Arisu [ #JustWriteIt - Horror - Complete ]

Chapter Nine - The White Rabbit

"Glassy shards the window did splay.
One thing he was certain;
It was not a fairy coming out to play."

Their curiosity knew no bounds. With a source of light in hand, the two children set out to explore every room of the manor in search of their missing guardian.

They saw a great deal of things that hadn't been there before. Door that led to unfamiliar hallways, walls blocking some of their previous routes, it was changing into a completely different place.

And that led to some unexpected surprises.

They'd lost track of each other twice, straying into separate hallways yet somehow bumping straight into each other again.

Alice swore that she could see rabbits everywhere. Hidden in paintings, sitting amongst the wooden carvings of furniture, sometimes peeking out from the wallpaper.

A lion sculpture became a sprinting rabbit in her eyes. There was a white bunny tucked away behind the translucent crystals of a dusty chandelier.

She must be going loopy! Was Trick's ultimate conclusion, as he was made to stop and sufficiently prove that there was no rabbit hiding behind the pendulum of a tall grandfather clock.

Unlike the clock's spindly hands, his patience wasn't frozen in time. In fact, he was losing it faster than something sinking to the bottom of a murky pond.

"Hey, Alice?"

The little girl stopped scrutinizing a painting and looked sharply over her shoulder. "Is there something behind me?" She wailed, waving about the flower as if it would protect her from unknown forces.

Trick sweatdropped. "No offence but... Maybe you should sit down for a while."

"I should?" She blinked in confusion, as if the concept was foreign to her.

"Yes..."

Trick gestured towards a relatively cozy-looking armchair. His annoyance towards her pause was poorly masked.

Alice lightly treaded over to the comfy chair. Then she paused again. Trick gave her a little push of encouragement. "It's not gonna eat you."

The meaning behind her smile was unclear. She half-clambered onto the seat, taking her merry time to curl up on the pushy padding.

Trick couldn't hide his relief.

"Now wait there."

"W-What?"

"I'm just going to check out the study, okay? If it's still there, I mean."

"B-But what if the door disappears? Y-You can't leave me here in the dark!" She said, her face falling with dismay. She looked terrfied at the prospect and clung onto the front of his shirt.

Trick grimaced and wiggled himself free of her grasp. He held up the luminous orb and tore it in half, dropping one of those halves in to her outstretched hand.

"Take care now; I won't be long - I promise. And besides, Coryn must be looking for us too. He wouldn't abandon us. You know that."

Alice looked at him with pleading eyes, as if begging him to forgive her for being so jumpy. Trick had no idea what to say to her. "Look... It's not your fault, but we'd probably find him sooner if you stayed here."