The room was one of angels, but I never thought I would become a part of it.

--

I didn’t expect my life to end the way it did, because it was in a way that, if you weren’t a twisted monster, you could never see coming. Hell, a way you wouldn’t even think up. Especially when it isn’t even an honest ending, but something that traps you forever, listening and replaying and praying to your final memory and hoping that maybe it was just a dream.

Except dreams are for sleep, and you aren’t sleeping, because you can’t sleep, and in fact you can’t do anything.

Well, you can remember sleeping, and you can remember the terror you felt before the final rest. You can remember not feeling anything for days when you woke up again. You can remember, and you can see the melancholy, warning eyes of those who came before you, knowing well that your own hold the same expression, and aren’t likely to be obeyed.

And you can remember the devil.

--

It started out innocently enough. It started out normal. It started out sane. It started out completely brilliant. But I could spend forever listing how it started out, and I do have forever. It’s just that the ending is what mattered, what I want to warn future angels of, and what they’ll never realize I’m trying to tell them. What we’re all trying to tell them.

I moved into a house that was really more of a castle. If you’ve ever seen Rose Red, or at the very least seen the house itself, my new home was that place, fountains and creepy vibes and all, regarding size and hallways that were mazes. I could have hated it, I could have refused to stay, and there were in fact a lot of things I could have done to prevent my fate.

The thing is that you don’t usually do things to prevent what you don’t see coming, and that is the trouble with life- you never know what could be coming. If a person knew they’d be in a car accident and lose movement from the neck down, would they get into a car? If someone knew their family member would die once they left them, would they leave? If an angel knew she would be taken in, fooled, and trapped for the rest of forever, would they go where it was destined to happen?

Of course not, and we can’t see these things. At least not most of us. I knew someone who could see these things coming, and I suppose she was an angel as well. The difference between the two of us was that the devil got to me first, and I was enough for him at that point in time. I’d like to curse that angel, to wish she was in my place, that he had seen her before he noticed me, yet I could never wish my position upon another.

Especially not another angel, and those were all he wanted.

Moving on, though, I wasn’t staying in the house on my own. I never could have done such a thing, for the house was a terrible place. Almost as terrible as the room of angels itself, where you couldn’t always feel the evil, but at the very least know it was there. Like something stalking you. And again I’ve moved off my point.

The foremost reason I couldn’t stay in the house alone was that it didn’t belong to me, or even a relative of mine. I didn’t have relatives at all- not even distant ones. My parents had been killed when I was seven. Killed could mean any number of things, I know, and I should be more specific.

My parents were murdered when I was seven. And I’d been there to see it. There will be time for that story later, though.

After my parents, I lived with my grandmother, one of only three relatives I had left. She was taken when I was eleven, from what the doctors said was natural causes. Except I was always pretty sure that it wasn’t natural causes at all- or at least not the ones that are always happening. Heart attacks are natural enough, but they don’t always happen. I was positive that a heart attack took her from me.

From seeing me covered in the blood of a boy I knew.

I’d love to have time for that story later, but I won’t, and so I’ll tell it now. After I moved into her condo with her, I met a boy my age, Jakob, who lived on the floor right below ours. He was friendly, and we started spending plenty of time together, doing whatever we could think of- our favourite pastime was sneaking into the plentiful uninhabited condos as we discovered was easily possible. No one at all lived on the first two floors of the building, meaning they were creepiest, but also the most fun. We’d found the door to one of the apartments open one day, and while going through it, discovered that each condo was connected to at least two others by way of tiny crawlspaces, and in the last condo on the first floor, there was a challenging, but worthwhile crawl to a condo on the second floor. After this discovery, we spent nearly all of our time exploring the condos, or just sitting in our favourite of them and talking, eating the snacks we’d stashed there, and other things.

Of course, the crawl up to the second floor was dangerous as hell. But we were eleven, and we didn’t care. We didn’t even think about that- we liked the fact that we could fall at any minute. Until the day that things went wrong, at least.

