Thread: The Legend of Tailford Mansion [Reader Discretion is Advised]

WARNING: This story contains extreamly graphic and scary
situations.
Gore, Blood, Scary situations


Target: Duskull
Total Character Count 21244


The Legend of the Tailford Mansion

Welcome to Hellsbury, where every desire you would ever want
is fulfilled. However, we here assume that your most wanted
desire.....is death

Hellsbury Library - Town History Section - The naming of
Hellsbury

Chapter 1: Mr. Tailford


The suburbs of Millsbury were reminders of the good life.
Just a simple road lined with houses. Behind each house was
another, creating two parallel streets. Behind one of those
roads was a lovely river adjutant to a beautiful sidewalk
where mothers would stroll their babies in their little
carriers. Little boys would walk their Growliths down the
street each day. In the morning, joggers could come
stampeding down the scenic little walkway like a clan of
Tauros. Yes, everything here gave this particular
neighborhood the unofficial award for best place in
Millsbury. Just one thing stuck out of place, the infamous
Tailford mansion. About a quarter mile down the runway was a
bridge crossing the river into the forest. Cross that bridge
and make your way through a little wood, and you've hit the
mansion.

The mansion was massive, maybe even 20 feet tall. Most
likely modeled after Constantinople’s Hagia Sophia church,
It had spiral columns twirling up to the roof, where stained
glass slowly tilted up to where a large dome stuck out on
top. The strange thing was, however, is there were very few
windows on the 100 foot wide expanse of the mansion. Some
say it was so no body could see in on what Mr. Tailford was
doing. Nobody truly knew what he was doing in there, but
most agree...Something unholy.

Mr. Tailford had a dead wife. A wife he loved with every
part of his soul. The older crowd of Milesbury could
remember him skipping threw the downtown shops, looking for
new clothes, or a new necklace. Money was no object to him.
Yes, they had a perfect life.....for a time. His wife grew
sick with an unknown ailment, an ailment no doctor in down
could possibly fix. He hired doctors from all over the
world. Some say the entire family of Nurse Joy once came to
his house. With no cure, there was to be no hope, and
Mrs.Tailford died.

Months past, and nobody heard a word from the new widow. One
day, during a storm, his house was hit by lighting, breaking
one his stain glass windows. While this normally would not
alarm the town, Tailford had donated millions of dollars to
the town over the course of his life; of course the
police were interested. Upon their arrival to the manor,
they saw the most terrifying sight anyone could ever
experience.

Mr. Tailford lay there in the middle of a circle of candles,
face down with his arms perfectly straight out, creating a
cross shape. This wasn't the worst part. Tailford's body was
completely emptied of blood. His blood surrounded him,
creating symbols that the investigators had never seen. From
his back, four bones were sticking right up from his back.
This wasn't suicide, this was something much worse.

Chapter 2: Little Joney


Ever since what happened, the Tailford mansion had been
blocked off. Works destroyed the stone bridge, and its
remains lay in the river. Not many people go through the
peaceful parkway anymore. Just the sight of the massive
building leaves a terrible taste in everyone's mouth. They
decided, however, that the case be covered up. If word got
around that a satanic ritual had occurred in their city, it
would be terrible tourism. Many suggested that after
Tailford's "Heart Attack" they should make the manor a
tourist attraction. However, one thing prevented them.
Despite the many years that have passed by, the blood
symbols have not yet been removed from the marble floor of
the massive first floor. Many people have gone in to try and
remove the blood, but all have failed. Even the local
forensic scientist said the blood was engraved into the
floor! So in the end, rather than try and fix up the house
for tourists, the bridge leading to it was simply
demolished. For almost 30 years, no body had set foot in the
house.

Joney was known to the people of Milesbury as nothing but a
wimp. When he hit a baseball into the neighbor's yard, that
ball no longer existed to him. He was to scared on what
might be on the other side of the fence, even if it was
obviously just grass and the occasional swing. What exactly
did he think was on the other side of that fence? Snakes?
Dogs? Nobody knew what was up with him. He just never liked
the idea of the unknown. Although, after that fateful
incident......maybe it was for the best.

