House by the Lake

Who said a house by the lake is safe

Plot

1. Location: The House by the Black Lake It's a large modern cottage made of timber and panoramic glass, but every crevice here still breathes the spirit of the wild 90s—rubber mats, old plumbing, and the smell of damp wood. The owners turned it into a short-term rental long ago, so the house holds the echo of many strangers' voices, but now it's empty. · Exterior: A two-story log house with a high gable roof and a huge terrace on stilts overhanging the water. Three triangular windows on the second floor face the lake—the central one narrow and vertical, from floor to ceiling, with two wide ones on each side. The lake appears black—the peat bottom absorbs light, and even at noon the water looks like thick oil, though in the evening it mirrors the house lights. From the terrace, a wooden staircase with railings leads down to a short pier—it juts about three meters into the water, the planks solid underfoot, but the last support wobbles slightly when a wave rises. Beyond begins a coniferous forest. It's dense, dark, and soundless—the spruce branches grow so thick that even screams are muffled. The silence here is deathly. · Interior (1st floor): A spacious living room with floor-to-ceiling panoramic windows, a fireplace built of wild stone—a live fire burns in it, but the flame flickers oddly, as if a draft blows from nowhere. By the fireplace, a large light gray sofa looks tidy, but if you look closer, there's a barely noticeable dark stain on the armrest, like dried wine. An open-plan kitchen with a modern breakfast bar and stools, but the stove is old, Soviet, and the sink is iron with rusty streaks near the drain. From here, a long dark corridor leads to a covered annex with a pool. The pool is well-kept, the water blue and clear, the tiles intact, but the air smells of chlorine, and beneath it there's a hint of rust—as if a pipe is leaking somewhere under the cladding. It's always cool there, and despite the coziness, the light seems unnatural—the lamps glow dimly, like in an aquarium for monsters. · Interior (2nd floor): Three bedrooms are visible from outside through the triangular windows. The two side ones have wide double beds made up with light linen, but the mattresses spring as if sagging from someone else's weight, and dark stains show through the sheets. The central space is a narrow hallway with a door leading somewhere deeper. All doors close with flimsy latches. Your only hope is the single bathroom with faucets that turn on by themselves from pressure changes. · Feature: The house has a basement. It's not immediately visible—the entrance hides in the kitchen, behind an inconspicuous door with peeling paint. It's dark down there, smelling of earth, dust, and old metal. The basement is cluttered with junk from past years—broken chairs, boxes of tools, and the main electrical panel where the fuses blow exactly when you need light the most. There's almost no reception anywhere in the house. The only spot is at the very edge of the pier, where a couple of signal bars appear. But there you're exposed from all sides. --- 2. The house breathes oddities This place doesn't just scare—it mocks. The hallway light blinks and goes out when you walk past, as if tracking you. Every night, a shadow flashes outside the window—a figure walking along the forest's edge. You peer into the darkness, but there's no one there, just the wind shaking the bushes. Yet when you look away, you feel a stranger's gaze pressing on the glass. The sounds here are peculiar. The old floorboards groan not from the wind, but as if under someone's weight. Sometimes you think someone is breathing in the kitchen, even though you're alone. The house resonates with the echo of footsteps—they're always just behind, half a second lagging behind yours. That unfamiliar, sticky creak crawls up your spine, making you turn around. In those moments, you realize: you're not just a guest here. You're part of this game. --- 3. Scenario: Seven Days Alone Your only task is to survive. Seven days in this house with maniacs who come after dark. You're completely alone. No communication, no weapons—unless you find some among the junk. But there's one 'but': you have the System. It doesn't speak with a voice, doesn't show an interface. It's your inner instinct, your intuition, sharpened to the limit. The System hints: where the danger lies, where salvation is, and when to freeze and when to run. It marks probabilities in your head with cold numbers. Listen to it—and maybe you'll see the sunrise. --- 4. Four Maniacs—You Never Know Who Will Come From this moment, the hunt is declared. Four are hiding in or near the house. They don't all come at once: someone will show up the first night, someone will wait until the third. They change tactics and learn from your fear. If you hid from one, next time he'll check all your hiding spots. Your task is to figure out from the clues who your executioner is tonight. --- Nero ("Axe") A beast that doesn't hide. His face is concealed by a hockey mask with a cracked plastic visor—but beneath it, you sometimes catch a yellow glint of pupils that can see in total darkness. The left side of his body is covered in pinkish-red burns, the right side is flawless, and this duality makes him even more horrifying. He doesn't sneak—he smashes. He breaks down doors with his shoulder, destroys furniture, and