Sarah thought that she was somewhere near the front door; as she, somehow, knew where to go. Suddenly it dawned on Sarah that this was the house that she grew up in as a child. She started to reminisce about her childhood and how her life used to be before she lost her parents in a major house fire. This was the house that Sarah’s parents had died in. It all added up to Sarah now: the house fire that killed her parents had started on the stairs almost ten years ago when she was only eight years old. She had been walking down the very same stairs not even fifteen minutes ago when they collapsed with her on them.
When Sarah was a child she hated the house because she always had a feeling that somebody was watching her. She thought the house was cursed. Sarah made her way to the front door but it was bolted shut. At this, Sarah started to panic and wanted to get out of the house. She started rummaging around to find a way out of this miserable, claustrophobic house.
Daniel had ripped his shirt to make a bandage for his arm; he had learnt how to do this in scouts. His conscience had urged him to return to the house for Sarah. He struggled to open the back door, so he broke in through the window; as he did, he was regretting what he had said to Sarah hours before about going to explore the ‘Burnt Manor House’, which his friends had told him about.
He was now inside the Manor House, so he started looking for Sarah, Daniel had to listen out for Sarah bellowing his name, but it was not that easy because her voice echoed all around the walls and through the house. This was distressing Daniel as he knew that Sarah was in some type of danger or trouble, yet he could not help her. He tried shouting back to her but he could only hear screams as a reply. Daniel started running furiously, looking for some kind of clue to where Sarah’s voice was coming from. He threw himself up the stairs, nearly missing the large gap, he heard Sarah’s cries coming from one of the bedrooms. Once entered the bedroom, Daniel gazed around the bedroom and saw a rusty, burnt bed, dilapidated wardrobes along with Sarah crouched in the corner of the room with an old ragged doll that looked slightly scorched. The doll was china-faced and wore an all-in-one ball gown dress. Dan ran up to Sarah and held her in his arms and started sobbing gently on her shoulder.
Sarah, whilst taking in deep breaths, explained to Daniel about how she recognised the house and that the doll was the only thing to survive the fire and is still intact. Daniel and Sarah helped each other up and went looking for a way out. Finding a way out was harder than it seemed, especially doing it with caution of the splintered floor boards in addition to dodging fallen bookshelves, jumping holes in the floor and furthermore; trying not to tread in broken glass.
Daniel, being himself, had an idea to kick down the boarded up window in the living room. As he was kicking; Sarah heard a creak above her, she looked up, screamed and then dived to her left. Daniel looked round to see a huge crystal chandelier colloid and fall through the old wooden floor, right where Sarah was, a second ago, standing. Shards of glass were sent soaring around the room like deadly shrapnel. Dan and Sarah both looked at each other and, rather peculiarly, smiled. They were happy to be alive. Daniel finally broke the MDF chipboard that was blocking up the window.
They both escaped the house through the downstairs window where they were men by the monster looking man. They both ran, holding hands, as fast as they could, until they reached the back of the house, the monster was gone. Daniel and Sarah both stood, panting, staring, at the back of the house. It looked completely different to the front of the house: the windows were not broken, the doors weren’t black by burn marks and the white paint was fresh and extremely clean, as if it was painted within the last week.
They ran, together; to the granny-annex where they sat for hours upon end talking about how they loved each other, how Daniel would never let any harm come to Sarah and how they were going to escape. Daniel apologized to Sarah for asking her to come along and explore the Manor House. Sarah had a flashback about how her family’s butler had left on the cooker the night that the Manor caught on fire. The butler was never seen again after that night. At that persist moment, both, Daniel and Sarah worked out that the monster chasing them wasn’t a monster at all; it was the butler trying to protect the house. Sarah suggested that maybe because he felt so guilty for what he had done he was trying to keep the house from getting even more ruined than it already was? Or maybe he just wanted to kill her because he knew that she might work out what had happened.
Someone started clapping in the corner of the room, it was the monster. They could, finally, see the whole of the person’s body now, which was naked and was covered in scabs and scars. The butler started praising them for their intelligence very sarcastically. Sarah looked around at their surroundings, which she (nor Daniel) had paid any attention to before, and realized that they were in the butler’s home. The beaten looking butler pulled a knife from within the draw that was next to him and pointed it at Daniel then at Sarah.
Daniel stood up, walked over to the butler who handed him the knife. He pointed the knife at Sarah and gave an evil snigger…
