The mansion had sat empty for years, they said. The story seemed to change a few times. A cult of satanists held a dark ritual here. The old owner lured people in to murder them. It was on an ancient burial ground and all who moved in were cursed. It once belonged to a powerful warlock whose arcane magic cursed trespassers.
But the modern results all had the same tale tied to them. Ghostly noises, strange lights, objects moving. Anyone in the building in day feeling like they were being watched. Anyone in the building at night.... Never seen again after the sun rose.
The only actual fact was, it was an old and dilapidated building, and prone to urban explorers. And yet, few had gone at night for a long time. And if they had no trace of them was ever found, it would seem.
Nancy however was determined to prove the ghost stories wrong. The blonde stood at the sealed iron gates, wind blowing as the evening sun slowly set, blue eyes looking over the mansion. Lightly dressed in a black halter top with spaghetti straps, light grey yoga leggings, and a pair of sneakers, it wasn't the wind making her shiver a little, it was excitement and trepidation!
...Okay, maybe it was a little the wind, she mused, as she felt another gust provoke goosebumps over her pale skin. She adjusted the strap of the satchel she carried, her flashlight, phone, and a few other tools in there plus water and some snack bars. She was spending a night in this place after all.
"So... are you going in or pussying out?" Ronny asked from behind her.
"I'm just looking it over! You have no sense of drama...." she chided her brother.
"Looks to me like you're hesitating. And that's fine by me, you want to get kidnapped by a ghost that's on you, you want to just be a coward, I get to go home and not waste the night watching guard out here."
"There's no ghosts. I'll walk in there, explore, and be out before the sun rises, just you watch!"
Ronny shrugged.
"I'm watching."
With a hiss, she began climbing the locked gates grumbling as the old iron rattled. She soon was over, and dropped down behind. The mansion beckoned.
"And if you do vanish or whatever don't expect me to come save you. You're the one wanting to do this!"
"So caring(!)" She sighed.
Built in a Tudor style of a pale sandstone, it seemed to be three floors high. It had two wings and one central section, and the overgrown garden around it was littered with dried up fountains, crumbling statues, broken paving, and wild hedges out of control. The main doors stood with peeling paint, the walls were coated in vines and ivy, and a few windows on the upper floors were cracked. The lower floor's windows were all boarded up and the doors sealed today, but Nancy was prepared. The door's locks were easy to pick open, the old brass clicking after a few minutes fumbling and a little squirt of oil to loosen them up.
Inside, she found the main foyer, the door creaking shut behind her.
"And now to start the countdown..." She said, taking out a small stopwatch and looping it over her neck.
It was digital, and began ticking back from a twelve hour setting, ending at dawn. Her time limit.
She shone her flashlight around the dimly lit room, seeing the main stairs up, four sets of doors at the sides leading to the wings, and a far off door at the very back of the hall leading to the back gardens.
Paintings lined the walls, and eight pedestals held statues flanking the four doors. Four males, four females, all nude. Each stared over at a counterpart, blank stone eyes locked on each other, hands raised arching above the doors reaching to each other. Each pair was a different material but the same pose. Pink granite and pale yellow Sandstone flanked west wing doors, white Marble and black onyx the east. A large clock sat atop the stairwell, silent.
"Hmm, let's stick to the lower floor first... West?"
Nancy moved to open the door flanked by pink granite statues, finding herself heading into a gallery it seemed. More paintings lined the walls, an old grandfather clock sat dusty and silent. A fireplace was empty of anything but dust and soot. Cobwebbed candlesticks sat on tables where the varnish was dulled.
From once ornate frames now dilapidated, the paintings stared out. Nancy shone her light on them, wondering why such things were made.
Each of them depicted a nude person, often screaming. And where they were not screaming the subjects were in other strange situations. A redhead woman was bound and gagged at the feet of a statue. A young brunette man held his own eyes in his hands. Two black haired twins huddled together nude in a snowy landscape, their bodies covered in icicles and skin blue...
"Art's subjective, I guess... and whoever had these painted is subjectively weird," she said.
