[Just a quick note: I changed the name of the town to Ashton Valley. Just thought I'd clear up any confusion before it came up. Find chapter one here.]
CHAPTER TWO
Quietus
The group walked around town, on the lookout for something to do. Ashton Valley was a town of less than three thousand people, but if one looked hard enough, there was always something to do. On this particular day, everyone had to be on constant watch. Most of the sporting events were out of town, and everyone who was not in a sport was off on vacation or at camp. Looking around Ashton Valley, one would think everyone had packed up and moved. Hardly anyone was out riding bikes, taking a walk, or driving around town. It looked abandoned, and it was this feeling of being alone that caused Brian to speak up.
“What the hell is going on?” he asked. “There’s nothing to do here. I could’ve stayed inside and watched TV or something.”
“Yeah,” said David. “I could be watching more cartoons.”
Isaiah groaned and said, “Well it’s your own damn fault you aren’t watching cartoons. You decided to tag along, and it’s your choice to be wandering around with us, so why don’t you just choose to go back home and quit bugging me?”
Lisa tried to calm Isaiah down, but she soon realized it wouldn’t do any good. The group walked in silence until Trina spoke.
“Where haven’t we been in a while, or ever?” she asked. “It seems like we always walk to the west side of town. We never go to the east side. We should probably go to the east side.”
“There’s nothing on the east side,” said Brian. “The west side is the business district, and the east side is all residential. Unless you want to go back home, there’s no reason to go to the east side.”
“Well, we should try it,” said Trina. “Who knows? There could be something there that would keep us busy.”
“We might as well,” said Ted. “I mean, we aren’t really doing anything anyway. There could be something to do, and if there isn’t, it’s not like we lost any precious time.”
Isaiah resisted, and eventually agreed. Everyone turned around and started walking to the east side of town.
The east side of Ashton Valley was nothing extraordinary to look at. There were rows upon rows upon rows of houses, each one similar to the last, but still having that one quirk to have its own sense of identity. Isaiah, David, Brian, Ted, Lisa, and Trina all made their way down the streets, not finding anything besides houses and the occasional tree to look at. The houses on the east side were deserted, with children out running around, and their parents at work or watching their kids at their games. The whole trip, David was asking questions typical of a little brother who is out to bother his older siblings.
“Why do you walk so funny, Isaiah?”
“Shut up, David.”
“How come you always wear your baseball cap off to the side? The sun is right in front of you.”
“I said shut up, David.”
“How come you always look at Lisa funny?”
Lisa and Isaiah blushed, and Isaiah turned around and said, “If you don’t quit asking stupid questions, I swear to God I am going to kill you!” He turned back around, leaving David wondering if the threat was actually going to be followed through. Brian, Ted, and Trina smirked, wanting to howl with laughter, but not wanting to suffer the same future fate of David. In a short while, with David’s questions exhausted, they reached the edge of town.
“Well,” said Isaiah, “here we are. We walked all the way from one side of town to the other, without finding anything to do. Are you happy, Trina, now that you’ve wasted an hour of our time with David’s stupid questions?”
Trina was about to say something, but David interrupted them: “Hey, what’s that?”
Off in the distance, they noticed what appeared to be a mansion sitting by itself, but it was too far away to be anything definite. David, out of intense curiosity, ran out to see for sure what it was. The rest of the group, not wanting David to get hurt or lost, chased after him. They ran about two miles when, in pain and out of breath, they reached the front gate of the building.
The tall iron gate surrounded the grounds of the building. Across the top of the gate, in an arch, read the word QUIETUS. Below it, read the phrase “Ut Somnium Est Morior”.
“’Ut Somnium Est Morior’,” read Ted. “What do you suppose that means?”
“I don’t know,” said David. “But I’m going to check out the building.” David pushed open the gates and ran up to the front door. The rest of the group followed suit.
The building of Quietus was an old and run down. The shingles on the roof were old and rotted, and a few fell to the ground as the group looked at it. The oak doors were rusting off of their hinges, the shutters on the windows rotted or falling off. The lawn was unkempt, the grass about knee height, leaves from previous autumns still scattered all around. Old, knotty trees were scattered around the front lawn, and two rows of dead bushes lined the walkway up to the front door. By just looking at the building, the group could feel a sense of despair and loneliness. Nevertheless, David was excited to enter the building. As he jumped onto the front porch, Isaiah grabbed him and carried him back to the gate.
“What are you doing?” shouted David. “I want to go in!”
“Did you even look at the building?” asked Isaiah. “It’s rotten, and if you go in, it might collapse on top of you, and you’ll die. You don’t want to die before you even get into high school.”
“Oh, whatever! If it hasn’t fallen down by now, it never will. Let’s just go in and explore a little bit. We’ll stay here for two hours, and then we’ll leave.”
“No, we’re going home.”
“You’re the one who’s complaining about how there’s nothing to do, Isaiah!” said Trina. “Here’s something we can do that we can honestly say we’ve never done. How often have we really explored an abandoned house?” Trina pulled David out of Isaiah’s arms. “Come on,” she said. “If these losers don’t want to live on the edge, then we’ll do it for them.”
