, interrupted here and there by the placement of a more leisurely velvet-lined armchair or recliner.