All Mine

•3•

After you stopped for a few seconds to think, you finally decided to gently place Brahms on the chair close to the door. You stepped away from him but froze, sighing. Slowly turning back, you saw he was staring just off to the right of you. Nonetheless, it was rather unnerving. 

Breathing out a sharp breath you didn't even know you had been holding in, you swiftly walked over to the doll. To the left of you was a blanket, so you thought to cover Brahms with it. He crept you out, what were you supposed to do?

"Brahms, you creep me out," You muttered, half to yourself, half to him, with a disgusted look plastered in your face. With those words, you threw the blanket over Brahms.

You bounced back and forth from your bag, the dresser and the wardrobe in the room while you were unpacking, which seemed to take forever to fully empty.

When you finally finished unpacking, you walked down the stair back to the ground floor. You looked over at the doll. Satisfied the cover was still thrown over its face, you ran past it and into the living room. With a small sigh, you collapsed into an armchair.

Your joints were stiff after not moving for a good half hour, and you felt quite old, which wasn't an odd occurrence for you. When you reached the hallway again, you looked left, checking the blanket was still covering Brahms. It was, much to your content.

---

Hours passed, and you found out you had fallen asleep. To be honest, it was one of the most restful periods of sleep you'd had for a long time. But that wasn't why you woke up.

You woke up to a soft tapping noise, not too far away from you. The soft tapping noise soon turned into a loud thumping noise. You remembered hearing this noise the first time you came around to the house. You slowly got up from your seat and walked over to Brahms.

You leaned over the doll, and in a split second, forcefully picked the doll up firmly with both hands moved it from its position in the chair. You made your way up the stairs and along the long hallway that followed after it once more and noticed the door was wide open. However, you didn't really notice this detail, as you flung the doll in the rocking chair set nearly directly in front of the door. You left the doll there, leaving it alone. Turning off the light, you saw in the corner of your eye the rocking chair swaying back and forth.

It began to rain quite heavily, only adding another twist to the knot that was now your stomach. Stuff like this only happens in horror movies or books. You prayed to every god there was you were right. The thunder being added to the rain also didn't do anything to comfort you.

By the time you were lying in bed, the wind outside was howling and the rain was now even more vicious than before. Every so often, a clap of thunder and a flash of lighting made you blink in surprise, but, luckily, that wasn't very often.

The weather just seemed to make your mind delve into a worse state, to the point where you were shaking, mostly because the house was so cold and partly because of the scariness the house seemed to clutch onto. The painted windows in the hallway were fully illuminated, casting numerous shadows on the carpeted floor, you imagined.

The house was still. Too still.

As if on cue, you heard a boy crying. 

You shifted uncomfortably in your bed, before suddenly throwing the covers off as you slowly grew more and more annoyed with them. Curiouser and curiouser, you lifted your body up and your eyebrows furrowed together in concern and fear.

Unsure what to do, you stood up fully up and carefully clasped a candle around your hand, your fingers wrapping around it. You stared into the flame in a moment of daydreaming but was quickly wrenched out of your sky of thoughts when you became aware again of the situation around you. You padded softly to the door, carefully took hold of the doorknob with your left hand and slowly opened the door, peering out of it ever so slightly, then all at once.

Nothing. No boogeyman was standing outside your door or in your hallway and no boy was to be seen, either. Yet, you slipped through the gap in the door and walked smoothly across the landing, making sure no sound was to be made.

The boy's cry could be heard again and you jerked your head in its general direction.

The footsteps you took were tantalizingly slow, and the lightning covered the soft thump you made walking across the carpet. Lightning struck once again, illuminating you and everything in front of it, including a weird goat that the Heelshires had thought to place on the wall. Their sense of style was pretty weird, compared to your modern taste.

The thunder rumbling calmed you, in a sense, and your shoulders relaxed. Still gripping the candle, you could feel your nails digging into it, chipping out flakes and casting them on the floor every so often.

You made your way down the stairs now, almost forgetting where the crying had come from.

On your way down the stairs, you spotted the Heelshires family portrait, which you had become quite familiar with now. The faces had remained the same, nothing unusual, as far as you could tell.

You walked up to the painting, peering at Brahms in particular. The smile on his face looked faked as if it had been painted on and wasn't how his face was in real life. You wondered about this painting for a few moments but was again cut off from your ocean of thoughts by another streak of lightning piercing your ears.

It made you flinch and blink in surprise, also making you look away from the painting. You looked around you for a few seconds, before returning your gaze back to the painting.

In a flash, an arm grabbed you and pulled you towards the painting, instantly making you shoot up in bed, waking you up from your nightmare.