Everyone who entered the Blackfield mansion vanished without a trace.
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Now, let’s step back in time to a place where silence was louder than screams and disappearances were more common than departures.
The year was 1847, and the Blackfield mansion stood like a rotting tooth against the gray autumn sky of rural Pennsylvania.
Three stories of dark timber and stone with windows that reflected nothing, not the sun, not the trees, not even the desperate faces of those who approached its weathered doors.
Samuel Witmore had been traveling for 6 days straight, his horse exhausted and his supplies nearly depleted.
As a land surveyor for the federal government, he’d mapped countless miles of the expanding American frontier, but he’d never encountered anything quite like the isolated stretch of road that cut through the Alagany foothills.
The locals in the last town, a miserable collection of wooden buildings called Harrows Creek, had warned him about taking this route.
There’s a perfectly good road 15 mi north, the inkeeper had said, his weathered face creased with genuine concern.
Adds a day to your journey, but it’s worth it.
Why is that? Samuel had asked, spreading his maps across the bar.
The inkeeper had glanced around the empty room before leaning in close.
Blackfield Mansion sits on that road about 30 mi east of here.
used to be a trading post back in the day, built by a family from god knows where.
But something ain’t right about that place.
Samuel had dismissed it as superstition, the kind of folktales that sprouted like weeds in isolated communities.
He’d encountered dozens of supposedly haunted houses, cursed forests, and demonic crossroads in his travels.
Every single one had a rational explanation once you stripped away the fear and ignorance.
Now, as his horse slowed to a nervous trot, Samuel found himself reconsidering that confidence.
The mansion appeared suddenly through a break in the dense forest, its silhouette stark against the darkening sky.
November winds howled through the bare branches, carrying with them the scent of decay and something else.
Something sweet and wrong like fruit left too long in the sun.
Samuel’s horse winnied and pulled against the rains, its eyes rolling white with terror.
“Easy, girl,” Samuel murmured, patting the mayor’s neck.
Her coat was slick with sweat despite the cold.
“It’s just a house.” But even as he said it, Samuel felt the wrongness of the place settle into his bones.
The mansion was too still.
No smoke rose from its three chimneys.
No lights glowed in its windows.
Yet it didn’t have the feel of an abandoned building.
It felt occupied, watched, intentional in its silence.
The front gate hung open, rusted iron creaking in the wind.
A weathered sign dangled from a single chain.
Blackfield House.
Lodging and trade.
est 1811.
Samuel had two choices.
Press on through the darkness for another 10 mi with an exhausted horse or seek shelter in the mansion and continue at dawn.
His surveyor’s mind calculated the risks.
If the horse collapsed, he’d be stranded.
If night fell completely, he’d be riding blind through unfamiliar territory.
The mansion, for all its unsettling appearance, offered walls and a roof.
Samuel dismounted and led his reluctant horse through the gate.
The gravel drive crunched under his boots, unnaturally loud in the oppressive quiet.
No birds sang, no insects chirped.
Even the wind seemed to die as he approached the front steps.
The double doors were made of heavy oak, darkened with age, and carved with strange symbols that Samuel didn’t recognize.
Not Native American, not European, but something else entirely.
Geometric patterns that hurt to look at too long, that seemed to shift when viewed from the corner of his eye.
He raised his hand to knock, then hesitated.
The inkeeper’s face flashed through his memory along with his final words as Samuel had left that morning.
If you see the Blackfield mansion, don’t stop.
Not for nothing.
Not even if you’re dying.
You hear me? Samuel had laughed it off then.
He wasn’t laughing now, but exhaustion and pragmatism won out over superstition.
He knocked three times, the sound echoing hollowly through what must have been a large entry hall.
Nothing.
He waited, counting to 60, then knocked again.
Still nothing.
Hello, Samuel called out.
I’m a federal surveyor seeking shelter for the night.
I can pay.
The silence that followed was absolute, suffocating.
Samuel tried the door handle and found it unlocked.
It swung inward with a groan that set his teeth on edge.
The entry hall was vast and dark, illuminated only by the fading daylight behind him.
A grand staircase swept upward into deeper darkness.
Portraits lined the walls.
Figures in old-fashioned dress with faces too shadowed to make out clearly.
The air inside was cold, far colder than outside, and carried that same sweet rot smell he’d noticed earlier.
“Hello?” Samuel tried again, his voice smaller now.
“Anyone home?” A sound drifted down from the second floor, soft, rhythmic, like someone sweeping a floor.
Then it stopped.
Samuel’s surveyor instincts kicked in.
The part of his mind that measured distances and calculated spaces.
The entry hall was wrong.
The dimensions didn’t match the exterior.
The room was too large.
The ceiling too high.
Unless the entire mansion was hollow.
Sir, a voice spoke from the darkness at the top of the stairs, making Samuel jump.
We don’t often receive visitors.
A figure descended the staircase, moving with an odd gliding quality.
As it entered the dim light, Samuel saw it was a woman, middle-aged, dressed in a severe black dress decades out of fashion.
Her face was pale, almost luminous in the gloom, and her eyes were dark pools that seemed to absorb rather than reflect light.
“I apologize for the intrusion,” Samuel said, fighting to keep his voice steady.
I’m traveling east and my horse is exhausted.
I was hoping to purchase a night’s lodging.
The woman smiled, though the expression didn’t reach her eyes.
Of course, the Blackfield has always welcomed travelers.
My name is Constance.
This is my family’s home.
Something about the way she said family made Samuel’s skin crawl.
