GRF-A86
Content warning: Botanophobia, Vorarephobia, Gatnobphobia
The House of Leaves
Original notation by Doctor Richard Golde, May 12th 1988.Revised by Maximilian Golde, head of the Golde Research Foundation, May 15th 2024.
File: A86
Class: Earth
Location: Balder
[R]
There is a road in northern Balder that is known for housing some of the wealthier people in town. This road, called Peregrine Road, is about two kilometres in length and contains about 100 houses. Walking the length of the full street takes about half an hour, though it couldn't be more than three or four minutes by car. Strangely, this street, when followed, comes to a dead end, with no other ways of reaching the rest of town. This means that the people living at the very end have no other choice but to travel the entire length of the street if they want to get anywhere.
Anyway, the anomaly in question here is not the terrible urban planning. This file concerns one of the houses on this street. Where every other domicile on this road looks like it had been built long before the modern era, this one particular house, 56 Peregrine Road, looks much more modern. Cubic, white walls with large, revealing windows lining almost every available surface.
Strangely, looking through these windows, you can't really see any kind of interior. It's all just more white walls. Hallways that seemingly lead nowhere except deeper into the house. I spent some time outside it, trying to see if there was anyone living within. There were no cars on the driveway, and no mail in the mailbox, it seemed all but abandoned. The only very distinct thing was a sweet smell, almost like some kind of candy. the smell was intoxicatingly nice.
I should probably explain how I even found this house.
I got a call from a distressed man, who had seen an entire family across the street all walk into the house on 56 Peregrine Road, and they hadn't come out after. As you would expect, at first he contacted the police, but when they told him, quote, "It was probably nothing. Don't worry about it.", he called me. Now, I'm very well aware that the settlements in the Bearlair Valley, whilst filled with the paranormal, are still human communities. I am also very well aware that within every human community, there exists a chance that one of those humans may turn out to be, what some would call, "monsters". So it is not without a slight sense of discomfort that I started investigating this house.
It, of course, crossed my mind that the inhabitant of this house may be one of those "human monsters," who had simply done unspeakable things to the family next door. To my surprise, however, when I rang the doorbell of the house next door, 58 Peregrine Road, the door opened, and a mostly normal-looking man greeted me. He was bald, freshly shaved and had a band-aid over the top of his head, but when I asked him if he and his family were safe, he looked at me as if I was threatening him, so I quickly backed off.
Both neighbouring houses of 56 Peregrine Road had their inhabitants inside safe and sound, so when I went to talk with the man who had called me, Freddy Keizer, I was rightfully confused. He swore to me that he had seen what he told me. The entire family of 58 Peregrine Road just exited their own house, walked next door, rang the doorbell and entered inside without ever coming out again. When I asked Mr. Keizer what he had been doing, staring at a house for hours at a time, he proudly showed me the camera he had set up looking out his window, which only raised further questions but I decided to hold off until I had seen the footage.
It was as he told it. The family of five entered the house, and fast-forwarding through not just hours but days worth of footage, they never came out again. What did happen, was that the man I had spoken to at the door of 58 Peregrine Road exited number 56, and walked over to 58, entering it and closing the door behind him. Mr. Keizer even kept fast-forwarding to a point where I saw myself walking in front of the house earlier that day, which made one question more pressing than all others. Who had I talked to in the doorway of 58 Peregrine Road? And why was this person not bald in the footage?
"I think it eats people, is my theory" were the words that snapped me out of my question-filled thoughts. Freddy, who was almost breathing down my neck looking over my shoulder at the footage, had a large grin on his face. Like he was proud of what horror he had uncovered. I thanked him for the detail and asked him to continue filming while I proceeded with my investigation. He gladly complied.
That was the moment I decided on something. Up until this point, I had kept myself at a distance from the anomalies for the most part. At least the dangerous ones. This time would be different. If this was truly the kind of work I wanted to be doing, I had to take a few risks. That's when I started packing. About 200m of rope, a flashlight, as sharp a pocket knife as I could find and a set of walkie-talkies. I gave one to Mr. Keizer, telling him to attach the rope to a lamp post outside while I tied the other end around my waist. I told Freddy that if he felt me tugging twice in a row, or I told him over the radio, he should begin pulling me out. He just grinned at me like an excited child.
I went in. Just as the family had, I rang the doorbell and the door opened without issue. I put a rock against it, making sure that it wouldn't close behind me and I began walking inside. It didn't immediately seem like too much was wrong. The house's entrance hallway was thin, with a small mirror on the right wall and a potted plant to the left. It stretched on far, though. From the outside, you wouldn't be able to tell, but standing here, I could hear the overwhelming silence of the beckoning abyss before me. No lights, just a seeping darkness that formed into the seemingly infinite hallway. It's strange, but the only thing I could think about was where the stairs to the first floor were. There were windows up there, so how could you possibly get up there without a staircase?
