Chapter Text
Within a sleepy, nameless village somewhere in rural England, there was a great, long since abandoned Victorian-era mansion, well hidden amongst the forest. It was easily the largest building in the area, with about six sprawling floors in total. It was fortified from every side by tall red brick walls, draped in poisonous ivy. The only way one could go in and out would be through the black iron gate at the front.
Or one could, if it weren’t for the rusty lock and chains that tethered the two ends of the gate together. There was nothing an intruder could do, except to fruitlessly peer through the gaps in the fence and take in the glimpses of the ornate architecture that were not obscured by the cherry blossom trees..
Had the world not changed so drastically since the houses’ conception, the property would have remained impregnable.
This was not the case, however. Society had long since experienced a myriad of revolutions. Things like horse-drawn carriages were replaced with automobiles. The telephone had gone through a radical metamorphosis, now no longer needing to be tethered to a wall. They were smaller, more capable of actions beyond mere communication.
And most pressingly, access to commodities and tools were at an all time high.
Tools capable of breaking chains, for instance.
As the sun began to descend on the mansion, two women approached its walls.
“You sure we won’t get into trouble for this?” A young woman in her early twenties asked. Her hair was bound into a ponytail and her posture was rigid. Her clothing was well kept and conservative. Her legs were shaking and her posture hunched. She clung onto her novelty Doraemon-shaped backpack like it was a lifeline.
“You worry too much.” The other woman was built of more sturdier stock. A medical patch covered one eye. Her clothing was loose and damaged, although most of the tears in the fabric were shoddily repaired with boldly colored thread that stuck out against the white surface.
In her right hand, she brandished a shiny new pair of bolt-croppers.
“This’ll be fun.” She said, as she slid the chains between the mouth of the croppers. With a little resistance, the chains dropped to the floor uselessly.
The one-eyed girl snickered to herself.
“Alright, it worked! Now, get your ass in there, we haven’t got all night.”
“Wait, aren’t you coming in with me?”
The older one scoffed. “Of course I’m not. There’s probably nothing in there but dust. If you wanted to break into someplace interesting, like a bar, then maybe I would tag along, but some boring-ass mansion? I bet anything worth stealing is long gone. Nah, you’re on your own, sis.”
The smaller girl rolled her eyes. The house was clearly untouched. If it wasn’t, there would have been no need to break the lock. She bet that Midari knew as much, too. The real reason was that it would be close to impossible to sell anything inside without raising any suspicions from the locals.
The village wasn’t too small, but it was well connected enough.
“...Right. Can I at least count on you to keep watch, then?”
“Probably not.”
“Midari!”
“Calm your tits, Sayaka, I’m taking the piss. Go explore your haunted nerd mansion, I’ll be right here. But make it quick, I’m getting hungry.”
“Alright, I’ll just take a cursory look around the inside for now. It’s not like it’s going anywhere.” Sayaka sighed. It was a shame. She had wanted to take her time exploring the mysterious building that locals have been whispering about since she was young, but she supposed she would have to wait another time. Even in a small town such as this, the streets were dangerous at night.
Better safe than sorry, she supposed.
She approached the double front door. Between the marble arch surrounding it and the ornate - yet very morbid - stained glass window on the door itself, It gave the building a chapel-like feeling. It was as if she was about to break into some sort of hallowed ground.
Not for the first time since she voiced her desire to see the inside of the manor to her sister, she began to have second thoughts. Was it right of her to intrude upon this place, just to sate her curiosity? It wasn’t like she would face any consequences for doing so. This place was a no-go zone, so she didn’t have to worry about being caught. Midari standing guard was merely an extra precaution.
And yet, her hand stopped midway towards putting the door open. It felt wrong to do this. Maybe she should just turn back.
“What’s keeping you? Get in there already!” Midari shouted from the gate.
Oh, fuck it. She could worry about the ethical ramifications of her actions later.
She pulled back the door, to be greeted by the sight of a large foyer. Dark oak furniture and walls were coated in dust and cobwebs. There were bookshelves and display cases taking up much of the free space. In the middle of the floor, there was an ornate rug that led to a split staircase. The velvet red steps stood out from the muted hazel and chocolate color scheme of the overall area.
