The Rose Mansion Part 1

“What are you doing here?”
The dark figure on the other side of the door looked at it’s feet and then up.Rain was puring heavily from the starless night sky.The figure did not have an umbrella,but it didn't seem to care.
“Why won’t you let me inside,Christina? I..I only came here to-”
“To bother her.” The woman on the other side of the door,Christina Rose,put her hand on her hip and sighed.
“You know that’s not why I’m here.” The figure stepped a little closer to Christina.The light coming from the candlestick Christina was holding lit up it’s face with an eerie orange glow.The figure was actually a man named Harold Locke,the brother of Sir Anthony Locke to whom Miss Angelina was once engaged to marry.He had a heavy moustache and wore a black hat and coat which made his appearance slightly mysterious even though there wasn't and ounce of mystery to him.He coughed and wiped his mouth before speaking.
“I just want to see her...for only a moment.I've heard things,you know.”
Miss Christine sighed and the flame on the candle wavered. “All right.I guess you can come in as long as you whisper.Follow me,”
Christina’s blue,satin robe made a trail for Harold to follow.Miss Christina’s feet were in little slippers so they made only a hushed sliding sound as she walked down the marble flooring, but Harold's boots couldn't help but make a soft clump-click clump-click clump-click as they walked through the dreaded Rose mansion.

Christine led him into the parlor and sat on the sofa while Leanne,the only maid,lit the room with a few skinny candles and a small fire in the fireplace.Harold disliked the parlor even on the sunniest of days.Now,sitting in the room no later than the evil hour of 3:00,he loathed and was frightened by it.The parlor was actually meant to be a place for lady friends to sit and enjoy tea together,but since there was only one maid and because of Angelina’s sickness,things were different about it these days.Flowers rotted in their pots and were forgotten,the dusty furniture began smelling of time and must,and in the orange light the giant painted portraits on the walls seemed to grin at him with the smiles of red-eyed devils and the grand piano somehow morphed into a crouching beast before his sleep deprived eyes.He blinked twice and things seemed to look halfway normal again,but all of those things in the room blended into an awful combination making his muscles tense with fear under his clothes.
Christine sat in the sofa by him with her small lady hands clasped neatly in her lap.Her brown hair was slightly mangled from sleeping...tossing and turning would actually be a better description of her sleep since Angelina “fell sick.”Suddenly he felt sorry for coming to this place at such a late hour,he probably woke both of them up,but he knew that he would not be able to sleep for even a moment until he saw Angelina healthy.He needed to come here.The time didn't matter.
“Your timing is just impeccable,Harold.” She whispered,making him feel even more sorry. “If you knocked even the slightest bit louder-“
“To be honest I was surprised you even heard me.” Harold snapped.She was a lady that was very hard to be a gentleman to.
She raised her eyebrows and then lowered them slowly.
“Well,” She sighed. “I have to stay up late to be here for Angelina anyway.I wish that I could say she’s awake during the night..that’s really not the right word for it.”
Harold tried not to look too confused. “What do you mean?”
“At night she has headaches,chills,and cannot stand for more than a few moments.She has lost weight and Oh,is she ever pale...” She sniffed “She’s also more depressed at night,when she is awake,than during the day.She doesn't sleep.Instead she takes naps but they’re at random times and she gets woken up very easily.That’s why I was angry when I heard you tapping at the door.She was just laying down after...” She left the sentence that way.
“What does she talk about?Does she talk about...Anthony?”
Christine's eyes closed. “She doesn't talk much but sometimes she’ll ask Leanne for parchment.She still writes even though she eventually burns the pages in her room.Other times she asks for a drink but she never talks.I still talk to her,though.” She looked like she was going to cry.

