In response to ParanormalCommunity 's 08/08/15 prompt: Bigger on the Inside

+_+

NAME: [REDACTED]

DATE: 09.22.2015 (GIVE OR TAKE A A MONTH)

SUBJECT: Potential Paranormal Encounter at [REDACTED] Mansion

I made the mistake of going to the kitchen on my own during our 2 a.m. coffee break. I wanted a snack--you know me, always snacking. I left the rest of the cryptography staff in the second best dining room, the one you find when step in and out of the entry hall twice and then slam the coat closet door six times. The others would have come with me, but we'd already lost one set of equipment (and one unlucky crypto intern) the last time we adjourned for a meal and we didn't have the budget to replace another.

In any event, I made my way through the formal garden in the den to the third kitchen in the basement (which is actually on the main floor while the kitchen on the main floor is actually in the attic) because that's the one with the best nibbles and I'd promised to bring enough back for everyone. We had all skipped early dinner, on-time dinner, and then late supper to pore over the latest glossolalian field transmissions from Agent #6. (Agent #6 is becoming very chummy with the poltergeists in Eastern Europe, it seems. We hope they'll be very happy together.) Hours later, we had the majority of Agent #6's communiques committed to the WPRS database and we were famished.

I was counting down the minutes until I could pull the tea leaves steeping in the tea kettle while also eyeing the water levels in the coffeemaker with growing anxiety. I wasn't the last to change the filter and the coffee was looking more like tepid sewage than fuel; the crypto-linguists would revolt without caffeine. Just as I was about to say to hell with it and dump in a six-pack of Monsters to make up the difference, the kitchen's heavy industrial door swung out as if it had been pushed, from the inside...from my side. I had been inside alone.

Wonderful, I thought, ghosts. I gathered the tea and coffee, the milk, sugar, crème, mugs, and cookies I'd found to return to my colleagues. Agent #17 had been struck with their third attack of xenoglossia, or xenolalia, in the last week. The working theory was that HQ ghosts were at fault. I wasn't convinced.

I stepped out of the kitchen going backward to keep from colliding with the swinging door. My first mistake. On the other side was a flagstone corridor instead of the garden maze I had seen before. Unlike the garden lit by moonlight, this hall was illuminated by torches sat in sconces. Unlike the garden, this place was not empty.

A person dressed in knee length battle skirt dragged their sword along the roughhewn floor.

I blinked once to bring the HUD display of my glasses online. No heat signature, no life signs. A specter.

"Going somewhere," they asked. I might have called them a woman, but it would never do to presume. They were smiling when they said it. I didn't think I'd seen them anywhere before. I'm not afraid of ghosts, but they're terrible for productivity; the energy signals they give off muck up the equipment, fry motherboards all too frequently and can set us back for days.

I nodded toward the door at the opposite end of the corridor. Never mind the bloody drag marks marring the floor in that direction. I could feel the solid wall that had replaced the door I entered through. The only way left was forward. 

 "Just headed back to my friends."

I flicked my eyes to the left to engage audio and video recording. WiFi was spotty at best in the unmapped corners of the mansion. We weren't sure they existed when we did, much less where. Recordings were our only sure bet.

The armored stranger sheathed their sword. "Don't go that way."

I paused so suddenly the mugs on my tray clunked together. "Where should I go instead?"

"Not that way. This way." They gestured toward a door I was quite sure wasn't there when I last looked.

"Do you live here?" Their face didn't match any I had seen on the centuries-old paintings lining the ever-changing hallways.

They smiled. "I always have. Come now, I'll take you back to your friends. I know the fastest way."

They produced a large ring of keys to open the mysterious door just as a clanging footsteps began to sound from the far end of the corridor.

"Go on, then. It wouldn't do to be here when the executioner comes. She gets...enthusiastic early in the morning. I wouldn't like to cross paths with her."

"Thank you."

"My pleasure, lass."

I wiggled my nose to take a clandestine panoramic shot of the hall and my unnamed helper, and then I stepped through the door into the dark.

I stepped out of the dark into the dining room we'd lost. Our intern was seated at one of the workstations playing Galaga as he had been the last time we all saw him. He was unharmed but bored; he thought we'd taken a long lunch without him. Subsequent calculations indicated temporal distortions factoring in the hundreds.

Upon returning with Intern [REDACTED] and snacks to staff in dining room #2, I discovered that I had likewise been declared missing and given up for lost. Duration of disappearance: 2 months.

The tea and the coffee I carried with me was still hot.

END REPORT