Chapter 1
I pressed an ear against the wall, holding my breath as I listened. Nothing. Closing my eyes, I listened harder, mentally picturing the little fibers in my ear standing to attention. There it was, just on the cusp of hearing. Slither, slither, slither. Not close, but certainly too close for comfort. I pushed away from the wall and burrowed deeper into my hiding place, breathing as quietly as possible.
A distant scream reached my ears. I didn’t even need to try to hear that one. Guess that somebody wasn’t as good at hide-and-seek as little old me. My nose started to fill up with the cloying scent of mothballs, and I began to regret my decision to hide in a closet. Still, better that than being eaten I suppose.
I remained still for at least five minutes, though it seemed more like hours. Then I pressed my ear to the wall again. No slithering sounds. Sighing with relief, I drew away from the wall, stood, silently twisted the closet knob, and crept out. I appeared to be alone.
I made my way over to the window that used to overlook the grounds outside. The outside pane was still covered with thorned vines, though they seemed to have grown a little longer since I’d been inside the closet. I thought briefly about trying to locate something to smash out the glass, but then I’d still need something to get through the vines.
Letting out a silent growl of frustration, I turned from the window and started pacing the room. Fourteen other dinner guests were out there, alone and frightened, probably doing the exact same thing I was doing. Hiding. Hiding from Mr. Slither.
Almost as if I feared that merely thinking his name would summon him, I stopped and listened. No more slithering, no more screams. He had moved on to somewhere else. I started pacing again. At some point, without quite realizing it, I began to voice my thoughts aloud, aiming them towards a medium-sized stuffed teddy bear that sat on a nightstand.
“Technically, I could probably escape the manor house safely. So what if this window is blocked off by mysterious vines, which I’m sure has nothing at all to do with what happened during dinner. Surely not all the windows are blocked. And it would take an awful lot of... vinery? is that a word? to block off the front doors. Surely Mr. Slither can’t be that strong... What do you think, Mr. Teddy?”
The Teddy Bear stroked its chin thoughtfully with a hand. I knew in my heart that it was only in my mind. The Teddy wasn’t sentient. I was just seeing things. Again. But I was an awfully scared little twenty-year-old girl right now, and if my hallucinations or whatever exactly they were helped give me comfort, then they were more than welcome.
“What about the other dinner guests?” Teddy asked of me. I knew once more that he was not actually speaking, twas just my schizophrenic little mind doing its thing, but it certainly seemed real. Unless it actually was, but that was a thought too creepy to contemplate. I dropped that thought from my mind and answered the esteemed Mr. Teddy.
“Took Manor is huge, with at least three floors that I’ve noticed. Searching it for fourteen terrified people is not going to be easy, Teddy...”
He shook his head.
“You have the wrong attitude, Neems. Maybe it won’t be easy, but what else are you going to do? They’re all in the same boat as you. Perhaps your only chance of either escaping, or somehow killing Mr. Slither, lies in teaming up with every other person you can find.”
I started pacing again. The guy had a point.
“Look at it this way,” he added. “While everyone is busy hiding, Mr. Slither is out hunting. You can either start moving, or wait for him to find you and do... whatever it is he did to that guy at dinner.”
My mind now decided, I crept over to the door and pressed my ear against it, listening for the tell-tale slither of Mr. S. before I opened it. My mind was invaded by the horrible image of someone shoving a nail through the door and right into my ear. I drew back, at the same time vowing to stop watching horror movies late at night, and just opened the door. The hallway outside was clear.
I took a step outside, then realized I needed a weapon. I looked back at Teddy Bear. He was one of those old-school ones, with hard button eyes, and an equally hard nose. It would have to do. Snatching him up, ignoring his protests, I ran out into the hall with the Bear held high. No monsters leapt out at me.
In horror, I realized I had forgotten my Snoopy Cap. I dashed back into the room for a third time to snatch it up from where it had fallen on the floor when I’d first fled from Mr. Slither, and slapped it snugly on my head. Charlie Brown was one of my favorite shows, and Snoopy was my favorite character. Without my baseball cap, nothing in the world quite seemed right. Looking around to make sure I hadn’t forgotten anything else, I made my way back out into the hallway.
It was maybe thirty feet long, with three doors on each side and a T-junction at the end, splitting off to the left and right. I didn’t know if the doors all led to bedrooms, or if some of them opened up onto further passages that might lead me elsewhere in the mansion. I had unfortunately paid zero attention during our brief tour of the mansion before dinner, my mind too busy thinking about strawberries (a fruit I thoroughly despised).
With a sigh, I tried the first door on my right, cracking it open to peer inside. Another bedroom, seemingly deserted. This one didn’t even have a teddy bear. Still, I had to make sure it truly was empty, so crept inside, taking long, exaggerated strides like I’d seen someone on Scooby Doo make. Because, you know, according to them it was the best way to be stealthy.
I made a quick search of the room, looking under the bed, behind a chair, inside the closet, and for some reason in one of the nightstand drawers, as if someone could actually curl up tight enough to hide in there. The room was empty.
Withdrawing silently, walking like a normal person this time, I closed the door behind me and opened the next one along the hallway. It was a large billiards room, reminding me a little of that old board game, Clue. Except this time the murderer would be Mr. Slither, in the Billiards Room, with Eldritch Powers of Some Unknown Variety. Since that was kind of a mouthful and I didn’t want anyone to have to say that upon my demise, I closed the door behind me and took a step towards the next one. That was when I heard him.
This close, it was like a handful of snakes let loose in a small room, slithering and writhing over one another in their fury. Or perhaps it was more like the infamous head of Medusa, each strand of hair a venomous and living entity. Regardless, it was terrifying, and even worse, I could see a shadow up ahead at the end of the hall, coming from the leftmost branch.
It was still far enough away to be a little blurry, but was in constant motion, moving in ways that no human shadow was supposed to. Eyes growing wide with horror, I grabbed at the handle of the next door and wrenched on it, desperate to get inside and away from Mr. Slither. Naturally, the door was locked.
Nearly crying in my terror, I dashed back towards the billiards room and pried the door open once more, still clutching my Teddy Bear. Slamming the door behind me, realizing too late that I’d just given away where I was, I hoped against hope that he hadn’t yet turned down this part of the hallway. Then he would have six doors that I might have gone through instead of one.
Looking around for a hiding spot, dashing about like a madwoman, I tripped over the outstretched legs of a man wearing a yellow smoking jacket. He’d propped himself against the side of the pool table, and there was a spilled glass of whiskey lying on the ground beside him, along with a fancy-looking wooden pipe. He appeared to be quite unconscious.