Every kid in town knew it was against the rules to cross the
river. "There's bears and lions and deadly snakes across the
river" is what they told them. Not even they knew what lie
beyond the beautiful river. They usually just assumed there
was private property there or something. Nobody but the
officials really knew. Joney, however, didn't need a clever
lie to keep him from crossing the river. He was scared of
rivers, as once he was bitten by a river Remoraid. Yet, he
was a kid, and when you are a kid, there are certain rules
you must follow

One day Joney was throwing a Frisbee with is friends in his
small, fenced in backyard. Behind him was his porch, which
led into his two story middle class house. As the small boy
swung his arm and threw the Frisbee, it spun wildly through
the air, eventually abruptly stopping in the hand of his
friend. Back and forth, back and forth went the Frisbee. A
simple yet affective was to pass the time it was. Near him, his pet Poochyena was running wildly after the toy.

Suddenly, with a burst of strength, his friend threw the
Frisbee over his fence, past the neighborhood sidewalk. over
the river, and into the Tailsford manor. None of the kids of
the town knew anything of the gigantic building, only the
"dangers" of the forest around it. Usually, once an object
has crosses the river, it no longer existed, but that was
Joney's friend's last Frisbee. He wasn't ready to lose it.

"Go get the Frisbee" he said to Joney "That was my favorite
one

"You threw it though!" rebutted Joney "You should get it!"

"What are you, chicken," said his friend in a desperate
attempt to get his favorite toy back

"You can't go over the river," Joney said in his defense,
"You know what's on the other side!

His friend would not take no for an answer. He dished out
the worst. "I DOUBLE DOG DARE YOU!”

This was bad for Joney. According to the rules for being a
kid, a double dog dare could not be refused. Once the dare
is made, you have to take it.

"Fine, I'll get it," he began, "but you'll owe me one!"
Joney wanted to make sure that he wasn't doing this for
free. If he was going to cross the lake and risk his life,
he wanted repayment. So the little child set out to get the
disk. Crossing the grassing backyard, Joney lifted the
secret hole in the fence that he could use if ever a Combee
got into the yard. He used his elbow to lift it, making sure
not to get a splinter, and appeared next the sidewalk.
As he walked toward the river right in front of him, he knew
that he would soon have to face his fear.

The river was intimidating, starring at him, ready for his
fall. He had no choice though; he would have to jump it.

"I can do this, I can do this" he thought to himself as he
began his run. Pushing himself forward as hard as he could,
he ran right across the sidewalk, down the small slope, and
jumped. For a moment, Joney felt weightless as he flew
through the air, intimidating rushing water below him.
Slowly, he began to make his decent. However, he was short,
and he might not make it.

The decent came.... and he made it. Rolling onto the hard
grass covered ground; he got up and brushed himself off.
Joney felt a great sense of accomplishment having jumped the
small river, but there was no reason to celebrate now, he
had a dare to complete. In front of him was a vast forest,
just where would he start first? He then saw the vast
mansion that the Frisbee had entered. Careful not to enter
the dangerous forest until he needed to, he walked along the
outside of the woods until he was right in front on the
large building. "Why would somebody put their mansion inside
the forest?" he thought.

He walked slowly into the forest. All around him was
Caterpie, Wurple, and other wood dwellers. The thick brown
trunks seemed to stretch out to the heavens before
connecting to the swaying green leaves at the top. As he
finally came out to the opening yard of the large mansion,
he looked around, hoping the Frisbee had not gone inside.

Unfortunately, the disk was nowhere to be found, and he
would have to enter the large dome topped manor. As he
walked forward along the stone pathway leading up to a
marble set of stairs, he almost didn't feel himself anymore.
Just what was he doing here? All is life he hid in the
safety of his middle class hideout, but now he was actually
going to consider breaking in to someone's house! He walked
up the steps, as his shoes made a clunking sound with the
steps. As the steps ended and the monstrous stoop began, he
walked up to the front door. Before Joney was a golden gate,
with the outsides lined with silver. Two large Arcanine
heads stuck out from the doors, holding circular bars in
their mouths, obviously there for knocking. Joney needed to
get this Frisbee swiftly though, as every kid knew this
building was abandoned because of the "lions, bears, and
snakes" that inhabited that inhabited the forest.

