You come to some time later.
"Oh... what happened?" you mumble to yourself as you lay in bed. You put your hands to your face and rub the sleep out of your eyes. You remember being at work, and getting something for a customer... but what then?
As you begin to come to, you are startled to realize that the bed you are in is not your bed. This bed was, though you hate to admit it, much too comfortable. The crappy bed you bought when you moved back to Salem felt like sleeping on a bunch of books. This one wasn't exactly the most comfortable bed you've ever been in, but at least your back wasn't aching sore upon waking up.
You kick the sheets off of you and scramble out of the bed. The room you are in is very, very dark. It's hard to make anything out. You put your hands out and try to find a door or window. After taking a few blind steps, your finger brushes against a wall, and you beeline towards it. You put both hands on the wall and feel around, trying to find some kind of door.
After a few minutes of blind fumbling, your hand makes contact with a door handle. You grab it and twist it back and forth a few times, trying to get the door open. It feels like something is blocking it. You push against the door, and then throw your whole body against the door. That does the trick. You hear something snap and then you tumble through the open door.
To your surprise, the hallway outside of the room you were in is lit up. You rub your eyes, adjusting to the light as you sit on the ground in the rubble of whatever was keeping you locked inside. Is this the Abner house..? You'd never gotten close enough to take a peek outside. You glance around and examine the dark walls and carpet. The décor is Victorian. That seems consistent with what you know about the Abner family. You worry that you might have just awoken your captor, so you hastily turn to retreat back into the bedroom.
As you turn, the rubble you sat in catches your eye. Your jaw drops, and you bend down to pick up a piece of the rubble. "Is this... a pencil?" you ask, wrapping your hand around half of a a gargantuan yellow fragment. It looks more like a thick treebranch, almost as thick as your arm. You examine it, puzzled. Why was there a giant pencil being used to block this door?
You clutch it with both hands as you reenter the room you woke up in. Light from the hallway dimly illuminates the room, and you can see it is ornately decorated, and actually quite large. The bed you slept in was a big poster-bed, with four columns that went up to the ceiling. Across the room from the bed was a large, grand armoire that looked like it could fit all of your clothes in it at once and then some. There was a vanity in the corner, with what appeared to be an old rotary phone, a fountain pen, papers, and... wait, could it be? It appeared that there was a window next to the vanity, covered by heavy-looking, ornately decorated drapes. You dropped the pencil and ran to the window. You wrestled with the drapes for a minute, trying to figure out the best way to get around them. You eventually dug through them and reached the glass windowpanes.
You pressed your face up to the window and tried to see where you were. You expected to see fields of grass, twisted old trees, and a gray sky. But when you looked out, you saw... nothing. It appeared that there was something blocking your view from the outside, like a big wall of some kind. The Abners must have fortified the room you were in, to keep you from escaping. That must be why you were barricaded inside... but why did they use giant pencils? What use could those possibly provide?
You turned to the vanity and reached for the rotary phone. Picking it up and pressing the receiver to your ear, you aren't surprised when you hear nothing but silence. Not surprising, you guess. You are about to put it back down when you hear a voice form the other end of the line. "Yes? Hello? Circe, is that you?" comes a thickly accented voice. You panic and smash the phone back down. Whoever Circe is, she sounds like a member of the Abner family.
You ponder your options for a moment, pacing in the room, when you hear a faint click-click-click-click sound. It sounded like someone drumming against hardwood. It's quite rapid, and it sounds like it's coming from another floor of the house. One of your captors? You wonder if it's Wendy and some of her deranged siblings. You pick up the fragment of pencil you had and shut the door, waiting in the darkness for whoever was approaching to enter your room. You darted to the corner of the room and waited. Your plan was to wait for the door to swing open, and you'd either beat the entering Abners with the pencil or jab them with the pointy end. You didn't really want to stab anybody, though.
You held your breath as you heard the drumming sound get closer, going up the staircase to the right of your room and approaching the outside of your door. To your surprise, the drumming footsteps kept going further and further away.
