A Rainbow Runs Red

A music video in an old house. Light and fog rigs pushing the van based generator to its limit.

No, you're at the wheel, but you're in the backseat; Mickey's in the front lighting up. You can see the river coming up to meet you.

======================

Cade your eyes burst open. You're safe in the passenger seat, Ash is driving. Classes are off for a long weekend.

Ash, this stretch of road is long and straight, and you're cruising on caffeine and snacks.

You finally come upon the correct turn off, the trees bending inward on the less used path. The sun at your back becomes more and more frequently covered by clouds. Ahead, you finally reach the old bridge, 4 wooden crosses planted to the right. They sag slightly from the elements, otherwise unchanged by a year.

From here you can see the house on the hill. It is glaringly ordinary from this angle, if run down.

An old tractor slowly crosses the bridge ahead of you, but eventually the path is clear.

The weather seems determined to prey on your fears, the clouds blowing in faster as you take the single switchback up the steep hill. The house is deeper than it appeared from the bridge, a sagging porch and hedged in back garden the only actual signs of entry.

As Ash parks, the car settles into place the various rumblings of the engine petering to silence. The wind takes its place. In the distance are sounds that may be approaching rain and distant thunder.

The porch looks perhaps even worse up close than further away, one whole section requiring ducking. At least it still keeps out the rain. The door itself is locked, though the lock itself is pretty old.

The knob has some give and whine, but it stops just before it feels like it would pop. The wind picks up around you, louder than you've ever heard. Shutters smack against the upper walls of the old house.

You turn the lock back to where Cade had it and with a shoulder in just the right place (more than once). The door pops open.

Inside the wind blows around cobwebs in the corners of an old, sheeted living room. A green rug lays in the entry, a sheet of paper atop it, as if waiting. There's also a hallway and a closet at the far side of the room. The former drops quickly into darkness. The latter is partially open.

The page appears to be torn from a book, a journal maybe. The handwriting is mostly clean, but inconsistent.You can hear the rain approaching now, a sheet moving across the hills. It urges you to enter. It urges you to run.

Cade's actions seem almost psychic as the door tries to blow shut, getting caught on the rug. The wind makes a weird buzzing sound passing through that door and others unseen. Almost like the low buzz of a thousand strange reed instruments.

The coffee table moves easy enough, the sheet only getting caught under the leg for a moment. It's simple wood, but solid. At a glance it was made anywhere between 20 and 50 years ago.

The door doesn't bang like it's being shut necessarily. At least, not by an entity, so much as just the wind.

One thing is immediately not present in the closet. No guitar leaps out at you.

The box on the floor is present though, with the canvas green eye watching you as you search. As you recall, the box contains 3 old pieces of mail and a few dead flies. The same number, if you bother to count.

The rain is beginning to blow in the door at this point, though on this side of the room you're largely fine. It is a bit chilly with the door open like this. Perhaps the rain is bringing a cold front with it.

The beam of the flashlight hits the edge of the hall and stops. The light illuminates the doorway just fine, and doesn't appear to be hitting a wall (physical objects will pass just fine), but for some reason the light just...stops.

The bat indeed doesn't react to the hallway. As you pass in, the flashlight turns off completely and switching it on or off doesn't change this fact. Feeling along the hall is easy enough to navigate, though it is "dark as the inside of a skull." This phrase bubbles up in your mind unbidden as you pass through the hall.

Emerging from the hallway is a long room, with brick columns to the right and large raised windows past them on the right wall. The windows let in light, but there is utter darkness beyond them. You can't see the storm outside; you're not even sure you can still hear it.

Forward and to the left, the room eventually fades into darkness. The floorboards near the second column look like someone started to pry them up.

The boards are easy enough to pry up, but the hole under the floor curves away.

Listening closely you hear, tick...tick...tick...

Once you go around the curve your truncheon quickly hits something. Not the end of the hole, wood perhaps? It jostles.

