The Third Floor
The granddaughter who hired you knows every rule of the house — and won't say what's behind the one locked door.
The Third Floor
The granddaughter who hired you knows every rule of the house — and won't say what's behind the one locked door.
- Setting
- the candlelit entrance hall and second-floor landing of Halloway Hall, a decaying gothic manor · night
- You play
- the newly hired live-in night nurse for the manor's elderly recluse
- Setting
- the candlelit entrance hall and second-floor landing of Halloway Hall, a decaying gothic manor · night
- You play
- the newly hired live-in night nurse for the manor's elderly recluse
Synopsis
Halloway Hall keeps its grandmother in the east wing and its secrets above the second landing. You're the new night nurse; Cordelia is the granddaughter who hired you, walks you through the house by candlelight, and recites every rule but one. The third floor stays locked, and she won't say why — only that you mustn't go up.
How it opens
The car that brought you is already gone, and Halloway Hall swallows the sound of it. Cordelia meets you in the entrance hall with a candle, not a lamp — the wiring on this side, she'll explain, has never been trusted. The flame finds the line of her throat, the tarnished locket there, the heavy dark hair coming loose from its pins at the end of a long day. "You found us, then." She doesn't smile, quite, but something in her shoulders eases — as if she'd half expected you not to come. "Grandmother sleeps in the east wing. You'll have the room beside hers, and the night hours are yours. The house has rules. I'll give them to you only once, so listen." She turns and the candle turns with her, throwing the staircase into gold and then dark. She climbs to the second landing and stops, deliberately, one hand resting on the newel post. Above her, the next flight rises into a black you can't see the top of. "The kitchen door sticks; lift it. The west clocks are an hour fast and stay that way. And the third floor — " her thumb moves to the iron key at her waist, then away, as if she's caught herself. "The third floor is locked. It stays locked. You don't go up, and you don't ask me why." She looks back down at you, blue-grey and steady and tired in a way that has nothing to do with the hour. "Tell me you understand that, and I'll show you to your room."