Joney pushed as hard as he could, straining himself to open
the massive doors. Finally, they gave way, and Joney
stumbled into the biggest house he had ever seen. In front
of him was a massive opening floor with a massive emblem in
the center. Above him was a dome shaped ceiling that seemed
to reach for the sky, with the only the light entering from
the stain glass windows lined around it. On the other side
of the room was the curved in set of stairs, leading about
ten feet up to a sub-floor. On the floor, two other
directions could be taken, either to the left or to the
right, both leading to small set of stairs heading toward a
door. On either side of where Joney had entered, were two
Murkrow statues looked off into the distance. As he walked
forward, he saw there were two more doors on either side.

The strangest sight, however, was in the middle. On the
gigantic emblem in the middle were symbols. Red symbols.
They were in some language Joney had never learned in
school. The little boy walked forward to investigate
further, but then hell broke loose. Joney's left pointer
finger began to bend back against his will. Further back ii
bent, eventually breaking. Joney screamed at the top of his
lungs, the torment would not stop. His arm began to bend
the wrong was, followed by a CRACK. The small child was in
too much pain to make any words. Along his neck, cuts began
to appear, spewing blood. For some reason, he didn't fall
dead, or even faint. The pain continued. Never ending
torment. Punishment worse than hell. Joney's eyes burst out
of his head, leaving only veins jutting out of empty
sockets. The child received torment after torment, but his
body refused to die. He begged to all gods to let him die,
to kill him now, nut his plea was not heard.

Then, from the center of the symbols, rose a figure. Grey in
color, the figure arose from the ground. A skull in the
center of the figure's face his glowing eyes. Then a
pain indescribable, unimaginable began. No words could
describe Joney's pain other than it felt as if life was
being pulled out from inside him.

From the village, the town saw a flash from the manor. The
police quickly caught word of this, and knew something bad
was happening. In a quick move to insure nobody would come
to see what happened, they sounding a town alarm. This alarm
was only pulled during life threatening storms, but he
reputation of the town was emergency itself. The policed
rushed toward the mansion, and were presented with a sight
of unimaginable terror. Little Joney was standing upright,
with what was left of his arms held straight out, almost
like an invisible crucifixion. His body was completely
stripped of his skin, and eyes gone from the sockets. It was
hard to tell, as his face had seemingly melted. There was no
life left in this child, and there was no way to truly
describe what they were seeing.

Later that night, a meeting was called. This obviously
super-natural town had a dark secret. However, the great
mayor Polinski thought that they needed to share this with
the people. The town also needed a new name to fit with its
evil nature. They decided of the name....

Hellsbury.

Chapter Three: Investigation into Hell

Come to the Tailsford Manor, where you can get thrills and
chills for the whole family! We guarantee it will be the
spookiest tour of your life!

Locke slammed the book shut. It sickened him how even
Hellsbury lied about its own past for tourism. This wasn't
the first time the investigator had seen things like this. A
town with building to spare decides to make some story about
a super-natural past to bring in some revenue. This town
however, brought it to a new level. Locke Mayheart was a
private investigator. There weren't many crimes going on in
this day and age, so he makes his income mainly now from
paranormal investigation. He had a few odd happenings in the
past, but it always turned out to be a hoax.

Locke combed his short black hair and readjusted his
button-down shirt. He was only 5 foot six, but he still
managed to reach the top shelf to put the rubbish book back.
Rather than waste his time with more made up history books.
He walked out of the small outlet Hellsbury library and into
the downtown sidewalk. The town was small, so even from here
you could see the Tailford manor where tourists were
throwing their hard earned money at BS tours. He got in his
car and drove off toward the pavement bridge crossing the
river into the forest. The rules made him park the small
Toyota Camery and walk the rest of the way toward the manor.
Forests annoyed him, as they were filled with annoying bug
type Pokemon, he stuck with his Espeon. As he walked out
into the opening, he saw crowds of people lining up to have
their thrills.

To the side, there were merchant booths, where people could
by their souvenirs.

"This is just ridiculous!" Locke exclaimed "Why would anyone
spend their hard earned money on a tour where no proof as
ever been given that anything as ever happened!"

"Come everyone! Get your shadowtags!" said one of the nearby
merchants. The short stubby man had a little booth, with
little pieces of paper hung down, ready to be bought "You
there" he said as he pointed at Locke's direction

"Yeah, what do you want?" asked Locke, knowing he was about
to be bartered.

