Early morning. In the pale light of the spartan '90s lamp, George sat at the table, hastily eating his breakfast. Lasa, his wife, entered the kitchen. “What’s the hurry today?”
Still munching his flakes, he answered half-heartedly, “Guests from the new company are arriving today, and they want to take a look at our house.”
Lasa raised her eyebrows, surprised, as she sat down next to him. “They want what? Why do they want to see our house?”
He shrugged. “Probably trying to get to know me. They had a long trip and want to be shown around.”
“Sounds like quite a courtesy.”
“Yes, it’s a bit much, but not too uncommon with international companies.” George took a sip from his glass of orange juice to emphasize his words.
Lasa observed him tiredly. She didn't particularly like these global corporate courtesies. In a way, they were too intrusive, she thought. But companies were like that—trying to be part of people’s lives. And George was involved in that kind of business. It was good money, but there was some distaste to it as well.
Wearily, she sighed. “Okay, but I’m going to my room to hide because I’m not in the mood for surprise guests.”
He nodded. “I understand. I guess it’ll be brief."
##
A few minutes later, the guests actually arrived. An enthusiastic ringing at the door announced their presence. George rose to go to the door, and at the same moment, Lasa jumped up to reach her room at the other end of the corridor before anyone could catch a glimpse of her.
Relieved, she shut the door behind her. George didn't mind spontaneous visits, but Lasa preferred to have some time to herself during the week without having to deal with strangers constantly. She liked planned meetings, but not spontaneous ones.
Muffled noises came from the kitchen. Strange. Judging by the distinction in their voices, it seemed to be two women, a man, and a small child. Lasa wondered why there were so many of them at once on this business trip. It was more reminiscent of a family outing.
Then the voices came closer. Apparently, George was leading them through the corridor and showing them the rooms of the house. Lasa took a deep breath and hoped that her husband would at least manage to keep her door closed. Their chatter sounded muffled through the walls, and they seemed to be the exhausting kind of people who never stopped talking.
In silence, Lasa felt sorry for George. It was difficult to entertain such guests, she supposed. Then she realized that the cacophony of conversation had somehow faded. What had happened? From the last sounds, Lasa could tell that the guests had gathered in one room. But what was going on there now?
Suddenly, the door opened. George hurried in and closed it quickly with deliberate caution. Wearily, he turned to Lasa and hissed, "I need your help!"
Exaggeratedly, she whispered back, "Why? What's wrong?"
He looked around and made a grand gesture. "We need another room! Somewhere where they can't hear us!" He started waving his hand back and forth. "Come, come with me!"
##
He hurried to open the door and rushed outside. His wife quickly followed him. They wound their way through the corridor, past the room where the guests were staying, and at the end of the corridor, George finally grabbed the doorknob that led to a staircase descending to the cellar. Again, he waved his hand nervously to signal Lasa to follow him. The two of them hurried elegantly down the stairs after she had timidly closed the entrance behind them.
At the bottom of the staircase was a small corridor that led to several doors. One of them was made of steel. George chose it, and they hurried into the room beyond. Relieved, he closed the heavy iron door after Lasa entered. The "click" of the door handle echoed like a melody in his ears. His wife took the opportunity to continue their conversation immediately.
"So, why are we running away from them?"
Nervously, he turned to her. "They're so weird, Lasa! I can't deal with them! I think they want to live here forever! I don't know what to do."
"What? They want to live here? How did this happen that you can't say 'no'?"
"They know about the debt. I think they're trying to blackmail me!"
Lasa couldn't believe her ears. "You think they're blackmailing you? What's going on?"
He searched the room with his eyes for an answer. "I... I don't know. They seem friendly. Or not. And they must live somewhere. But they speak strangely... Like a threat." Then he whimpered, "I'm so scared!"
Suddenly, Lasa froze. "Shh, I hear something!"
They both listened. There was the sound of footsteps coming down. The bang-bang-bang made their hearts beat faster. George lost his nerve. "They're coming, Lasa! We have to hide!"
Startled, she realized that he was right. The room they were in led to another corridor, which led to the checkroom of the former gym. There were huge blue metal lockers in the checkroom. They hid in one of them and closed the door.
##
Tightly embraced, they listened to the sounds of their guests coming closer and closer.
A woman called out, "He must be here. I heard something."
The man commented, "Man, this place is big! How come they have such a big basement?"
Another woman growled impatiently, "We have to find him."
The tiny footsteps of the child walking beside the man could also be heard. After a while, they seemed to have passed the locker where the couple was hiding. When Lasa was sure they had gone into the next corridor, she made a decision. Normally, her husband was the one who dealt with people, and he usually did a good job of it. But now Lasa had to take over. She was sufficiently detached from the others for that. With her one blind eye and her difficult childhood, she was somehow resistant to certain manipulations, while her empathic husband was not. And now it was her turn.
