chapter 2

authors note: I expect that when I reach the end of this tale I will go back and revamp the early chapters as details become more clear. Oh, and since I didn't say so before I'm saying so now, all rights to this story belong to me. I don't want it reposted unless I have some approval as to how it's posted. This is a work of fiction and any resemblance to anything else is accidental. now on with the story!

Chapter 2

Silence is a strange item to approach. It can fill your soul with terror, or soothe the weary mind. Silence is a blade with two cutting edges. Silence can be your ally or your enemy. There have been times that I would have given anything to receive the blessings of silence. I longed for it at times, when my life became so full of noise and clutter that silence was like an old friend that I embraced it like an old friend. I let it surround me, like a warm blanket keeping out the wind.

Sadly for me the silence I found in that long empty house was far from a friend. It was rooted in emptiness and death perhaps. I was able to search the corridors of the 3 main floors. I realized soon that a room to room search on my own would take me days, and though I had provisions to last that long I was not capable of it. I had intended to search the house from the moment I found my fathers footsteps approaching the ancient building. The problem was resources, and to that point I had only been able to bring what I could in a pack on my back. The lodge had been so long uninhabited that no food or provisions could be found. That was not the major problem though, the silence was the problem. Working alone was dangerous. The prospect of working alone was so unpleasant to me that I determined I would have to return to the nearby city for help. Furthermore I would set up a base of operations and a sort of residence in the ages old lodge in case of the event that I would need to set up a search and survey of the surrounding acres. Having determined this need I quickly scribbled a note to the effect that if my father or companions found it to stay in the central living area until I returned, and that I would return within a day and a half. Included in the note were the time I had left and a number at which I could be reached in case they had something urgent to communicate to me. I attached it with a tack and hammer to the inside of the heavy wooden front door, left my provisions but for the bare essentials on the inside of the door frame and locked the door behind me as I left.
I stuck to the main road this time and in a little more than an hour hiking on the abandoned roadway I reached the front gate and headed back into town, after making a quick stop at the family home to pick up my sister Alice who was three years older than me and an excellent cook. In town I went about contacting a team of two surveyors, a professor of history, and two men with backgrounds in both back country survival and handling weaponry to protect our small group. The situation was explained to all involved, and that regardless of whatever we found they would be employed for a minimum of a month, and with no maximum time limit. Upon the advice of our expert survivalists we purchased a good deal of communications from advanced walkie talkies to several miles of cable and a set of portable communications terminals. The professor who's name was Doctor Kent required that all of us carry cameras to record what we found. I had no trouble luring  him or the others, no just with wages but with the smell of adventure and mystery. It is easy to overcome caution simply by sparking a person's curiosity.  Alice put herself in charge of shopping and bringing the provisions in and holding down a sort of home base when we arrived and got set up. We gathered that night for a drink to help take the edge off, but headed to our respective homes early to get an early start. We agreed to meet at the front gate at dawn the next day.
The dawn saw me driving down the empty highway, not too cloudy out at the time. The strange thing was that as my car approached the gates a fog hung close to the ground, thickly blanketing the ground and hiding all the details of the pavement and ground.  I led the way using my car as we drove down the winding service road up towards the lodge. Though the sun was just coming up tall trees surrounding the road blocked out much of the light, leaving us to use fog lights to see our way. The road was particularly treacherous because of our inability to see the pavement under our wheels added to the winding and changes in the altitude of the road surface. This forced our pace to be painstakingly slow. Finally after many agonizing minutes that felt like hours we reached the lodge and parked our vehicles at the end of the building. Looking up at the foreboding stone structure I felt the enormity of our undertaking in searching the building and grounds. It seemed to me that we would never see the end of this place. I shivered involuntarily as I thought about those hundreds of empty rooms, long empty time had forgotten them. He suddenly wondered if a building could become feral and wild, taking a life of it's own and refusing to be tamed by man. People put so much of themselves into buildings that they sometimes begin to take on personality of their own, a life of their own. They seem more like people than structures, and if the lodge were a person what sort of person would it be? I imagined a lonely but tenacious old man, tossed aside by the world left with nothing but his own thoughts to keep him company year after weary year. At some point he stays alive out of a sort of unholy determination, feeding on his own stubbornness and refusal to let go of life.
I knew I had spent too much time staring when Alice woke me from my daydream, bringing me back to the present. "Can we get on with getting in the front door? You've been standing there staring for over thirty minutes. What do you see?"
"Nothing, just wondering if there might be termites.
"Even termites would have trouble sustaining themselves on this stale building, it would probably taste terrible." Susan retorted, bringing a smile to my face. 
I unlocked the front door, letting the double doors swing inward on their own weight. As everybody brought our supplies indoors I looked to see if my provisions I had left had been touched. Once again I found every trace that I had been there was wiped away, even the tack I had used to pin the note to the front door. This was slightly unsettling for me, so I checked the central living area. Once again I found nothing. Our group decided to store our provisions in the large kitchen, so that Alice could cook and have what she needed close at hand. I instructed the survival experts to help Alice set up a sort of home base in the kitchen, while the surveyors, Dr. Kent and I proceeded to the east wing of the lodge. The most puzzling thing that came to our attention was a giant room lined with shelves. The door hung ajar making this the logical first stop for our search. While what we had found so far seemed orderly and everything in it's place this room looked like it had been ransacked. Chairs lay on their backs, books and papers lay scattered over every surface, however the shelves themselves were empty. Dr. Kent was thrilled with all the books, as he went through picking them up and putting them in a sack to bring with him. He called my attention to a large leather bound volume with the title "Logbook of the Orion estate", which I told him to set aside for me back at base camp. We finished our sweep of the first and second floor with very little eventful happening or being found. The third floor just left us mystified as all rooms except a storage closet were locked securely, and did not budge no matter what we did. As the daylight left us we gathered in the kitchen for an evening meal, sharing the experiences of the day and enjoying Alice's wonderful cooking. It was decided we should sleep on the kitchen floor, and bar the doors against entry. I was the last to fall asleep, frightened of a return of my previous dream in this unfamiliar place.
I did not have a repeat experience of the dream, instead just imagining a drumbeat, followed by the tune I had heard in my dream before. The lyrics were missing, but the tune still brought me restless sleep, I was unable to hold still the whole night.
End of chapter 2