The night was still and silent, the only sound the soft rustle of the wind outside as it whispered through the trees. Riley lay in his bed in the rose room, the moonlight filtering in through the curtains casting a pale glow across the room. He had just drifted off into a restless slumber when he was abruptly woken by a strange sound, like the haunting wails of a woman crying. His heart pounding wildly in his chest, Riley say up, his senses on high alert as he strained to listen.
The sound seemed to be coming from the hall just outside his door, echoing faintly through the empty corridors of the mansion. Glancing at the clock on the nightstand, he saw that it was three in the morning, the witching hour, when the veil between the living and the dead was said to be the thinnest. Despite his growing unease, Riley shook off his fear, reminding himself that he didn't believe in ghosts. He took a deep breath, trying to steady his nerves, and after a brief hesitation, he swung his legs over the side of the bed, his bare feet sinking into the plush carpet as he stood up.
The mournful wails persisted, growing fainter as they moved through the silent hall. At first, he dismissed it as a deception of his imagination, a figment of his tiered mind playing tricks on him in the dead of night. It made perfect sense. This was his first night, alone, and in an unfamiliar house. That on top of the ghost stories Noah had told him the day before, it was no wonder he was hearing things now.
He'd almost convinced himself that he'd made the whole thing up, then he heard it again. The pitiful lament of heartache. He knew then that he couldn't continue to ignore it. Whoever, or whatever, was out there, was real. Swallowing his apprehension, Riley grabbed his phone off the nightstand and slipped it into his pocket then he quietly padded across the room to the door. He hesitated only a moment, his heart pounding in his chest, and then, taking a deep breath, he ventured out into the hallway.
The hall was shrouded in darkness, the only light coming from the dim glow of the moon streaming in through the windows. Riley listened, following the woman's cries as they seemed to echo from somewhere in the distance. With each step, the sound grew louder, more desperate, sending chills down Riley's spine. How had no one else heard her? Riley wondered. Or, perhaps they had and were smart enough to ignore it. Riley sighed. He couldn't just ignore it. He was too invested now.
Following the mournful cries that seemed to echo all around him, he continued down the empty corridor. Rounding the corner, he froze, the hairs on the back of his neck and arms standing on end as his eyes caught sight of something that made his blood run cold--a faint trail of fabric, like the hem of a long gown disappearing around the corner and up the stairs leading to the third floor. His mind raced with too many possibilities, his rationality warring with his fear as he contemplated just what could be causing the eerie phenomenon. His mind immediately recalled a passage he'd read in "A Christmas Carol." Was what he was experiencing now just undigested food? One thing was certain, what he saw moving so effortless down that hallway was not a blot of gravy.
With a mixture of trepidation and curiosity, Riley pressed on. The floor boards creaked softly beneath his weight adding to the chilling atmosphere. The air grew colder with each step, causing Riley to shiver uncontrollably as he approached the foot of the stairs leading up to the forbidden third floor. Despite every instinct screaming at him to turn back, Riley continued on, his curiosity overpowering common sense as he carefully ascended the stairs. The old wood groaned beneath his feet and Riley flinched, holding his breath. He counted, one...two...three...convinced that his presence had gone undetected, he resumed his ascent, climbing each step with slow and deliberate movements, trying his best not to make a sound.
As he reached the top of the stairs, Riley's breath hitched at the sight that greeted him--a spectral figure, dressed in a flowing gown of white, gliding mournfully down the hallway, her long hair trailing behind her like wisps of smoke. She clutched something to her chest though what it was, Riley couldn't tell. Whatever it was seemed important by the way she cradled it, pressed against her bosom as though guarding it from some unseen threat.
She continued her decent down the long and darkened hall. Her sobs echoed off the walls and then stopped abruptly as she disappeared through a door at the end of the of the hall. Riley stopped where he was, not totally sure if he were hallucinating or not. "This has to be a dream." He whispered into the darkness. "Just a very bizarre dream."
That's all it was, a dream. He'd had super realistic dreams in the past and those were far more terrifying than this one. For the past two months he's had a reoccurring dream that he entered a bathroom in one the rooms he was cleaning and found a bloated corpse floating face down in the tub. In the dream he always runs from the room screaming and then wakes up, covered in sweat. He never understood what prompted that dream but since having it, he'd been fearful of cleaning the motel bathrooms.
Of course he never did find a corpse in any of the rooms that he cleaned and he was always relieved afterward. He told himself time and time again that he was being silly. It had just been a dream, or more like a nightmare, but that never stopped him from feeling that quick moment a pure horror a split second before entering the bathroom and glancing at the tub.
He kept telling himself that what he was seeing now was also a dream but deep down he knew that it wasn't. What he had seen was real though his skeptical mind refused to believe it. It defied all logic but his heart told him something entirely different. The third floor of Reaney Hall really was haunted, and Riley had just met it's resident ghost.
Riley thought about turning around and going back the way he had come. Back to the second floor and back to his own room. He had no business being on the third floor in the first place and he certainly had no business roaming the halls of Noah's mansion, alone, in the middle of the night. The smart thing to do, the logical thing, would be to leave. He knew that. He also knew that he wasn't one to just walk away from a good mystery. He wanted to know who that ghostly woman was, why she hadn't moved on, and why she was crying.
Riley tried to come up with answers to his questions himself. Maybe she was still mourning her own death. Passing away so young must have been extremely traumatic for her. That didn't seem quite right to Riley though. There was something else that was holding her there and not allowing her to let go. Riley wasn't sure how he knew it but he did. He was sure of it. The woman wasn't trapped in the house because she refused to let go of her life, she was trapped there because of something or someone else. Riley's heart went out to her. He wanted to help her if he could but the only way he could help her was by finding out what it was that she wanted and, he wasn't going to discover that while standing in the hall, quivering in fear.
Summoning his courage, Riley walked down the hall. He slowed his pace as he approached the door. "You can do this." He whispered, giving himself a pep talk. "It's just a room. What harm ever came from just...entering a room?" Carefully, he turned the door knob and to his relief found that it was unlocked. Pushing the door open revealed a nursery, it's once bright walls now covered in cobwebs and dust. Riley pulled out his phone and slowly scanned the room with the light from it. The room seemed frozen in time, the air heavy with the weight of years gone by. The scent of decay hung in the air, chocking every bit of life out of the ancient chamber.
Riley's gaze swept over the room, his eyes lingering on the faded toys and furniture that lay in ruins, discarded and forgotten. As Riley stepped further into the room, a feeling of unease washed over him and with it, a sense of dread that seemed to seep into the very fiber of his bones. This nursery, it was meant to be a place of new beginnings. A place where happy memories were made. It should have invoked a sense of joy and love but it did not. Standing there now, looking at the remnants of another time, all Riley felt was the icy chill of death.
Riley wrapped his arms around himself in an attempt to stave off the cold. As he exhaled, a cloud of breath billowed out from his mouth, swirling and then dispersing into the surrounding air. 'This isn't right.' Riley thought to himself. 'I shouldn't be here.' Looking around, his mind began to race with questions and uncertainties. Whose child was this room meant for, why was it hidden away on the third floor, and what happened to that child? Had it died perhaps? Was that why the ghostly woman in white was crying? Was she mourning the loss of a child? Riley's heart sank. He could thinking of nothing worse than losing your own child. It was something that no parent should have to suffer.
Suddenly, being in that room felt like a violation, an intrusion into someones sanctuary. His very presence was disrupting the ghostly woman's time of grieving, a time when she would most certainly want to be alone. Just as the thought had entered Riley's mind, a powerful gust of wind swept through the room, sending dust swirling through the air and nearly knocking Riley off his feet.