We’d cleared the space beneath the second-floor-crawl, since it had been full of nails and whatnot when we started out explorations, and assumed if one of us fell it would be just fine. The way up consisted of platforms of wood, maybe two feet by one foot, so they weren’t very big. We used a chair to hoist ourselves onto the lowest, and then continued the hoisting from platform to platform, for all of the fifteen platforms. This particular day, I went up first- it didn’t matter which of us when first, until the incident. The difficulty was that because the condos had been empty for so long, the wood was rotting, and crumbling around the nails that held it in. He waited at the bottom while I made my way to the top as fast as I could. Then, on the tenth or eleventh platform, things went horribly wrong.

The wood, in its weakened state, gave out, and the nails came with it, as they were inside the platforms, holding them to the wall, not vice-versa. I screamed, but there was no way to stop it, and I simply clutched onto the sides of the platform with my eyes closed tightly, feeling the thumps as my platform smashed into the others on the way down, and took them with us. I heard my friend cry out, and hoped he got out of the way in time.

Then came the sickening thud, and I heard something snap. I’d made it down with only a bunch of scratches from wood on the way down, and my hand was bleeding from one side I clutched having been the one with the nail. I rolled off of the platform, already sobbing with pain and terror, and began to push at all of them, not caring that I was gaining more cuts along the way. Finally I reached the bottom, and there was Jakob. Many of the nails had apparently come out of the crumbled wood on the way down, and he hadn’t gotten out from under the hole when he should have.

The snap I’d heard was his arm, wherever it had been, and it was now twisted at an odd angle. I didn’t know how it happened, but some of the nails had thrust into his stomach, and most likely hit vital organs- blood was leaking from his mouth as he tried to speak.

On my hands and knees, I moved closer to him and dipped my head closer to his lips. “Jakob?”

“I…” He gasped, and I was sobbing harder as I listened to him try to force the words out, whatever they were. “Ka- wha- ha-”

“I don’t know, Jakob…” I whispered insanely through my tears. “I don’t know… It… Don’t… Wait… I’ll get… H-help…”

I moved to stand, but he reached out with the arm that wasn’t broken and gripped one of my hands. I stared at him, and dropped back to my knees, shaking my head. “Let me…”

“No…” He shook his head nearly imperceptibly, and I desperately hoped that he would let me go, to get an adult. This was dumb of us. The blood surrounded his mouth, so dark I couldn’t believe it, sliding down onto his neck, he looked almost like he was choking.

I rolled him over slightly, and by that point he was too weak to spit, so the blood spilled out of his mouth instead. When he’d been like that long enough to not choke any longer, I let him lay back down.

“Kati- Don’t…lea… Me…” His eyes stared at me pleadingly, allowing me to only nod. “Lo… You…”

A moment of uncertainty held me for what felt like eternity as I looked into Jakob’s dark but bright eyes, from which the light was fading. Then I leaned down and kissed him, not caring about the blood, not caring that he was obviously dying, or- Actually, I cared that he was obviously dying. It was why I kissed him. And he struggled to kiss me back.

So there we were, two stupid eleven-year-olds, kissing while one of us died. While the one who was merely injured could have been going for help. Help that wouldn’t be fast enough no matter what, so was there a point? Of course not.

It wasn’t a long kiss by most people’s standards, I’m sure, but at our age, as our first and final kiss- as his final kiss- it was like eternity until I pulled away. His blood was in my mouth, yet I didn’t spit it out. Why should I?

“I love you, Jakob.” I said, forcing my voice not to shake.

“Love… You…” His voice was a gurgle, and I clutched his hand as he began to shudder violently.

And then the light left his eyes, he was still, and through my tears, I stood and stumbled towards the door out of the condo.

