Un-Caging Wyland

The light was on, but I could smell the fire burning.

"Lights out!" Colin yelled, "Who left the lights on?"

We stopped our whispering, and I heard someone try to snuff out a smoking cigarette. Then silence. Our footsteps were loud on the cracked marble floor and we stood in front of the double doors. I wondered if they had any age to them.

"Do you think this is it?" I whispered to Patrick. He shrugged, but he looked excited. We had been searching for weeks for a house that matched the description from the website: "a large house in need of repair". This one fit the bill perfectly, though it hadn't been advertised as such on Craigslist or anywhere else online. According to the site, this was the home of a man by the name of William Peckins--a mysterious fellow who disappeared sometime in the twentieth century after being charged with murder. The only other piece of information we found online was an old newspaper article which simply stated that William Peckins was guilty of murdering three teens who broke into his home... in 1963. The reporter went on to say that Mr. Peckins claimed that he was protecting himself and his wife from intruders, but gave no further details as to why he would feel threatened in his own home. A picture accompanied the article--a grainy black-and-white of a man with a massive mustache standing next to a pretty woman with long hair and a flowy dress. They both looked very serious, even though they were surrounded by children dressed like ghosts for Halloween--the reporter probably snapped them when he first arrived at the scene. We didn't know what Halloween was, but assumed it was some sort of holiday, like Christmas or Easter or something like that. So we decided to dress up like ghosts too (I ended up painting my face white and covering my eyes with two toilet paper tubes; Patrick used black makeup). After a few hours of waiting around in our costumes, we finally saw headlights approach down the long dirt road which led to this house--and sure enough, an old car pulled up outside the house and two people got out: a tall man wearing jeans and a leather jacket and a woman in her sixties wearing an elegant blue dress and carrying an umbrella. They walked up to their front door--which looked very similar to ours--and unlocked it with a key from her handbag before disappearing inside without looking back once at us or our homely costumes. A few minutes later, we heard multiple locks click shut and felt relieved: maybe these people really did live here! Maybe we weren't about to get shot! We may have gotten caught trespassing, but this seemed worth it... After all, how often do you get to break into someone's home?

We let ourselves in through one of their windows (we actually just forced it open) and made our way through their kitchen and living room until we reached what looked like an office or den (it was hard to tell; everything was covered in dust).

As soon as Colin flicked on the light switch, I started coughing. "Shit," Patrick said as he tried not to breathe too much smoke into his lungs, "they must be burning something important." It smelled terrible... like burnt rubber tires mixed with rotten eggs (or maybe there were eggs rotting somewhere?). We walked quickly past the den and eventually came across two large wooden doors which were slightly open; they looked very old, polished with wear over time until they shone slightly under our flashlights' glow. Colin pushed on them gently until they creaked open slowly; beyond them was another hallway which lead deeper into darkness--until suddenly its end lit up brightly from a light on the floor illuminating an ornate rug underneath it.