The Haunted Mansion

Gallery of the Dead

My assumption about the gallery was correct; it did seem to have a lighter and happier feeling to it. It wasn't as dark and macabre as the foyer. With the faux Dorian Gray and the dark paneling, I felt as if I was the heroine in a gothic novel. In a way, I was. But instead of a heroine in a castle, I was a foolish mortal in a haunted mansion.

Since I was trapped in the gallery, I deemed it a great opportunity to look and gaze upon the well-detailed paintings.

There were four paintings in total, each containing a different and unique subject matter. The golden frames around each painting proved wealth and the smug look on the subjects' faces proved the knowledge of said wealth. The first painting was of a bearded gentleman holding a document. The second painting was of a pretty young lady holding a parasol. The third painting was of an old woman holding a rose. And the last painting was of a man in a bowler hat. The paintings were rather lovely and proved to be a nice escape from my current drab surroundings. I hope nothing sinister would happen.

The wallpaper in the room was pink, green, and cream striped. And a wood many shades lighter than the one in the foyer made up the wainscoting. The last detail of the room caused goosebumps to form on my arms and the few wisps of hair on the back of my neck to rise like the living dead. There were no windows. And the door I just stepped through was gone. With that observation, my ghost host deemed it worthy to start talking again. "Your tour begins here in this gallery, where you see paintings of some of our guests as they appeared in their corruptible, mortal state." After my ghost host stopped addressing me in a taunting manner, the room began to move. Not as if an earthquake was happening, but like an elevator. The room was moving down. I ran to the nearest wall and leaned my shaking body against it. My forehead was perspiring and my hands were coated in a sweaty sheen. I heard a faint whisper behind my ear.

"Please drag your body away from the wall and into the dead center of the room."

It wasn't my ghost host.

The strange whisper still tickled my ear as I walked back to the center of the room. My ghost host began speaking again. "Your cadaverous pallor betrays an aura of foreboding, almost as though you sense a disquieting metamorphosis. Is this haunted room actually stretching? Or is it just your imagination— hmm?"

The room was stretching, but not breaking. It was growing in an odd sense. It was like a hidden addition to the room was being revealed. And from what I was experiencing and seeing with my eyes, I swore I was being betrayed by sanity. The innocent paintings from before turned into my darkest nightmare. The bearded gentleman holding a document is revealed to be wearing only his undergarments from the waist down and standing atop a lit keg of dynamite. The pretty young lady holding a parasol is revealed to be balancing on a fraying tightrope above the gaping jaws of an alligator. The old woman holding a rose is revealed to be sitting atop a tall gravestone, at the bottom of which is a stone bust of her husband George with a hatchet embedded in his head. And the man in the bowler hat is revealed to be sitting on the shoulders of another man, who sits on the shoulders of a third man who is waist-deep quicksand.

Instead of the usual three fates seen in myths and stories across time, there are four bestowed upon me. Looking down at me and, if paintings could come to life and laugh, they would be pointing their pompous fingers at my misery. My fate, according to those nightmarish paintings, is to meet an ultimate end. My fate is to join this mansion. To be another chapter in its long ghost story. My ghost host began speaking again. "And consider this dismaying observation: this chamber has no windows and no doors . . . which offers this chilling challenge: to find a way out!" My ghost host has the audacity to laugh, then he stops. And in a newfound serious tone, he says: "Of course, there's always my way."

All the lights in the room extinguish with one sweep of a ghostly hand and a sudden thunderclap. I look up and the ceiling has completely vanished. In its place, a cupola is revealed. Lightning flashes and I see a skeletal corpse in a noose hanging from the rafters. I'm seeing a body. A dead one. Hanging by a noose in a place that either doesn't exist or used to. I hear a dreadful scream and something that sounds like bones shattering and then darkness falls once again.

The light comes back, surprisingly not lost from its forced journey away. The ghost host speaks again in an optimistic tone. "Oh, I didn't mean to frighten you prematurely. The real chills came later" — a chill sweeps the air, dragging a bit of my sanity away with it— "Now, as they say: 'look alive,' and we'll continue our little tour."