I forced myself to the fourth floor, to my grandmother’s condo, and she panicked when she saw me, asking where Jakob was, and what had happened, and if I was okay, when obviously I wasn’t: there was a hole in my hand, and for God’s sake- I had Jakob’s blood in my mouth. She called Jakob’s parents, she rushed me to the hospital, and he was rushed there too, despite the complete lack of hope I told them there was. Why listen to an eleven-year-old, particularly one who had to be in shock?

She died when I was in the hospital that night, and I agree that it looked like natural causes, as I was awake at the time. It had to be the sight of me… Especially after my parents. She was another death I could never get away from myself, although the worst of them was Jakob’s.

The coppery taste of his blood never left my mouth.

After my grandmother died, I was passed on to my sister Trisha, who was twenty-six at the time. She lived in Los Angeles, and I liked it there, because it was such a contrast to what I figured was inside of me. My insides had to be black, considering everything that happened around me. All of the death.

The taste of blood, which I even liked. And I was never sure if I liked the blood because it was his, or because it was blood in general.

With my sister, I went to school, she went to work, and I didn’t really have friends. There was one girl who always sat with me, one who didn’t talk much, and I liked her, I guess. I felt like maybe she understood me even though we hardly talked. The sunshine of LA was amazing, brilliant even, and we weren’t too far from a park that I developed the habit of going to on my way home from school, because my sister didn’t mind.

Then she was gone as well, and again I was there for it. In Trisha’s case, it was a bus accident. She, her boyfriend and I had gone to the zoo when I was fifteen, and we’d taken the bus, just for the hell of it. With the bus, we got- or I suppose I should say I got- more death. Because somehow I was the only one to come off of the bus alive. I didn’t pay much attention to the majority of the passengers, but I spent forever begging my sister’s lifeless body to wake up- one of the poles standing passengers hold onto had gone into her chest when the bus went into a semi.

So I was sent on to the other relative I had left- an older uncle from my father’s side. He was in his fifties by the time I went to him. And his death was no worse than those of the others. I liked him, loved him almost, and we got along on just about anything. We agreed on my rules, on what the situation with meals was, on the things I could watch or read, and even on whether I should go to therapy. In that case, we both agreed that I was mentally sound enough to not need it, as I’d yet to have a breakdown. I stayed with him until I was eighteen- exactly eighteen, in fact.

He died on my birthday.

I think I ought to not say ‘he died’, however, because it’s not just dying when it comes in a fashion such as his. I walked into his room on the morning of that birthday, to find that he’d been strangled, almost decapitated by someone who was caught around two months later. The person had left the garrotte around his throat, actually.

The sickest part of my uncle’s death was that when I saw his body, the first thing I felt was relief that at least I hadn’t been there for it this time.

Then I was alone.

After my uncle died, I moved back to LA. I decided to just go a community college, despite having been an honours student, because I really didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. While going to the college, I didn’t need to worry about money, as, being the only person left in my family, I’d inherited from everybody who had money along the line- I wouldn’t be wanting for the ability to pay the bills anytime soon.

I’d been back in LA until I was just over nineteen when I heard about the show. Usually I hate reality television, and change it right away if it hits my screen. I change it to anything. If my only options are Survivor and Dr. Phil, I’ll take the good doctor over the damned idiots stranded on an island any day. This one, however, was being rambled about by a girl in my Psychology class, one whom I could never work out how she even got into community college.

The gist of the show was that fourteen people, plus two from the TV station, would go stay in this house in an obscure part of the state. I’d never even heard of the town before, but I did know of the house the girl twittered about. It was a Victorian style mansion, made famous by the murders there, and the supposed hauntings, and the fact that the last family to try and move in was found murdered, except for their teenaged daughter, and she simply went missing. The group would be divided into two teams, and each week, one person from each team had to go home, depending on what events had taken place that week- all of said events revolving around the place’s gruesome past. I figured with where the show took place, they’d love someone with a past like mine, and I was right.

