Come to the feast

The clock struck seven in the nearby church tower, and Anya took a deep breath. It was time. The others would be calling her at eight; she wasn't sure how long it would take her to walk out of town and along the driveway - she'd never done it on foot before. Every other visit had always started from the suffocating warmth of Rachel's car, sniggers and giggles punctuating the off-key singing as they rattled along...
As she pulled her coat on and wound her scarf back around her neck, her thoughts travelled to her absent friend, not for the first time that night. She was only here because of Rachel, and had only come alone because Rachel had refused to ever set foot in Ninnerton Park again. Anya had to confess her surprise at that. Up until three days ago, Rachel had been totally fearless, afraid of nothing and no-one, no place too isolated or overgrown to stop her exploring it. It had always been Anya who hesitated, questioned the wisdom of it; Rachel would give a quick glance at the map, memorise the route in three seconds and jump into her battered old red car, hurtling off down tiny country lanes faster than one of her racing driver idols flew round a track. She was the kind of person Anya had always longed to be - up for any adventure, regardless of the risk.
Until last Thursday. Anya could still remember the look on her friend's face when Rachel had staggered back into the flat at ten o'clock that morning, the way her eyes had bulged out of their sockets, bloodshot and terrified. In the dim light of the corridor, she hadn't looked like the Rachel that Anya had known and adventured with for the last three years; she'd looked more like a frightened child forced into the body of an adult. Like she was wearing someone else's skin, Anya had thought at the time, hadn't quite grown into it yet.
"It's true", was all she'd said, gasping the words out when Anya asked her what had happened. "Everything the tour guides told us, everything we thought was just a story...it's real, mate, as real as you or me".
Anya had put her friend's change of heart down to spending a night alone in the old house at the centre of Ninnerton Park, allegedly the most haunted building in the country. The two of them had discovered it one rainy afternoon, when their search for adventure had left them soaked to the skin, with rainwater running down the backs of their shirts and into their trousers, after a failed attempt to climb to the castle on the hill that overlooked the Park. They'd gone to the house in an attempt to dry off and warm up, only to find a very talkative group of tour guides who'd been all too eager to enlighten them on the Park's dark and gory history.
Rachel, ever the cynic, had laughed it all off and complimented the guides on their knowledge and storytelling skills, but admitted that she didn't believe a word of it for one moment. That was when they'd offered her the chance to test her theory - if she spent the night alone in Ninnerton Park, sleeping in the house's supposedly ghost-riddled attic, they'd refund her entry fee and repay the fuel costs of getting to and from the Park. Not one to refuse a challenge (and with most of her student loan already blown by their rent), Rachel had agreed on the spot.
But what did she see that shook her so much? Anya wondered as she left the pub and began the walk back through town towards Ninnerton's gates. Rachel had grown up in a lonely town miles from anywhere; noises in the dark didn't scare her.
The wind had picked up in the time it'd taken Anya to gather her nerves and ready herself for an empty Ninnerton house; as she made her way along the narrow lane, chunks of mud and fallen leaves were whipped from the ground and hurled into her face. She swatted them away as though they were nothing more than irritating little insects and carried on, yanking her hood over her hair and burying her mouth and nose in the folds of her scarf. Better to look ridiculous than be uncomfortable - or so Rachel had always said, anyway.
The road gates were shut and locked when she reached the end of the driveway, and the pedestrian path had been blocked by a heavy wooden fence. Anya let out an irritated sigh and reluctantly pulled her hands out of her pockets. Climbing hadn't been a part of the plan, but never mind. I wouldn't have worn skinny jeans if I'd known, she thought as she swung her legs awkwardly over the fence's uneven top. A small puddle of rainwater from the earlier downpour caught the back of her thigh and sent the biting cold straight through to her skin; she cursed angrily and jumped down. As she often had during the last three years, she envied Rachel and her car, uncomfortable and ancient though it was.
Through the darkness, the driveway twisted away in front of her, snaking its way across the empty fields before disappearing into the patch of woodland that shielded the house from view. Anya shoved her hands back into her pockets, took another deep breath and marched onwards. If Rachel could do it, so could she - anything her friend could do, she could do just as well.

On the other side of the trees, the wind dropped without warning and the cold came rushing in to take its place; Anya felt it clinging to her skin the way a cobweb clings to velvet. For a second, she found herself hesitating. Was it colder here than it had been in town?