This gallery had another door at the back, and it led to a corridor. Off to the right, three more doors and an old elevator. To the left, a small sitting room and stairs upwards.
Again, more odd art was here. The sitting room had a statue of a woman in bronze holding an empty bird cage, her face in an odd fearful expression.
Paintings of odd scenes, like terrified people under a guillotine. Nancy sighed at this.
"At least creepy is consistent... and no wonder no one stole this stuff. Who'd buy it."
She went to the first door on the right, and it led into a small bedroom. A broken bedframe lay there, but there were also a few old books on a shelf. A chess board sat on a desk, a queen and a rook forcing a checkmate against white. And the pieces seemed strange, like each was a small figurine... with a terrified expression. They were half male half female, and Nancy picked up a knight, depicted as a centaur woman in ivory, holding a sword, looking fearful.
"Not much in here..."
She went to the door, and was puzzled.
"...Jammed? What the..."
She shone a light in the keyhole, and tried the oil, but the door seemed stuck until she pulled it open with a grunt. And then she was very confused.
It led out into a different hallway. Another door was opposite, the elevator was to the left, and one more door to the right. No sitting room. No door back to the gallery.
"...That's not right. I was... how?"
She tried the door opposite, finding a room full of... mannequins? Blank plastic faces stared down, as she examined the room. A window at the back wasn't boarded, fading sunlight spilling in and to her confusion, it looked out over the front gate? How had she reached the second floor? A tree blocked any view of Ronny, she guessed...
...And then a plastic hand landed on her shoulder. She screamed for a moment, but felt herself freeze up. She was dragged backwards, unmoving, unspeaking, as the mannequins robotically shifted around her. Plastic hands began tugging at her clothing, prodding her skin, as they stripped her.
Helpless, motionless, she felt them take off her strapless bra, tug off her sneakers, tug her panties down... and she saw that what they exposed was smooth, bare, plastic.
She tried to cry out as her skin turned a dull matt flesh tone, as her joints became seams and ball sockets, but could not. And her face went blank, eyes just empty space, mouth a thin line, and blonde locks a wig.
And the other mannequins began taking her apart. One took her head. One took an arm. One even popped off her blank featureless breasts and replaced them with her own larger pair. Nancy was taken apart and had her limbs traded amongst the mannequins, unable to scream, resist, or move, until...
She blinked, back in the room with the chessboard. Not made of plastic... but naked. How? Had she stripped off and hidden her clothes in some kind of trance? There was no sign of them. Just her bag, with her phone, and the stopwatch
"...Am I going nuts?" She muttered.
That had all felt real, but was clearly some hallucination. One where she'd taken her own clothes off and discarded them.
...and did her boobs feel bigger now? Nah. Maybe it was just them being free of her bra and top.
***
The door had now led to the correct halfway as she figured that the clothes weren't important (and weren't in that room either way). The elevator, an old rusty gate type, was as expected empty. The other two doors were just empty rooms, except one that held an odd statue posed like a ballet dancer, but with no head or arms.
She made her way back to the foyer to stay on the ground floor, but in the gallery, there was something strange.
"...The clock started up?" Nancy wondered as she heard the ticking.
Sure enough, the dusty old clock was now working, and checking against her phone, seemed to be at about the right time. It seemed like a regular cabinet type thing, but the clock face had a pattern of a face, a smiling young woman.
...Wait, if the clock and her phone were accurate, she'd spent nearly half an hour wandering a few rooms? Must have been under her funny spell when she got herself naked.
She sighed and moved to the main foyer again, this time heading into the doors flanked by sandstone sculptures. In here... was a large swimming pool or spa. It had blue and white tiling, a room at the far end to act as a changing room, and the walls were covered in mosaics of different scenes. One depicted three women being blasted by icy winds. One depicted a muscular man holding a large block of ice aloft like Atlas holding the globe. Another showed snowmen.
"...A cold theme for the swimming pool? Odd."
The pool however was dried out. Dust and dirt covered the bottom of the pool, the whole place bone dry. A lonely diving board now sat gathering cobwebs and promising a rather messy impact from about ten metres up, and not a divebomb into water. Grime covered skylights blocked the faintest hints of moonlight.
