This was always the case with David: he has always been a skeptic. Superstitious stories are for kids and weak-minded people since they are just stories that are supposed to scare children. However, when he got a phone call pleading for help from an old friend Sarah who had been missing for one year, his disbelief was somewhat shaken. The call was short, monotonous and raised in timbre with the signs of fear. All the time, she was trying to tell the man on the phone, “David, help me. The Cedar House. Hurry.”
The Cedar House was an old mansion far from any city center, which had long been abandoned and had a sinister reputation connected with several mysterious deaths. Such incidents as people being disappeared and the places being haunted might have made people avoid the place but David could not turn down Sarah’s appeal. He panicked, switched on the flashlight and ventured into the night.
And the great windows of the mansion were empty and blind. The gate opened and out came David who headed towards the door that was up a flight of stairs from the ground. He rose and went to the window and there he saw Sarah standing in one of the windows on the upper floor looking terribly frightened. She made a gesture to mouth the word ‘help’ but she could not make any sound.
David opened the heavy door with a heart beating violently. The inside of the house was dim, and it was evident that dust and the smell of rot had taken over. He called her name out loud and his voice was heard but there was no response from Sarah. He ascended the wide, magnificent stairway; the boards creaked as he placed his feet on them. At the end of the hall, which was at the top of the stairs, the hall extended into the dark, and all of the doors were shut.
“David,” a voice whispered. He swung around to look for her and saw Sarah at the other end of the hall, the woman who had been shouting his name. She has not changed at all; she was still the woman he loved but something was off – her gait was unnatural and stiff. She then got up, walked through the door and was gone.
David followed her, his flashlight was dimming with every momentary pause. The room was virtually devoid of people; the only thing that occupied one of the walls was a big mirror. And in the reflection he saw Sarah standing behind him, although the room was otherwise devoid of occupants. “David, help me,” she said again; her words were somber and, it seemed, fading away.
He jerked around to look at her, but she was no longer there. The mirror was as if covered with water waves, and the environment in which he found himself also shifted. He was no longer in the gloomy old dark house, but in a brightly lit modern luxurious version of the Cedar House with sofas and chairs and beautiful paintings on the walls. There was cheerful laughter and music and he saw people dressed in what he perceived as period costumes.
Perplexed, David had to come to the understanding he is observing events from the past. Among the guests, he noticed a woman that he knew – Sarah – who appeared lost and scared. She was dressed in fashionable clothing, unlike the other people who were dressed in historical costumes. A man in a black suit appeared before her, his eyes had turned evil looking.
David attempted to stretch out to her, but he moved like a drowning man, heavy and slow. He could do nothing but watch as the man pulled Sarah to him and took her behind the door concealed behind the mirror. David had a brief moment, and then he was back in the decrepit house, his sight now gone.
He was determined to save her now, and after examining the mirror a little more he discovered a hidden latch. With that, the mirror swung open to reveal a small, winding staircase, going down and down into the darkness. He descended, the stairs progressively colder and more wicked than the previous one.
Finally, he landed at the lowest level, a small and poorly lit room. The walls were written with a lot of markings that I couldn’t understand and in the center of the room there was a large well made of stone. Sarah was there, her ethereal self locked up and chained to the wall, her eyes begging to be set free. The man in the black suit stood by the well, his face was wicked.
“You came too late,” the man whispered. “She belongs to Cedar House now.”
David moved forward and tried to reach out to him, but he was shoved backward by an unseen force. The man laughed, his voice cold and empty like the inside of a cavern. “You cannot save her,” the girl was told, “She is the house, she is its ill omen.”
Unwilling to be defeated, David continued to look for something that could assist him. He went to a shelf and picked up a dusty, leather-bound tome of spell and rituals. In vain, he tried to read aloud, but the words seemed so unfamiliar to him that they felt like they were not his own.
The man screamed — the scream of a man who is enraged and terrified. Now the marks on the walls started to become luminous and the chains which tied her became undone. His form became solid, growing more human with every second that elapsed since he had taken that fateful bite. The man in the black suit screamed and attacked David only to be stopped short by the glowing symbols.
Screaming one final time, the man expelled himself from existence in a loud, billowing cloud of fog and vanished into the well. Everyone stepped back and shut up; Sarah was given a chance to come to the ground and she was free.
Fortunately, David rushed to her and pulled her up off the floor. ‘Thank you,’ she said quietly, and wiped the tears that were flowing down her cheeks.
The rising of the stairs was accompanied by the animation of the mansion around them, which even began to reverse its rot. When the characters got to the front door, Cedar House no longer resembled the haunted house of their childhood nightmares but a restored home, established with no history of the unspeakable horrors that went on inside.
Side by side, they stepped out into the new day; the first rays of light were just streaking the eastern sky. Cedar House can be seen standing behind them with its whispers finally stilled. David understood that this trial had marked a new chapter in their lives and linked them in a manner they could not foresee. The evil of the Cedar House had been defeated but their memories were still vivid, the ghost of the shameful past the residents of the Cedar still had to confront every day – the living and the dead.