Putting that thought aside, I took one last look at Mr. Keizer and started walking. If one thing can be said about this house, it's that Mr. Keizer wasn't entirely wrong when he said it eats people. I felt it, walking down that dark and empty hallway. A definite feeling that I was walking into the mouth of some large beast, indifferent to my sapience, simply wanting to eat.
I counted my steps, but in my distraction, I'm sure I missed a few. It must have been around 50m into the hallway when I started noticing a shift in the environment and a distinct increase in the strength of the sweet smell. I called it in with Freddy the moment I noticed it. Cracks were beginning to form in the wall and at certain points, small roots and branches could be seen growing from the ceiling and walls, small leaves attached. The further I went, the harsher the decay of these walls showed itself. It came to a point where I had to push the branches and roots aside if I wanted to continue moving forward, I even cut my hand on a thorny bush in the way at one point.
At about 150m, the smell had turned from sweet to spicy and my nose was almost on fire, I had to push through bushes so thick it would have taken a machete to clear an actual path. there were not just roots now, but a tangled mess of thick vines and branches climbing over the walls. The air felt hot and moist and after pushing a bit further, I was almost fully surrounded by plant life had it not been for the small segments of wall I could still see. Now not just enclosed to my sides, but also to my front and my back, I began feeling much more nervous about the rope which still tied me to the outside world, my means of escape.
My advance now slowed to a crawl, having to push harder and harder to make it through the thick plant life. My coat was being torn to shreds by the small thorns on every branch. It must have been at 185m in, just before I would reach the length of my rope that I fully pushed through the plants and into what I can only describe as a greenhouse. It was massive, large glass panes covered with leaves and vines. Wildflowers in all colours lined the floor and walls, even hanging from pots attached to the ceiling. I swear I could even hear a faint bird song.
Outside the glass was nothing but bright, white light. It made it impossible to make out any details of the sky above. I could take a few steps into the greenhouse before the rope snapped tight behind me, so I grabbed my walkie-talkie to report back to Mr. Keizer about this. I was greeted by nothing more than static coming from the other end. It was then that I remembered why I had come here in the first place. The family. This place was not a friendly one, I had to remind myself of that.
I started looking around from where I could walk, the rope still attached to me, and investigated some of the foliage. After determining that there wasn't anything immediately dangerous in here with me, I removed the rope and began to venture deeper into the greenhouse. I'm a physicist, not a biologist, so I couldn't really tell you if the plants there had any paranaturally special properties. They sure seemed a lot more colourful than the flowers on our side of the world. I plucked one, a bright blue tulip, and brought it back to the foundation, I did some research and it turns out blue tulips like these don't really grow in the wild. It's currently sitting right in front of me, on my desk.
I hadn't been looking around for too long before I noticed a small pool of wet blood on the floor. Wet blood, meaning that whatever had died here had done so fairly recently. Then, a drop fell into the pool. Then another. Then another. It took my mind several seconds to process the meaning of this, and when it did, I slowly looked up. a pair of legs was dangling from inside a closed flower, massive in proportion. Drops of blood were falling from above, dripping down the person's leg.
I suddenly got very nauseous and retched in a potted plant standing next to me. I'd seen bad things, but for one reason or another this sight really got to me. That isn't to say it got better after I retched. In fact, it got much worse. Scanning the ceiling, I noticed many of these plants all throughout the house, some of them with feet or arms dangling out from them just like the one right above me, the rest with long tendrils lowered down to the ground, most likely to catch any unaware prey. Suddenly, one of the ones with an arm in its "mouth", excreted some sort of pollen which slowly fell to the ground.
That's what made me investigate the plants a bit further. It was among these plants that I made the worst discovery of all. They were not just plants. Right there, in one of the pots between a sprawling patch of dandelions, I could swear I saw a forehead poking out. It looked greener than a normal head, but I could distinctly make out the tops of its eye sockets and the bridge of its nose. A full head of hair stood atop his head, with a distinct thorny stem growing from its centre. I retched again.
I had to leave. The sweet smell was now replaced by the scent of gastric juices and that morning's breakfast, and my mind became clearer, allowing me to realise that it hadn't been all this time. I began looking for my way back, but I couldn't seem to find where I had left the rope behind. I began to panic, but luckily after calming myself, I was able to see it in the distance. I started running towards it but was pulled back in the middle of my step. I looked to my side, and noticed my leg, hanging in mid-air, one of the hanging tendrils wrapped around it and squeezing tight. It felt like it was going to cut my leg off, and I began to feel it pulling me towards the ceiling.
I scrambled to find my balance but failed, and fell to the ground, hitting my head. I must have lost consciousness for a few seconds because when I came to, I was already hanging upside down, 5cm above the ground, I looked downward, straight at the flower which was slowly pulling me towards its gaping, maw-like centre. I felt around me in a panic, looking for anything that could help me and then looked up at the ground, only to see the pocket knife lying there, having fallen out of my hands and pockets while I was unconscious. I could see my salvation, so close yet so far, the pocket knife lay just outside of my reach.
