"To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all."
– Oscar Wilde
***
In his mind, his family was more of a feeling than a set of faces. He remembered the warm hand of his father caressing his head whenever he was hurt or sad; he remembered the gentle but firm lectures from his mom whenever he was being a naughty child.
More than that, he remembered the little gremlin who wouldn't let him sleep at night if he wasn't there with her. When she became old enough to waddle, she'd always toddle to him and be practically glued to him.
His sister was the one he was most fond of when he was little, but after that fateful day, he only remembered the anxiety and restlessness bubbling in his naive mind while in daycare, when his parents didn't pick him up.
Hearing that childish, nostalgic voice made his mind turn to mush and his eyes turn red with sorrowful feelings... He was just about to turn around, but some corner of his rational mind screamed at him not to budge an inch.
Closing his eyes tightly and trembling lightly, and with a force of will, he didn't turn or speak anything; he just sat down crouched on the grassy plain and covered his ears tightly.
'Adam....Adam.... Adam.... Adam....'
The sound continued to burrow through his muffled ears; it managed to poke and prod at the deepest parts of his turbulent heart.
Eventually, it felt as if a child was sitting next to him and was tugging at his sleeves, trying to grab his attention.
That made him shake even more.
'It's not real... It's not real... That isn't Anne.... That couldn't be Anne.'
His rationality told him that this... thing wasn't his little sister, but something that wanted to break him and swallow him whole.
After a few minutes of the song echoing, it dissipated and faded in the wind.
Just to be sure, he still waited a couple more minutes...
After cracking his eyes slightly, he looked around him but found nothing.
His bloodshot eyes were bouncing around in his sockets, looking at every single thing in his field of vision.
Nothing, it looked like nothing had changed from the earlier view.
Looking at his hands, he came to a chilling realisation... his hands were a little less colourful, as if someone had turned his skin colour a shade lighter, as if his presence had been forcefully lightened.
He was a little transparent?
He stilled.
A bang went off in his head, then he realised why he was feeling that sense of wrongness for a while after stepping out from the manor, why his instincts were going haywire... It was because he was becoming more and more like that white foggy figure in the window.
He didn't realise it earlier because there wasn't enough illumination in the room after that.... thing tried to choke him.
He came to a grim realisation regarding the white figure behind the window almost instantly.
"If I stay here longer, will I become like that thing?"
His face changed drastically, and he tried looking for something in his memories that he might have missed earlier.
Coming up with blanks, his frustration began to rise, biting his nail in anxiety, he continued to ponder.
'What is the reason for this?!... I was fine when I first woke up here, but when did this start happening?!... What is the common denominator for this phenomenon?
Just then, he caught the faint edges of a thought.
'It started after that thing choked me... in my dreams? Or in reality?'
He still wasn't sure about the situation, but he had ascertained the time when this started happening.
'Physical stimulus?... probably not, else I wouldn't have gotten fainter right now....just what is the common connection between these two happenings?'
He realised it just then, it was that he had confirmed the presence of unnatural entities in this place.
"I became aware of this place's reality; the unnatural things aren't hallucinations but actual entities."
The more he was steeped in this place and its presence, the more his actual self would conform to this place's deviant physical laws and in the end, he would become one of its residents.
His face was grim at that thought, and he finally realised why the prophecy had talked about wandering this place till eternity.
If he couldn't find his way out of here, he would be dammed to wander eternally in this dammed place.
Looking at the mansion, his heart was jumping inside his ribcage out of fear and anxiety.
Just then, he noticed faint specs of light in his peripheral vision at the woods that sprang beyond the edges of the property.
Focusing slightly, he saw two very faint light sources peeking from behind one of the trees beyond the walled boundary.
He shivered.
Those weren't lights, those were eyes.... that were looking at him unblinkingly.
At that moment, he realised the eyes belonged to a tall figure with sickly but unnaturally long legs, and there wasn't only one of them, there were a myriad of them dotting the entire forest beyond the boundary.
The only reason he even saw that one was because its eyes were reflecting the moonlight, and the rest of them were looking in random directions.
But just as his eyes met the first one, all the rest of them silently moved their head with an eerie synchronicity and looked at him.
He bit his tongue and shivered, but still didn't scream.
If he made a loud noise, something far more terrifying might be attracted to him.
For now, it seemed that the figures were only looking and not moving; he took a step forward while all their gazes still trailed him without missing a beat.
'They aren't moving.'
Sighing inwardly, he still tensed his muscles to bolt at any signs of movement and tottered at a slow pace towards the back door.
It was unfortunate that the front doors were stuck, and he couldn't go through that route.
Walking slowly and steadily, he didn't realise when, but those figures eventually averted their gazes and continued looking in random directions.
'Why the fu*k are these things so sneaky? How can I spot them in the dead of the night?!'
Lamenting his shit*y luck as usual, he stepped back into the hellhole through the back door. At least there wasn't an army of dark fiends inside this place.... or was there?
'Fu*k me and my damn mind!'
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[A/N]
Gimme comments, people.
Anyways, see ya'll.