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.