Leanne offered him tea and he took a cup gratefully.He sat with Christine in the quiet parlor while she struggled to keep her tears inside her.The tea was hot,sweet,and it made his skin a little warmer beneath his wet clothes in the way a good,piping hot cup of tea always does.He felt good with the tea inside him.Mentally.Christine wasn't doing amazingly well,but she could have been equally as bad as Angelina only mentally.Honestly,Harold couldn't understand how she was doing this well.She was keeping her emotions in check and doing a very good job of evaluating Angelina.Angelina was her sister,after all.He himself had been dangerously close to crying in the last few days because Angelina was a...close friend to him. A very close friend,but that was as far as he would let himself go.
The real truth was that in some deep part inside him he knew,he knew, that Angelina was so much more than a friend.Truthfully,he loved her with the deepest mixture of love,lust,and desire that a mortal man could ever feel.He loved her mesmerizing eyes,the way her stomach curved in and her hips out,he loved her deep,red lips and the way she smelled.
Secretly,he knew that no matter where he ventured her scent and presence followed.He knew exactly what she smelled like and it as the most addicting thing he knew.He had studied it,like a test,by smelling the handkerchief she had given him a while ago.At night when he couldn't sleep,any time when he was alone,really,he would take the piece of purple satin and smell in in long,dragging,deep breaths.Rose petals,mainly,but there was somthing else...maybe honey..somthing sweet and heavenly that couldn't be explained...
That...that was why he could never sleep a single second knowing that he could have helped diagnose her mysterious malady if somthing was medically wrong.Then if he helped her (or even healed her completely), just maybe,she might want to...
repay him. He wished she would repay him.
But it was...wrong,wasn't it?
Yes.It was wrong to love the woman your brother almost married before he decided to end it.That was,after all,what happened. He simply ended it. Some people called it "talking your own life." Harold never really cared for that title.He never in his life considered or thought of it himself,but to him suicide never was "talking your own life." To him,suicide was talking your life from other people.Taking it from your family,your fiancee. Anthony's suicide had left Angelina sick.(Christine was certain it was medical but Harold knew better to not rule out mental factors in diagnostics.)She was heartbroken and perhaps even dying. Harold knew it was wrong to wish anyone dead,and he didn't,but because Anthony was gone two things had happened. The first,Angelina was open. When Anthiny and Angelina were getting married Harold felt very jealous...Now there night be a chance even though it was kind of under morbid circumstances.
The second,Anthony's suicide had left Angelina sick.So,Anthony had left pain and suffering in the place of his life.No that death ever brings much good,but to almost bring the death of another person...
So..now was not the time to admit he loved her. Not at a time like this. Any other time would be better..Now,in her condition...
It would kill her.
“May I see her? Please?” His voice was so low that he could hear all the sounds of the house as if they were as regular as his own breathing.A mouse scurried in a wall,the fire crackled,and the rain poured on the mansion.It was a large house.A house too large for only two young women.
Lightning flashed through the red curtains that shielded them from looking out the tall windows into the pitch black English night.The lightning was loud but Christine did not budge in her seat across from Harold.
“I suppose you can see her.” She brushed a curl from her eye and for a moment Harold noticed how beautiful she really was.The light made her lips look especially red and her face looked flawless.
“She does miss you.”

She led him down endless,turning corridors holding only the small candlestick high up towards the ceiling.Other then their little circle of light,a pit of darkness was in front of them and behind them in the hallway.Harold could see that Cristine’s hands were sweaty and shaking...he looked down and realised his were too.
As he was led past hallways showcasing empty,haunting rooms that displayed eerie combinations of dusty furniture and faded colors,he realised why everything about the Rose mansion sacred him so.It was not just ”The Rose Mansion” but “The DREADED Rose mansion” and for a good reason.Rumor had it that 50 years ago (to that time) a mad,brokenhearted woman had killed her husband after she had found out he had been seeing a mistress in secret.After she took the knife to him,rumor also told that she went up into the highest point of the mansion (where Angeline herself was a that very moment) and slit her wrists with the very same knife.Harold knew as well as everyone else that is was of course, only a scary story someone made up to give some meaning as to why the mansion was so scary looking,but it still frightened him.It was a good thing it didn't frighten Angelina and her sister when they bought it for a very low price (the reason for the low price being nobody wanted to live in such a large house that could possibly be haunted) because it was a good house despite it’s rust,dust,and creaks.
The farther they went down the halls and the deeper they went into the mansion the more Harold was convinced that they were lost.He had never been in the place for more than a quick visit,but he did know that Angelina’s bedroom,once the master bedroom for her and his brother,was upstairs.He saw no stairs in sight but he shut up about it.Christine was as good a navigator through he Rose Mansion as any.She lived in it with Angelina for a long time,after all.