Raven Manor, it was called- both the show and the house.

--

Happiness is not a right, it is a privilege, and can be snatched in the time you use to blink your eye.

--

They filmed us starting the day we arrived, which was June 1st, though the first episode wouldn’t air until that Wednesday, the 4th. I wasn’t sure Sunday was a great day to make us be there, especially when I didn’t know if any of the contestants were Christian.

I wasn’t; there had been too much death, too much despair, too much blackness and mourning for me to believe in any higher powers by that point, though I wonder today if I should have been that way- if maybe Christianity could have saved me from my fate.

June 1st was meant to let us all introduce ourselves, in layman’s terms. I wasn’t sure I wanted to introduce myself, but of course they wouldn’t give me an option in that- I’d signed a contract two weeks in advance, saying I had to do as they told me in most situations. And they hadn’t even told us what we were competing for yet- that would come later.

Everyone was required to get their own transportation to the mansion, and show proper identification to a guard at the front gate, who would say if we were allowed in- which of course, we only would be if we were a contestant. I brought my student ID from the community college, of course, and in regards to luggage… Well, I brought only what mattered to me, and that made up one suitcase and a duffle bag, the suitcase holding mostly clothes.

I’d learned not to become attached to things.

The man at the front gate pointed me back further, where there was a cart to put my things on. He spoke in a gravely voice, and apparently was also the gardener. “Recent job,” he muttered as I walked away to leave my things on the cart, for them to be brought inside later, “not my damned fault that the place looks like shit…”

Beyond the cart was a cluster of people, around a fountain. In the center of said cluster was a man I recognized as one of the people who got to choose contestants, and come to our homes in order to inform us we’d been chosen. His name was Brad Collins, and at his side was a tiny blonde with a clipboard- signing in? I’d met her before, since she accompanied him to tell me the good news, but I hadn’t bothered to remember her name.

I approached, pushing my dyed raven hair behind my shoulder. It was naturally a white-blonde, but I figured it should match my insides, starting after Trish’s death. My eyes, an irregular almost-black shade of blue remained focused on Brad, as I had no desire to make eye contact with anyone else quite yet.

Brad noticed me, despite being in conversation with what had to be another contestant, this one a blonde as well, and one I knew immediately that I would hate. She wore only pink, including heels, and a handbag, and sunglasses which weren’t over her eyes, among other things. Her expression was a smile, except one that I could see beneath, to the, ‘Oh gods, I hope I don’t get dirt on my new Prada!’. Bitch.

“Aha!” He said, smile widening to show off his teeth, white enough that I think they nearly blinded me. “Our twelfth contestant arrives!”

I encouraged myself to return his smile, and did it, and he actually hugged me- something that hadn’t happened in at least a year. Somehow I managed to not cringe at the physical contact.

“We’re not introducing ourselves until the other two arrive.” He told me seriously, leaving me to wonder what the point of being there now was, if I still had to wait God-knows-how-long to actually get in the house and sit.

I managed to sit, however, in the next few moments, by taking a seat on the edge of the fountain we were all surrounding. From this position I surveyed my opposition, at least five of whom would be on a team with me. There was the blonde, of course, and I was liking her less and less as I listened to her speak with Brad- she was going on about something involving an ex-boyfriend, and how he’d said something about not wanting sex until marriage, daring to refuse her, and even breaking up with her over it. If she’d been looking at me when she said that, she would’ve seen me roll my eyes.

Also included in the cluster so far were a darkly tanned woman who was probably in her twenties as well, and a pale woman in the same age range with a Bible in her hands, mouthing verses to herself. From reading her lips, I gleaned that she was reading out of Revelation- I knew the holy book inside and out, regardless of what I assumed was inside of me, and besides that, the last book was one you expected to be read in such a place as this. A thirty-ish looking man chatted with a redhead woman dressed as if she’d planned to go to the beach and taken a wrong turn onto the dirt road leading to this mansion instead.

