Sip, Swallow & Scream

Part 6 | The Heart of the Whirl

Sep 27, 2025

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We stared up at the old Ravenwood Mansion, the centerpiece of the estate, in awe. Well, I wasn’t sure if it was awe or exhaustion that had us hesitating at the bottom of the nineteen stone steps leading up. I knew there were nineteen steps because Linds had spent the entire ride over reading out the Wikipedia article and laying out the whole estate for us — from the gardens that dotted the environs of the mansion to the stables and barns, and fields of corn that lay half a mile down the road.

The Ravenwoods had done well for themselves, and the little village of Ravenwood had sprung up under its watchful eye on the hill, a sleepy little hamlet that had hidden itself away from most of the world. It wasn’t Amish country, and we had gone the mile from the hotel to the estate in a black Chevy Tahoe, but everything we were looking at right now dripped with Old World charm.

The estate’s façade was a towering stretch of blackened stone and ivy-covered brick. It reminded me of an old wall I’d walked by a million times on the way to school in Watkins Glen. We started up the stairs, taking in the details. Quiet, little more than our footsteps echoing on the stone -- ours and those of other would-be haunted ball party-goers. It was as if the house itself settled everyone, or maybe put them on edge, leaving the entrance deathly quiet while tall gaslights threw eerie shadows across an entrance framed by carved pillars depicting creatures—both real and mythical—whose watchful eyes seem to follow us up the grand stone steps.

Even Linds was quiet. I almost thought to check on her, but I could see how wide her eyes were as she took it all in. We slipped through the heavy oak doors that stood at the main entrance, their surfaces engraved with the Ravenwood crest, a raven clutching a key in one talon and a dagger in the other. And on the other side, as if the whole mansion captured every sound and gleam of light, the world came back to life.

“According to legend, the chandelier above the ballroom was once lit with ghostly blue flames, and on the night of the grand ball that included the Duke of York, one unlucky guest vanished before the clock struck midnight and was never seen again.”

I stared at Linds, my eyes roving to Regan, then back to the light fixture that dominated the ballroom. “No way.”

“Way. I Googled it. Also, this place has one hundred and seventeen rooms on four floors, including an indoor pool dug out by Lord Ravenwood himself back in 1782. There are twenty-seven chandeliers, six dumb waiters, four kitchens, and there’s a pneumatic tube system that guests used to send their meal requests to whichever kitchen was closest to whichever of the nineteen bedrooms they stayed in.” She shrugged, and neither of us was going to argue with her. She’d been on her phone making little Lindsay ooh and ahh mental note sounds.

“And how many secret rooms? Did Google tell you that?” Leave it to Regan to go right at her. I needed to get these two in motion.

“There are six secret passages. It said that, but it didn’t say where. Maybe there’s one from the ballroom to the study.”

“Where Professor Plum killed Mrs. White with the knife?” We all giggled then. It was a favorite movie, but also not getting us anywhere.

The ballroom was huge and humming with suspense. The centerpiece of the event, the whole chamber was draped in black velvet, spiderweb-patterned banners dripping down the walls like molten silver. And from some well-hidden speakers, eerie music wafted out over the crowd. The whole place smelled like candles and wine and autumn leaves and just…old things, as if the ancient mansion was breathing and we were inhaling four hundred years of history. And, of course, overhead, the chandelier dazzled with more crystals than I’d ever see in Lindsay’s collection. The light from the gaudy monstrosity flickered, as if at the whim of an unseen breeze, revealing the gleam of polished wood floors. Chairs and settees draped with black cloth lined the walls of the round ballroom, and already they were occupied by ghoulish guests wrapped in outlandish costumes, some of them clearly going for creepy, some for silly.

We were going for sexy — well, not like ‘sexy nurse’ or ‘sexy yoga instructor’ — whatever that was, but I’d seen it on the Amazon. After a long night of trying to decipher that poem, then sleeping half the day and wandering through shops while trying to stay out of the damp fog that had drifted down into the streets of Ravenwood, I was just happy I’d managed to put my costume on the right way around.

We’d had a good laugh about it all on the way over. Clearly everyone was tired.

“Oh em gee, Ses, you are the sexiest bitch — I mean, witch, I’ve ever seen.” Linds had squeezed into the back of the Tahoe in her lace dress. She was the Bride of Frankenstein that would knock anyone dead with a smile. Regan was right behind her, face and arms crisscrossed with festering wounds, a zombie by any account, and looking smashing in a black sleeve dress. I had on this long thing I’d found a while back, a Gothic number that fell to the floor and down to my wrists in black velvet. It was lighter than I’d thought it would be, and cut low in the front for, um, ventilation. Plus, it was essentially backless, so there was little chance I was getting overheated. Linds had gone for sexy Bride, but Regan, as per usual, was on her own vibe.