"Don't be stupid", she scolded herself, her voice strangely loud in the sudden quiet, "it's just the way it is, remember?" It always did this, always felt colder out here - the town was down in a valley, protected by the hills and mountains and trees, sheltered and almost warm, even on damp winter nights. Once you were through the woods and on the last stretch of the driveway, though, it hit you with an unexpected violence. You were exposed, open to the elements, vulnerable and alone...
Anya shook her head to get rid of these thoughts and carried on. Ninnerton was just an old house surrounded by isolated parkland; there was nothing around at night that hadn't been there in the day. Rachel was right the first time, she tried to convince herself, the tour guides were just storytellers. Telling everyone the house was haunted probably helped bring in more visitors.
She rounded the last curve in the driveway, and there it was: Ninnerton house in all its eerie glory, sullen and silent in the gloom, its turreted roof sharp and grey against the night sky. Every window was a black, yawning chasm in the brickwork, the huge ornate doorway a vast mouth leading into the belly of the beast. Anya huddled down inside her coat, no longer caring about the damp. For the first time since she'd left the flat, her lone adventure started to feel like a bad idea.
A cloud of starlings took off from the trees behind the house, making her jump; she missed her footing and slipped on a patch of half-rotted leaves, pitching forward into the verge. Mud and wet grass splattered across her tongue and tickled the inside of her nostrils. She sneezed heavily and felt something graze her forehead. Probably a stone, she decided, hauling herself back to her feet. Whatever it was, Rachel had better be grateful when they saw each other tomorrow. I'm only doing this for you, mate.
Taking care to avoid anything else especially slippery, Anya crossed the driveway and made for the old oak front door. Creepy or not, at least the house would give her some respite from the night's unfriendly weather.
Halfway to the door, she stopped again and glanced over her shoulder. She'd noticed that car before she'd slipped, but hadn't thought anything of it at first; now she found herself drawn to it, the shape suddenly seeming oddly familiar. That boxy look, no styling tweaks or unnecessary frills, no curves in sight apart from the wheels...
Her heart missed a beat.
"No", she said to the empty air, "it can't be...she's back at the flat..."
She moved closer and felt her blood run cold. In the darkness, the car's colour wasn't obvious, but everything else gave it away - the headlight held on with duct tape; the racing team stickers in the rear window; the strip of black and grey cloth tied round the gearstick. Even the keys, still hanging from the ignition, fitted the picture. The blue lanyard with the red Ferrari keyring on the other end had dangled from Rachel's pocket enough times for Anya to know it at a glance.
"This doesn't make sense", she said, again out loud. "Rachel's at home; I was talking to her before I left...her car was in the car park outside the flat..."
Her heart now pounding in her ears, she looked back over at the front door, at the black and lifeless windows. This house had some questions to answer.

Inside, the entrance hall was pitch black, but Anya had expected nothing less. She pulled her phone from her pocket and switched the torch on, pausing to check the time as she did so. Five to eight. Just enough time to get her bearings before the others called. She settled herself down on the bench beside the door and let out a sigh.
It was strange, seeing the house without throngs of visitors milling around; the passageways didn't sound right without the constant footfall of curious tourists. Anya even felt a brief longing for the chatty tour guides as she sat there in the silence. Their voices had filled every room with a kind of security, as though the information they were forever relaying could protect the ones they were talking to. If that's true, I'd love one of them to be here now. In all her life, Anya couldn't think of a time when she'd felt less safe. It was harder to believe Rachel's claim that the stories were just tourist-trapping fiction when she was a little too far from the warmth and comfort of the flat.
The shrill blast of her ringtone jerked her out of her anxieties, so violently that she almost lost her phone down the side of the bench. She shook her head again and took another deep breath before answering.
"Alright?"
"I'm guessing you made it, then". The signal wasn't brilliant out here; Kate's voice sounded like it was coming from underneath a tin can. "Any sign of her yet, or is it plan B?"
Anya's first thought was that her flatmate had lost it.
"What're you on about?" she had to ask, fear temporarily giving way to confusion. "Any sign of who - and what plan B?"
"The police", Kate replied, in the tone of someone explaining that two plus two makes four. "We said we'd call the police if you couldn't find her at the house, remember?"
"Couldn't find who?"
"Rachel, you idiot - you know, your best mate". Kate's tone changed; now Anya could tell she was scared. "The one we haven't seen since last Wednesday, when she went to Ninnerton on her own?"
