A Night at Ravensmoor Manor

It was a dark, quiet night, as I drove toward the imposing façade of the old Ravensmoor family home.
All of my friends had stayed the night there one time or another, but not me, I had heard the stories, that place was HAUNTED. I had my sleeping bag and a flashlight and was ready to stay the night no matter what spooks I might encounter. As I drove up the overgrown drive, I remembered the atmosphere of the house. It looked different than the repetitive suburban houses in the neighborhood where I lived, the house stuck out like a black dot on a colored background. I stopped the car in front of the door, grabbed my stuff, and walked up the steps. The house had been abandoned for years, so there was a lock on the door to keep vandals out, however my friend’s father owns the property and loans us keys for our overnight stays. Walking inside I locked the door behind me, an ominous event even though I have the key. I swept the beam of my flashlight around the room trying to get a good look of the place. The entrance hall was just as spooky as I remembered it, when I visited during daylight, the staircase on the left wall and large fireplace toward the center. The room would have been beautiful when it was still in good shape, but recently part of the stairway had collapsed and no one had been upstairs for years. I laid my sleeping bag on the floor and decided to go exploring on the first floor. To the right was the library, it shelves had been emptied of its contents long ago, when the family that lived here, the Ravensmoors, mysteriously moved away without telling anyone leaving the house to decay. The piano that still sat in the corner, far too heavy to bother moving, sat quietly. As I turned to look elsewhere I heard a key being played on the instrument and turned sharply to face it, but it had just been a piece of plaster falling from the ceiling that landed on the keys…Or was it. I decided to stop exploring and get some rest, just to get this whole thing over with. I got into my sleeping bag and turned off my flashlight. The darkness swallowed up the entire room in seconds, and it was disturbingly quiet, not a sound from outside or in. Then I heard what sounded like a combination between an uncoiling spring and a pig squealing coming from upstairs. I lay there motionless, unable to see anything, unable to do anything, just waiting for something horrible to happen. I was startled out of my trance by a clock somewhere chiming the hour, I counted the chimes. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13? I felt a chill run down my spine, but the clock continued to chime. I sighed with relief, the thing must be broken I thought to myself. That’s when I heard the rumbling noise coming from the basement, except is wasn’t just a noise, you could feel it. The sound of glasses clinking nearby assured me that the rumbling was real. Then I heard a creak, and a cracking, as the floor beneath me gave way and I plummeted down endlessly into a dark void. I heard voices of unseen spirits mocking me as I fell. I sat up yelling for help. The darkness was gone and I was sitting on the floor in the entrance hall. I stood up feeling relief that I was free from that awful nightmare. It was still early in the morning, but I decided that I had stayed here long enough. I went to the door to unlock it, when I realized that the key was gone! I searched around where I had slept, when I had a chilling thought. The basement door creaked open, and I descended into the musty underworld and there, in the middle of the floor, was the key.