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Wade saw the roofline as he hiked along the forest's edge. He walked past it initially, but he couldn't ignore the tall spires and darkened stained-glass windows’ Gothic look. He’d never seen a real Gothic mansion before—only what he’d seen in movies and books. The house piqued his interest, and Wade, without thinking about all the possibilities or anything untoward, quickened his pace to the front door.
He stepped onto the porch with its high, double-arched ceiling, and then he noticed a broken window and shards of glass strewn across the floor. He wondered whether someone had tried to get out and if they had succeeded.
He grabbed the steel doorknob; it felt cold in his hand. He tried to turn it, but it wouldn’t budge. As he was about to leave, the door opened, and a gust of wind pushed him into the house. When the door slammed, it sounded like the final nail in a coffin.
He stood in the foyer. Lit candles throughout. He heard squeaky floorboards and low, torturous moans. An inexplicable sense of being watched as the candles flickered.
He felt a light touch on his shoulder and a female voice whispered his name. He turned to see a woman. Her voice was soft, and her floor-length gown was a deep, Manik red velvet.
“You look like you’re going to a ball," he said. The pinned blonde updo at her neckline showed her pearl necklace and matching earrings.
“Yes, we’re going to a ball.” She giggled. Her powdered cheeks and ruby-red lipstick captivated Wade. “I’m Sophie. I’ve been waiting for you. Ready?” She took Wade by the hand.
“Me? You’ve been waiting for me? What do you mean? You don’t even know me. How do you know my name? What the hell’s going on?”
“Precisely.”
“I don’t want to go to a ball. I came here to look around and see what’s inside this place.”
“Oh, you’ll see in good time. Trust me.” She tugged on his shirt, and they ascended a few stairs. They stopped when a book dropped.
Wade picked it up and read the spine. Thirteen Ghosts. “I don’t like being here anymore. I’m leaving." Old portraits of the dead and eerie landscape paintings hung on the staircase walls, laden with cobwebs and dust.
"Take it easy, Wade; here, take this bag to keep the book in while we move forward to the ball,” she said, handing him a bag.
His mind raced through the Gothic horror stories he’d read. He remembered reading about how appearances could be deceiving and that reality was often far scarier than fiction. He wondered about Sophie—was she a rose with thorns? Regret over his decision to investigate the house fuelled his desire to flee. A shadow flickered out of the corner of his eye. As they stood there, they caught a woody scent lingering in the air. Tobacco smoke?
A thunderous voice rattled the house. The walls appeared to be waltzing. A spine-tingling fear shot through his body. The voice taunted them with an eerie version of an old song meant to lure children out of hiding.
“So-phie, Wa-de, come out, come out, wherever you are.” Terrified, Wade’s teeth chattered. Sweat dripped down his back, pooling at his waistband. His body temperature was like mercury on a mid-July scorcher.
“Who’s that? How does he know my name? Sophie, what’s going on?”
“Don’t worry about him. It’s nothing. We need to keep moving. Your new attire is in the bedroom on the left.” She looked in his eyes. Wade jerked his head back, focusing more closely on Sophie’s appearance. “Besides, Wade, some things are on a need-to-know basis.”
She grabbed Wade’s hand, and they climbed the stairs. They entered the room off the landing to the right.
“Wade, come on.” She pulled him along, leading him to a particular stack of books in the back of the room. She hit it, revealing the maze. She went through it.
Wade stopped short, and the entrance closed. He turned to the stairs. He thought he heard Sophie gasp from somewhere within the walls. Wade could not help but hurl himself down the stairs toward the front door.
Think, Wade. Get yourself down the stairs. He told himself. You’ve got to get out the door. Run. If you don't, something horrible will happen to you. He focused on the front door; it was so close, but the more Wade ran without getting ahead, the more he understood why his grandmother said, “Your friend’s running in a bushel basket, always moving but getting nowhere.” Wade looked at the door from the top of the landing, his head in his hands. Frustrated, he slid down the wall.
He sat against the wall for a long time, waiting for his courage to return. He had to find Sophie; he entered the maze with renewed wonder of what lay ahead.
“Sophie! Are you here? Answer me. Why? The front door won't open. I have to get out of this place. Are you trapped here, too?” Wade shouted down the torch-lit hallway. “How can you do this to me?”