"You're going back upstairs. I'm going to face them!"
He nodded.
Without making a sound, she left the locker and moved forward through a corridor that ran parallel to the checkroom departments, cutting off her path to the uninvited guests. When she was sure she heard them approaching, she stepped out from behind the corner.
"You must leave. This is not a safe place."
Startled, the two women, the man, and the child stopped and stared at Lasa as if she were a ghost. The older woman knew very quickly how to react.
"Oh, are you George's wife? Nice to meet you!" The irony in her voice was clear. She continued, "Why should we go? It's such a huge house. There's plenty of room."
Lasa tried to repeat her warning, "It's not safe. You have to go."
The younger woman fixed Lasa with her eyes and took a few steps forward. Lasa immediately backed away. Driven by the obvious fear she observed, the woman spoke to the others, "You see, she's even shyer than her husband. No need to argue."
Now everyone moved forward, and Lasa backed away, fleeing back into the corridor. The unwanted guests accelerated their pursuit but soon lost track of Lasa.
"Oh, forget about her! Let's inspect this place. It seems huge!" The older woman scoffed, and the younger one complained, "They're so selfish! Only those two own such a huge house, and they're not prepared to share it."
The man with the child remained silent. He looked a little worried, and the boy pressed close to his father while trying to make sense of what he was experiencing.
Lasa watched the four intruders from a safe distance. Unlike them, she knew these deserted halls very well. The guests had left the gymnasium area and entered the outer section of the estate through a crack in the wall. Here, there were halls with broken ceilings that let the naked sky shine through. A narrow bridge connected one hall of ruins with another on a higher plateau.
At first glance, all these buildings made no sense. They were strung together as if a mad architect had reigned unchecked. As the intruders walked across the bridge, the man suddenly pointed to the broken entrance arch high above them and shouted,
"Look, everyone! How on earth is this arch stone being held in place? The arch is half broken!"
The women and the boy stared at the stone above them, slowly taking care not to stand directly beneath it. The younger woman muttered,
"This is definitely not a sensible thing here."
The older woman agreed, "Let's get away from this area and head back to the more intact rooms."
From a dark spot on a vaulted ceiling on the other side of the open area, Lasa watched them make their way back to the more modern gym section. With a giant leap, she jumped from the ceiling and landed on the floor as fast as a cat. Then she strode forward to reach another observation point.
When she arrived on the roof of the gym building, she noticed that the man and the boy were exploring the stairwell by themselves. She decided to approach them, so she walked slowly down the stairs until she was in sight of the child and his adult. The two stopped and looked at her.
This time the man began to speak, "I'm sorry for intruding here. It's just that the boy and I are looking for a place to stay."
"There's a shelter on Holmes Street nearby. It's good for kids too. But I can't offer you this place here. The free-hanging archstone is only part of the problem."
The man raised his eyebrows, "But how is this stone held in place? It doesn't seem natural."
Lasa nodded, "And it's not natural either, that's true. Magic keeps it in place. But I don't know for how long."
The boy now burst out in excitement,
"Magic?"
Lasa answered positively again. "Yes. Magic. This place is haunted. You must leave."
The man and the boy looked at each other in confusion. But the woman with the one blind eye continued, "I will lead you away from here. But don't come too close to me. I don't like strangers near me." She pointed a finger at her eye, and somehow they seemed to understand.
Lasa turned and went back up the stairs, and the two followed her at a distance. On the level before the top floor, the younger woman joined them, and the man told her that they now had to comply and follow Lasa. On the top floor above them, the older woman suddenly appeared, looking at them sternly and aggressively. Lasa tried to avoid her, went down on her knees for a moment, and then suddenly took a giant leap up to the gallery on the top floor, swinging elegantly over the banister.
Astonished, the older woman lost her sternness and exclaimed in amazement, "You're really strong!"
Lasa replied in a firm voice, "Yes, I am. And now you all follow me. We must leave this place quickly."
##
Lasa hoped they would all follow her slowly, but instead the older woman hurried ahead of Lasa, obviously thinking she knew the way out, and disappeared around the corner of the corridor.
The half-blind woman sighed. Sometimes she just didn't understand people. She turned to the others, who were walking carefully behind her at a distance, keeping an eye on where Lasa was going. At least they realized that the situation had become serious.
They walked through the corridors for a while. Lasa's mind wandered through her memories of the first time George and she had discovered these places. The whole estate had been incredibly cheap and they hadn't been able to resist. But over time, they learned the hard way why no one else was interested in this former school campus as their new home. Sometimes they thought they would pay for this naivety with their lives, but slowly it became clear that Lasa was good with the active parts of the ruins. So now they had to rely on it. All the money they had lost on the purchase, even more debt they had incurred to repair the broken parts of the building, and now they were struggling to survive the general recession. They even invited an old friend over to show him the ruins and ask if these were suitable for some kind of adventure park. Their friend was impressed, but warned against bringing other people here as the whole area seemed highly unsafe.
