The Mark of the Mansion

A story I wrote for my English class in eleventh grade. The assignment was to write a horror story.

Written in November, 2004.
A little over seven pages, double-spaced, in Word.
Deviantart Mirror.

Mark of the Mansion

The room was a dull white. A blank, dull white, that returned my empty stare. I could see someone looking in through the window. His appearance was disguised by the tint of the window, and all I could tell was that I knew him. From somewhere. But who he was, I could not tell. He was speaking to someone, one of the caretakers, I suppose. His presence gave me somewhat of a nostalgic feeling. As emotions did not often come in this dull white box, I indulged myself in it. I began to remember, remember how I had ended up in this place.

* * *

I arrived at the mansion on a clear, sunny day, about a week after the funeral. It was a large and foreboding mansion, one that I could clearly imagine as the setting for a scary story. I could merely picture the mansion on a dark and stormy night, with lightning reflecting off of the large, cracked windows that surrounded the house, and water flowing through the crevices in the stone, down the enormous pillars in front of the menacing wooden door. Even the manor’s size was frightening; it was at least three or four stories tall, and it extended beyond view into the forest surrounding it. I could hardly believe that I was to be living in such a large estate all by myself.

The house had come into my possession by somewhat strange circumstances. It had previously belonged to my great uncle, who had built it with his own two hands, and those of several hundred migrant laborers. He was a bit of a shut in, and no one in our family had actually seen him in several years. However, it somehow became apparent to the authorities that he had died, and the whole family was called in to discuss what was to be done with his estate and wealth. Nobody had any particular attachment to him, and they were, in fact, rather happy to be receiving his money. Not one person, however, was really interested in receiving his house, whether it was because they already had places to live or because of something else. I, having recently graduated and being in need of a home, was left with the entirety of his property, which was somewhat ironic, because I was the only person who had never met him.
I shoved open the front door and passed through the gateway into the house to find an enormous entrance room with a grand stairway ascending up two floors, and a butler, standing rigidly in the dark, far end of the room. He was wearing a black suit and a plain white shirt, with a black bow tie secured tightly around his neck. He had surprisingly long, black hair that was slicked backward, and wore a small smirk on his face. I expected him to quickly approach and introduce himself, but he did not, and so I slowly walked up to him.

“Hello, sir, my name is Mark. I was the servant of your great uncle, and I have been instructed to continue my stay here and work under you.”
“That’s great!” I exclaimed. “I was not told that there was going to be a butler here to work for me. I didn’t even know my uncle had had one while he was alive! But, of course, this is a great thing!”
“Yes, of course sir. Now, if I may introduce you to the house. You will find the dining hall to your right, and the kitchen beyond that. On your left, there is a lounge, followed by several guest rooms. Through the doorway directly to our right you’ll find the living room and the grand ballroom. Your room is on the second floor, to the right. There are many, many other rooms, but I’ll let you explore them for yourself.”

I was struck by his bluntness and his failure to actually show me through the rooms he described, and I found it even more disrespectful that he failed to grab my baggage and carry it to my room. However, I shrugged it off, picked up my bags, and climbed the stairs, leaving him standing there, alone.
As the first few weeks went by, I had plenty of time to explore the mansion. I could see why my uncle had rarely left the house; on some days I even found it difficult to find the front door! However, there was something slightly awry about the mansion that I assumed had kept my uncle’s attention and quickly gained my full interest. I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was, but between the numerous rooms and the endless number of paintings and sculptures that lined the walls, I felt that something simply wasn’t quite right. However, that just spurred me on to continue my exploration of the building.

Those works of art, in particular, captured my attention. There were hundreds, literally hundreds, of portraits and sculptures of people throughout the house, each one completely unique. I could never figure out who each of the subjects was, much less how my uncle had come to posses so much art. However, what intrigued me the most was that the same odd feeling came from the paintings, too; each person seemed slightly off, as if there was something unrealistic about each one, or possibly something too realistic.

Exploration soon became my primary activity in the house. I wandered down hallways and arrive at doors that led to rooms I had never seen. I explored every floor, and each one seemed to expand on forever. I felt as if I would never see everything the house had in store, but I made it my mission to try. I found it interesting, though, that Mark seemed to pop up in the most random parts of the house. I would be in the north end of the second floor, investigating a new office I had just found, only to turn and find him standing stiffly in the corner. What bothered me more, though, was that I never saw him walking around the house – I only found him standing in one place or another. However, I slowly became at ease with him as the weeks went on, as I noticed that he began to move more when I did see him, rather than keep his rigid stance. I figured he had been merely nervous with having a new employer, and he was now, in fact, slowly becoming at ease with me, but I was never quite sure, as he didn’t really strike me as a nervous fellow.

After a few weeks in the house, I discovered that I was on the verge of obsession with the house and its secrets, and I decided to invite my friend, Charles, over, so that I might have a break. He arrived on yet another sunny afternoon, and I brought him inside to talk. However, when I called for Mark, he was nowhere to be found.

“Who are you calling for?” Charles asked. “Who is ‘Mark’?”

“Oh, he’s the butler of the house! Although he seems rather strange, it’s nice to have him around.”

“I was unaware that you had a butler!”
“So was I, when I first arrived!”
Despite my frustration with Mark, I had an enjoyable afternoon talking with Charles. I even briefly showed him around the mansion, but I dared not discuss the oddity of it that bothered me, for fear of being thought insane.