She took a look in the changing rooms portion, and felt a little dizzy. She leaned on a locker, and tried to get her bearings.
"Oh, wow... Did I hit my head somewhere?" She wondered.
The room held some old benches, a few lockers, and some shower cubicles. The old showerheads looked in disrepair, and the tiling was cracked and crumbling in one.
Nancy noticed the locker she leaned on wasn't actually closed, and feeling curious, opened it... to find a red bikini inside. It was a simple string tie thing, both the bottoms and the top just tied together. Not the most secure of garments for swimming, really...
"Guess someone left their suit when they moved out."
She reached to touch the red swimsuit... and her head span again.
Dizzily, she sat down on the bench, her eyes going blank as she did so. She began pulling on the bikini over her naked body, before standing up, and walking out into the pool....
....Where the sound of water lapping the tiles met her. She padded bare feet across suddenly clean tiles, into skylights with sunlight pouring in. She slipped into the water and swam, and swam, and swam. The water was lukewarm, but turning colder as she swam each lap.
Shivering by the tenth, her skin blue, she walked out of the water as frosty chill and fog billowed. She climbed the diving board, as the pool water stopped moving. She looked down at sheets of ice, wobbled for a second, and felt icy chill wash over her.
She froze up, literally, the cold reaching her bones. She wobbled a moment, then pitched forth, frozen body impacting the icy pool below with a smash...
...And then blinked, back in the locker room.
"What was that..." She muttered to herself, then realised the swimsuit was gone... She was naked again!
Or there had been no swimsuit and she imagined it all.
She checked her phone and gasped. Another half hour wasted on some little trance?!
***
She rushed back to the foyer, thinking maybe she should leave... but then again this was barely a quarter of the place, and Ronny would never let her hear the end of it, having her flee the place before midnight! Into the Onyx statue rooms to the east she went, but paused.
...The clock in the foyer was ticking now as well.
"Why are they all starting up all of a sudden?"
Sighing, she opened the door to find a dining room, connected to a small kitchen. The table was not set, and held only dusty web-strewn candlesticks. Close inspection revealed them to all depict nude women holding the candles aloft
The walls held more strange paintings. One had a gorgon surrounded by smashed statues. One had a strange porcelain doll sitting down. One showed a woman seemingly normal, but her body had lines and marks like she was a jigsaw.
On one wall there was a cuckoo clock. Two small doors were at either side of the clockface, likely to let something pop out and move along the tracks, and a third door held the cuckoo... or would have, had the door not seemed to be nailed shut.
The kitchen held little of value. Old stoves and worksurfaces, dusty and grimy. But there was also a photo of a group of diners here, hanging above the sink. They all wore formal dress, and held their glasses aloft.
"Weird place for a picture... Some kind of party held here?" She said, and noticed something. There seemed to be a key sitting at one of the chairs.
And it was a real key. She reached to touch it...
...And found herself motionless, sitting down, holding a glass aloft. Others around her did the same, and she heard moaning, soft sobbing... She tried to move but could only flit her eyes around, seeing she was wearing a cocktail dress in red, and sitting beside a man whose face was smiling but his eyes held terror...
She looked up, and saw that the world ahead of her was the kitchen, empty and silent. The world she was in, was the inside of the photo...
She gasped as the cuckoo clock rang out from the dining room, getting out of the funk. She sped out to it, and watched two small marching dolls walk out, and heard a thump-thump from the nailed shut door. The clock also claimed it was past midnight now, long past. Her phone confirmed it... and was also now on half battery? It had been fully charged just a few hours ago and barely used!
"Alright, that's it, I give up. Ronny can laugh all he wants but this is just getting too much," She sighed, and made her way back to the foyer....
....and walked into the back garden?
"Huh?! What the...."
The garden was overgrown here too, long grass waving in the night wind. She shivered, looking over the empty place as cold night air caressed her naked form and caused goosebumps. High walls surrounded it, a long dried fountain sat full of leaves, and statues lined some of the walls. Maybe she could climb one to get out since she was losing her bearings inside so easily?