She spoke the word like it was both a blessing and a burden, sacred and profane.
I’ll stable your horse,” Constance continued, moving past him toward the door with that same unsettling glide.
“You must be famished.
There’s stew on the stove, and your room is prepared.” “My room is prepared,” Samuel echoed.
“But you couldn’t have known I was coming.” Constance paused at the doorway, her back to him.
“For a long moment, she didn’t move.
Didn’t even seem to breathe.
Then she turned her head just slightly enough for Samuel to see her profile in the fading light.
We always keep a room ready, she said softly.
One never knows when guests might arrive.
She stepped outside, leaving Samuel alone in the entry hall.
He heard her leading his horse away, heard the mayor’s nervous winnies fading into the distance, and then from somewhere deep within the mansion came another sound, a door closing softly, followed by footsteps moving through hidden corridors.
Samuel Witmore stood at the threshold between the dying light outside and the consuming darkness within.
Every instinct screamed at him to run, to mount his horse and ride until dawn.
exhaustion be damned, but the door behind him was already closing, pushed by no hand he could see, moving with slow, inevitable finality.
The last sliver of twilight disappeared, and Samuel found himself sealed inside the Blackfield mansion with only the sound of his own hammering heartbeat for company.
Somewhere above him, in rooms he couldn’t see, something shifted and settled.
The house was breathing, he realized with creeping horror.
The mansion itself was alive, and it had just swallowed him whole.
Samuel forced himself to move through the darkened entry hall, his boots echoing on the wooden floors with each hesitant step.
Constance had mentioned stew on the stove, which meant there had to be a kitchen somewhere in this labyrinth.
The thought of hot food should have been comforting, but instead it raised more questions.
who had been cooking if no one knew he was coming.
The hallway stretched before him, lined with more of those unsettling portraits.
As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, Samuel noticed something disturbing about the paintings.
The figures weren’t just shadowed, they were moving, or perhaps his mind was playing tricks.
Exhaustion and fear combining to create illusions.
But he could have sworn the eyes in the portraits followed him, and that the mouths were slowly, incrementally opening.
He found the kitchen at the end of the corridor, a large room with a massive stone fireplace and a cast iron stove that radiated heat.
A pot bubbled on the stovetop, filling the air with the aroma of meat and vegetables.
It smelled delicious and wrong at the same time, like something that shouldn’t be eaten, but would be impossible to resist.
Samuel ladled stew into a bowl he found on the counter, noting that the kitchen was immaculately clean despite showing signs of age.
No dust, no cobwebs, no signs of neglect.
Someone or something maintained this place with meticulous care.
As he ate, standing by the stove because sitting felt too vulnerable, Samuel’s surveyor mind continued cataloging inconsistencies.
The kitchen had no exterior windows, which meant it should have been pitch black without the fire.
Yet, he could see clearly, as if the walls themselves emitted a faint, sourceless light.
The room’s dimensions were off, too.
The walls didn’t quite meet at right angles, and the ceiling seemed to slope in ways that defied architectural logic.
“The stew is lamb,” Constance’s voice came from behind him, making him nearly drop the bowl.
She had materialized in the doorway without a sound, still wearing that same outdated black dress.
“From our own flock, though they’ve been gone for some time now.” “Gone!” Samuel managed, setting down the bowl with shaking hands.
The animals stopped coming near the house about 15 years ago, Constant said, gliding into the kitchen with that disturbing smoothness.
They know things.
Animals do.
Things that people refuse to see until it’s too late.
Ooh.
She moved to the stove and stirred the pot with a long wooden spoon.
Her movements mechanical and precise.
You’re wondering how there can be lamb in the stew if the animals are gone.
It’s a reasonable question, but time works differently here, Mr.
Whitmore.
Food doesn’t spoil.
Clocks run backward and guests.
She turned to face him, and in the fire light, her skin looked translucent, revealing dark veins beneath, like cracks in marble.
Guests become part of the house.
Samuel backed toward the door, his hand instinctively moving to the surveying compass at his belt.
Not a weapon, but something solid and real from the world outside.
I think I’ll be leaving now.
I’ll sleep in the forest.
You can’t leave, Constant said simply without malice or emotion.
The doors only open from the inside when the house allows it.
And the house is hungry, Mr.
Whitmore.
It’s been 2 months since the last guest arrived.
“You’re insane,” Samuel said, but his voice lacked conviction.
He’d already tried the front door when she’d been outside, had tried it without thinking, just a casual test, and found it wouldn’t budge despite being unlocked.
“Perhaps,” Constance agreed.
“It’s hard to say anymore.
I’ve been here so long that I can’t remember what sanity felt like.
None of us can.
” “Us,” Samuel whispered.
Constants gestured toward the ceiling.
The house has many guests.
All the travelers who stopped here seeking shelter.
All the curious souls who ignored the warnings.
All the officials who came to investigate the disappearances.
They’re all still here.
Mr.
Whitmore in the walls, in the floors, in the very fabric of the black field.
She moved closer, and Samuel realized with horror that her feet weren’t quite touching the ground.
She hovered an inch above the floorboards, sustained by something other than muscle and bone.
“My family built this place in 1811,” she continued, her voice taking on a dreamy quality.
“My father was a brilliant man, obsessed with architecture and geometry and the spaces between spaces.
He studied with men who studied forbidden texts, who learned to build doorways that led to nowhere and rooms that existed outside of normal space.
He wanted to create a house that would last forever, that would never decay or fall to ruin.