"You look like you're ready for a tour," began the merchant
"You'll be in need of a shadow tag, guaranteed to keep the
ghosts and ghouls off you! You wouldn't want to end up like
little Joney would you?'

"No thanks, I'm good" Locke replied. The merchant attempted
to protest, but Locke had already walked away. As Locke
walked toward the marble steps, he wondered how the town
thought of such a ridiculous story. Locke admitted, it was
quite creative for a scam. He continued to look through the
masses of people slowly being let in through the large
golden doors, and into the manor. After awhile, Locke made a
decision: Tonight, he was going to investigate.

If Locke was able to prove that nothing happened at night
(when the tour was closed because "that’s when the ghosts
come out" according to the Hellsbury pamphlet), he might be
able to keep these people from wasting their money. He
walked back toward his car as he started formulating his
plan.

Night came quickly, and Locke returned to the manor. To
prevent him from being seen, he was wearing black jeans
along with a heavy black coat. He walked slowly into the
grass covered front lawn, and took a look at the manor.
Nothing was out of the ordinary here.

He walked slowly up the marble steps, as his shoes made a
heavy sound. Locked shuddered as he made the sound. He tried
to walk up the steps more carefully this time, tiptoeing to
make sure that not a sound was made. He finally made it to
the top, and looked at the doors. These doors were overkill,
large golden slabs lined on all sides with silver. In the
middle of both, two Arcanine holding curved bars in their
mouth's. The town really went out of their way to make sure
that the manor matched the story. He slowly opened the large
doors and, luckily, they didn't make a sound.

He walked into the manor, astounded by the view. Curved
stairs leading to adjutant doors, a dome shaped ceiling, and
a gigantic emblem in the center. Yup, it matched the story
completely.

Locke looked down to see the supposed blood letters.
Luckily, he brought with him a little devise that could
detect the half-life of any carbon in an organic substance.
If this was paint like he suspected, he would get an error
message.

Though, when he took the swab, he was thrown back by
surprise. The devise gave him a reading of .000000001 %,
meaning this was organic, and had been there for 50 years!

"Oh, God, I was horribly wrong" Locke said, as he realized
the story had merit. "Okay calm down, maybe it's just animal
bloo.." Locke was cut off as he began to fell a sharp pain
in his hands.

CRACK! His finger bent in half "Holy Sh--" Locke said as he
realized there was something wrong with this house. He
quickly ran for the door, and tried to make an escape, be it
was no use. The doors were locked tight. His mind was
tormenting him, and his body tried to break itself more, but
Locke fought back.

"This can't be happening!" Locke yelled

"IT IS. IT IS YOUR PUNISHMENT" Screamed a voice. Locke
turned around to see a figure rising up from the blood
symbols in the center. Fully grey, and floating like a
ghost, Locke couldn't believe his eyes. The floating figure
had a large skull on the front, and a small little wavy
strip coming from the top of its head. There were
crossbones lining its hunched back. A Duskull.

"Are you the one who has done all this? Are you Mr.
Tailford?" Locke demanded.

"I am he!" said the Duskull, but then responded in a
different, much deeper voice "AND HE IS I. You must be the
payment for the sin we have committed!" The higher
voice responded back "You must suffer along side us"

Five cuts suddenly appeared on Lock's wrist, and blood
sprayed out quickly. Pain continued for Locke, but attempted
to fight it back. He reached in his coat pocket, and pulled
out a white and red sphere. Releasing it, a flash of light
revealed a purple cat like creature, his trusty Espeon.

"Espeon, use physic!" Locke ordered as he held the cuts on his
arm. The Espeon began to glow, along with the Duskull.
Espeon attempted to use this to throw the ghost into
submission, but it didn't seem to do anything. Suddenly,
Espeons paw began to bleed extensively, causing the purple
creature to real back in pain.

"Don't let him get to you, Confusion" Locke ordered again.

The Espeon closed its eyes, attempting to use its physic
powers to confuse the Duskull, but to no avail. The Duskull
simply shook off the pathetic attack. The evil entity slowly
floated forward, and disappeared in front of Espeon. Locke's
pokemon then started to run around wildly, bashing its head
against walls, and used it's claws to cut itself.