She picked one that looked to have the right sort of shape to climb up, grabbing the stone breasts of the female sculpture, and pulling herself up on the shoulders of the statue. She was about to stand and reach for the wall, when she was grabbed by stone arms?!
"No way!" She found herself lost for any sensible comment as the statue she climbed pulled her down.
Struggling and trying to break free as it held her arms against her body, the statue moved with the scrape of stone on stone, as she writhed and shouted.
"Help! Ronny! There's a ghost statue or something trying to kidnap me!"
No reply came... and the statue took her to the fountain, placing her atop the central column. It held her in place as she squirmed... and then she felt water rushing up her throat.
"Gllaurgh!" She sprayed a torrent from her mouth as the statue let go, grasping her throat for a moment... but letting go and feeling her body strike a pose.
A cold wave spread up her, as her skin turned pale. She turned to stone atop the fountain, the water spraying from her mouth, running up pipes in her body, and even leaking out of a few small cracks...
***
...And then she blinked, inside the foyer, not a fountain, not spewing out water. It was now nearly 3AM?!
"Okay, I'm out for real now, there's the door, bye bye creepy hallucination house..." She said, heading for the exit...
...Only to rush into another room, not out the front door. This was a hallway lined with suits of armour, their breastplates either blank or strangely depicting nude screaming women. One other door was at the end and in a panic she ran for it.
And halfway down, tripped on something.
"Wargh!" She said as she fell in a heap... and screamed as a suit of armour loomed over her, axe raised.
She dodged the swing and crashed into another suit, making it fall apart, only for a third to be in front of her. It grabbed her, and she struggled against it.
"Lemme go you ghost hallucination thing! I gotta get out of here!" She feebly protested as more suits moved, grabbing the fallen suit of armour's pieces.
One dropped the helm on her head, muffling her cries and blocking her vision. She felt them force her into the armour, cold on her nude form. She tried to fight back, but soon, was trapped inside the suit... the suit that was moving back to where it stood...
...and then she found herself staring at a reflection in the blank breastplate in front of her. A screaming blonde nude woman on the chest of a suit of armour. Herself...
She screamed as she blinked, and realised she was somehow in the mannequin room again. Still naked. She had only the stopwatch on her neck, no bag, no phone now.
"Wait, I have an hour left... I need to get out..."
She found the mannequin room led to a hallway, that led to the second floor of the foyer, and the stairway down to the exit! Clocks ticked loudly around the place, matching her heartbeat as she ran...
...and then going faster as her heartbeat seemed to slow. She felt like she was moving through molasses as the door seemed further and further away, but there was time! Lots of time...
...the clocks ticked faster, she moved slower, and as she just managed to start reaching for the doorknob, the pink sky outside began glowing brighter. The sun was rising... and had risen while she just hand a hand on the door.
The clocks slowed back to normal, and the sunlight filtered in the place. Nancy let out one cry of surprise as she saw her hand vanishing... felt herself fading... and heard an echoing laugh as the mansion claimed her.
***
Ronny sighed as the sun rose, and Nancy was nowhere to be seen. He gave her another ten minutes, then shrugged.
"Well, she wants to get herself into these sorts of things, let her get out of them."
He'd maybe come back in a bit, but frankly, he was a little bored of this now. A night wasted on a predictable outcome...
***
Over the next few weeks more people explored the place, at day.
"...Did that painting move?" One explorer wondered, pointing at a nude blonde girl that was screaming, fleeing a moving suit of armour.
"Is there someone there?!" Another asked after they saw a reflection in a mirror.
A naked woman?! But no, the room was empty...
Two nervous girls watched the odd shadow around the corner, nearing it... and finding nothing.
"You saw that, right? A woman's shadow on the wall?"
"Y-yeah, maybe... Maybe just a trick of the light?"
One explorer found a bath full of murky water... and blinked when he for a moment saw a beautiful blonde in the tub bathing, but it was empty. Just green water...
And as they explored in daylight, those that had explored by night watched. Dozens snared by the spirit of the house over the years.
From a painting, Nancy stared out from the canvas her blue eyes were fixed to....