Constance laughed, a sound like breaking glass.
He succeeded, but he didn’t understand the price.
To make something that never dies, you have to feed it things that were once alive.
Memories, dreams, souls.
I don’t believe in souls, Samuel said, though his voice trembled.
Neither did I.
Constance replied, “Until the house ate mine.” A sound erupted from the upper floors.
A cacophony of footsteps, doors slamming, voices calling out in overlapping confusion.
Samuel heard fragments of different accents.
Different time periods, a woman shouting in Dutch, a man cursing in French, a child crying in English, but with an accent Samuel couldn’t place.
They’re waking up, Constance said, tilting her head as if listening to music.
The new arrival always disturbs them.
They remember what it was like to be fresh, to still have hope of escape.
Samuel bolted from the kitchen, running back toward the entry hall.
He had to find another exit, a window, a back door, anything.
But the hallways shifted as he ran, turning in on themselves, leading him in circles that should have been impossible in a normal building.
He passed the same portrait three times, and each time the figure in it had moved closer to the frame’s edge, as if trying to climb out.
He burst through a door and found himself in a dining room he hadn’t seen before.
A long table dominated the space, set for dinner with dozens of place settings, and at every chair sat a figure.
Men, women, children of all ages and eras, dressed in clothing that spanned centuries.
They were translucent, ghostly, but their eyes were horribly alive.
They all turned to look at Samuel in unison, and their mouths opened to speak with one voice.
Run while you still can.
Samuel didn’t need to be told twice.
He fled the dining room, crashed through another door, and found himself on the grand staircase.
He climbed toward the second floor, driven by some desperate instinct that told him, “Escape lay upward, not out.” The second floor landing opened onto a circular hallway lined with doors, each one identical.
Samuel tried the first door, locked.
The second locked.
The third opened easily, revealing a bedroom that looked like it hadn’t been disturbed in decades.
A bed with rotting linens, a wash stand with a cracked mirror, and a window.
Blessed Salvation, a window.
Samuel ran to it and tried to force it open, but the glass wouldn’t break, and the frame wouldn’t budge.
He pounded on it with his fists, then with a chair, but the window remained intact as if it were part of a painting rather than an actual opening.
As he struck the glass one more time, his reflection changed.
It wasn’t him anymore.
It was a man in a tricorn hat and colonial dress, screaming silently, trapped on the other side of an invisible barrier.
The man pointed frantically behind Samuel.
Samuel turned to find Constance standing in the doorway, and behind her the hallway had filled with the translucent figures from the dining room.
They crowded together, a mass of lost souls spanning generations, all staring at him with a mixture of pity and hunger.
The house needs you, Mister Whitmore.
Constant said, it needs your fear, your memories, your life force.
In return, it will give you eternity.
You’ll never age, never die, never escape.
You’ll simply remain.
No, Samuel breathed, pressing himself against the window.
Yes, Constance replied.
Just as everyone before you has remained, just as everyone after you will remain.
The Blackfield mansion is eternal, and so are its guests forever and ever and ever.
The figures moved closer, reaching out with hands that weren’t quite solid, eyes that glowed with an otherworldly light.
Samuel felt the cold radiating from them, felt something reaching into his chest, probing for his soul, and as the room darkened, and the figures surrounded him.
Samuel Witmore understood with terrible clarity that the inkeeper had been right.
Some places should never be entered, some doors should never be opened, and some warnings should always, always be heeded.
But understanding came too late.
It always did at the Blackfield mansion.
Samuel awoke to pale morning light filtering through dusty curtains.
For a moment he thought the previous night had been a fever dream, exhaustion and superstition combining to create hallucinations.
But as he sat up, the reality of his situation crashed down on him with crushing weight.
He was lying on the bed in the second floor room, fully clothed, his surveying equipment still at his belt.
The translucent figures were gone.
Constants was gone.
The room looked ordinary in the daylight, shabby and aged, but perfectly normal.
Samuel rushed to the window and found it opened easily now, revealing a view of the overgrown grounds and the forest beyond.
His horse stood in a ramshackle stable, visible from this vantage point, apparently unharmed.
Everything looked possible.
Everything looked escapable.
He ran from the room, flew down the grand staircase, and reached the front door.
His hand closed on the handle, turned it, pulled.
The door opened onto a hallway.
Not the outside, but another interior corridor identical to the one behind him.
Samuel slammed the door shut and opened it again.
Same hallway.
Again, same hallway.
He tried every door on the ground floor, and each one opened onto the same impossible corridor, stretching endlessly in both directions, lined with those terrible portraits.
“It’s the architecture,” a voice said from the shadows of the staircase.
Samuel spun to find an old man sitting on the steps, or rather the ghost of an old man.
He was more solid than the others had been, dressed in clothing from the early 1800s, with kind eyes and a sad smile.
Who are you? Samuel demanded.
Josiah Blackfield, the man replied.
Builder of this house, father of constants, architect of my own damnation and everyone else’s.
Samuel’s surveyor instincts immediately fixated on that word architect.
You built this place.
Then you can tell me how to escape it.
Josiah laughed bitterly.
If I knew how to escape, do you think I’d still be here? I’ve been trapped in my creation for 36 years, Mr.
Whitmore.
36 years of watching travelers stumble into my trap, watching the house feed on them, watching myself and my family become something less than human.
The old man descended the stairs with surprising solidity, and Samuel noticed that unlike Constants, Josiah’s feet actually touched the ground.