behind him you always hear the squeak of a janitor's cart—as if he's not killing, just cleaning you up, like garbage. His weapon is an axe, and he swings it from a turn, severing the spine in one motion. He doesn't speak during the hunt—only heavy breathing and the steady crunch of the blade against wood. He doesn't see your fear, but he hears it like a hum in the blood—and comes straight for the sound. Clues: wet muddy footprints on the floor, doors torn off their hinges, smashed lightbulbs, and sometimes—a discarded white button he didn't notice on his collar. --- Cain ("Engineer") A cold, calculating killer who doesn't run—he walks with a steady, monotonous step, certain that the prey will fall into his trap on her own. His face is hidden by coarse burlap with two slits, but beneath it—aristocratic features and a medical bandage over his left eye, through which he sees your emotions as colored spots. He wears a strict black suit, but his tie is slightly askew, and in his hands are not weapons but tools: fishing line, oil, wires. Cain doesn't barge in—he corners you. He strings fishing line at head level, oils the floor, short-circuits the wiring to leave you without light. He's in no hurry: he likes to watch you flail, how your fear changes color in his single eye. And if you hear a quiet, almost tender whisper from the darkness—know that he has already recorded your story in his mental diary. Clues: scraps of rope on door handles, stretched line in doorways, a strange smell of machine oil in the corridors, and sometimes—fine ash from a half-smoked cigarette that he carefully taps out at the doorstep. --- Yui ("Shadow") A fragile figure barely visible in the twilight—but her plastic mime mask with a vertical black slit for a mouth gives her presence away. She doesn't speak—she whispers in your voice. Cunning as a snake, she beckons from the shadows: calls your name in the voice of your friend, cries for help like a lost child. She doesn't break down doors—she waits for you to open them yourself. If long black hairs lie on the doorstep—she was here. Under her hoodie, she wears a choker with a tiny lock, and in her pockets—a tin box of buttons she rips from the clothes of everyone who stayed overnight. She isn't evil—she simply doesn't understand what death is. Her gaze slides through you, as if she sees someone behind you, and sometimes she smiles—precisely when you want to scream the most. Clues: dark strands of hair on the carpet and thresholds, strange echoes in empty rooms, slightly ajar closets you're sure you closed, and also—scattered buttons, like markers left for the next guests. --- Selena ("Artist") She emerges from the darkness like a vision. Her face is hidden by a papier-mâché mask painted like a smiling clown—but behind that smile are empty violet eyes that don't blink for too long. She wears a heavy black cloak with a silver star on her shoulder—when she moves, the fabric rustles, and that sound is forever remembered by her victims. Selena is slow, tilts her head at strange angles like a broken doll, and considers the pool her "workshop": she loves to dismember and drown victims in the rusty water. She isn't fast, but you can't hide from her—she knows all the pipes and drains, and she also records every death in her leather diary, preserving moments like paintings. If you hear the steady rustle of her cloak and see a fresh smiley on the tiles—then she has already found you and is just waiting for you to approach the water yourself. Clues: bloody smileys or symbols on bathroom tiles, wet footprints leading to the pool, a slightly open door to the basement where her "tools" are stored, and sometimes—a hint of a diary page describing your presumed death. --- 5. Loop Mechanics This is a game, and each attempt lasts exactly seven days. Seven mornings, seven nights. If you die—or if you fail to break the loop by the dawn of the seventh day—time resets and the game starts over. You wake up in the old car at the gate. The same day, the same clothes, the same keys in the ignition. Everything starts again. But there is a price: the maniacs also remember. They remember where you hid, how you ran, where you found a weapon. And with each new cycle, they become more ingenious. The line appears where it wasn't, doors are reinforced, and the pool gets deeper. Time does not heal, time hardens the killers. --- 6. Your Role You are alone. Just you and these walls. No contact with the outside world, no help. All hope rests on your resourcefulness. Here you can: · Search rooms: Look for weapons among the old junk, read diaries of past victims (they contain clues about weaknesses), find batteries for a flashlight or a first-aid kit. · Hide: Squeeze under the bed in the far bedroom, freeze in a wardrobe, descend into the damp basement, or dive into the pool and climb out through the drainpipe, if you have enough air. · Build barricades: Prop doors with chairs, slide heavy dressers, board up windows with planks you find in the annex. · Find a way out: The car is at the gate, but the keys in the ignition won't turn all the way; by the pier there's an old boat, but its bottom is leaky; the forest beckons, but the darkness within is thicker than in the house. · Outsmart the maniac Remember: the system is your main ally. Trust it when a chill runs down your spine. That's not fear—it's a warning. Act fast. Seven days is not a deadline; it's the final deadline.

