Haunted Mansion Mafia: 8:00 pm (SCENARIO)

Victor James stuffed the mysterious invitation into his dinner jacket as he made his way up the steep hill to the front door of the De’Lecti Estate. From his neck hung a heavy camera case, which waved from side to side and occasionally smacked into his chest as he walked. Victor hardly noticed. The view was nothing short of spectacular; a grand mansion, ancient and striking, loomed in the distance, illuminated by the rising moon.

At last Victor approached the ornate doors which lead inside the De’ Lecti Manor. Two rather ugly gargoyle heads with rings in their mouths served as door knockers, but before Victor could reach for one, the door opened, revealing a middle aged man, dressed in a stylish business suit. He seemed out of place, surrounded by the antiquity of it all. Something else seemed a bit odd about the man, but Victor couldn’t place it.

“Greetings, Victor James. I am Mr. De’Lecti’s Lawyer. This way, please.” And with that, the man briskly turned and headed inside the dimly lit foyer. Victor snapped his mouth shut and scrambled after him.

The pair walked in silence through a long, narrow hallway. From time to time Victor noticed a door, or the entrance to another hallway, another wing of the manor perhaps, but the lawyer continued on, as if he were in some great hurry, and Victor was compelled to follow him. After a time they reached a set of double doors, which the lawyer pushed open easily despite their size, and gestured for Victor to go inside.

The room, like the rest of the house, was dimly lit by candles which were placed all along the length of a dining room table that stretched on so far Victor had to strain to see its end. A massive and decorative fireplace also provided some illumination, but the room was large enough that the walls seemed to fade into the darkness, barely visible. The ceiling was a lost cause; looking up, Victor saw only dark.

The doors closed softly behind him. The Lawyer was gone without a word, and Victor found himself very much alone.

Vaguely uncomfortable in this overly large room all by himself, Victor chose to ignore the several chairs placed around the table, instead walking around them to the end of the room where the fireplace burned merrily. Above the fireplace hung a painting, which Victor privately thought was one of the ugliest pieces of art he had ever seen in his life. It was a portrait, obviously commissioned by a wealthy gentleman, probably De’Lecti himself. It was hard for Victor to nail down exactly what was so wrong with the painting; the subject’s face seemed perhaps a little too pale, too drawn and shadowed, his eyebrows too thick and his jaw too heavy to be natural. The effect was a generally…misshapen face, too harsh to be handsome, to sickly to be striking. Victor shivered and decided that perhaps it was best if he just took a seat after all.

To his great relief, The Lawyer soon arrived again with another guest in tow. Victor gave the new arrival a sheepish grin, but did not say a word. The silence was awkward, but Victor thought conversation might be worse in this room with that painting on the wall, with the darkness wrapping around them, with the hairs on the back of his neck standing straight up for reasons he could not fully understand. The Lawyer disappeared as quickly as he had come.

And so it went on. The silence, the painting staring at him, him trying not to stare back, the fire crackling merrily. The Lawyer came and went again, and another guest circled the table, saw the portrait, shivered, and took a chair at the table. In this manner every chair was soon filled. The lawyer, however, was not present.

Where was the host?

“If I could have everyone’s attention for just a moment.”

Silence.

And then everyone began speaking at once. Chairs scraped. A wine glass shattered. Victor felt the blood drain from his face as he gave a strangled gasp.

The man in the portrait cleared his throat politely. Victor detected a slight smirk. Surprisingly, everyone seemed to settle down, watching the portrait with wide eyes. Perhaps, they thought, they had imagined it all. Perhaps this was all some sort of hallucination brought on by a long journey. Still, no one could tear their eyes away from the disturbing painting. And so no one could deny what happened next.

The man in the portrait smiled. On a more handsome face the smile might have been soft, even warm, but this smile was stiff and frozen, and didn’t come close to reaching his cold, dead eyes.

Victor thought he might faint when the man winked at his audience.

“Very good, very good. If you haven’t already guessed, my name is Kadaver De'Lecti. You are all guests in my humble abode. I would ask that you hear me out, and please do not be alarmed.” Victor personally felt that alarm and fear was this twisted man’s exact intention, but he kept that thought to himself.

“I would like to present to you a unique challenge. You have all been invited to my home to participate in a game. A battle of wits, if you will. The rules are simple. All you have to do is spend a single night inside of my home.”

“I should warn you, though. What I am challenging you to do is something that no one has ever managed before. The rewards, however…” At this, the portrait gestured grandly, making a sweeping motion with his arm, “…are rich indeed.”