“I studied sacred geometry,” Josiah explained, seeing Samuel’s analytical gaze, the mathematics of space and divine proportion.
“But I went too far.
I found texts that spoke of non- uklitian architecture, of buildings that could exist partially outside normal space.
I thought I was being clever, creating a structure that would never decay because it wasn’t entirely in our world.
He gestured to the walls around them.
Every angle in this house is wrong.
Every corner is slightly off.
Every room is dimensionally impossible.
I created a space that exists in the cracks between reality, Mr.
Witmore.
And then I made the fatal mistake of living in it.
What happened? Samuel asked, his surveyor’s mind racing to understand the geometry Josiah described.
The house woke up, Josiah said simply.
It became aware.
Or perhaps it was always aware, and I simply gave it form.
Either way, it developed needs.
It feeds on human consciousness, on the life force of thinking, feeling beings.
At first, it was subtle.
My family and I would feel tired, drained.
We thought it was the isolation, the hard work of maintaining a frontier trading post.
Josiah’s eyes grew distant, haunted.
But then travelers started staying longer than they planned.
They’d come for a night and remain for weeks, unable to leave despite no visible restraints.
We watched them fade, watched them become translucent, watch them join the walls, and we realized we were fading, too.
Why didn’t you warn people? Samuel asked.
Why did you keep accepting guests? Because the house made us, Josiah replied.
It controls us now.
We’re extensions of it.
Puppets dancing on strings we can’t even see.
We warn you in our own way.
The wrongness you feel, the dread that hangs in the air.
But the house makes us welcoming, too.
Makes us prepare rooms and cook food and smile as we lead you to your doom.
Samuel pulled out his surveying tools, compass, measuring tape, notepad.
If this was a problem of geometry and architecture, then perhaps it could be solved the same way.
Show me the layout of the house, every room, every corridor.
There has to be a pattern, a logic to how it’s constructed.
Josiah looked at him with something like hope flickering in his dead eyes.
You think like I once did.
Very well.
I’ll show you the blueprints, though they may drive you mad to look upon them.
The old ghost led Samuel through the mansion, pointing out architectural impossibilities that became more apparent with careful observation.
Staircases that rose 13 steps but descended 14.
rooms whose interior dimensions exceeded their exterior measurements.
Hallways that curved in ways that should have intersected but never did.
Samuel sketched frantically, his trained mind trying to make sense of the spatial contradictions.
He’d studied enough mathematics to understand basic geometry, enough engineering to know how buildings should function.
But the Blackfield mansion defied every principle he knew.
Here,” Josiah said, stopping before a small door tucked beneath the main staircase.
“This is the heart of it, the original room I designed first, the anchor point around which everything else was built.” Samuel opened the door and found a small study lined with books in languages he didn’t recognize.
In the center of the room stood a desk, and on that desk lay yellowed architectural plans covered in bizarre geometric diagrams.
As Samuel leaned over the plans, his mind reeled.
The designs weren’t just complex.
They were wrong in a fundamental way that made his eyes hurt and his stomach churn.
Angles that shouldn’t exist.
Curves that bent through impossible dimensions.
Shapes that his brain refused to process correctly.
I based these designs on the Necronomicon’s geometries, Josiah explained.
On texts older than recorded history, written by civilizations that understood dimensions we can’t perceive.
I thought I was building a house.
I was actually building a trap, a dimensional snare that catches souls the way a spider’s web catches flies.
Samuel forced himself to study the plans, fighting against the nausea and disorientation.
His surveyor training helped.
He’d spent years learning to translate three-dimensional reality into two-dimensional maps.
Perhaps he could work backward, finding the flaws in Josiah’s design.
Hours passed, or perhaps minutes.
Time moved strangely in the study.
Samuel noticed that the shadows on the wall never shifted, that the candles on the desk never burned down, that his own hunger and thirst had disappeared.
The house is feeding on you already, Josiah warned.
The longer you stay, the more it takes.
Eventually, you’ll fade like the rest of us, become part of the structure, another soul to power its eternal existence.
But Samuel had found something, a discontinuity in the plans, a point where the geometric patterns didn’t quite match up.
It was in the eastern wing, in a room Josiah had marked with strange symbols.
What’s in this room? Samuel demanded, pointing to the spot on the blueprints.
Josiah’s face went pale, or would have if he had any color left to lose.
That’s That was my laboratory, where I conducted the final ritual to activate the house’s properties.
I haven’t been there since the night everything went wrong.
Take me there, Samuel said.
Mr.
Whitmore, that room is the most dangerous place in this entire structure.
It’s where the boundaries between our world and the spaces beyond are thinnest.
You could be lost forever, not just trapped like the rest of us, but erased from existence entirely.
Then it might also be where the boundaries can be broken, Samuel reasoned.
If this house is a trap, then the mechanism of that trap has to be somewhere.
And your plans suggest it’s in that laboratory.
Josiah studied Samuel for a long moment, and something like respect flickered in his spectral features.
You’re braver than I was.
Or perhaps just more desperate.
Very well.
I’ll take you there, but understand.
If we open those doors, there’s no guarantee what we’ll find.
I sealed that room for a reason.
They left the study and climbed to the third floor, a level Samuel hadn’t yet explored.
The air grew colder with each step, and the walls seemed to pulse with a sickly organic rhythm.
The portraits here were worse than those below, figures twisted in agony, faces melting into abstract horror, eyes that wept black tears.
