The Whitmoor Manor

. . .

An invitation arrived in the post. Black wax seal. No return address.
You and your companion accepted. You should not have.

You are now sealed inside Whitmoor Manor — the long-abandoned estate of a family whose final letters spoke only of the thing in the walls.

You have been separated. Your companion is somewhere else in the house. You can hear each other through the stone — through your phones, your headsets, your call.

Sunrise is in ten minutes. The doors will only unseal if you both escape together.

Speak to each other. Trust nothing you see alone. Walk slowly. The manor is large.

Choose Your Side

One of you will be in the Library. The other, in the Cellar.
You will not see what your companion sees.

The Library

Player One — among the books and locks

The Cellar

Player Two — among the keys and whispers

Send Your Companion

Send this link to your friend. They will enter the other side of the manor.

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When your companion is ready and you are both on a voice call, begin together.

Library — The Foyer

You stand at the threshold.

The door has shut behind you. You did not push it. The library opens out in front: tall shelves, a guttering oil lamp on a desk, dim corridors leading away.

Your companion's voice crackles through your headset. They sound far away.

— Doorways —

Library — The Reading Hall

The lamp burns lower here.

A long table runs the length of the room. Open books are scattered across it, pages curling. One book is splayed open at a passage in a language you do not recognise.

At the far end of the room: a wooden cabinet, its three brass dials gleaming faintly.

— Doorways —

Library — The Long Gallery

Tall windows. Rain on glass.

You can see the grounds outside. They look normal at first — wet grass, a row of dead poplars, the iron gate.

Then you notice that the gate is locked from this side. Faint figures stand in the rain among the poplars. When you blink, they are gone.

— Doorways —

Library — The Cabinet

Three brass dials, set into wood.

The cabinet seals shut. Beneath the dials, a brass plate reads:
"Set the colours as the verse demands. The cabinet will yield."

Click each dial to change its colour.
Your companion has the verse.

Red

First

Red

Second

Red

Third

— Doorways —

Library — The Star Chamber

A domed ceiling, painted with stars.

Above you: a dark dome scattered with tiny lights. Each one bears a name in old engraving. A plaque reads:
"Touch the stars in the order the heavens demand. Falter, and the dome will see you."

Your companion has the order. Touch them as they say.

— Doorways —

Library — The Black Door

The wall has split open.

Behind the star chamber, a section of the wall has cracked apart, revealing a door of black wood. Set into it, a brass keypad expecting four digits.

A scrap of vellum is pinned to the door. You read it aloud:

"Three digits the cellar will give. The last is yours alone — count what you have lit."

The last digit is the number of stars you touched in the dome.

Ask your companion for the first three digits.
The fourth — count the stars you lit.

_

— Doorways —

You have arrived.

. . .

You are in the cellar of Whitmoor Manor. Your companion is somewhere far above you in the library.
You can hear them on the line.

The cellar door is barred from the outside. You aren't going up that way.

Pages of an old journal are scattered through the rooms below. Find them. Read them aloud to your companion. They cannot escape without what you have.

Sunrise is in ten minutes. Walk slowly. The manor is large.

Cellar — The Floor

Cold, and a smell you don't recognise.

Stone walls weeping damp. A single bare bulb swinging on a wire — though there's no wind down here. Three openings lead away into the dark.

You aren't going up. The cellar door is barred from outside. But you have something your companion does not — knowledge they cannot see. Pages of a journal scattered through these rooms.

Find them. Read them aloud.

— Passages —

Cellar — The Workbench

A page from a hymnal.

You smooth the page out. Tight, panicked hand. Above the verse: "For the Cabinet, when next they come."

Three locks bar the way before you,
set them in this proper hue —

First, the colour of the harvest moon,
risen low and risen soon.

Second, the colour of the bone beneath
whatever skin the dead bequeath.

Last, the colour of the wound that never closes,
the wet that rises through the roses.

Read this aloud to your companion.
They will set the dials. When they pull the lever, you will know.

— Passages —

Cellar — The Wine Racks

Rows and rows of dark glass.

The bottles are old. Labels rotted to grey. One has been pulled out and emptied — the floor beneath it is sticky, dark.

Behind the rack, scratched into the stone wall: they come for whoever moves last.

You hear a slow exhale somewhere very close. There is no one with you.

— Passages —

Cellar — The Coal Pit

A pit of coal, almost untouched.

The coal sits black and undisturbed except for one corner where something has been digging upward — from below, not above.

You stand at the edge of the pit. You don't go closer.

— Passages —

Cellar — The Star Atlas

An open atlas, pinned to the wall.

It's a chart of stars — the same ones, you realise, painted on the dome above your companion. A page is folded into the binding. Another verse.

The dome above will only yield
when these four stars have been revealed —

First, CORVUS, the watcher in the rain.
Then VESPER, who comes when the dead complain.
Then LYRA, whose song the sleepers hear.
And last, NIX, when the morning is near.

Read this aloud to your companion.
They will touch the stars in order.

— Passages —

Cellar — The Folded Page

One page remains.

It was folded inside the cover of a black book. The ink is fresh. Too fresh.

"If you have read this far, you are nearly free. The final door requires four digits. The first three are below. The fourth your companion already holds — they need only count what they have lit."

9 · 0 · 2

Speak these to your companion.
Do not write them down. The walls remember handwriting.

Wait for your companion to enter the code.

— Passages —

. . . . .

You stepped out into the morning.

The manor stood silent behind you. The seal was broken. Whatever was in the walls did not follow.

You and your companion are free.

No one ever returned to Whitmoor Manor. The estate was demolished in 1962. The grounds remain empty.