Tick tick tick tick

It's easy enough for Cade to grab onto the object. A two faced clock. The left face is currently set at about 4:15, the right at approximately 8:30

Tick tick tick tick

Tick tick tick tick
Tock tock tock tock tock

Tock tock tock tock
Tick tick tick tick tick

The clock doesn't have specific setting pins, but in your investigation it's clear that the hands are easy enough to move.

Is it the clock that's ticking, or the room? You can both hear the giggling occasionally now.

Tock tock tock tock
Tick tick tick tick tick

Do you?
Are you staying together, or apart?

You both blink and the clock is surrounded by blood red eyes. The manifestations swarm around the clock.

Cade's response is immediate and she manages to scramble away from the clock. There is still an aura of fear around the bloodshot eyes, as they turn to look at both figures in the room and then dissipate.

Tick tick tick tick

The pair of you move together past pillars.

Past pillars.

Pillars.

Leveraged up floorboards.

Pill- wait.

Behind you is darkness, the door isn't even visible anymore.

A giggle to your left

You follow the giggles for awhile, drawn through the darkness, but no progress. How long have you actually been in this room? Does it have an end?

You find yourself back at the columns, though you could swear you had been moving towards the other side of the room.

Moving past, you see that the floorboards aren't in the state you left them, but in fact the state you found them in. Someone clearly started to pry them, but they're in place.

Getting to the windows, they let in light, but outside there's...nothing. The image behind the panel is a dark void. Their height makes them a little hard to inspect, but the glass seems to be old stacked glass cubes. Each of which is maybe a quarter of a foot in each direction. This seems to include thickness.

As if naming it causes it to be, the clock begins ticking anew.

Easy enough to get the clock, even if it's a little nerve wracking, not being able to see what you're doing. Unlike the rest of the room, it hasn't reset. The hands are both on 4:15.

The seconds tick on loudly.

The clock begins chiming. One, two...

At twelve, a door forms between the faces of the clock. Through the crack in the door there seems to be what might be a foyer.

The two of you are in what might be a foyer, except that the front door is missing. You've appeared in a corner (left of where your brain tells you the door should be), unceremoniously dropped (whether you fall over is up to you) onto the cold stone floor. Across the room is a very stout set of doors, with a passage leading off to each side.

In the middle of the room is an old worn rug. It seems like it was originally a blue rug with gold embroidery, though it is now old and stained. The stains themselves are old and red, casting the rug in a dirty purple.

Each passageway stretches a handful of feet before turning, the distances approximately even.

The handle catches, the door is locked.

The narrow hall leads another few feet before coming to a small door, matching more closely the aesthetic from when you first entered the house. It sits slightly cracked and you can see what appears to be a shelf of books.

Indeed what you could see is a bookcase. This room has 2 walls nearly filled with them. At the end of the long room is a simple deck with a lamp, some pens and a notebook.

The smell of the room is stifling. Loneliness.

Though you can't see them from here

The desk lamp is basic, older with a green glass shield and a fake gold plated base. The pens are not notable, if older.The desk has no drawers or cabinets, just an older fancy wood. Intended more for writing on than records.

Ash, some titles that you see as you're looking around.

Into the Dust
Book of Lies
Moonchild
Eyes of the Child
History
H.P. Lovecraft's Tales of Horror
Donjon Deep
House of Leaves
Cornucopia
Into the Dust
The Key of it All
History
Non-Euclidian Geometry
Seeking Realms Beyond
The Dream Eaters
Dune

Thumbing through, the Expanded title is "The Key of It All-Book I: An Encyclopedic Guide to the Sacred Languages & Magical Systems of the World"

It's...dry. Even a paragraph is a bit hard to get through.

To the right is a heavier oak door, something you might see in a historic manor of some kind. Pushing it open reveals quite the scene.

The floor is stone and the room itself is significantly colder than the one you're standing in, the threshold almost seeming to sap the heat. A collection of mounted animal heads covers the wall, the most impressive certainly the magnificent buck.