I found that there were really a surprising amount of teenagers, most of whom actually looked young enough that they would have needed parental consent. Two African-American boys who had to be twins, though one had dreadlocks and the other didn’t have much hair at all, stood speaking with an apparently Native American boy sporting a long ponytail, as well as an Asian girl. Standing only a few feet from them was a girl in full punk regalia, including hair streaked pink, and she was smoking a cigarette, glancing around at everyone else every few minutes.

Another small group consisted of two more men, one of whom was scribbling madly on a pad of paper while listening to the other speak in apparent half-interest. The one talking was very hyperactive if appearances were anything to go by, and I could see from the movement of his lips that he was telling a story.

Once I’d sat on the edge of the fountain for precisely twelve minutes, the Native American boy came over to me and seated himself. I turned my head to look at him, not wanting to appear impolite, and studied him more closely. His ponytail looked silkier than my own hair was, and extended to the middle of his back. The clothes he wore didn’t show anything about his heritage for the most part, being jeans and an Iron Maiden tee-shirt. However, he was wearing a necklace made solely of shells, which I found very pretty. It was his eyes that got me though; they shone with a bright inner light, though they were very dark.

“Hey,” he spoke in a friendly voice. “why are you sitting all alone over here? Why not come join us?”

I almost laughed at the hopeful look on his face. Suddenly I was being hit on by this boy who didn’t even know my name. Sure, it happened to women in bars all the time, but that wasn’t from teenage boys. At least not if the teenage boys obeyed the law, which is another subject entirely.

“What’s your name?” I asked with a smile, determined to not alienate him, at the very least.

“Jake. Or at least that’s what I go by, considering my name is really Jakob.” He stuck his hand out in my direction.

I felt myself go pale, felt the smile slide from my face, and definitely felt my two front teeth go into my bottom lip as I tried to convince myself unsuccessfully to answer him. Jakob. I didn’t know if I could speak to someone by that name again. Not after what happened to the first one.

When I still tasted the blood from my first kiss, not the only one I’d had by this point in my life, yet the one which mattered most because of the coppery flavour that would likely remain forever.

The boy cocked his head slightly, now confused. “What? Is something wrong with my name?”

“I’m Jakob.” the boy grinned the happiest I’d ever seen at me. The first light in my darkness since my parents had died. “You’re new in the building right? I’m glad to meet you, ‘cause there weren’t any kids here before, only a little baby. And babies aren’t any fun. What’s your name?”

“Katherine.” I said softly, liking him already. He had to be what I needed. Something I could latch onto in the waves that were pushing me everywhere in the sea of insanity that represented my mind. “You can call me Katie, though.”

“Katherine.” He repeated, and for a moment he was almost frowning. Then his eyes lit up and the grin returned wider than before. “I like it. That’s a pretty name- way prettier than Katie. Besides, I know a Katie at school already, and she isn’t very nice. I bet you‘re way different, and just as nice as you are pretty.” Jakob made a face.

“Thanks.”

Back in the present I was shaking my head. “No, it’s nothing. I just knew a Jakob before, is all, and it is a really common name, so… Nothing, like I said.”

“Hm.” He seemed to consider me for a moment before speaking again. “So what’s your name?”

“Katherine- Katherine Baray. That’s all I’m telling you until introduction time, all right kid?”

Jakob feigned indignation. “Kid? You can’t be much older than me!”

“I’m sure that’s meant as a compliment. In any case, if you’re under eighteen, you’re a kid in my eyes.”

Before he could answer, two people ambled into view from the same path I’d entered on. One was a girl who looked to be around my age, with a surprising grace, and features that somehow went together to form something beautiful on someone who looked like they didn’t know what they held. The other was a severely pale man with a lanky build, and eyes dull to the point that they were almost lifeless. Neither looked like they much wanted to be here, and I wondered why they’d signed on for the show.