Thinking quickly, I began to swing back and forth toward it, yet with every swing I came just short, and the longer it took the further I was pulled toward the ceiling. Adrenaline is the most potent drug of all. In a fit of rage pointed at my captor, I swung myself upward instead, grasping for the leg attached to the tendril. I grabbed it, and in a feat of unprecedented athleticism, I was able to pull myself right-side-up. I cannot describe what came over me, the pure mix of terror, panic and rage, but I grabbed the tendril and bit down.
It was thick, and hurt my teeth, but like a wild animal, I chewed and ground my teeth on the rough, organic rope. I must have fallen about 25cm when I eventually did break it. That might not sound like a lot, but let me tell you, being under the influence of such high levels of adrenaline, only to fall straight down and onto your tailbone, it hurts. Then again, it's probably a lot better than being eaten alive by a flower, so there's that.
I grabbed the knife and sprinted towards the rope, which I promptly attached to myself again and pulled tight, making my way back to the exit. Where it took much effort going in, going out felt like a breeze. Exiting the house, I fell to my knees right in front of a confused and worried Freddy Keiser, who had been yelling at me through the walkie-talkie ever since I left the greenhouse. I had not responded, the haze of panic I was in made my mind focus on the singular objective of getting out. I explained what I saw to Freddy, who told me we should report it to the police.
He was right, of course, though my experiences so far have shown me that calling the police about these things is not effective in the slightest. I told him I'd bring what I discovered directly to the police headquarters in Lear, which I will do after I've finished writing this file. When I'm standing there physically, being who I am, doing what I do, they'll have to believe me. They'll have to.
I've not heard anything from Mr. Keiser anymore, I'll contact him as soon as I've spoken to the police. Yesterday I was walking through the local supermarket and I passed through the perfumes section. I couldn't help but feel nervous at the sweet smell. I have to get it together.
More on this as it develops.
[END OF GRF-A86]
[M] The house on 56 Peregrine Road is still there and it is exactly how Richard described it. The only modern house on the street, though now it does seem a lot more abandoned than he described it. The outside walls are overgrown with Ivy and the lawn looks like it hasn't been mowed in years. I rang the doorbell of the house across the street, but nobody answered. The house looked as abandoned as 56 did, with broken, boarded-up windows and an overgrown front yard. When I looked further into Mr. Keiser, I found out he passed away a few months after GRF-A86 was written. Apparently, his house had been broken into and he had been killed. The perpetrators didn't take anything it seems and were never caught. They had left the place a mess, with furniture thrown all around and piles of dirt and grass all throughout. I looked a bit further into the history of the house, and indeed, it had been built in late 1985, not that long before Richard wrote the original file. The way it looked and the way Richard described it, the house's architectural style was way ahead of its time, though. Distinctly modernist or even postmodern, a style which appeared around the 1960s in big architectural projects but would definitely not be a popular style for domiciles until the 80s. Wikipedia is a godsend. The house was built by a man named Luther Manesbury, a name I'm sure I've heard somewhere before, but can't seem to pin down. The blue tulip mentioned in this story is no longer anywhere in the foundation. That would make sense, it was a flower which had been picked in the late 80s. The reason I mentioned it though, is that when I looked up Mr. Keiser's grave in the graveyard, it had a blue tulip growing from it.
[M] The house on 56 Peregrine Road is still there and it is exactly how Richard described it. The only modern house on the street, though now it does seem a lot more abandoned than he described it. The outside walls are overgrown with Ivy and the lawn looks like it hasn't been mowed in years. I rang the doorbell of the house across the street, but nobody answered. The house looked as abandoned as 56 did, with broken, boarded-up windows and an overgrown front yard. When I looked further into Mr. Keiser, I found out he passed away a few months after GRF-A86 was written. Apparently, his house had been broken into and he had been killed. The perpetrators didn't take anything it seems and were never caught. They had left the place a mess, with furniture thrown all around and piles of dirt and grass all throughout. I looked a bit further into the history of the house, and indeed, it had been built in late 1985, not that long before Richard wrote the original file. The way it looked and the way Richard described it, the house's architectural style was way ahead of its time, though. Distinctly modernist or even postmodern, a style which appeared around the 1960s in big architectural projects but would definitely not be a popular style for domiciles until the 80s. Wikipedia is a godsend. The house was built by a man named Luther Manesbury, a name I'm sure I've heard somewhere before, but can't seem to pin down. The blue tulip mentioned in this story is no longer anywhere in the foundation. That would make sense, it was a flower which had been picked in the late 80s. The reason I mentioned it though, is that when I looked up Mr. Keiser's grave in the graveyard, it had a blue tulip growing from it.