At the end of the corridor stood a door made of dark wood, covered in intricate carvings that hurt to look at directly.
symbols from a dozen different occult traditions intertwined with mathematical formulas and geometric patterns that seem to move when viewed peripherally.
“This is it,” Josiah said, his voice barely a whisper.
“The laboratory of angles, where I thought I was becoming a master of space, but was actually becoming its slave.” Samuel reached for the door handle, then hesitated.
Behind him, he heard footsteps, many footsteps.
He turned to find the hallway filled with ghosts.
Not just constants and the others he’d seen before, but hundreds of them, maybe thousands, stretching back through the years.
Men, women, children, all trapped in the Blackfield mansion, all watching with desperate hope.
They know what you’re attempting, Josiah said.
They’re praying you succeed.
We’re all praying.
Samuel took a deep breath and opened the door.
the room beyond defied description.
It was larger than the mansion itself, yet somehow contained within it.
The walls curved in impossible directions, covered floor to ceiling, with mirrors that reflected things that weren’t there.
In the center of the room stood a construct of metal and glass, part machine, part sculpture, part something that had no name in human language.
And surrounding the construct were bones.
Thousands of bones arranged in geometric patterns forming shapes that Samuel’s mind screamed to look away from but couldn’t.
The foundation, Josiah breathed.
My God, I’d forgotten.
Or perhaps the house made me forget.
This is what I used to anchor the ritual.
Human remains arranged according to the dark geometries.
Each bone from a different person, each death feeding power into the structure.
Samuel stared at the macab display and understanding dawned with horrible clarity.
You didn’t just build a trap.
You built a monument, a memorial to death itself, powered by every soul it claims.
Yes, Josiah whispered.
And I was its first victim.
I died the night the ritual completed.
Died and was trapped here.
Unable to move on, unable to warn anyone, forced to watch as my creation consumed everyone who crossed its threshold.
Samuel approached the central construct, his surveyor’s eye analyzing its proportions.
It was a three-dimensional representation of the architectural plans he’d studied, but built on a scale that let him see the true pattern.
And there, at the intersection of three impossible angles, he saw it.
The heart of the trap, the focal point where reality bent and souls were caught.
If I destroy this, Samuel said, placing his hand on the cold metal.
What happens to the house? I don’t know, Josiah admitted.
It might collapse entirely, taking us all with it.
Or it might simply return to being a normal building, releasing those of us trapped within.
or it might do something worse.
Tear open the barriers between dimensions and let things from beyond pour into our world.
Samuel looked at the ghosts crowded in the doorway, at Josiah’s ancient weary face, at the bones of countless victims arranged in their terrible pattern.
He thought of the inkeeper’s warning of his own arrogance in ignoring it, of all the future travelers who would stumble into this trap if he did nothing.
Then we’ll find out together,” he said, and brought his surveying hammer down on the construct’s heart.
The world exploded into light and sound and screaming geometry, and Samuel Witmore fell through dimensions he had no words to describe, praying he would find solid ground before he fell forever.
The light was wrong.
That was Samuel’s first coherent thought as consciousness returned to him.
He was lying on the floor of the laboratory, but the quality of the light streaming through the windows had changed.
It was sharper, more real, less like the perpetual twilight that had permeated the mansion.
He sat up, groaning, his entire body aching, as if he’d fallen from a great height.
The central construct was shattered, pieces of metal and glass scattered across the floor.
The geometric patterns of bones had collapsed into random heaps, their terrible arrangement broken.
Mr.
Witmore.
Josiah’s voice came from nearby, stronger and more solid than before.
What have you done? Samuel looked up to find the old man standing in the doorway, and he was different, more substantial, more present, as if he’d regained some measure of reality.
Behind him, the other ghosts were changing, too.
some growing more solid, others beginning to fade entirely.
“I don’t know,” Samuel admitted, climbing to his feet.
“Is it working? Are we free?” Before Josiah could answer, the mansion itself responded.
A deep groan emanated from the walls like the death cry of some enormous beast.
The floor tilted beneath Samuel’s feet, and the impossible geometries that had defined the house began to unravel.
Angles that had been obtuse suddenly became acute.
Rooms that had been too large shrank to proper proportions.
Always that had stretched endlessly now had visible end points.
The Blackfield mansion was coming apart at the seams.
Reality reasserting itself against the architectural nightmare.
Run! Josiah shouted.
“The house is collapsing.
We have to get out before.” His words were cut off as a section of the ceiling fell, narrowly missing Samuel.
The laboratory was disintegrating around them, the non-ucuklidian spaces trying to exist in a uklidian world and failing catastrophically.
Samuel bolted from the room with Josiah close behind.
The ghost now solid enough to run.
They raced down the third floor corridor as portraits fell from the walls and doors burst from their hinges.
The other ghosts were running too, a stampede of the trapped and desperate, all rushing toward exits that might finally lead outside.
“The front door,” someone shouted.
A woman in clothing from the 1830s.
“It’s opening.
The front door is opening.” Samuel reached the grand staircase and looked down to see the entry hall three stories below.
The massive front doors stood wide open, revealing the forest beyond.
real forest with real sunlight and real air.
Freedom lay just [clears throat] 40 ft away down two flights of stairs, but the staircase was unraveling, steps disappearing into nothingness as the house’s impossible architecture collapsed.
Ghosts were leaping from landing to landing, some making it, others falling into the voids where floors had been, and vanishing with screams that faded into dimensional nothingness.
Jump, Josiah urged.
It’s the only way.
Samuel didn’t hesitate.