Lasa snapped out of her thoughts as they all entered the huge gym. It was dark, the windows were covered with wooden planks, and only the little light that flickered through a few gaps from outside helped the human eye. There, in the hall, stood the older woman. The man immediately raised his voice,
"Clara! There you are! Why did you run off?"
Clara replied with a sharp "Shh!" and then pointed to a strange figure in the other corner of the hallway.
With terror Lasa noticed the creature and waved her hand for Clara to stop where she was. Then she gradually moved in the direction of the creature to attract its attention and protect her guests. Quietly, she whispered, "Now it's going to be even trickier. They're waking up."
The four strangers held their breath. By now, they had accepted without further question that Lasa was the one who could handle the situation.
The creature fixed the half-blind woman with its eyes and suddenly ran towards her with incredible speed. Lasa didn't blink. It stopped right in front of her and eyed the brave woman, who was twice its size. Small and round like a ball, the creature had a clown's face and two arms and two tiny legs.
"Do you want a paper drawing?" it asked in a screeching voice.
Lasa smiled, "Yes, I would like one."
The clown figure handed her a round piece of paper with a watercolor drawing on it and she took it. Then it continued, "Do you want another one?" Lasa nodded and received another round drawing, but this time it was slightly smaller. Then the creature remarked, "Will you take them all?" She agreed to the game and the creature pressed a small package with several drawings into her hand. Then it vanished into thin air with a "blob".
Clara frowned. "Oh, come on! That looks scary, but it's not! Why should we waste our time with strange visions? Next time you'll let me shoo it away, kiddo!"
Lasa turned to Clara and hissed hastily. "Shut up! Don't say that! It'll provoke them and it would speed up her waking process!"
"What waking process?" The younger woman looked nervously at the darker patches in the old gym.
Suddenly the child pointed his finger and exclaimed, "Oh, look! A huge, squishy ball is rolling towards us!" Startled, Lasa spotted the ball heading straight for her. Again, it stopped a few centimetres from her toes.
She bowed forward and tried to look closely at the sphere with her one intact eye, "There seem to be three small children trapped in this sphere. They are looking straight at me."
Then she turned to the four guests and whispered, "We need to get out now."
Clara immediately started running again, and the younger woman retreated in a different direction. Only the man and the child stayed put and waited for further instructions from Lasa.
The half-blind woman clenched her hands into fists, "This is getting out of hand and I don't know how long I can hold them back. So, you two better close your eyes, because now I'm going to get us all and then we'll dash through these walls together."
"What?" the man asked in irritation as he suddenly felt his feet lose their footing.
They were lifted into the air by an invisible force.
Lasa explained further. "It won't hurt. You'd better close your eyes because it can be scary."
They didn't know whether to follow suit and close their eyes or not, because the feeling was intense. The boy, the man and Lasa floated in the air as they watched the two women also being pulled back to their previous position and lifted up by an incredible unknown grip.
Lasa's eyes lit up and she focused intently on something beyond comprehension. Then the air began to ripple, and suddenly they were all hurtling through several underground brick walls without feeling a thing.
##
The whole group was catapulted back into the entrance hall of the cellar, near the staircase that led back to Lasa and George's villa.
Blinded, they slowly stood up, groaning a little as they did so. As soon as the two women realized where they were, they immediately ran up the stairs and hurried into the corridor of the mansion, probably on their way to leave the house in a hurry.
But the man and the boy stopped, looked around, and noticed that Lasa was standing there, relaxed. The man turned to her, "Thank you for getting us out of there." Then, he hesitated a little and added, "And thank you for your patience with us."
Lasa just nodded.
Somewhat intimidated, the man extended his hand to her. "I'm Marc, by the way. And the boy is Daniel."
She accepted his hand and asked, "Are you and the boy alone?"
"To be honest, yes. His mother died when he was a baby. I lost my job because of the massive recession. Now we're homeless."
Lasa let go of his hand and gestured gently. "The homeless shelter on Holmes Street is fine. Stay there for a few days to get some distance from what's happening here, and then if you still feel up to this place, you're welcome. You're right, we have plenty of room and maybe, if you want, we can work together to solve the problem here." She hesitated a little and then smiled, "It's just that in a place like this, we need people we can trust. And I think that can be you."
The man nodded. "I will think about it. So maybe, we will meet again."
Marc and Daniel slowly trotted up the stairs. Lasa remained behind looking at them as they left.
Then, being all alone, she went back to the iron door in the cellar and turned its key in the lock. Having done that, she strode up the stairs, walked through the corridor, and entered the living room where she found George sitting on the sofa.
He turned his head towards her and asked, "Are they gone?"
She grinned. "Yes, they are. But if two of them come back, the situation might improve."
He eyed her. "If you say so. Then, indeed, they will be good company."