Locke's pain was getting worse, as blood began rushing down
from his forehead. "Espeon, use physic on yourself!"

Using what small strength was left in the small Pokemon's
body, Espeon threw himself back with a physic blast,
knocking Duskull out of him.


This victory was short lived, as hell began to break loose.
The Duskull had apparently done it's job. One of Espeon's
eyes began to bleed, and soon was cut right in half. The
other eye melted right inside the socket, leaving nothing
but an empty hole.

"Esp-Esp!' The Espeon tried to scream, but the words were
soon replaced by blood flooded the Pokemon's mouth. Next,
one of it's legs began to come right off, as if pulled by an
invisible force. Nothing but veins and bone were left
hanging off one leg. The Espeon gave one last scream, and then
succumbed to death.

Locke stared in horror as the Duskull began to look back at
him. "Tailford tried to bring his dead lover back" started
the high voice "but his life was taken as payment instead."
continued the second voice.

One of Locke's arms cracked in half. Still trying to resist
the pain, he asked "then why do you continue to torment
others?"

"Because his soul was not worth his lover's," started to the
first voice "and payment must still be made!' responded the
deep voice.”Your soul is needed to complete the payment of
his sins!"

The Duskull began to head forward, and grabbed Locke. Locke
was dragged to the center where the ritual circle was
situated. Locke felt pain like none could describe, as his
soul was ripped from his body. Down they went, toward
repentance. Down to hell his soul was dragged, deep down.
Locke, used as payment for the sin of another. The Duskull,
whether he was Mr. Tailford or no, now owned the Soul of
Locke.

Down to hell.

To repent together.

For all eternity.



----------------------
Afterwords; ITS FINNALY DONE. I've been working on this
story all week. This story was I guess inspired by the Old
Chateu. The little ghost that flies by, you know? So yah
this story stemed from it.

If you want to give feedback
DONT POST IT HERE.
Send it via PM, or more preferably, post it it the URPG
stories feedback and discussion thread. thanks

Claimed, give me a short while.

First grade in months :O

Introduction

Rather cleverly done. A little blurb that sets the tone (semi-disturbing horror) and establishes the setting. Ordinarily I like to see a more plot relevant introduction, one that maybe introduces a character or two, or provides some physical setting, but I think for the purposes of this story it works nicely.

Plot

It was... okay, wow. Kind of reminds me of the first few chapters of The Power and the Glory. No actual sense of who the main character is or what the major theme is, but at the same time still entertaining. On the other hand, it was too... well, it felt too short. Like, this kind of disjointed collection of related plots that connect into one story, it just seems like it should have more. Like, you've got the establishment of how the manor became haunted, then you've got Joney's story, and then you have Locke's. I think it would have felt much more fulfilling if you'd had just two more stories in there, even if it required spreading out the explanations more.

On the topic of explanations, I should mention one thing specifically that wasn't clear to me: why is it that Tailford and Joney's souls weren't payment enough? There wasn't really any indication of the answer to that. I mean, was Tailford's wife that valuable that her husband and an innocent child weren't enough? Or was Duskull just greedy and making excuses to remain and devour souls? I like speculating, but it's completely pure speculation with nothing to actually base it on and a jumping board helps avoid what I call "Epileptic Tree Syndrome" where your reader is left with few clues as to the real answer.

The one final problem I have with the plot is the spacing between chapters. It's incredibly ambiguous, which annoys me to death. I can take a guess of a few decades for the first two chapters, but the third one begs questions. A year or two, and Joney's death was recent? Decades, and it's a story that's becoming a fun myth for everyone? Centuries, and it's become a complete urban legend? I can't for the life of me figure it out, and the ambiguity is going to give me an aneurysm.

That said, I did like the outlining of the plot. Haunted mansions and bloodthirsty spirits. Sheer awesome.

Characters

Here you're a bit inconsistence. The first chapter, being exposition, has no characters to really focus on, so I can skip over that. Then you come to Joney, who's part I really liked. He had a fair bit of depth, which I enjoyed. The bit of backstory with the river made him a bit more real, too. My favorite part was undoubtedly the Double-Dog-Dare part. Made me massively nostalgia to A Christmas Story, which is always a good thing.