Brad turned away from the blonde with a smile, not seeing her look of resentment, and clapped his hands excitedly. “Well, now we have our last two, and we can get started!”

--

The most dangerous games are played by the devil, preying on the unsuspecting sheep.

--

Introductions were to take place in the living room, one of the areas that had been refurbished enough to make use of. The other such areas included the kitchen, the bathrooms, and enough bedrooms for everyone to use, though some people would apparently be sharing.

I vowed to not be one of those people.

The living room seemed all right, and definitely usable. Electricity had been paid for, because God forbid there be no lighting or otherwise in today’s modern society. How the Amish do it, I’m sure I’ll never truly understand. Beyond electricity, the living room had new furniture, because apparently while a lot of the house’s furniture had survived, a window in this room had broken one spring, and before the people who were supposed to take of the house had noticed, rain had destroyed much of the softer things. Thankfully, this hadn’t happened in any other rooms.

The things meant to be sat on were all around a coffee table, which had a hat filled with slips of paper inside of it. Currently I was seated on a couch that could hold a lot of people, one of those longer-than-usual ones, and in a color that would have made spilling most beverages on it a sin. I had an arm, next to me was Jakob, and the rest of the teenagers seemed to be on this couch as well, exempting the punk girl. She was by an open window so she could smoke. Brad and his blondes-one on either side- along with the thirty-looking guy and redhead were on a couch across from ours. The tanned woman, pale lady, man with the notepad, and hyperactive one- who was bouncing up and down in his seat- were in the four recliners around the coffee table, with little-to-no legroom. And the final pair to arrive were standing, on opposite ends of the same table.

Cameras were already rolling.

Brad spoke with the same level of zeal he’d kept up every time I’d heard him so far. “All right, everyone, here’s the deal. We need names, and it really doesn’t matter if your fellow contestants know your last names, so whatever you want there. Then you gotta tell us all what you do for a living, or if you’re a student, what you want to do for a living, and ages, and of course, the ever-important, question: why did you want to be a part of Raven Manor? We‘ll start with my lovely assistant, because of course we all know me.”

Blonde Number One, on Brad’s right, clipboard still in hand, smiled. “I’m Nathalia , but call me Lia, all right? I will not, under any circumstance, disclose my age. And why am I here? Brad, of course. Moving on." Miss Call-Me-Lia looked pointedly at the thirty-looking guy.

"I'm Joshua Leir, thirty-four, and a doctor. Why did I want to be on this show? A change of pace is all I needed. My wife left me a few months ago."

I rolled my eyes despite myself. Few things bugged me more than people who say right away that they're recently single after a serious relationship- why should we care? I mean, being sympathetic is one thing, but in the end does it matter to us? Of course not, when we don't know the person being upset. Wait to tell us things like that until we know you enough to feel something genuine.

Redhead time! Exciting! I felt the eagerness in the room as I sat forward in my seat, wanting to know about this woman, more than anything else in the world. …Yeah, right. No one moved, except for Miss Punk, rubbing her cigarette out on the windowsill and lighting a new one. And the redhead, of course.

She was folding her legs, and it was her leaning forward. "Well, my name is Crissy Timber, and I'm twenty-six. I've got a temp job for the moment, because my company just moved a few states over after a merger, and I may be losing that job, so I needed more income. I'm on this show to take a break, and because I've always wanted to come in this place, actually."

Yes, it's a horrible place to leave off, but you know what? It's 3:30 in the damn morning and I have not slept! Gimme a break!

So anyway, this is based off of a song by the same title, from Silent Hill. If you've never heard it, YouTube it: Akira Yamaoka, Room of Angels. It really sets the mood for this piece. In fact, I based the story off of the song. Took me awhile to come up with it, but I like it, my best friend loved it when I pitched the idea, so I figure it'll go well.

Short story though- it's just coming in a few installments.

There we have it.

Arianna Sterling