Short Gothic / Horror Setting Story

Description of a Gothic Setting

The old, pot - holed, cracked tarmac road winds through the dense forest of skeletal trees that never seem to have any colour to them; no leaves, no flowers and all that lays on the forest floor is dead twigs and leaves. The road is thin and covered by a layer of dull, dead leaves that never move, even if there is a strong gust of icy wind. At the end of the labyrinth track, there lies a desolate manor house. The windows are smashed or have countless cracks in them that interconnect to form an imitation of a spiders web; they weave in and out of each other. The rusty iron gate, with an intricate Victorian design, slowly creaks open. The screech of the gate echoing through the endless skeletal forest. It seemed as if the gate was inviting you in. Like it was forcing your curiosity to overwhelm you and take over every sense, every nerve. You step in, tentatively, then CLANG, the iron gate suddenly shuts, trapping you with whatever wants you to be there. The curiosity subsides and fear takes over in tsunami like waves, drowning you, making your thoughts go fuzzy, making everything blurry. You manage to pull through the ocean of emotions and are now left prisoner to your own mind. 

Feeling compelled to approach the grand, arched, old oak front door, you slowly start taking steps towards it, dragging your feet like a zombie. It's like someone has taken over your body, but your mind works perfectly fine. You raise your fist to knock on the door, it creaks open. Alarm bells are ringing in your ears, deafening any other thought other than to get out of there. You try to run as fast as you can away from the manor. You can't. A force pulls you into the house with such a force that your body is slammed against a bookcase. Everything starts to fade into the blackness.

You wake up, surrounded by books and dust is swirling through the moonlight that pierces the darkness of the manor, like a beam of hope. You feel something next to you. It's like someone is there but you can't see them. Footsteps creaking on the old, mouldy floorboards scare you and you desperately run to the door. It won't open. You try with all your might to force the door open, however, whoever is in the house with you doesn't want you to leave. 

The next time that you open your eyes you're in a damp room with gusts of icy winds coming through the gaps in the concrete. A small window lets the hopeful rays of weak sunlight fill the small space that must be a basement. You try to open the window; you want to get out of here, you want to go back home to your loving family and a warm bed where everything will be alright. To your surprise it opens with only a little bit of force. You squeeze through the small gap and run for your life, in fear that you will get pulled back into the manor. You see a vague outline of a tree through the heavy misty that hangs on to the gnarled barks of the skeletal trees that litter the ground around you. 

Something colder than ice lightly touches your face. Was it a falling leaf? Was it a bird flying past? Was it just your imagination? No... You look up slowly to your right, from the black lake in front of you, up the dead bark of the old willow tree that droops over you and there it is...

A foot so pale it is whiter than white. The blue veins pop out of the skin. All of a sudden... another one appears next to it.. The mist lifts, making everything so much clearer but it seems so menacing now; the dead trees, leaves on the ground, the icy wind, the black lake. The feet belong to a woman, pitch black hair, wearing a filthy nightgown, hanging from an old, snapping rope by her transparent neck. She starts to turn...