Dry Blood

Who decides what insanity means? Where does the threshold begin? Where does it end?

It is that heavy stillness again.

There is no sound, no movement. For a while, Ethan and Henry thought they had deluded the whole thing, but as they advanced in the other corridor. They returned to the terrifying reality again. The lighting was good here, which made the view even worse.

They found a large stain of dark blood that made the place like a rusty iron smell, while there was no trace of its source. That did not help their suspicions about Janet's fate at all. Henry is on the verge of fainting, but Ethan stepped forward and bowed to touch the dark red floor.

"The blood is dry, and I guess it happened before we were here, and It is not Janet's blood. But who, or what is the source of this blood?"

"This situation is never normal, Ethan, it should not happen."

"Get hold of yourself, Henry. We are still--"

"Wait, do you hear that?" Ethan asked.

"Hear what?"

"It is the sound of the clock ticking."

"The clock?" He was listening for a while. "Perhaps it was the clock that he found below. Maybe Janet heard the sound as well, she is heading toward it! Let us go back down quickly."

They jogged down the stairs, turning around anxiously. Nothing would make their situation worse now, except if that strange thing appeared again from where they were not expecting.

Henry followed Ethan's footsteps to the room, which located the huge clock. He skipped the room, while he violently pushed the wooden door shouting."Janet," and then was surprised by...

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The stark red was the first thing their eyes saw.

He stepped in slowly inward and his handsome face raised an unpredictable look, while Ethan breathed a sigh of relief as he resisted the urge to rush forward like an idiot.

The force with which Henry pushed the door caused (Janet) to jump out of place with fearlessness as she released a small cry that she quickly silenced with her hands. Her face looked pale as she was rolling backward in an involuntary movement. She must have thought that the next was the unknown that she had seen in the hall.

"Henry, Ethan... you both are here .. why?" She mumbled this in amazement, to Ethan's surprise, he was expecting that she would start crying and wailing at any moment now, but she didn't.

Henry did not answer her, and he did not seem to have heard her question in the first place, so he came forward to hold her hand anxiously, smiling happily.

"Oh my God! You're fine, thank God, thank God ... You idiots, don't make me anxious like this, I swear that I was about to have a heart attack because of what we saw, but you suddenly disappeared and I couldn't find you .."

"Thank God, you are well! I was back from this room to the hall and didn't find you, what happened?" (Ethan) said, as he looked at her.

She said confusedly, with signs of guilt visible on her beautiful face: "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to ... but I was just surprised by the appearance of that thing, and when Henry screamed I couldn't control myself and I started running down the corridor until I got to this room. "

"But…!" (Ethan) cut off his words as he silently crossed his eyebrows. "But this is impossible ..."

Ethan?

"Hmm? Yes ... what were we saying?"

"We used to say that we should get out of this place as soon as possible, so we don't need to wait for more strange things to appear to do that," said (Henry) while looking for something in his pocket.

(Janet) followed desperately: "But the door is tightly closed, I tried to open it to get out but it never responded, and the windows don't open either for some reason."

"On the occasion of mentioning strange things ... (Janet) ... you ... you are not wounded somewhere, are you?" (Ethan) already knew the answer but asked the question anyway.

"What? Hmm, no, not at all. I'm fine, except for the emotional wound that you left me alone!" She said in a joking tone of reproach as she directed frivolous gazes at Henry, who pretended that meditating on the carpets was his main concern.

((That's fine. It looks like the blood on the second floor isn't hers.))

(Ethan) smiled sweetly and said in a calm tone, "You are stronger than I expected, so don't show that fear about what happened."

"Well, I was surprised," she said as she pulled away some strands of hair on her face. "I think I held together when I thought of Henry, he was really afraid, which made me so worried about him, and I decided to be calm and courageous to search for him - I noticed the look." The miserable woman on the face of (Ethan) ran up and shouted - Oh, I worried about you too, Ethan, and I wanted to look for you ...!

"Yes yes, I can see your concern for me - he said it sarcastically - but that doesn't matter now. What are you doing, Henry? Stop turning around the room like this!"

"I'm trying to call Lawrence, but I can't complete a call."

(Ethan) agreed, saying, "I've tried it before, it seems useless. Maybe we should go back to the second floor and wait in the room you were in until we find a way out or others find us. I think we all need some rest."

Janet said miserably, "I'm exhausted, let's go up, but the bed will be mine! You can sleep on the floor or in the fireplace!"

"Ruthless! Is this how you thank the one who came running to your rescue?" (Henry) murmured hatred as he put his cellphone back in his pocket after making sure that it was futile to try to contact anyone outside.

The two continued to argue as they walked out of the room, not noticing Ethan, who stood in silence looking at the huge wooden clock questioning.

The clock continues to point to four, Which confirmed his first theory that this watch suffers from damage. What caught his attention was the presence of a small hole in the middle of the dial, something he did not notice the first time. It was more like a hole for a key or a small piece. Perhaps there was an instrument used to calibrate the watch?

He dismissed these thoughts from his head and quickly followed his two friends when he noticed that their voices were far from him.

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