He launched himself from the third floor landing, aiming for the second floor corridor.
His boots hit solid wood, slipped, and he caught himself on a railing that was already beginning to dissolve.
Behind him, Josiah made the same jump, landing with surprising grace for a man who’d been dead for decades.
The second floor was in chaos.
Doors were opening and closing randomly, revealing rooms that shouldn’t exist.
Samuel glimpsed impossible vistas, staircases leading into endless darkness, windows opening onto alien skies, corridors that twisted through dimensions his mind couldn’t process.
He ran toward the stairs to the first floor, but a section of the ceiling collapsed, blocking his path.
Samuel skidded to a halt, desperately looking for another route.
There, a window overlooking the front entrance.
It was a 15- ft drop, but the alternative was being crushed or lost in collapsing dimensions.
Constants.
Josiah’s anguished cry made Samuel turn.
The woman in black was standing in one of the doorways, and she was changing.
As the house’s power diminished, whatever it had done to her was reversing.
Her translucent flesh was becoming solid again.
But not with life, with death.
She was aging rapidly.
Decades of decay compressed into seconds, her body catching up to what it should have been after 36 years of death.
“Father,” she said, her voice cracking like dry leaves.
“I can feel it ending.
I’m so tired.
I’m sorry, Josiah whispered, reaching for her.
I’m so sorry for what I did to you, to all of us.
But before he could touch her, Constants crumbled to dust, her entire being disintegrating in an instant.
The wind from the open front door swept her remains away, and she was gone.
Truly gone.
Finally released from the mansion’s grip.
Josiah stood frozen, staring at the empty space where his daughter had been.
around them.
Other ghosts were experiencing the same fate.
Those who had died long ago were aging to dust, while those who had died more recently were reverting to corpses.
“We have to go!” Samuel shouted, grabbing Josiah’s arm, solid now, warm with life, or the memory of life now before the whole structure comes down.
They ran to the window.
Samuel smashed it open with his surveying hammer and looked down.
The drop was onto overgrown lawn, no longer the endless void that had been there before.
He climbed onto the sill, took a breath, and jumped.
He hit the ground hard, rolling to absorb the impact.
Pain shot through his ankle, but he was outside, actually outside, in real air, under a real sky.
He wanted to weep with relief.
Josiah landed beside him a moment later.
And together they stumbled away from the mansion.
Behind them, more survivors were emerging.
Ghosts becoming human again, or at least human enough to escape.
They poured from doors and windows like refugees fleeing a burning building.
Some solid, some still translucent, some aging and dying as they ran.
Samuel reached his horse, still miraculously alive in the stable.
The animal winnied with joy and nuzzled against him, as desperate to leave as he was.
He mounted quickly, then looked back at the Blackfield mansion.
It was magnificent in its destruction.
The three stories were collapsing inward, reality crushing the impossible spaces into geometric impossibility.
Walls that had stood for decades were crumbling to dust.
Windows were shattering spontaneously.
The roof was caving in section by section, and standing on the front steps, making no move to escape, was Josiah Blackfield.
“Come on!” Samuel shouted to him.
“You can still make it.” But Josiah shook his head, a sad smile on his weathered face.
“This is my creation, Mr.
Whitmore.
I brought it into being, and I should be here when it dies.
Perhaps I can ensure it stays dead, that no one ever rebuilds it or attempts what I attempted.
You don’t have to do this.
Yes, Josiah said simply.
I do.
Tell them what happened here.
Tell them about the dangers of seeking knowledge that humans weren’t meant to have.
Tell them that some doorways should never be opened.
Some spaces should never be constructed.
The mansion gave a final tremendous groan.
The front wall began to fall forward.
directly toward Josiah.
“And tell them,” Josiah called out, his voice clear despite the chaos, that I’m sorry for all of it, for every life I took, for every soul I trapped.
Tell them.
The wall fell, and Josiah Blackfield disappeared beneath tons of stone and timber.
Samuel turned his horse and rode, not daring to look back, as the Blackfield mansion collapsed completely behind him, with a sound like reality itself screaming.
He rode for miles before daring to stop.
And when he finally did, he was shaking so hard he nearly fell from the saddle.
He looked back toward where the mansion had stood, but he could see nothing through the dense forest.
No smoke, no dust cloud, nothing to indicate that anything had happened at all.
Samuel made camp that night in a clearing, unable to bring himself to seek shelter in any building.
He lay under the stars, his surveyor’s compass clutched in his hand like a talisman, and tried to process what he’d survived.
He’d destroyed the architectural nightmare.
He’d freed the trapped souls, or at least given them a chance at freedom.
He’d avenged Josiah’s victims and prevented future tragedies.
But Samuel Witmore knew with the certainty of someone who had stared into the spaces between spaces that some horrors couldn’t be fully destroyed.
They could only be contained, documented, and warned against.
And he knew that somewhere in America’s growing frontier, someone else might be studying the same forbidden texts, might be attempting the same impossible architectures, might be building another trap disguised as a home.
Because humans, Samuel had learned, never quite understood which doors should remain closed until they opened them and found themselves unable to close them again.
Three weeks later, Samuel Whitmore sat in the office of Federal Marshall Thomas Blackwell in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
The marshall was a practical man known for his non-nonsense approach to frontier law enforcement.
He’d listened to Samuel’s story with increasing skepticism, taking notes, but making no effort to hide his disbelief.
“Mr.
Whitmore,” the marshall said when Samuel finished, “you’re a respected surveyor with years of federal service.