Wade’s eyes cast frightening shadows in the gloomy corridor, and as he drew closer, he noticed holes in the wall and rats running in and out. A familiar fragrance filled his nose, and he smiled when he recognized Sophie.
"Wade, aren’t you adorable? Especially when you're passionate about something. Yes. It’s true; the door won’t open. And yes, I live here; this is my home now. I couldn’t leave with you if I wanted to. Enough talk about this stuff; let’s get going.” She smiled at him.
“Sophie, I don’t have time for your ball. I’m still working on a way out of this place. Trust me, Sophie; if there’s a way out, I’ll find it. About the book —" Before Wade could get out the rest of what he wanted to say, another book dropped. The Haunting. His nerves were jumbled, and he tasted pipe tobacco. Sophie picked up the book and slipped it into the bag.
"Listen, Wade, just keep collecting the books and dropping them in the bag; let me worry about everything else, okay? Right now, the only thing I can suggest is that we keep heading toward the ball together.”
“No, let me out!” Wade said, panting like a caged feral animal.
"To survive the voice, we must go deeper into the maze.” Sophie grimaced.
The two ran until Wade’s adrenaline turned to exhaustion; they sat on the hardwood floor.
“Why’s he chasing us?" Wade said.
“I owe him books. But I don't know what he wants with you. I don’t like trouble. And I’m sorry to say that if he catches us, we’ll have to give him whatever it is that he wants.”
“I’m not giving him anything. I’ll take my chances with the book collector. A real face-to-face so I can get out of here.”
“Choose your words cautiously, Wade, and mind what you wish for.” Her breath puffed out into the air as the temperature dropped to 25 °F. Wade’s teeth chattered as a shiver ran through the hair on the back of his neck and flowed down his backbone.
They ran to keep Wade warm above anything else. They stopped when the next book dropped.
“Why is this happening? I’m freezing?” She squeezed his hand. The realization wrapped around him like a twisted sheet or a tortured soldier from the front lines in a nightmare. “I wish this book-dropping would stop! I’m nuts over trying to figure out why this event is happening. And now, you expect me to run from this guy? Someone I’ve never met, when I don’t even know what he wants from me?”
He stopped to pick up another book, The Uninvited, and added it to the bag.
This time the voice bellowed, "Come out of that maze this instant.”
“He knows where we are? How can that be? Does he sound more agitated than the last time he yelled to you?” Wade held his fists to his forehead; sweat emerged under his armpits and around his neckline.
“I have a horrible idea about this person. What is he after me for? One thing’s for sure: I am done running.”
She hugged Wade.
The voice echoed throughout the house again. “Time’s up.”
She whispered to Wade, “He’s the librarian here.”
“A librarian? You’re joking. For whom?” His voice was uneasy.
“The librarian always gets what he asks for, regardless of anything else that goes on in this house.”
Wade faced her and considered her words. “So, this is it. How do I fit into this mess?"
Before she could answer, The Haunting of Hill House fell into his bag. And another, House on a Haunted Hill. Only this time, it fell in front of Sophie. Wade nodded at her to pick it up.
The second she dropped the book into the bag, she murmured, "Sorry, Wade."
A wicked wind whipped up. His strength was no match for the whipping wind; it blew Wade back through the walls and landed in the library.
“You need a library card to be in here. Don’t worry, it’s free." The man had a pipe in his mouth.
"No.” Wade held his hand up to the man. “You keep it. I won’t be needing it. We came to return these books.” He dumped the bag on the counter and turned to see Sophie, but she had vanished. “I’d like to leave now," Wade said. The librarian’s black cat ran across the desk with Wade’s library card in its mouth. It jumped at Wade and slipped into his hand.
The librarian looked him in the eye and said, “You’re dead, Wade. You’re one of us now. We’re all ghosts. Sometimes being curious can have unwanted consequences.” The librarian broke into a full-teeth smile, and Wade saw blackened, tobacco-stained, yellow-spotted teeth. And he heard an unsettling laugh escape his mouth.
Wade stopped to admire himself in the mirror and adjusted his bowtie.
Wade greeted the newcomer in the foyer. A gust of wind ushered her in. She looked around and said to Wade, “What a beautiful house.”
“Yes, Diane, it is.”
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