DAY 047

[allthekeys]

|| Day 047: GENERAL The sound of the clocks calling in the day is almost drowned out by the low rumble of thunder as the storm draws to a close. The final chime of the hour is accompanied by a flash of lightning, followed by the sound of a door slamming open in the Attic of the First House. A young blonde girl, Victoria to those who know her, creeps out of the attic as the door creaks shut behind her and locks. She walks cautiously down the stairs, as if anticipating something. The rain continues to pound on the windows for several long moments more before, quite suddenly, it begins to let up. The rain turns to soft patters on the roofs and windowpanes, and the sun creeps out from behind the clouds. Still, it is a gloomy enough day, for all that the weather has cleared up. The smell of mildew and mold still hangs in the air. There is another soft crackle of static from the radios before they all shut off simultaneously. They won’t turn on for the rest of the day, nor will any other electronic device. Throughout all of the houses, agonized cries of children can occasionally be heard. They sound faint, and it’s impossible to place where they are coming from or locate their source. The Rats have calmed again. They congregate in corners of rooms, especially the Chapel and chatter together. They rub their paws together as if conspiring. In the Chapel, some of the bodies from the catacombs have been moved into it, strewn through the pews in a macabre parody of a church service. The bodies have not been handled with care, and are in varying states of decay, with some of them missing pieces that lay on the floor. The censers that hang around the walls have been filled with thick animal-fat and half-rotten old weeds; they emit a guttering, thick, oily smoke that fills the room with a foul stench. A gutted, rotted carcass of some kind of animal, no longer recognizable, is laid on the altar, twitching occasionally with infested insects. One of the bodies is propped up at the altar, leaning against it in a pose vaguely suggesting a sermon, or as much of one as can be managed with an unmoving and fragile corpse. Rats join the bodies in the pews and roam the floor, with one occasionally jumping onto the altar to steal a less-putrid piece of meat. The bushes in the Rose Garden have all been cleared out. Something appears to have ripped them from the ground, leaving behind nothing more than a few stray root fragments caught in the dirt. All of the statues are gone from the Statuary Bedroom. The Doll Bathroom is also uncharacteristically vacant. The porcelain dolls have vanished from their shelves; only the Queen remains. The plastic sheeting in the Sewing Room has been thrown to the floor, creating a mess to traverse. More difficult though, are the mannequins packed at the edges of the room, flooding toward the doorway and making it almost impossible to enter. There are two that remain in the centre of the room; the one kneeling on the floor with his hands defensively in the air and the one with her hands around his throat. In the Tapestry Bedroom, the loom is flecked with spots of fresh blood. All kitchens in the Fourth House have been emptied of food, and the cake in the Cafeteria has turned into a melted puddle of goo. In the Courtyard, the burned figure has disappeared, but there is a charred shape of a body in the grass where he stood. The walls in the Abandoned Nursery are blank, and there's no sign that a mural had ever been started. The water drains from the Leaky Basement slowly, letting the body inside it float to the bottom of the floor. The blonde woman the drainage reveals lies perfectly still on the floor. It is unclear if she is breathing or not. Suddenly, there is a loud bang in the First House, originating from the Dollhouse Room. All five of the dollhouses have slammed shut and refuse to open. And, a second later, the sound is echoed—this time almost deafening, it emanates from all five open houses as the front doors to each close with a bang. No one and nothing can get outside today it seems. Or back in, if they happened to be trapped outside. There is a low growling coming from the basements of each house.