Shortly after his departure, as I was returning to my room, I found Mark. I approached him angrily and requested that he walk with me, so that we might be able to talk. I was surprised to find that he complied with my request, as he had never been very mobile, and this was the first time that he actually walked around in my presence.

“Where were you all of this evening?” I shouted. “I had a guest, and you were nowhere to be found! What do you think your job is around here?”
“Why sir,” he responded politely, while his smirk never left his face, “I merely had business to attend to. There is certainly much more involved with maintaining this house than just living in it, as you do!”
I was taken aback by how he spoke to me, but I continued. “I expect you to attend to me and especially to my guests before you deal with other things about the house!”
“But of course, sir. I am quite sorry. It completely slipped my mind that you had a guest, and I will certainly be around to serve you as well as your guests next time.”

It seemed as though he was ignoring my authority, and I was rather annoyed by and suspicious of his disrespect. However, I was tired, and so I cut him a break and went to sleep.
As the weeks went on, I became more and more obsessed with the house, and more afraid of it. I felt as if I was being watched. The strangeness in the paintings and the sculptures became more and more apparent. I often found things that had been moved around, such as a dining room chair in a hallway, or a potted plant on a couch. Mark would pop up in ever more obscure places, and I could often feel his eyes watching from a dark corner. And it wasn’t only Mark; I felt as if there were other people in the house, right around the next corner or lurking in the shadows. But I was always just one step behind them. The house even began to seem larger. I would enter doorways I thought I knew and end up in someplace I had never been. Some hallways seemed to extend endlessly, winding all throughout the house. In general, the house seemed to get darker, as did the conditions outside.

I addressed my fears with Mark, but he merely shrugged them off. “It is nothing, sir. You’re merely imagining such things,” he said, with a devious smile. This began to provoke me to even more suspicious of him. I wasn’t sure why, but I felt as though Mark was causing the things that I was experiencing, and that he was provoking my fear. I grew more and more fearful as the weeks and even months went by. I wasn’t even sure how much time had passed since I had last seen Charles when I called him for the second time. I was becoming afraid of Mark, and I needed someone I could trust - someone in whom I could confide my fears.

This time around, Charles arrived on a stormy, cold evening. I tried to mask my fear, but it was not long before Charles asked if I was alright. I explained that there was something wrong with the house. People were in the house that shouldn’t have been there. I was being watched. Things were being moved. Mark, I explained, must be the one behind these peoples’ presence.
“And you’ve seen these people? Why haven’t you called the police?” He asked.

“No, I haven’t actually seen them, but I know they’re there!”

“Well… may I possibly have a word with Mark then?”

A good idea, but, yet again, Mark was nowhere to be found. Charles suggested that I might want to see a doctor. But why would I need a doctor? Mark was the one causing all this!

After Charles had left, I went to sit in the lounge and have a drink. But, inside the lounge, I found numerous people. All dressed up, in expensive garments. They looked like models, or subjects for paintings. As I entered, they all turned and laughed at me. I screamed, and ran back through the doorway. This didn’t lead back in the entrance room, but instead to a long white hallway. There I found another person, a woman. I asked her why she was here, and she replied that she was invited by my Uncle. She then began to laugh, and asked if I wished to see him, while pointing to a doorway. I went through it, to find a bright white room, with dark red stains splattered on the walls and the furniture. I looked at my feet to find the corpse of my Uncle. Suddenly, the lights went out, and I heard a high pitched scream. The lights flickered back on, and I was in a long hall, with a black and white tiled floor. Along the walls were the well dressed people, all staring. I broke into a run, and opened the door at the other end of the corridor, to find myself in the hallway of a hospital. I walked down the hall, to the door at the end. I looked in. The room was a dull white, with pads covering the walls, and I was sitting in the corner, staring back at myself. I jumped back, and then rushed through the door, only to find myself back in the entrance room.

Here, I found Mark, with his characteristic smirk. I ran forward with tears I my eyes, and screamed, “Why are these people in my house? What have you done with the rooms?” He merely smiled, and told me that nothing was wrong, that it was all my imagination. He then began to laugh. I shouted that I was going to call the police! I picked up the phone, and dialed 911, and screamed that there was something wrong in my house. I then collapsed in front of the stairs. The last thing I remember was the door opening, and men in boots storming in.

* * *

“Well, what do you think, Charles?” the doctor asked as we both looked in on him in the cell. “What do you think happened to him?”

“I’m not sure,” I said, “I saw him twice during his stay at the mansion, and he seemed quite unsettled. He thought there were people in his house, and that his butler, Mark, was conspiring against him.”
“Mark, you say? He has mentioned Mark often, though we didn’t know that he was the butler of the house.”
“He wasn’t. There never was a Mark. Both times I visited him, the butler was nowhere to be found. After I was told that he had been committed, I went back to the house to investigate. All I found were a bunch of paintings… perhaps those were the ‘people’ in his house. Either way, there was one painting that intrigued me, because there were copies of it in several different rooms. It was a painting of a man, in a black suit with a white shirt and a black bow tie, and somewhat long, black, slicked back hair. Below each of the copies, there was a plaque, inscribed with the name ‘MARK’.”