The Number Four

The ornate wooden pendulum moved slowly from side to side, While its brass hands pointed at four. Four? This worn-out clock looks like if it had not been calibrated in decades. So it is not surprising that it indicates the wrong time. He breathed a sigh of relief as he turned around to get out of the room and back to his friends with good news. He thought that the scary sound was just an unintended prank from an old clock.

The presence of a shiny longitudinal mirror beside the clock caught his gaze, so he approached it to stand in front of it and contemplated his reflection in it. He ran his fingers through his long, dark hair to remove the strands that had collapsed onto his forehead, blocking one of his brown eyes. He was wearing a white shirt, topped with a black coat with a soft, fur-lined collar and dark jeans. A necklace resembled a black rose hangs and a third silver-colored necklace with a small rectangular medallion with his name. Perhaps his impulsive personality did not suggest that to those who do not know him, but in fact, he cares very much about his appearance and considers not dressing up (within the limits of reason) a heinous crime. He quickly put his clothes in order and went outside.

On his way back, it occurred to him that the path was long, This area was almost isolated from the rest of the house. He took his cell phone from his pants pocket and chose a melody to huddle with, feeling anxious dissipating from his depths whenever he approached the entrance hall.

"Guess what? It was just that -"

He did not complete his words as there was no one but him in the spacious hall. Ethan felt the tension float inside again. Where are they? Were they so scared that they left the house and left? He advanced through the main door and grabbed the round handle to open it, contemplating what jokes he would make to his cowardly friends when he went out to meet them.

But the door did not want to move.

It was fixed in place like a stack of rocks, although it was not locked when they came. What is the meaning of this? Maybe Henry and Janet thought it was fun for them to get out and close the door on him from the outside. O dirty! He stepped back and kicked the door even though he knew it wouldn't help.

Or maybe ... maybe they were inside, maybe they were hiding in one of the rooms in the left corridor waiting for him to come. This possibility seemed closer to reality as he did not think they had enough temper to prank him at a time like this.

Wait ... why doesn't he call one of them? As soon as the idea came to his mind, he quickly raised his mobile and navigated his lists until he found the number *Henry, he made the call, but all that happened was the line was cut off before the start of the call, announcing that there was no coverage in this place. He sighed in sorrow and decided to swallow his tension and set off into the left pathway to catch a look into the rooms there.

"The most degree of courage is to admit that you are afraid."

Nobody claimed that Ethan was the kind of cowardly fearless one.

On the contrary, he was of the type that had no problem facing what the rest of the people could not bear, which earned him the reputation of being unnatural, with the support of Janet that always described him as a strange being.

But in reality, at these very moments, he was afraid. There is no particular reason for him to feel this, but it is only an urgent feeling deep in him, and he has learned to listen to unintelligible feelings as they are mostly fair.

The left corridor was somewhat similar to the right one, except that the lighting was slightly better over here. The carved wooden doors faced each other on either side of the corridor that diverged at right angles to another heading north.

He tried to open the first door cautiously, but it was tightly closed, and so was the door facing it. The matter did not differ with the other ones in the corridor that made him even tenser, as his friends could not be hiding in closed rooms. He suddenly remembered that he saw a large marble staircase in the back of the main foyer. Maybe they were on the second floor? He told himself to head up if his attempts to open the doors were unsuccessful.

As soon as he turned right to go to the opposite corridor, he found that thing before his eyes.

His description of "thing" might have been a bit vague, but it was something mysterious and impossible to see in the blackness. that perched at the end of the corridor like a curtain woven from the darkness. But without a doubt... something was moving slowly over there. Perhaps it was the shock that made Ethan stick in his place, or it was a voice buried inside him telling him not to make any move that would draw his attention.

The only sound was the sound of that strange thing standing in front of the door at the end of the corridor as it slowly opened the wooden door, making a loud buzzing, shattering nerves. Ethan stood rigidly in his place even after the thing (or the person?) rolled in and closed the door behind him, and he remained like this for two minutes or more than two. He was madly talking to himself.

"What just happened ?! I got crazy, no doubt that Henry were right, I should sleep more. Where are they? Where is the fool Henry? Do I follow this thing inward?"

He got hold of himself and moved forward to the bathroom. There was only one door, which was the door at the end of the corridor. He approached it, feeling a cold shiver running in his limbs, and extended his hand towards the brass knob to slow it.

The door locked fast.

It is impossible.. everything happened in front of him. There was something or a mysterious person who opened the door and entered without any problems.

Did this happen??