“Zombie porn star?” I quipped, running my hands along the tattered fabric of her dress.

“Hey, just cause you look hot doesn’t mean the apocalypse ain’t gonna get ya.” She winked and sat back, crossing her long legs. The girl could never get enough time in the gym, and living with her had made that abundantly clear. I was sure with her workout routine and all that kickboxing, she could wreck anyone, even in those heels.

“K, we’re set. Be there in five,” I said, and then I sat back to enjoy the ride, trying not to close my eyes. I didn’t need to fall asleep now that we were so close. And I was convinced we were close. I’d been thinking about the damned poem ever since we’d gotten up and out around three. Four hours of shopping and dancing around puddles, tripping over cobblestones and gulping copious amounts of java had us primed for a fun night.

“Sorry, but I was thinking…”

“Not again, Ses. We definitely need to work on that.” Regan giggled and leaned just out of reach.

“No, for reals, bitchachos. Listen. I’ve been working some stuff out. The poem goes, ‘In echoes, whispers of leather-bound lore, Verse by verse, a secret to explore. Hollowed realm, where riddles swirl, Unlock the hidden room in the heart of the whirl.’”

“Yeah, we already decided that’s the ball, and the hollowed realm is like the inside of Ravenwood mansion or something, right?” Linds shrugged and pulled her phone out of her cleavage. “We got the key. We just need to find the door.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I said, nodding, “but we got this part, too: ‘On shelf of dust, in gloom’s embrace, A silvered spine, out of time and place.’ The book is in a place that no one goes. A storage room. A basement vault. It’s dusty there and dark, which means it’s not going to be any place we’ll be allowed to go while we’re here, I think.”

“Well, I’m not being the distraction again. I wanna be the sneaker-arounder,” said Linds with the cutest pout anyone had ever seen from a dead woman made of body parts.

“You can’t say shit. You had a ghost go right through you to spit out spooky ciphers,” said Regan, one long finger pointing and waggling. “I don’t wanna hear none of your BS. It’s my turn to get violated by a ghost. Ooh, that didn’t come out right.”

I giggled and looked around, taking in the scene. There was more to that stanza, and it had all been playing through my head the whole time. ‘Veiled by webs, a title worn and shy, The Telltale Lines where secrets lie.’ Somewhere so ignored that there were cobwebs. And the book with a silvered spine and no title -- a very worn cover because Poe had used it a lot. That had to be it. All we needed was to find a hidden door to a secret room with a key like this. I touched the witch’s hat perched on my head, smiled, feeling clever. Where else was I supposed to carry it? Of course, witches didn’t have feathers in their hats, but this one did.

I glanced around as we made our way left, circling what I assumed would be the dance floor, my eyes casting about for Loofah and Soap. It didn’t seem like that kind of party. Would they go with the bathroom accoutrement or try something more sophisticated? And if they did show up — and who wouldn’t? — without the key, or even knowledge that there was a key, what could they hope to accomplish other than to grind to the Monster Mash?

Someone handed me a cocktail, a smoky mist lingering over the amber liquid. Bourbon? I took a sniff and smiled. Yes. Yes. Yes. Bourbon and mysteries — it was gonna be my kind of party. Black-clad servers drifted through the crowd, balancing trays of charcuterie on slate boards, featuring an array of cured meats, blood-red cranberry compote, pumpkin seed crackers, and ghostly white cheeses shaped like skulls or tombstones. We grabbed a little something here and there, Lindsay squealing when she snagged a snack that looked like a tentacle on a toothpick. She slammed it into her mouth and made all the yummo noises, and I looked at Regan to see what she thought, but she was pounding down a pair herself.

Gross, I thought. Creepy food to go with creepy music. I’d just stick with the bourbon for now, a little smoked gouda on a cracker, and maybe a handful of grapes if anyone came back around. Until then, we weren’t finding a damn thing in the place where everyone was. We needed to get lost. Literally.

“We need a basement door. Steps going down. Linds, was there a layout of the mansion?” I tugged on her sleeve, and she tugged her phone out as we passed by two skeletons in tuxedos, both eyeing Lindsay’s boob-phone maneuver.

“I didn’t see anything like that. Maybe there’s something. I’ll look and you steer.”