“Should you succeed in your challenge, I, Kadaver De’Lecti, will grant you the deed to this manor. You may do with it whatever you chose. Sell it and split the proceeds, which should be considerable, or if you are a person of the right…temperament…you may wish to take this home as your own residence. It matters not to me. The choice is yours.”

“If the idea of earning a small fortune for simply spending the night in my home does not appeal to you, you may, of course, leave. You are here as guests, and I will not force you to stay. If you do not wish to have any part in this, there is the door.”

In another sweeping gesture, the portrait pointed to the double doors, which swung open soundlessly. A sudden gust of chilly air swept through the room, blowing out better than half the candles on the table.

“You will have the next thirty minutes to make your choice. When the clock strikes 8:30, every door and window in this house will be sealed until morning. Make your choice now.”

And with that, the portrait froze in place as though it had never moved at all.

Moments later, the lawyer opened a door Victor hadn’t noticed before, near the fireplace. Sorting through a neat stack of papers, he delivered them to the other occupants of the room. When Victor finally received his copy he briefly glanced over the sheet.

“My employer, Mr. De’Lecti wants you to know how serious he is about this whole situation. If you do choose to stay, please sign this agreement. Naturally, my client can’t be held accountable for any mishaps that may occur during your stay here.”

Victor couldn’t help but notice the emphasis the lawyer used, but he kept his assessment unannounced.

“Further on in The Agreement you will notice the legal terms and conditions of the game. It is all in there, I assure you. I have spent several nights toiling over its exact wording.”

The lawyer turned to leave, briefly pausing at the door to say, “You heard Lord De’Lecti; I will be back shortly after 8:30 to pick these up.”

The man, strangely familiar and yet undeniably vague, closed the door behind him. A door that, oddly enough, seemed to have vanished with The Lawyer.

In the silence, the guests reflected on the choice before them. Some were drawn by the lure of money, some by their own sense of adventure. One guest felt nothing but confidence; after all, should anything happen, this particular guest felt quite capable of handling a crisis. As a doctor, this guest was, after all, uniquely qualified.

Another guest, though, felt less than comfortable with current arrangements. There was a chill in this room that no one else seemed to feel. The chill of the dead. This person was more than a little familiar with the feeling; it had been with this unusual individual all their life. Here, this person was certain, the dead walked.

Had this guest known what really resided in this house, perhaps they would have chosen differently. For in an abandoned room, deep in the manor, dormant spirits suddenly stirred. Their shapeless forms twisted around one another restlessly, and as one their minds turned to the flesh and blood in the room far below. Their gaping maws opened in silent screams of fury and frustration at this intrusion. The lure of living flesh was overpowering to them; it filled them with longing. Longing to consume the flesh, to feel blood course through their veins, to feel their hearts pound with life. At the same time, they felt a terrible fury at this invasion, this disturbance of their rest. Wordlessly, they agreed; something must be done to rid this place of these trespassers.

The other guests did not notice a glint in the eyes of one of their own. Greed consumed this person, and murderous thoughts of how to make this fortune all their own raced through their mind.

Victor was becoming unnerved by quiet. He looked from guest to guest, wondering which of them would suddenly leap from the table and run for the door. He was half afraid it would be him.

Lost in his own thoughts and fears, the chiming of the clocks alarmed him. The house shook with the sound; Victor imagined there must be hundreds of grandfather clocks, mantle clocks, hell, even a cuckoo clock, all synchronized, all ringing together to sound the deadline.

So this was it. A choice, made in the silence of an ancient dining room, presided over by a portrait.

He signed the document hastily, before the lawyer could return. It seemed as though the normally soft sound of pen on paper echoed across the vast emptiness of the room as others also signed the pages in front of them. A few of these people caught a strange tingling sensation as it ran from the pen to the back of their necks, slightly raising their hair. Though others didn’t notice, these guests suddenly could sense the supernatural unlike any human; murderous thoughts consumed these visitors. Spirits had a strange way of getting what they wanted, strange and cruel.

In an attempt to forget his worries, Victor took another look at the guests seated around the table. Deciding he might as well be friendly with his new potential property owners, he clapped his hands, rubbed them together, and spoke in a somewhat false and cheery tone.

“Alright! Looks like we’re all roomies for the night. What do you say we go around the table and introduce ourselves?”

/ooc Game starts Tuesday, April 5, 2005. Characters should be in by April 4th at Midnight.