Locke, on the other hand, was less developed. I mean, he has a clear dislike for supernatural bullcrap, but the only explanation there is that he's done it a ton already and it's never been real, but there doesn't seem to be a real reason why that makes him so hostile towards it.

The final point is that, while Joney is decent, both characters should be more developed, no question. When you give a character depth, it needs to come from three places: backstory, the reasoning for why they are who they are now; development, how they become what they will; and the inherent traits that they're given. Development can be ignored since shortly after their appearances both die quite gruesome deaths, and the character traits are good as they are, so you really just need to work on fleshing out the backstory and I don't think you'll have any more problems with this area.

Length

You're good here. Slightly on the low side for the difficulty, but it's fine.

Realism

The mansion was towering, maybe even 80 feet tall.

Given that the average story of a building is between 8 and 10 feet high, that means that the mansion is therefore between 8 and 10 stories. Doesn't quite make sense.

Months past, and nobody heard a word from the new widow. One
day, during a storm, his house was hit by lighting, breaking
one his stain glass windows. While this normally would not
alarm the town, Tailford had donated millions of dollars to
the town over the course of his life, no of course the
police were interested. Upon their arrival to the manor,
they saw the most terrifying sight anyone could ever
experience.

A conspicuously large, occupied mansion is struck by lightning, and the only reason anyone is concerned by this is because the guy who lives there gives the city money? That's oddly selfish for the suburbs, don't you think?

Grammar

You had quite a few problems here, but they were mainly typos so I'll just point out a few key ones and remind you to proofread extensively. General rule, for every hour you've spent writing spend fifteen minutes proofing.

Little boys would walk their growliths down the
street each day.

Pokemon names are proper nouns, and thus should be capitalised.

"What are you, chicken" said his friend in a desperate
attempt to get his favorite toy back

There should be a comma after chicken.

To the side, there were merchant booths, where people could
by their souvenirs.

By should be buy.

Yeah, that's all I got. I hate this section ^_^

Description

Ah, this one is interesting. Good description for a first story, although I must remind you that Pokemon should always be described even though this is a Pokemon forum. Duskull was good but at the very least Joney's Poocheyena and Locke's Espeon should have had a good bit more. The assumption has to be that your reader has no clue what any Pokemon looks like, and thus you need to make that image clear.

I do have on caveat that I feel would really help you to be helped to avoid. Gore for the sake of gore. It doesn't work. The bloody and horrid details of Joney, Espy and Locke's deaths are pointless. They aren't really artistically executed, just a number of gorey adjectives, and they don't serve a clearly purpose as imagery. I'm not saying blood and gore is bad. Hell, it's the entire reason for the existence of most good works of horror. But gore just so there can be gore is meant for the kind of cheesy horror that you'd expect that in. Good horror has blood because it makes it scarier, or provides an outlet for descriptive brilliance, or serves as imagery. Just bear that in mind.

Battle

Now this is an interesting one. I liked that Duskull won, far too often the hero of the story is victorious and for a relatively new writer it's very refreshing. On the other hand, first rule of URPG stories is that the battle shouldn't be one-sided (actually not true, the first rule is no chatspeak but hey, no quibbling). While I get that the point is that Duskull is extremely powerful, I've seen more uneven match-ups than that-I myself have had a Blastoise vs. a Horsea possessed by, well, bloody freaking god. So just bear that in mind and, again, gore for the sake of gore, try to avoid it.

Final Verdict

Hm... on the one hand there were some confusing bits to the plot and a lack of realism that the suspension of disbelief doesn't quite meet. On the other, it's actually a pretty good plot. I'm going to say... Duskull not captured. Clean up the typos and help my suspension of disbelief out a bit and then I'll pass it.

Ill have the fixed version up monday or tuesday night



Btw this is actually my THIRD story =)

Okay cleaned up the grammer, ready for regrade......but


You said i was a little on the low side for length
Duskull is Medium, which is 10k-20k
I had over 20K.......ummm yah other than that......yah ready for regrade!

Hm... well, there are still a fair amount of typos, but my suspension of disbelief is feeling less strained and it is a fair bit cleaner, so I'll say Duskull Captured. Sorry about the character thing too, I was probably looking at Dusclops' difficulty instead of Duskull's.