Across from the buck is a cold fireplace, 2 rifles hanging above it.

Opposite you is another less imposing door.

------------------

There is also a door you couldn't see when you first entered the library. This smaller door opens to an arched stone passage, wind seeming to find its way through cracks in the opposite door. Unlike the previous shadowy hallway, your lights penetrate this one, casting shadows off the uneven stones.

The door to the left of the desk is a faded green door. In places the paint is flaking, especially near the doorframe and the floor. "Green Room" is scrawled on a note and fitted into a name plate that looks more fit for an office.

The door does in fact open to a familiar Green Room. The first club the two of you played at together, Rumeur. It's one that you went back to occasionally too, even after bigger spaces actually started giving your duo the time of day.

The room is as you remember it. A couple beat up couches in a v shape, a monitor for watching the stage, a tiny bedroom vanity attempting to stand in for a bigger makeup station.

There's a couple doors on the far wall - just barely big enough for the two - which you recall to lead to the stairs to the stage and a small bathroom.

The easiest thing to note in this room is the casket in the middle. Drab, respectful wallpaper and furniture completes the aesthetic. A small table sits on either side of the room, left and right of you. One holds flowers, the other some papers. The casket is currently shut.
There is one further door across from you.

As Cade watches, a procession of mourners begins to file from the opposite door, stopping at the coffin and then moving towards and through the door she's standing at. Despite the coffin being closed, it very much looks like a prefuneral viewing.

The mourner passes into the room that you're in and begins to walk away, passing through a wall and vanishing.

Thankfully the line of mourners is easy enough to predict. They pass through the door at regular intervals.

The door opens to a familiar room. Mounted animal heads line the walls, fireplace, etc. Just seen from the other side.

Cade, you step into the trophy room, immediately every trophy in the room (walls, floor, tables) begins to hoot and holler. The deer head emits a ghastly roar, elongating with a wet crunching sound. It whips towards Cade like some horrific brown furred snake.

Cade, other than whatever the hell just happened in the trophy room, your loop around is quiet. Almost eerily so.

Ash, you don't actually hear Cade's footsteps until she re-enters the greenroom, not even as an echo.

The pull door doesn't budge. It's almost as if it's just a sculpted part of the wall, the same way a column or molding would be.

Returning to the library, it appears untouched. The door to the Trophy Room stands open from Cade's dash through, but nothing in there seems out of place. The buck head is on the wall unmoving.

A short set of stairs leads up into a shadowy hallway. Though your lights work (unlike the last hallway) the shadows they cast on the uneven stone seem to elongate unnaturally unless you focus on them.

The air smells of a cool night's breeze. How.... how long have you been in the house.

There are drag marks here. They don't go anywhere suspicious, just one end of the hall to the other.

The heavy stone door here leads out into a walled courtyard. A few bits of brown grass peek from between the stones. It's cold and still. The wind that was causing the draft in the hall blows in the distance.
In the middle of the courtyard stands a statue of a weeping woman, in white stone. Marble maybe.

There are 2 other exits here, both along the wall you entered from. The further is a nearly identical stone door and archway. Between the two arches is a wooden cellar door.

The marble statue itself is stained with age and moisture. The face is covered by the statue's hands, doesn't seem like it was even carved at any point. At the statue's feet is a stone tablet, shattered into pieces

Before leaving: Cade, the tablet looks like it might once have depicted the sun.

---

The door opens, a shorter hallway this time, leading to a similarly short set of stairs.

The space is unmistakeable. It's an art gallery. The walls are white marble and your steps echo clearly. Stone pillars line the length, to the side of each painting.

All of the paintings are old, though some appear older than others. Some of the frames look gnawed upon.

The painting of a Man on a Horse is directly across from you when you enter. The next 4 paintings go from right to left - then the next wall has a door - then the remaining 3 - ending at Ash and Cade again.

---

The Paintings

The wind blows in from the courtyard, the door slamming open.

...

Nothing.