it was a large brown mansion. really really huge. we walked in through the giant oak doors.

once we got in we knew something was wrong. there were people walking around like zombies. they were wearing old school academic robes, and they had a greyish hue about them. one of the girls i was with noted that she could see others, barely visible, almost floating through the halls.

i knew that if i didn't give myself a task, i would fall asleep like they had. so i decided i needed to find ron hynes, because i knew he had disappeared inside this house. most people thought he was dead.

i started going through the house. i went into each room methodically. it was hard to concentrate. in one of the rooms an old man sat at a large desk and stared off into space. he said "this house is larger than you think, my dear".

i went out of his door, and sure enough, there were more and more rooms branching off of hallways. i saw staircases leading up and down, many of them near each other and leading in alternate directions. it didn't matter, i knew i could do it methodically.

i got to one closet-like room, and almost fell through a hole in the floor. but wait, no i didn't because the hole closed over. every time i lifted my foot it would open, and every time i went to put my foot down it would close. i reached down and pried it open. there were lights like on a stage underneath a sliding door. it had a girl's name on it. then i realized that some of the translucent people weren't people at all but holograms. i wondered if they were once people trapped in here, and made into holograms once they were dead.

i knew what i had to do. i went to the main room with my friends (i was fighting back the grey mist that swam before my eyes, denser and denser every minute). they were sitting around a table looking at a bottle. there were labels all over this bottle. i peeled one off. a man in front of us vanished. i peeled off another, same thing happened.

i knew that this bottle was at least going to help me distinguish between people who were living and trapped in the house and people who were holograms. i hoped that r. hynes, standing next to me, would not vanish.