[HSM] A Surprise Visit...

For a long moment, the only sounds that she would hear were that of chirping birds and the faint whirr and hum of the camera's motor. As she approached it, it seemed to track her, at least - seemed to center on her as she stood before it. There was a long moment of nothing, no reaction, no answer, nothing....

But then, suddenly, there was a beeping sound, the gates swinging open to invite her in. Nothing was said, there was no announcement, no nothing...just the entryway itself, seeming to want her to come further up the road.

The mansion loomed overhead, tall and imposing where it stood atop its hill. Beyond Charlotte, there were no signs of life there...no one else had even parked out front. The porch lights had been lit for the evening, preparing for the dark of the night. It was true, Michael wasn't in at present....

But the front door was unlocked.

This could mean one of two things. Either Mister Stewart had unlocked it, knowing Charlotte was coming...or someone else had unlocked it on their way in. Either answer was viable - but the discarded cigarette butt lying near the doorway was less than encouraging.

The room she entered into was the small entryway - just a little, clean room, housing little to speak of. There was a pay phone on the wall (which was strange, but a little strangeness could be overlooked in such a dire situation, surely), a little metal bin for wet umbrellas, a doormat...but besides that, not very much was there. Her words echoed in the small space, no reaction reaching her ears besides her own voice bouncing back against her.

The doors leading into the next room were ajar slightly - and there were no sounds coming from the next room. The mansion was so...quiet - at least, it was.

From the next room, there was a very sharp, shrill sound, discordant and startling.

When she plowed through the doors, she would find herself in the large round room, the white piano in the center and the fine couches set out against the curved walls. Besides the strange shape of the room and the slightly off-kilter paintings hung up, there wasn't all that much amiss in the area on first glance.

If she walked around the piano, however, she would find two things that stood out.

One was the ashen fingerprints upon a few of the keys - a very strange minor chord, played all on high notes.

The other was the much-battered tin of salmon, sitting atop the even-higher notes where it had been set. The sound she had heard from the room before...the can had just been dropped onto the keyboard. He WAS here...he was here, and he was just ahead of Charlotte.

There was no response to her derisive shouting but her own echo - again bouncing back at her from the rounded walls. As she played the chord, she would immediately realize the point to doing so...with a deep rumble, the room started to spin around her, turning in its entirety around the platform she stood upon with the piano. It spun steadily, the door creaking faintly as it shifted position...and then it all stopped.

The door clicked as if some manner of latch had been undone...and somewhere behind the it, soft, dark laughter could be heard.

The door opened into a long, straight hallway...one that ended in a two-way fork off in the distance. This hall was more dimly lit than the previous two rooms...only the occasional sconces lit with barely-burning bulbs every few feet. There were a number of doors on either side, more strange paintings hung up between them - but these paintings were a great deal less pleasant than the ones in the round room. Strange images, warped perspectives from what must have been a warped mind. A dead bird with another bird standing over it, one of its eyes in his beak. A prisoner being dragged away by the ankles, fingernails peeling away where he was digging them into the ground to try and stop. None of these were paintings it seemed like Mister Stewart would have chosen; and none of the doors seemed to be open, all locked tight. The locks seemed to be mechanical - there was no keyhole, though the box for the mechanisms were easy to see beneath the doorknobs.

In the middle of the hallway was a small, round table - which may have once been a very nice little table, but now stood as a charred echo of its former self. Sitting atop it were three things.

A small crystal bottle, filled with some dark crimson liquid.

Some manner of small cake, which would almost look appetizing were it not for the ashes that littered the top.

And a note written on ash-smudged paper, red letters in a scrawling, sharp-looking hand:

You did say you wanted to play, didn't you?

The only remarkable thing about the bottle was the fact that there seemed to be something in the bottom of it - something murky and hard to see with the liquid in it. The cake, however, had nothing to show that it was important at all...but then, why would it be here? It seemed unlikely the Smoking Man would put these things there just in case she was hungry.

The paintings didn't seem to have any real pattern, besides the disturbing content of each. The only ones that seemed to be of any importance were at the end of the hall, just beside the corner leading off who-knows-where and beside the last doors in the hallway. The paintings weren't similar in the least - one was depicting a surgeon with wild eyes, tearing into a man's chest with what, by the patient's expression, seemed to be no anesthetic. The other seemed to be two men beating each other, large, heavy, blunt instruments in hand.

Both paintings had a small rectangular slot on the nameplate, clearly meant for something to be slotted into it.

A curl of dark cigarette smoke wafted from behind the right-hand blind corner, accompanied by a soft laugh. He was amused. Having fun watching her scramble into the house, shouting at him - at HIM - as she tried to check up on the old man.