Sergei groans. A brisk walk always cheers him up. Except today, for some reason. Perhaps it is the fact that Purgatory Road seems to be further away than he anticipated (he was never good at reading maps), or maybe the fact that he is alone. It's not really an attractive thought to go and spend time in a grand villa all by himself. He is definitely going to just be thinking about the lack of his friend's presence all the time. He's already tried not to. Several times. There just is no use. As such, lost in his own thoughts and eyes glued to the ground in front of his feet, he doesn't really look at the scenery around him until he is right at the gates of the mansion itself. And there, he realizes that he isn't alone, after all. But also that the mansion itself… Is a bit…
"Uh. Excuse me. I've probably taken a wrong turn somewhere, but. This isn't Purgatory Road, is it?" he asks the first person he sees.
"Sure is." Touka replies, hopping off the stone wall beside the gate and landing on the dirt path with a thud. "Hope you weren't expecting a warm welcome."
Without waiting for a reply she walks up to the gate and jumps towards it, wrapping her hands around the iron bars and locking her feet in between them, pulling back hard. She'd been waiting outside, in the cold on her own, for half an hour now, and whilst she did appreciate not being the only one here her frustration was beginning to show. Hopping back to the ground she brushes the hair out of her face and throws her hood back, looking straight at the newcomer.
"Anyway, the name's Touka," her voice is monotone, almost bored, "are you here for the weekend getaway too?" she says sarcastically, rolling her eyes.
I'm not alone! Sergei thinks, and relief washes over him and makes him smile. Only to be abruptly replaced by concern again when his eyes flicker back to the mansion ahead. Or what should have been a gorgeous mansion.
"I'm Sergei… But… I mean, I sort of was expecting a warm welcome, actually. This isn't exactly what I saw online," he says and points at… All that dreariness behind the gates. "Should we just go back to town and ask someone about this?"
"You're welcome to. I'd rather sleep out here than go back into THAT town," Touka says bluntly. After spending more than five minutes in the town just outside Purgatory Road, she'd already decided that she'd had enough. It seemed… Dead. Void of life.
"So Sergei, what was it? An email telling you you'd won a contest you never entered? Text message letting ya know the raffle numbers you didn't purchase had been drawn?" opening up the email she'd received on her phone, she continued "Did it look something like this?" she thrust the screen towards Sergei's face, the words Congratulations, you have won.. at the top in bright bold lettering.
Sergei blinks as his eyes focus on the screen. "Yeah that's about right. And uh… You're right honestly, walking back at this hour… Ah, nope. Maybe it's not as bad inside as it looks on the outside, heh?"
As he says that, he turns on his camera and takes a photo of the area from just outside of the gates. "This will look fine on a more, uh, honest Tripadvisor review later."
"If it doesn't look better on the inside, it could be grounds for a lawsuit." From around the corner, passing through some woodland shrubbery, a tired-looking man walks up to the gate with a yawn and a wave. He brushes twigs and leaves from his wrinkled brown suit. "I've just been doing a lap of the grounds to see if I got the wrong entry point. It seems not. I take it you two are also lucky winners?"
"Very lucky," Sergei says and swallows hard as he steels himself for actually entering this creepy looking place. "Who are you? How many did they send here? And what company was it again, I can't even remember actually. Can I see that again?"
He reaches for Touka's phone, on which she showed the message earlier. She hands the phone to him, pulling her headphones out of it with an audible hmph. As Sergei thumbs through the email, Touka turns her attention to the man in the brown suit.
"He doesn't want to go in," she says, deadpan, pointing towards Sergei who is still frantically scanning the contents of the email, "but I'm sick of sitting out here. Do you know if we're waiting for anyone else, or do you want to get out of this weather?" she motions towards the dark sky, the clouds threatening to unleash a storm.
Descending from the wall once more, Touka walks straight up to the stranger and, with all of her 5'4", got in his face. "So what's your name?"
"Oh, right. I'm Milo Bell. It is a pleasure to meet you." Milo rummages around in his pockets looking for his business cards, but quickly establishes they are not present. He sighs, then continues. "Unfortunately, I don't know much about this situation. The email I received was not very specific."
"You're right," Sergei says behind Touka, looking bleak. "I don't know why I didn't react to this before but uh… There are very few details of… Anything here. I sure hope they have beds and food at least?"
"I would certainly hope so. It was certainly implied our needs would be catered to," Milo replies with another yawn.
Adyson hauls the rest of her gear up the hill, already exhausted from her trek up to the designated location. When she breaches the top of it, she's met with the faces of the others. Quickly, she runs a hand through her hair and tries not to look so out of breath. She's immediately filled with adrenaline again and rushes up to the group standing outside, just catching the tail end of the conversation.
"Well, I don't know about you guys but I'm ready for anything!", Adyson smiles as she glances around. "I'm Adyson!", she says cheerfully, unabashedly offering her hand to the group of strangers.
"Sergei," the blond man in the group replies with a small wave and weak smile.
"Milo," the sleepier man introduces himself again with a half-hearted wave.
"Touka," the short, uninterested girl chimes in without taking her eyes off her phone.
"This place looks perfect." Adyson says with a light, content sigh, a bit of nostalgia caught up in it. She gazes at the mansion, dark and foreboding. She buzzes with excitement as she seems to bypass everyone, transfixed. Approaching the wrought-iron gate, she brings a hand to the rusted surface, giving it a gentle pull. It doesn't move.
She turns to Sergei, "Um, haha, little help?".
"Oh, uh", he reacts and moves up. "I guess we're doing this, then," he says sort of over the shoulder to the pouting Touka, before he pulls together with Adyson.
The pair pull with all their might, but the gate doesn't budge an inch despite the pair furiously yanking at its bars. Then, it very abruptly flings itself open as though it has a mind of its own, dislodging Segei and Adyson both in the process.
Sergei, almost having fallen over, straightens back up and fumbles for his camera again to snap a shot of the gate. "You didn't need me at all!" he comments in Adyson's direction.
I could've done that, Touka thinks to herself, watching the two.
Adyson is taken aback, but recoils quickly. She looks at Sergei curiously. "I didn't..", excitement is visible on her face as she turns back to the group. "Don't worry, this happens to me all the time!" She says, as if it's the most normal thing in the world that a gate opened on its own.
"Please be careful not to damage the gate," Milo interjects, "Destroying someone else's property is still a crime. Even in these circumstances."
"I'd say there's already been some criminals here in that case," Sergei says and emphasizes his meaning by gesturing to the dreary structure behind the gate.
"Yeah, isn't it awesome!?" Adyson concludes.
After a short period of waiting around, Touka sighs heavily, plugging her left earbud in and selecting a song on her phone. "Alright then," she motions to the other three people standing around her, and then points down the gravel path leading towards the mansion.
"Shall we?"