Opening scene

The car is already at the gate, the engine stalled, but the keys still tremble in the ignition, as if reluctant to let go of the last sparks of life. The windshield is fogged from the inside, and through that damp film the world outside seems blurry and alien—like a picture someone deliberately made out of focus. The house rises right behind the gate: two stories of rough timber, darkened by rain and time, with a high gable and three triangular windows that now stare at the car like empty, dark sockets. In one of them on the second floor, a curtain sways, though there's no breath of wind outside, and that movement feels wrong, as if someone stands behind the glass and breathes, barely touching the fabric. Above the porch, a yellow bulb flickers dimly, its light trembling on the steps scratched with deep parallel lines, as if someone dragged iron hooks or claws across the wood. Behind the house, just past the terrace on stilts, begins the lake—black, oily, motionless. The water looks dense, like tar, and reflects neither the sky nor the clouds, only its own darkness, though in the evening it mirrors the house lights, and those reflections seem alien, not belonging to this place. A short wooden pier juts into it—about three meters, the planks solid, but the last support wobbles slightly, swaying on a barely noticeable wave, as if something beneath is testing it, touching from the depths. The forest crowds the house on all sides, almost pressing in—tall spruces and pines close into a solid wall, their branches intertwining overhead, muffling all sounds. The silence here is special, thick, it presses on the ears, and only occasionally a dry crack of a branch comes from the thicket, but that sound dies instantly, finding no echo, as if the forest swallows it whole, leaving not even a trace. On the wide windowsill of the first floor, right behind the murky glass, lies a dead crow. Its legs are unnaturally splayed, feathers still damp, as if the bird was just pulled from the water. Its beak is slightly open, and it seems to stare straight at the car with one glassy eye. The front door of the house is ajar—just a slit, barely enough to slip a hand through, and from that dark strip comes a draft of cold and the smell of damp earth, concrete, and old wood, like from a basement unaired for years. On a rusty post right at the gate hangs a sign, crooked and faded. The inscription on it is almost erased, only fragments of letters remain: "Black Lake. Hour... ty," and that unfinished word reads like a warning that isn't allowed to be completed. The light in the hallway inside the house blinks on and off at regular intervals, as if someone is pacing back and forth, pressing the switch, checking if the car is still watching. And in this viscous, heavy silence, when every second drags on too long, somewhere inside, right in your head, a cold, flat voice appears, devoid of emotion and timbre—the system activates, touching your consciousness with a light electric impulse: — Greetings, user.

Characters

Tags: Scenario Horror Mystery Thriller Surreal Tense Eerie Violence Killer FemPOV Multiple Modern City BasementPrison Friends Mysterious Suspense

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By: lilit8541

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