Eventually they came to the staircase which wound up in an endless spiral.As they walked upwards it seemed like every single wooden step creaked and groaned beneath their feet until they finally came to the top to the stairs. Then they began making their way down the upstairs hallway (which was surprisingly more frightening than the downstairs.) The upstairs hallway was long,dark,and full of alien sounds.Every few seconds a small scurry in the walls that was actually just a mouse seemed to sound like someone or something was taking their hand and scraping their fingernails along the wall.The thunderstorm continued to shake the house.Unlike he downstairs hallway with was free from outside light,the upstairs hallway was close enough to a window behind them so that every time lightning flashed the mechanical blue light lit up the hallway for a split second in the way lightning always does.In that split second all they could see was the single door of the master bedroom illuminated in grey instead of brown and the ancient,peeling, yellowed paper on the walls.The floors seemed thin and old,as if they were made of paper.Every time the house shook with the storm,Harold feared that he would fall through the floor.They inched forward,now close enough to the door to see it’s hideous peeled paint,and stopped.The hallways smelled of time and wet newspaper.
Shaking,Christine knocked on the door three times.There was a pause,and then the most thin,hoarse voice Harold ever heard whispered two words.
“Come in.”

When they opened the door it creaked so loudly that the figure the the master bedroom stood upright in the four poster bed.The master bedroom was very large and it looked even bigger in the whitish moonlight that poured out the tall window.It took Harold a moment to comprehend how sickly white Angelina’s face was with the added moonlight.It was just a white sheet of paper with two black dots for eyes and a thin pink line for lips.
“Angelina...Harold is h-here.” Christine spoke as if she was talking to a rabid dog.Angelina took no notice.She stood upright with her eyes wide and distant.Harold saw that her eyes were rimmed deep with red as he inched closer.
“Harold...” That voice again,he hated it.It chilled his blood and made him feel as if he was sick as well.
“Yes.Well....I’m just here to make sure-“
At that moment Angeline let out a single,piercing cry of agony and that was matched by another crack of lightning just following. Her face twisted in pain and she fell backwards on the bed,still moaning (only quieter now) in that God awful way that sounded like the whistling wind in the middle of a forest.
Harold leapt up on the bed and held her shoulders as she writhed in pain. He could feel how much weight she had lost,and God,was it a lot. She was mere bones...He could see all the tendons and her two collarbones clear as day because her red satin nightgown had slipped off both her shoulders in her struggles.She sobbed as Harold checked her pulse and her reflexes.Christine tried to soothe her by caressing her midnight black hair (which was streaked with sweat along the edges from what must have been fever) with one hand and shushing her.Angelina only cried and stared at both of them looking extremely confused and scared. Harold had a flashback of the first time he had to give a shot to a child.Her faced projected those same exact feelings of sadness,pain,and mistrust.Her eyes screamed at both of them,asking why,why they were trying to hurt her,even though they only wanted to help.She looked like a rabbit caught in a trap,minutes from it’s certain death.
"What's wrong with her?" Christine looked up from her sister's face. Now her face was scared looking too.
“She’s delusional from the fever,” Harold said as he put his stethoscope back in his black leather doctor’s bag. “Do you have a cool rag?” Christine shook her head yes.She then went to the other side of the bed,lit a few more candles,and dipped a piece of cloth into the basin on the bedside table.The basin was white china and had pink pose buds painted on it.Christina then went over to her sister’s side and patted her forehead gingerly as they both cried quietly,the way people cry during funerals.

As Harold saw the desperation and love in both of their eyes,he knew he had to do somthing.The thing was,he had never seen anything like this before in all his life. It seemed like classic red fever (actually an infection of the stomach and bowels),but in that case she would have developed the tell tale rash on her extremities and would have been vomiting severely.
"Are you sure she hasn't vomited at all?"
"Yes," She dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief from the pocket of her floor-length dress. "N-no stomach problems at all. No vomiting,not even stomach cramps. I suppose she's been nauseous,but that's the only thing that could explain why she hasn't eaten hardly anything."
Nothing could explain he mood swings she had previously told him about,the insomnia,or the way she was losing weight so quickly.Why couldn't she eat if there wasn't anything wrong with her stomach?
“I'm going to have to give her somthing or pain...” Harold reached into his bad and took a needle and a small bottle.