Rosethorn Manor

Rosethorn Manor: is your stereotypical haunted house. It sits like a blight in the withering woods of South America. Before bed the girls and boys at your boarding school crowd under thin white blankets and swap stories of the horrors there. Someone once saw a girl screaming and battering against the window. Someone saw fresh blood on the mailbox. Someone saw someone saw someone saw. The acidic taste of fear stains your coarse little giggles.

One night you and a group of your peers sneak out. Evade the teachers on night patrol. Take the bus down, only a coppery penny each. Walk along the night-deadened streets to where the house pierces the night sky. Quiet, awed, you dare your best friend to go inside. That's the last time you see him.

Rosethorn Manor: is your home. You have lived there all your life. It is beautiful, and it is shiny. You are beautiful, and you are sinless. You dance in your bedroom and pretend you are on a stage, millions cheering your name. Your father is a brute, and your mother has headaches sometimes. They tell you never to leave the house.

One night a voice calls your name and asks you to dance. So you dance. The walls of the house open like the petals of a blooming flower and you dance through them, out into the fresh night air. You dance and don't notice the approaching crevice of the well until it is too late.

Rosethorn Manor: is a pair of jaws waiting to snap shut and close on blood and gristle and bone. And the latest target of the horrors which lie within is Sherry Sordino.