Davenmoor Manor

Davenmoor Manor stood tall atop its darkened hill. The wrought-iron gate creaked from phenomenon unknown while shadows danced along corroded walls and empty window frames. The manor had once been an object of everyone’s envy with its marbled columns and ivied walls; now, it stood desolate in the dark. I had come to find out the true reason it was deserted, and to see if all the rumors whispered through dimly lit aisles of occult bookstores were true. Armed with a camera, extra film, my journal, and my pen, I walked through the overgrown and dying ground. Trees laid bare and fallen while what little of the once lush garden remained was now a tangle of dead weeds and decaying flowers and bushes. The rotting door was stuck due to something I couldn’t place, and my shoulder almost broke trying to get it open.

The smell hit me first and was something I couldn’t describe, but I was able to pinpoint where it came from: the rotting bodies in the crumbling walls. I took a photograph of the skeletons and half-decayed bodies, hoping the film would capture the manor’s ghostly secrets. I continued on through the foyer and entered what used to be a sitting room. The disintegrating and destroyed furniture lined the walls and floor. Ruined and ripped paintings clung to the wall; what looked like skulls of children peeked through the decomposing wood. I took a photograph of this room, and stayed a while longer, hoping that maybe something arcane would show itself.

I continued exploring the manor and taking photographs of each destroyed, deserted and decaying room on the ground and upper floors. Each hid its own dark atrocities in the dilapidated walls. All that was left to explore was the servant quarters in the basement. The stairs were narrow and steep as they descended into the inky darkness below. There was no railing, so I had to brace the revolting, slimy wall; slime bled out of cracks in the concrete. Other times globs of the mucus-like slime squished between my fingers. I started to get an icy chill the deeper I went. I wasn’t sure if it was because the cement walls no longer held heat or if it was something more.

It was dark, eerie, and smelled terrible; worst of all, I couldn’t see a thing. The stench of the room was that of dried blood and rotting meat, something I had wished to never smell in my lifetime. I was starting to regret not grabbing a light as the infinite blackness inched over me, like bugs crawling under my skin. As I waited for my eyes to somewhat adjust to the lower light, I felt a tacky, freezing, clawed hand grab my arm and try to pull me further into the unnatural darkness. I shrieked, and someone—or something—giggled like a child at my expense. I took a photograph with the flash on, just so I might glimpse the room and see what had grabbed me. What I saw sent me running back up the narrow, steep, and now slick basement stairs and off the dead and dying grounds of the manor for good. Due to my hysterical state and this feeling of looming, sticking horror, I ran most of the way back to town, leaving my car behind. Eventually, the police picked me up, suspecting from my terror induced daze that I was intoxicated. I couldn’t form a sentence, the image of the dark otherworldly horror still engraved in my brain. Once the police officer learned I was in Davenmoor Manor, he charged me with trespassing and took my camera and film away from me. I assumed he was going to burn the rolls of film, but I stayed at the station much longer than I expected.

Before I knew it, men in white hauled me to this godforsaken place calling me crazy. The doctors told me that my film was developed, and the picture of the basement was driving others mad. All my photographs were burned before I had the chance to look at them; all my arduous work gone to waste. I was stuck in this place until I died, or until I couldn’t remember that thing in the basement. But I could never forget. Every time I closed my eyes I saw it, glaring at me with those perverse yellow eyes. It haunted me. I couldn’t sleep anymore. I could only pray that my time on this earth was close to over and that the image would leave my brain forever.