Puzzled, you approached the door, crawling to it on your hands and feet. You peek out through the bottom of the door, and see shadows move further and further away from you. Nervous, you open the door slightly when you think they have passed you entirely, and poke your head through the door.
You let out a bloodcurdling scream when you look all the way down the hall. About two hundred feet away from you is a massive hairy spider that looks to be about half your size, going somewhere down the hall. Your scream attracts its attention, and you watch as its eight legs turn it towards you in a matter of seconds. Black, beady eyes shine as they watch you. And then, the spider begins rapidly maneuvering towards you.
You shut the door and press yourself against it in an attempt to keep the spider from breaking through. You hear its legs drum towards you at a breakneck pace, and some of the light filtering in through the door below is blocked by its body. Your heart races as you hear a shuffling sound as it seems to press itself against the door, and you see one massive, hairy leg push its way underneath the door, fumbling in the darkness. It must be looking for you. Your skin crawls as you imagine one of its legs touching your legs, so you reach down and stab it with the pencil piece you grabbed, surprising yourself with your bravery. You hear what sounds like a shrill wail as the leg spasms and retreats back out from underneath the door. You hear more drumming sounds, and the spider click-clicks itself down the stairs.
You collect yourself, and then turn towards the door. You aren't opening it again. No way. You fumble in the dark for a lightswitch, which you find next to the door, illuminating a small chandelier that hangs at the top of the room. It's dim, but it will work.
You run over to the vanity and grab the ornate little chair accompanying it, and use it to block the door, propping it up so the back of the chair prevents the door handle from turning. You look around again, wild-eyed, looking for something else that might be of use.
That's when the house starts shaking. You fall face-first as the house feels like it's being pushed around, and then roll onto your back as the whole thing feels like it's rapidly being yanked up in an elevator. Everything shakes and bobs for a minute after, causing you to bounce around the floor and bump into some of the furniture, and then the whole house feels like it drops a few feet.
Everything calms down for a minute, and you hear what sounds like a sigh from somewhere outside of the building. You are too terrified to check what's outside. Was the house hit by a spontaneous tornado?
There are loud bangs, creaks, and scraping sounds. You scramble up towards the door and press yourself against it, terrified something is about to come through the window. You're practically shivering with fright.
The creaking gets louder, and you can hardly believe your eyes as the entire bedroom wall - the one with the window on it - peels away, swinging open like a door. You catch a glimpse of giant fingers and a hand as the door moves, and your heart stops as more and more of the giant is revealed as the wall retreats. You feel a sense of lucid shock as the giant's face swings into view. It is the face of Wendy, wearing her neutral expression on her face, as though she's bored. Her eyes are twinkling the same way that they were when you first met her. You can tell she's trying to smile. It looks almost grotesque, like a statue at this size.
"I thought I heard commotion" she said, staring at you. You felt small and insignificant when you watched her mouth move as she spoke. Every muscle that twitched and allowed her to enunciate her words looked like it rippled with force. You'd never have noticed this at normal scale. "I'm glad to see you are awake."
She reaches a pale hand in to the house, watching you with her black eyes as you try to scramble out of range from her hand. She seems amused, chasing you with her fingers. You crawl on all fours to the corner, trying to get behind something. You should have gone through the door, you think, realizing she can just reach over the bed to get you.
You feel her fingers wrap around your legs in a vice grip. Her hands feel both warm and ice cold at the same time as the grips you. She drags you across the carpet floor towards her, causing you to scream.
Still making her odd grimace-like expression, she lifts you out of the house, dangling you upside-down from her first, examining you with her black eyes. She puts her other massive hand underneath you and lets go, causing you to fall into her waiting palm face-first. Her fingers pinch one of your arms and flip you over, righting you in her palm. You are still holding the pencil in your hand. You try to stab the giant's hand, though she laughs a genuine laugh in response.
"We can play a tickle game later" she says, taking the pencil...
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