This new, strange chamber is tall and large - stretching up to a plastered ceiling that seems impossible to reach. It is dim, barely kept alit by a number of rusted bronze gargoyles, each clutching two dripping candles, the light they cast dancing across stately portraits, each of a beautiful young woman...
The wall panel slides shut behind you, sealing you in the room, as the same thundering voice echoes through the chamber...
Notre visite commence ici dans cette galerie o- vous pouvez admirer la douceur et l'innocence de la jeunesse.
<Our tour begins here, in this gallery, where you can admire the softness and innocence of youth.>
As the voice speaks, you are given time to admire each portrait - each innocent and carefree, showing the young woman picking flowers, sitting in the sun under the shade of a parasol, posing for a portrait with the mansion in the distance or perhaps on a jovial picnic with her young suitor.
click on any to see it stretch
And yet, even in the flickering gloom of this octagonal chamber, even a leisurely gaze at the portraits reveals an unsettling change - the ceiling is rising, or the floor lowering, and the portraits are appearing to rise with the ceiling, as the frames elongate, revealing a series of ghastly situations! As we see more and more of the portraits, since hidden from view, illusion is stripped away and the true nature of the house is revealed in increasingly horrifying ways..
H‚las! Les choses ne sont pas toujours ce qu'elles paraissent... Les murs de cette piŠce, par exemple, ne s'allongeraient-ils pas, par hasard ? Et comme vous pouvez le remarquer, il n'y a ni porte... ni fenˆtre... Quel angoissant problŠme ... r‚soudre... par o- sortir ?
<Alas, things aren't always what they seem...This room's walls, for example, maybe they don't really stretch? And as you can see, there is no door... no window...What a frightening problem to solve... where is the way out?>
J'ai bien peur que vous soyez contraints de me suivre.
<I'm afraid you're bound to follow me.>
Seemingly all at once, the candles flicker out, and darkness envelops the room. Suddenly, far above us, seemingly miles away now, we see into the manor's distant attic, where a shadowy figure stands above us in a billowing cape and top hat, face obscured in inky blackness. We see in his hand he grasps a fraying rope, and that rope is hung up and over the highest point in the attic. From the end of this rope sways a corpse, barely illuminated by flashes of lightning which play around broken windows on all sides, as the hangman laughs maniacally down at us...
Just as suddenly, the scene is gone, and the room is plunged into darkness
for what seems to be an eternity.