The two of them walked up the walkway, onto the front porch, opened the door, and disappeared inside. After a moment of hesitation, Isaiah and Lisa followed them in, with Brian close behind. Ted, astonished that everyone would just walk right in without considering the dangers, ran in behind them. The door, which was left open, slowly began to close on its own.
Inside, Isaiah, David, Trina, Lisa, Brian, and Ted looked around. The entrance to the building was empty, save for a plaque that was erected in the middle of the floor. The group walked up to it to see what it said. The plaque read:
To die, to sleep; to sleep, perchance to dream:
Ay, there's the rub:
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil
Must give us pause!
-- Hamlet, III, ii
The group stood in silence, reading and re-reading the quote. Lisa suddenly spoke up, saying, “Guys, I’m not liking this building anymore. Let’s leave.”
“I agree,” said Brian, “but we’ve run into a problem. The door is locked.”
Everyone rushed to the door, where Brian was tugging and pulling as hard as he could. The door wouldn’t budge, even when Isaiah threw all of his weight into it. Ted looked around the handle of the door for a locking mechanism, but found none. Ted confirmed that they were locked in the house, and immediately Isaiah began to yell at David.
“You idiot, look what you’ve done! You’ve gotten us trapped in this God-forsaken house. We’ll probably die here, because you decided to be stupid and run into a house that’s bound to collapse before we’re able to get help! If you had just stayed home, we wouldn’t be stuck here. Why couldn’t you just stay home and watch your stupid cartoons instead of screwing everything up like this!”
“I don’t think you should be so rough on the boy.”
The new voice seemed to come from the walls of the house. Everyone looked around to see who was talking, when Lisa suddenly screamed and pointed.
Out of the darkness came a tall, dark figure wearing a ratty old suit. The suit hung off of his thin frame, and the top hat he was wearing seemed to slide down his forehead to his nose. The man stood about seven feet tall, and was graceful in his speech and his movements. He glided over to the group, and took off his hat.
“I don’t think you should be so rough on the boy,” repeated the man. “It’s not his fault that the rest of you followed him into the house.”
“Who are you?” asked Ted.
“Why, I’m the Housekeeper,” answered the man, “and I wish to welcome you into Quietus. You will certainly enjoy your stay here.”
“What do you mean ‘stay’?” said Brian. “We just wanted to explore, and now that we are all freaked out by everything, we would like to leave.”
“Unfortunately, I cannot allow that,” said the Housekeeper. “You see, by entering Quietus, you have accepted the challenge.”
“What challenge?” asked Trina.
“That is for you to find out. Go ahead, explore the house and discover its secrets. However, in order to leave the house, you must defeat it.”
“What do you mean, ‘defeat it’?” asked Isaiah. “Do you even know what you’re talking about?”
“I do indeed. Now it’s up to you to find out.”
With that, the Housekeeper slinked back into the shadows. Isaiah ran after him, but ran into the wall; the Housekeeper had vanished. Isaiah screamed and cursed the building.
“Enough!” shouted Ted. “Would you just settle down? We can handle this. We just need to explore the house, and pay attention to anything weird we see. It isn’t that hard. That Hamlet quote was put there to scare us, and obviously it’s working. But if you don’t let it scare you, it won’t. By staying strong and staying together, we can beat this thing. Now, come on, let’s go.”
Ted walked further into the house, with David close behind. Isaiah, Lisa, Trina, and Brian stayed behind, until something slammed to the ground behind them. Without turning around to investigate, they screamed and ran further into the building.
The rest of the house was just as dirty and musty as the entryway. The grimy, opaque windows let in enough light for the group to make their way around the house, but not quite enough for them to see everything. The ambiance given from the house was enough to make Lisa more paranoid that she already was. Every little sound or sudden movement would make her shriek in terror, which quickly got old with the rest of the group. Rats were prone to scurry across the floor at a moment's notice, so Isaiah and Ted nominated themselves as "rat watchers". Trina and Brian were designated "cobweb swipers", while David was the "every once in a while glance back man", and Lisa was the designated "screamer". Their teamwork was impeccable: all rats were spotted, all cobwebs swept, all backwards glances occurred intermittently, and everything was screamed at.
The group made their way through the lobby, and toward a doorway with thick wooden doors. The sign on the door read: THE ONLY WAY TO EXIT IS TO ENTER
Isaiah scoffed at the sign. "What kind of bullshit is this?" he said. "'The only way to exit is to enter'? It doesn't make any sense."
"Well," said Ted, "we can't get out through the front entry way, so we might as well go in. Maybe the only way to 'defeat' the house is to follow all of its directions. If it means that we'll have to follow directions that make no sense, so be it."
Ted opened the doors and entered, followed closely by Brian, Lisa, Trina, David, and, after a moment of reflection on how ridiculous this venture is, Isaiah. The thick wooden doors creaked slowly shut. Isaiah thought he heard them lock, but he shrugged it off as one of the strange noises of a settling house.
