Shades of Grey

William jumped to his feet and gasped. It was a dusty gramophone in one of the corners that had suddenly started to play by itself. He was even more terrified as he noticed that the needle did not lay on the track, but broken beside it. The distorted, cacophonic song rose and sank in pitch, and repeated again after the first verse. A voice was discerned amongst the perturbational tones, and the singer's distorted voice reiterated the verse to William's ears that gave the song a praeternatural tinge that chilled the bones.

"I like the way you smile at me baby,

Give me one more smile,

So baby won't you smile for me."

 

"No wonder they play this sort of insane clamour in the asylums", he thought, and prepared to move on, but stumbled backwards over a well hidden threshold which quickly showed him the direction to a dark hallway. The instant way in which the gramophone silenced as he retreated form the place impelled him to keep his distance. Holding the lantern in a firm grip, he slowly began to unveil what menacing surprises the house might hold for him.

To his right were a shortcut past a flight of stairs and back to the main hall. The molded corridor in front of William lead him to another room. The colourless, decayed door was open halfway, and had almost broken free from it's rusted hinges. Behind there was a dark, damp room, which was utterly tainted and held an immense smell of sickly confinement. William ignored the obscene ambience of the room and entered. The lantern dissipated the abysmal darkness and illuminated a threadbare office of some kind.

There were numerous papers scattered all over the place, documenting notes, writings and photographs faded beyond recognition. William paid them no attention at all, even though he was an investigator; it was already fixed on a leatherbound notebook or manuscript. As his fingers touched the book he immediately felt an unexplained curiosity, and began to read with wide opened eyes.

The pages had been treated badly and were almost entirely torn out of the book, but despite its decadent appearance and the poor handwriting, William where able to discern it's contents.

The writer introduced the book with the words: "The House of Horrors", which increased William's curiosity about the text. The book turned out to be a diary, which itself was a rewriting of another diary by the same person, Thomas Arthur Rowe, the latest inhabitant of the house. William shivered with excitement as he started to feel that special feeling of mysteriousness, which he always felt when working on a case.

The first date mentioned was the 7th of October, which again gained his interest since this was the date of this day! At this date, Thomas' wife and eldest son had been struck by a terrible and unknown disease. Reading further, William revealed that Thomas had, after failing to restore their health with logical methods, turned to an old tome containing magickal rites that once had belonged to the previous owner of the house, his strange uncle that was a notorious madman. One odd thing that bewildered William and obsessed him with abnormal considerations regarding the reliability of the book's content, was the fact that Thomas seemed to have succeeded in healing his contaminated family with his magick rites.

But something appeared to have gone inaccurate, for things unnatural had begun to befall in the old house from the late 16th century.