“Got you,” said Regan, wrapping herself around an elbow. I took the other as we strolled down a dark hallway, Linds scrolling while we dodged party-goers. A couple dressed as his and her vampires — super cute! More than a few people wearing the bird-like plague doctor masks and gowns, but most of them I’d seen looked like staff. A bearded guy in a faded velvet cloak and broken but golden crown, like a fallen king. A woman all in black with a long lace veil. She cried as she walked by, and I thought for a moment she needed help. Someone behind us stopped her, and I spun around to see her lift her veil and scare the ever-living fuck out of that guy with the best, most horrifying make-up I’d ever seen.

“Jesus fuck,” I muttered, trying to shove my heart back into my chest and pulling my girls away as quickly as I could. “If you ever see her, do not stop her and ask if she’s okay. For fuck’s sake, don’t.” I giggled then, maybe a little hysterical, and I wondered if I should have some more bourbon before we went any farther.

No luck on the phone with a layout of the mansion, but we made the rounds, tromping down hallway after hallway, finding two kitchens, a series of connected bedrooms and a long line outside a bathroom. There were also decidedly a few dark corners, and at least twice we came across someone, or someones, needing a room, if you know what I mean.

Then, we rounded a corner, my feet a little achy, my friends a little stabby — or stakey, considering we’d just passed another vampire, but this one had to “Hey, baby” one or all of us; I thought Regan was gonna light his ass up — and we stopped and aimed ourselves at a little nook, dark and quiet and sporting a divan that would fit three tired bitchacho booties. I’d caught two bourbons on the walking, but I was running low on calories, and I thought maybe if we sat down, a plague doctor would wander by with a tray of plague rats on a stick or something. I was ready to gnaw, and we were gonna have to do some more digging on the layout of this place.

This was the place, right? The heart of the whirl — wasn’t this the whirl? We’d all agreed it was. Music echoed down the hallways, and I was sure we’d made the rounds of most of the mansion and were almost back to the ballroom, where we’d started, empty-handed and super annoyed. I didn’t want to go back to the room with nothing to show for our trip here other than a hangover. We weren’t even dancing, and the girls were being real sports about that, although I was sure at this point, it was gonna be barefoot bopping and two-step hopping. It was a thing, after all.

My mouth popped open as my ass hit the seat, ready to spew an apology, to suggest we get some food, to ask how everyone’s feet were doing, but the moment we settled in, I couldn’t help but feel a chill draft right up my dress. “Whoa! Icy ghost fingers in the no-go region,” I said, popping back up and spinning around. “Feel that?”

“Feel it and smell it,” said Regan, following my lead. Linds got up, too, her eyes drifting between us, and then all of us were staring at the divan and the heavy red velvet curtain that lined the wall behind it.

“Not much for insulation in these 16th-century mansions, huh? And you’re right,” I said to Regan, twisting up my nose, “smell something funky. Damp, musty, old. This whole place looks old, but it’s been maintained well. Suddenly, we’ve found the one spot they don’t clean?”

“Ses?” Regan looked at me, her zombie-infected arm extended toward the drapery. I nodded, and she pulled it aside, revealing an open space, a nook, dark and not-so-inviting. A light flashed, and Lindsay leaned in, phone in hand, shining her flashlight app and illuminating the darkness, where we found the darndest thing.

“A trap door.”

In the floor, exposed concrete all around it, where there was modern wood flooring through most of the halls. And the door itself, rough-hewn planks of oak flush with the floor and sporting an iron ring. The wood was scratched and grooved, as if someone had once put a heavy piece of furniture over the hatch, or they’d tried to break in.

I leaned in, then hiked up my dress and climbed over the couch. “Keep an eye on the hallway. No one can see this,” I whispered, reaching out and snatching the phone from Lindsay’s fingers. She squealed in protest, but I ignored her as Regan pulled the curtain back in place. They could run interference for a moment, and if the door budged, we could all sneak in. I didn’t see a lock. Just the ring. I took a deep breath, suddenly forgetting my feet ached and I was hungry and maybe should have only had one of the bourbons and more of the cheese, but it was all too late now.

Pressing a hand to the wood sent a chill up my spine — the trapdoor was ice cold, as if what lay beneath existed in an entirely different world. Even through the solid planks, a faint, unsettling scent drifted upward — not just damp stone and stale air, but something sharper. Metallic. Decayed. Placing an ear to the wood, there was only silence at first, thick and absolute. But then — a slow, deliberate creak, deep below, like old wood shifting under weight. Something far beneath had moved.

Or maybe I was just imagining things. When I pulled on the iron ring, the door grunted as if it was angry with me for disturbing it, but then it swung open and a blast of dank air hit me full in the face. I yelped and Linds’ phone flipped out of my hand, falling some ways down, where it clattered on a stone floor and went out, leaving me staring into the darkness and the top rung of an old wooden ladder.

Fuck me sideways.