She closed the door behind her. Her first instinct was to check out the books. There were so many. Hundreds. Maybe more, if there were more shelves around. She wandered to the nearest shelf and carefully slid a random book from its resting place. She blew the coating of dust off it before flicking to a random chapter.
From the way each page bore a title on top and a series of sparse sentences running down the center, it was evident that this particular book was a collection of poetry. Personal poetry, judging by the handwriting.
Some pages were accompanied by an inky illustration of some kind, mainly marine life. Other drawings depicted females in various poses and situations, some innocuous, others not so much. As for the poems themselves, they varied in stanzas, length and format, but as she skimmed through each one, the unifying theme was crystal clear.
Vampires. Every poem had something to do with some element of vampirism. Blood sucking. Immortality. Brooding soliloquies lamenting the doldrum that accompanied having an infinite lifespan. At least one gripe about the presumably undead narrator accidentally punching a hole in her tongue with her fangs while inebriated.
If every book was like this, then she must have stumbled upon the largest collection of undiscovered creative fiction in all of England! A private trove of personal works for her alone to peruse at her leisure.
There was no way she was leaving this place without taking at least one of these books with her. She removed her bag, slipping the book into the plush Doraemon’s mouth. Once safely inside, she donned her bag, going off to explore the rest of the ground floor.
If living in a mansion this big wasn’t enough of an indicator that whoever lived here at the time must have been rich beyond measure, the cabinets full of antiques and porcelain, the gorgeous paintings of pale skinned women and sensual marble carvings of mermaids made sure to hammer that detail into the eyes of any visitor or interloper.
They also served as an accurate indicator that the owner was an open pervert with a fixation on sapphic imagery. Either a debauched old man, or less likely, a lesbian.
Either way, they sure were pushing the envelope far beyond what was acceptable at the time.
The more she saw of the house, the clearer a picture it began to paint of its owner. The openly morbid, borderline fetishistically gory nature of some of the artwork on display led Sayaka to believe that the owner had no qualms about putting every fascination they had for all to see, ignorant or indifferent to the taboos being broken in doing so.
Or maybe, this was the house of a wealthy hermit. A hermit who didn’t have to worry about what the visitors thought because there weren’t any.
Once she had finished exploring every room and hallway, she returned to the bifurcated staircase. It was time to explore the other floors.
.
The second floor was brighter than the first, though no less imposing.
Small oval picture frames, mounted animal heads and long-since extinguished candles were fastened unevenly across each mocha-colored wall.
She chose an arbitrary direction and followed it, figuring she could easily scope out the untraveled path later.
As she walked, she found many doors. Most of these doors led to what looked like servant dwellings. Large rooms containing many beds packed together like sardines. That struck out the theory that this was a hermit’s abode. Or if it was, it wasn’t always like that. Either way, the beds were missing their covers, the duvets having been stripped off long ago.
Aside from that detail, nothing else of interest struck her, so she continued on.
.
She eventually found herself in what must be the main washroom. The main attraction, taking up most of the space at the end of the space, was a porcelain boat bath, held up by leonine gold-cast legs. A cyan shower curtain was fixed above. Along the way, porcelain nymphs served as shelves for bath salts and lyes and many other bottled assortments.
She absently wondered if any of these were still usable. Probably not.
.
It took her a while to notice, but the ‘picture frames’ weren’t entirely composed of actual pictures. There certainly were photographs amongst them, but they appeared to be of little relevance, with no two photographs containing the same two people. The rest were mock-ups, paintings framed as photos..
In these false photographs, two women kept on appearing over and over again. A pair of blue-eyed twins. One let her silvery locks flow down to her neck, while the other kept her hair in looped braids. The contrast in the way the twins held themselves spoke volumes of who they were and which one ran things.
