Chapter#02

"I'm guessing they are bedrooms." Mike walked to the first door and gave the knob a twist, but it didn't budge.

"This one too?" Beth asked. She knelt down, but Tink pushed between her and the door, scowling through the thick lenses of her goggles.

"Shit!" Tink gave the door a kick then ran down to the next one. She stopped briefly at the next door and stomped her feet in frustration. She ran to the end of the hall and uttered curses under her breath upon inspecting the lock.

"All of them?" Mike blinked in disbelief. Who would block off the doors? And why with poop?

"Hello?" Beth knocked on each of the doors. "There's nothing to be afraid of, we're friendly."

Mike placed his ear on the door closest to him. He heard nothing through it.

"Tink buy new drill from magic screen. Get some bits for concrete." Tink walked around the corner and Mike could hear her stomping down the stairs. He had no doubt that she was headed for his laptop to put in an order at one of the local hardware stores.

"I guess it'll have to wait for tomorrow." Beth raised an eyebrow. "Wanna place any bets on what's inside?"

"I can guarantee we will both lose somehow." Mike smiled, and Tink yelled in surprise from the bottom of the stairs.

Beth and Mike ran down the stairs, Mike jumping the last few and turning toward the sound of Tink's voice. He ran out of the living room and tried to turn into the kitchen, but ran into a wall that had never been there before.

"What the hell?" He looked and saw an opening to his left. Stepping through it, he found himself inside of a very large dining room with ornate china cabinets along the wall and a table that could easily seat more than ten people comfortably. Tink was standing at the other side of it, feeling the wood with her fingers.

"Is very good." She gave the table a knock. "No remember, but actually remember."

"I..." Again, Mike somehow had a memory of bolting through this room and never quite seeing it. This one was harder to swallow for him. It easily would take a couple of seconds to cross, so it couldn't just be memory loss.

"Oh boy." Beth leaned against the wall, her head in her hand. "This one actually makes me feel dizzy."

"It isn't just our memories. I get walking past a hallway and never going down it, but I remember going through this room, and that doesn't make sense. Is the memory a fabrication?"

"That's a good question." Beth moved away from the wall. "Unless the house erased our memory of it as we passed through."

"That almost makes the geas sound alive, or sentient."

"Isn't it?" The way Beth asked the question told him that she had already made up her mind. "The house waited until today to expand. How far can it go, I wonder?"

"If that's the case, then how many rooms have we walked through already? That kind of time adds up and I think we would notice that it takes a really long time to cross the house. It can't just be memory manipulation, it has to be something more."

"Yes, well, before we do any more exploring, I would like to go lie down for a bit. Unlike some people here, I've been up all night."

"Yeah, okay." Mike poked his head out the other side of the room to see the small kitchen table that he and Tink had eaten breakfast at. His laptop was still on it. "Hey Tink, go ahead and get that stuff ordered. I want to get into those rooms as quick as I can."

Tink jumped onto the nearest chair and opened his computer, her fingers clicking on the keyboard. He could hear her pounding on the keys while he grabbed Beth's luggage by the front door. He tried to pick up the briefcase she had brought with her, but she snatched it away from him.

"What's in there?" he asked. "Must be important."

"Sorry, reflex. This was my dad's case, he gave it to me when I moved out. It's just a few things from my apartment that I couldn't live without. Old copy of The Hobbit I got when I was young, stuff like that."

"Hey, you're entitled to your privacy. I've just learned to be curious about everything, especially creepy little dolls." Mike and Beth both laughed. At the time, Beth's possession had been a serious matter, but they had both come to terms with it.

"Speaking of Jenny, you should probably get her out of your bag."

"Oh, right!" Beth opened up her backpack and pulled out the little doll. With a porcelain face that they had cleaned up and a pretty green dress that Tink had made for her, she looked less ominous.

"Here ya go." Mike took the doll and walked into the living room. The front window overlooking the yard had been covered with dark curtains which he parted to allow in more light. The window sill had been deepened to allow for the large dollhouse that Tink and Mike had put together. It was tucked in the corner of the window, initially hidden by the curtains. It looked like a caricature of the home itself, with a finely carved turret on top with a toy gargoyle hanging from the gutter. Inside, roughly where Mike's room was, sat a small chair built just for Jenny. He set her in the chair and pushed her to face toward the front yard.

"And she likes this?"

"Loves it. She kept haunting Tink to help her draw up the plans. Tink kept complaining about it because apparently Jenny kept doing that when she was busy with other stuff." Beth had been gone while they had been building the dollhouse during one of her many trips into the Labyrinth. Mike had learned from her about the potential magical items that had been sold at an auction, so he had her visit with Ratu to see if they could identify any of them from the itemized list she had kept from her visit to the New Castle storage facility.