Margaret blnked against the light which was shining through the open door and tried vainly – but not in a conceited way – to see further into the building. Abruptly the light went out and the interior of the mansion immediately fell into a murky darkness that had always tended to be the prevalent fashion with Gothic mansions. Once Margaret had recovered her night sight, she discovered that she was just as much in the dark as she had been before, both figuratively and literally. She still was unable to discern what lay within.

Has my journey come to naught but this? thought Margaret to herself, allowing herself a brief moment of melancholy and angst-like melodrama. She believed that she ought to do so in order to remain in keeping with her surroundings. The moment finished with, Margaret began to contemplate her position in a more practical manner. She was hesitant about entering uninvited, despite the distinctly open nature of the door, as she had seen many horror movies over the years and knew full well that axe-wielding psychopaths tended to reside in such places. And they were the sort of people she had no desire to mingle with socially – not due to social snobbery on Margaret's part but rather due to the fact that Margaret had discovered, at a young age, that she had a severe allergy to axes, whether they were wielded by maniacs or not. [It was a bit like her ambivalence towards garden gnomes but that is another story.]

Realizing that she had little hope of successfully retracing her long and meandering path, due to the darkness of the moon and the night as well, Margaret knew that she really only had two options open to her. Either she could wait outside until dawn cast new light on the situation – though with her luck it would probably be extremely overcast – or she could take her heart in her hands – as messy an option as that might be – and enter the mansion and see what, if anything, awaited her there. Never one to go backward when she could go forward, Margaret decided that, even at the risk of being assaulted by a weapon-laden psychopath or, even worse, being dragged into a real-life interpretation of the Rocky Horror Picture Show, she really had no choice but to allow herself to be swallowed up by the palpable darkness which awaited her beyond the door. Taking a deep breath, Margaret stepped into the inky blackness before her.