The long haired girl rarely looked directly at the viewer, opting to focus on something out of view. The girl with the braids, on the other hand, was always facing forward, her posture haughty and imperious. It was of little doubt to Sayaka that she was the matriarch of the mansion, either officially or otherwise. If that was true, then the eccentric and downright homophilic imagery could be attributed to her.
Just who were these two women? If they were this wealthy, she would have heard about them by now, surely? Judging by the photographs, they had plenty of visitors in their lifetime, so the hermit theory was dead in the water. They must have had some interactions with the locals, and if that was the case, then the mansion being off-limits could be attributed to reverence just as much as it could be to fear.
Or maybe, the townsfolk had forgotten about it all, and the warnings to avoid it carried mundane explanations behind them. Maybe they feared that the building had since been infested with colonies of plague-riddled vermin, or that the structure of the mansion had become tenuous.
She turned away from the paintings, unaware that the many little eyes of the girls in the portraits were following her movements.
It was a personal office, decorated with the pelt and heads of various game animals, along with a few taxidermied lions and bears. Sayaka wondered if they were all placed to face the front door as some sort of intimidation tactic. It was easy to imagine some poor servant cowering before the judging gaze of a half-dozen dead moose heads.
At the end of the room was a work table and hefty leather chair. The table was littered with documents and other things. Amidst the sheets of paper that obscured the entirety of its surface, there was an open diary. An old fountain pen was nestled in the crease between the pages.
‘I‘ve grown bored of it all. England is such a dull place these nights. There is nothing left to peak my interest. I’ve seen it all. I have it all. And so, I’ve had my dear twin take the servants and other staff elsewhere, while I sleep the decades away.
Whatever new world I wake up to can’t be any more dull than now. Besides, a new world brings new things. New challenges. It will be mine for the taking all over again, if I see fit.
If not, at least the task of finding Ririka again will be amusing. I wonder where she took up residence. France, perhaps? She always did want to visit France.
Good day, journal.
Signed, Kirari M.’
If the paintings outside didn’t confirm it, this entry did. That woman, Kirari, was the owner of this mansion. A woman who had lost her zeal, as well as her mind over the years, until she had cut herself off from both her servants and her own sister in a delusional haze.
But that begged the question, what happened next? What became of this Kirari?
A morbid thought crawled its way into Sayaka’s mind. She shuddered. Maybe that’s why people avoided this place. They knew it for what it was; the final resting place or a well-to-do woman who couldn’t tell reality from fiction.
Guilt stirred within her. If that was the case, then she was essentially rummaging through someone’s tomb.
Her phone vibrated, diverting her attention from her upsetting revelation.
She fished it from her pocket.
“If you don’t get out of there in five minutes, I’m leaving without you.”
Midari was getting impatient. More than usual, at any rate.
Sayaka huffed. She texted her back, telling her she was done anyway. There was nothing more for her to see, no reason for her to be here. She would leave behind the book she had taken earlier, and that would be the end of it.
Unbeknownst to Sayaka, she wouldn’t be making it out of the mansion alive.
Unbeknownst to Sayaka, something was in the room with her, and she would not know until it was too late.
The creature had been watching her since she had entered her domain. The creature had seen her rummage through its things. Her things. The creature had seen this ignorant young fool prance around her resting place, unaware that every single thing under this roof had belonged to her.
And that now included her.
She was parched. It had been so long since she had last fed.
This girl would do nicely.
.
It all happened so fast. One second, she was looking down at her phone. The next, she found herself slammed against the desk, the wind knocked out of her. Something - Someone - was on top of her.
Sayaka tossed and turned, trying to either buck off her attacker or wriggle out of her grip, but it was a vain effort. Her arms were pinned together. She couldn’t do anything but stare at the gleaming blue pinpricks that bore down on her with a feral intensity.
The pinpricks moved closer.
“My, what a pretty little idiot you are, coming here. Not that I’m complaining. Who am I to turn down a free meal?”.
Sayaka didn’t have time to contemplate the words or the demure voice that spoke them. She could only scream as she felt something cold and wet and sharp dig its way into her neck, piercing through skin, veins and flesh until the sheer pain of it all was too much for her to bear.