That’s the only reason I’ve given you this much time.
But what you’re describing is impossible.
I know how it sounds, Samuel replied, exhausted from nights of sleepless vigilance.
I’m a man of science, Marshall.
I deal in measurements and calculations.
But I’m telling you what I saw, what I experienced.
The Blackfield mansion was real, and it was dangerous.
Marshall Blackwell tapped his pen against the desk.
I’ve sent men to check on this mansion before, tax collectors, land assessors, even a federal investigator after we received reports of missing travelers.
None of them reported anything unusual.
In fact, most of them came back saying the place was abandoned and unremarkable.
Then they never went inside, Samuel said, or there among the ones who never came back at all.
The marshall sighed and pulled out a map of western Pennsylvania.
Show me exactly where this mansion is located.
Samuel studied the map, tracing his route from Harrows Creek.
His finger stopped on a spot along the old trading road here, about 30 mi east of the last settlement.
It should be marked.
It was a registered trading post.
It’s not on any map I have, the marshall said, examining his own charts.
In fact, according to federal land records, there’s nothing in that area but forest.
No buildings, no settlements, no registered properties.
That’s impossible, Samuel insisted.
The mansion stood for decades.
Multiple families lived there.
Josiah Blackfield built it in 1811, and there were records.
I’ve checked the records, Mr.
Whitmore.
There’s no Josiah Blackfield in any of our archives.
No family by that name ever registered property in Pennsylvania.
No trading post, no mansion, nothing.
Samuel felt ice forming in his stomach.
You’re saying it never existed? I’m saying that if it did exist, it left no official trace, which is strange considering how many government officials you claim visited the place.
Before Samuel could respond, there was a knock on the door.
A young cler entered carrying a telegram.
Marshall, this just arrived from Harrows Creek.
Thought you’d want to see it right away.
Marshall Blackwell read the telegram, his expression darkening.
He looked up at Samuel with new calculation in his eyes.
It seems the inkeeper at Harrow’s Creek, the one you say warned you about the mansion, died 3 days ago.
Natural causes apparently, but before he died, he told his son about you.
Said a federal surveyor had come through asking about the Blackfield place.
That supports what I’m telling you, Samuel said, feeling a small surge of vindication.
Except the inkeeper also said he’d been waiting 20 years for someone to finally destroy that cursed house.
20 years, Mr.
Witmore.
But according to your story, you were only there 3 weeks ago.
Samuel’s mouth went dry.
That that doesn’t make sense.
I spoke with him in November, late November.
It’s only December now.
The marshall showed him the telegram date.
Mr.
Whitmore, it’s February 2nd, 1848.
You’ve been missing for 3 months.
The room spun.
Samuel gripped the arms of his chair, trying to process this information.
3 months.
He’d lost 3 months.
Or time had worked differently in the mansion.
Or, I want to show you something else, the marshall said, pulling out a worn journal from his desk drawer.
This belonged to one of the investigators I sent to check on the Blackfield reports.
James Mitchell, good man, thorough agent.
He disappeared 5 years ago while looking into the missing travelers.
He opened the journal to a marked page and slid it across to Samuel.
Read the last entry.
Samuel read, his hands trembling, November 18th, 1843.
Have located the mansion.
Structure appears abandoned but is architecturally impossible.
Angles are wrong.
Space inside exceeds exterior.
We’ll investigate further tomorrow.
Met a surveyor here.
Samuel Whitmore, Federal Service.
He’s been trapped inside for months, but doesn’t realize it.
Time moves differently here.
He thinks it’s been days.
He keeps trying to escape, but the house always brings him back.
I tried to warn him, but he couldn’t hear me.
I don’t think he could see me either.
I think I’m already dead.
I think we all are.
The house won’t let us leave.
Won’t let us die.
Won’t let us exist properly in either state.
If anyone finds this journal, burn the Blackfield mansion to the ground.
Burn it and salt the earth.
Don’t let anyone The entry ended abruptly.
Mids sentence.
Samuel stared at the page at handwriting he didn’t recognize describing events he’d never witnessed.
This can’t be right.
I never met this man.
I was only in the mansion for 2 days, maybe three.
Were you? The marshall asked quietly.
Or did you experience those same days over and over, trapped in a loop you couldn’t perceive? The inkeeper said people who visited the mansion sometimes returned years later, confused about the date, insisting only days had passed.
“But I destroyed it,” Samuel said desperately.
“I broke the construct.
I collapsed the impossible architecture.
The mansion fell.
Dozens of people escaped with me.
Did they? Marshall Blackwell’s voice was gentle now, almost pitying.
Mr.
Witmore, you rode into Pittsburgh alone.
Your horse was half dead from exhaustion, and you were delirious, raving about ghosts and dimensional traps.
We’ve been trying to make sense of your story ever since.
No, Samuel whispered.
No, there were others.
Josiah helped me.
He showed me the blueprints, led me to the laboratory, and there were hundreds of ghosts all trying to escape when the building collapsed.
Or perhaps, the marshall suggested, you’re still there.
Perhaps you never escaped at all, and this is just another illusion the house has created.
Perhaps I’m not real, and this conversation is happening inside your head while your body remains trapped in that mansion, slowly being consumed.
The words hit Samuel like a physical blow.
He looked around the marshall’s office at the maps on the walls, the books on the shelves, the sunlight streaming through the windows.
It all looked real.
It all felt real.
But so had the mansion in its own twisted way.
“There’s one way to know for sure,” Samuel said standing abruptly.