Anya's stomach somersaulted. Every muscle in her body trembling, she staggered to her feet and stuck her head back through the half-open front door, switched on the torch on her phone and shone its thin beam of light over the car on the driveway. She still wanted desperately to believe that it couldn't be Rachel's car, that it had to be a trick or something...catching sight of the number plate killed the last of her hope. VS55 WRJ. She knew the registration off by heart.
"Anya? Anya, are you still there?" Kate's voice was growing increasingly frantic. "What's going on - are you okay?"
"Call the police", Anya heard herself say, but the signal gave out before she could offer any explanation and the phone went dead in her hand. Her stomach swirled again. All she could do was cross her fingers and pray that Kate had got the message.
She pulled the front door to and went back into the entrance hall, a new-found determination rising up inside her. If Rachel was still here, and wasn't planning some elaborate joke, then something must've happened to her, and Anya didn't much like the thought of leaving her friend to deal with whatever that might've been. It would take the police a while to reach Ninnerton - assuming they believed Kate in the first place, and didn't just brush her off as another student mucking about. I'm not waiting to find out. Rachel wouldn't have abandoned her if it'd been the other way around.
Still clutching her phone - now only useful as a torch - she crossed the entrance hall to the nearest door and went through into the house's restored dining room, set up to look the way it would've done all those years ago. The tour guides had said something about decorating it for Hallowe'en; obviously they'd made a start, seating skeletons in every chair around the table and draping cobwebs over the candlesticks. Anya smiled in spite of herself. They'd even laid out plates of fake food, made to look as if it was rotting...
The smell made her retch and leap backwards. That was just taking it too far; surely they didn't want tourists throwing up every time they entered the room? They were making some of the skeletons unnecessarily gory too, she thought - there was no need to stick chunks of fake flesh and muscle on the bones. This place was supposed to be family-friendly, wasn't it?
As she turned to leave, her torchlight landed on the portrait behind the door, and when she realised what she was seeing, her blood seemed to freeze in her veins. It wasn't just the face - that could've been a coincidence. Rachel had been wearing that exact shirt the night she'd come to Ninnerton, those exact same jeans with the butterfly belt. Even the scorpion tattoo on her collarbone was in the right place, the right colour, the right size.
Rachel, what the hell are you doing in a portrait at Ninnerton house?
Anya had barely finished thinking this when something drew her attention back to the table and the gruesome feast laid out along its length. Each plateful was noticeably different from the next; some were loaded with huge mounds of fatty, yellowish meat, whilst others barely held anything at all. Two had thick clumps of hair poking out from them, one still held in its dark brown braid.
"Too weird", Anya muttered to herself, a moment before realising that every portrait on the walls sat in line with a skeleton seated at the table. And now that she looked more closely, not all of them were dressed for the house's original era...
Some were visibly overweight, others thin as a rake. One had long, dark brown hair, hanging over her shoulder in a thick braid.
Fighting the instinct telling her to run, Anya peered at the plate in front of Rachel's portrait. Was that...? No, it couldn't be...
God help me - it is.
Anya turned and sprinted for the doorway, only for something to catch at her ankle and send her crashing to the floor. Brushing the dust out of her eyes, she looked up and saw that another chair had been placed at the head of the table. On the wall behind it, an empty portrait frame had appeared.
"No", she declared furiously to the silent room, "you're not having me - no!"
The vague outline of a face began to materialize in the empty frame. As Anya stared, her own features started to gaze back at her.
Time to get out of here. She scrambled back to her feet and lunged for the door handle, suddenly finding that she had to force her hands to work. Her fingers didn't seem to want to move; her arms fell limp at her sides and all the strength went out of her legs.
When she crashed to the floor a second time, her head struck the corner of the table and the dim light of the room faded to blackness.

Morning brought the tour guides back in with their information and warnings, followed by the tourists with their never-ending hunger for eerie tales. Those who ventured into the dining room that day were shown the portraits and the skeletons, and heard the age-old story of the fools who'd come to the feast, convinced there couldn't possibly be any danger.
"Don't make their mistakes", the guides warned as a parting shot, "the danger's still as real as ever, even now".
The two fresher-looking portraits gazed down from the wall in silent agreement. In front of one sat a skeleton still clutching a mobile phone with the torch switched on; the other hung above the plate holding the chunk of flesh marked with a scorpion tattoo.