“Take me back there now.
If the mansion is destroyed, we’ll find ruins.
If it’s still standing, then I never escaped and I’m either still trapped or insane.
Either way, we’ll have proof.
Marshall Blackwell studied him for a long moment, then nodded.
I was planning to do exactly that.
I’ve assembled a team, 12 armed men, a priest, and a scholar from the university who specializes in folklore and supernatural phenomena.
We leave at dawn.
Why the priest? Samuel asked.
Because if even half of what you’ve described is real, Mr.
Whitmore, we’re dealing with something that goes beyond natural law, and I’d rather be overprepared than dead.
The expedition left Pittsburgh the next morning, following Samuel’s directions.
The journey took 4 days, longer than Samuel remembered, but then again, everything about time seemed unreliable now.
He caught himself constantly checking his pocket watch, convinced the hands were moving backward or skipping forward randomly.
The scholar, a thin man named Doctor Cornelius Webb, rode beside Samuel much of the way, asking questions about the mansion’s architecture and the geometric patterns Samuel had observed.
Unlike the marshall, Webb seemed to believe every word.
There are precedents, Webb explained.
Not many, but they exist in the historical record.
Buildings constructed according to principles that predate conventional architecture.
The Egyptians knew some of these secrets.
So did certain medieval alchemists.
And there are rumors of places in the Middle East where space itself behaves strangely, where buildings exist that shouldn’t be possible.
You’re saying the Blackfield mansion wasn’t unique? I’m saying, Webb replied carefully, that humanity has been trying to manipulate space and reality since the beginning of recorded history.
Most attempts fail.
Some succeed in small ways, optical illusions, clever engineering, but occasionally, very rarely, someone stumbles onto something that actually works.
And when that happens, the results are always catastrophic.
On the fourth day, they reached the turnoff to Harrows Creek.
The settlement was exactly as Samuel remembered, small ramshackle, barely hanging on.
But when they entered the tavern, Samuel froze.
The inkeeper from his previous visit was there, alive, pouring drinks for the handful of patrons.
The man looked up as they entered, and his face went pale.
You, he breathed, staring at Samuel.
You’re the surveyor, the one who rode through 3 months ago, headed for the Blackfield Mansion, Samuel finished.
You warned me not to go.
You were right.
The inkeeper set down his bottle with shaking hands.
But you did go, and you came back.
That ain’t supposed to happen.
Nobody comes back from Blackfield.
I destroyed it, Samuel said.
At least I think I did.
We’re going there now to verify.
Then you’re fools, the inkeeper said flatly.
But I can’t stop you.
Just whatever you see there, whatever you find, remember that not everything that looks destroyed actually is.
Some things just pretend to die, waiting for the next victim to let their guard down.
With those ominous words echoing in their minds, the expedition continued east.
Samuel led them along the old trading road, his surveyor’s instincts guiding them despite the lack of markers or signs.
The forest grew denser, darker, more oppressive.
And then, as they rounded a bend in the road, Samuel saw it.
The Blackfield mansion stood untouched against the gray sky.
Three stories of dark timber and stone, windows reflecting nothing, exactly as it had been when he first arrived.
No damage, no collapse, no sign that anything had ever happened to it.
“No,” Samuel said, his voice breaking.
No, this is impossible.
I destroyed it.
I saw it fall.
I saw Josiah die beneath the rubble.
Mr.
Witmore, Marshall Blackwell said quietly, his hand moving to his pistol.
I need you to tell me the truth.
Did you actually escape this place, or are you still inside somehow projecting yourself out to lead us in? Samuel couldn’t answer.
He stared at the mansion at its impossible wholeness and felt reality crumbling around him.
Had he escaped, or was he still in the laboratory, still breaking the construct over and over in an eternal loop, never actually succeeding, never actually leaving? The priest began praying in Latin.
Dr.
Webb was sketching the mansion’s facade, his hand moving with frantic speed.
The armed men formed a defensive perimeter, their weapons trained on the building as if expecting attack.
And from the mansion’s open front door, open, always open, eternally welcoming, came a figure in black.
Constants, whole and undead, smiling her terrible smile.
“Welcome back, Mr.
Whitmore,” she called out.
“Did you truly think you could leave? Did you truly think destruction was possible?” Samuel’s legs gave out.
He fell to his knees in the road, understanding at last the full horror of his situation.
He hadn’t escaped.
The escape had been the illusion.
The three months of freedom, just another room in the mansion’s impossible architecture.
He was still trapped, would always be trapped, because the blackfield didn’t just capture bodies, it captured the possibility of escape itself.
“No,” he whispered.
But even that denial sounded hollow to his own ears.
The mansion waited, patient and eternal, as it had always waited, as it would always wait.
Because some structures once built could never be destroyed.
They could only add to their collection room by room, soul by soul, until they contained everyone who ever dared to seek shelter within walls that had never been meant to protect, but only to consume.
And Samuel Witmore understood in that moment of absolute despair that his greatest achievement as a surveyor would be to map a space from which no map could ever lead anyone home.
He would document his own eternal imprisonment with the precision and detail that his profession demanded.
After all, he had nothing but time forever and ever and ever.
The mansion’s doors swung wider, and the darkness within beckoned with promises it had no intention of keeping.
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Drop a comment telling us, would you have entered the Blackfield mansion or would you have kept riding? And remember, sometimes the scariest places aren’t the ones we can’t escape from.
They’re the ones we never left to begin with.
Stay safe out there.
