Since I've been asked numerous times to tell about the strange events I happened to witness last spring I finally decided to lay out the full series of events on this website. To anyone wondering, my health has largely recovered by now. What happened to the mantelpiece and where it is now I do not know and do not wish to know. What happened to house I do not know either; I moved to a different town and never went back. I am only glad to have gotten myself rid of the whole affair for good.
I am sure there will be some readers who having seen this page will be quick to dismiss it as a work of fiction. The story presented here is entirely truthful and not a little embellished, and though many months have passed my memory of the incident is no less vivid.
In March I started a new job with a good salary for my field of work. My first few weeks at this place went extremely well, and I was starting to like the building and my new coworkers. Overall, I was satisfied. It was about as good an office as could be, and so within the first week I was already sure that I wanted to stay there for a while. But this isn't related to the main incident aside from being the reason that lead me to it.
As I mentioned, this new workplace was almost perfect in my eyes. The only complaint I had was how distant it was from my house. It was practically on the other side of the city, so driving to the office and back took up to three hours on some days with high traffic. Subsequently, I started to look for new place to live at closer to that side of the city. Fortunately, I was already considering moving out of my apartment which I didn't like very much anyway. Somewhere around the second week of April I came across a slim, tall two-story Victorian house which became the center of my misery. Its architecture was noticeably old but in good condition, as if renovated relatively recently. It had a small yard and one of those small beautiful black iron fences around it. Aside from that there isn't much to say regarding its appearance. The neighborhood was full of similar but unique houses. Inside, it had three bedrooms, a living room, all the usual stuff. One of the bedroom was locked, which the landlord told me was off-limits. It was supposedly used for storage. The rest of the house was entirely mine to use.
Now, the house was a fair bit larger than I needed, but the rent was surprisingly low. It must've been half of what it should've been. When I inquired the landlord he avoided giving a straight answer and mumbled something about not being able to find a tenant.
There was another feature in the house I did not mention. The house had some furniture and decorations inside, just about what you would expect for a house its age, nothing unreasonable. However, it had a certain mantelpiece whose appearance gave off a strong feeling of uncertainty. I observed it many times during that time and could never find what exactly about it made me so uneasy. It was a regular ornate mantelpiece made of some pale rock which I assumed to be limestone. Nothing about its design was unusual, but still its whole form gave off nauseating hideousness. I don't know how else to possibly describe the strange emotion it evoked.
Looking back, these details should've alerted any reasonable person, but at the time I only thought it was too good of an opportunity to pass on. How much I've come to regret thinking that...
* * *
I moved in on the 16th. Nothing extraordinary happened in the first week. I tried to cover up the mantelpiece with a spare sheet of fabric, but for whatever reason it didn't seem to help. Instead, I avoided it as much as I could.
Four days later, on Wednesday, I had a dream of being in an empty room, with the mantelpiece on the wall in front of me. It was giving off a sound akin to humming and a faint glow. There was nothing else in the room, no furniture, no windows, no doors. When I came closer to the mantelpiece its decorations started shifting suddenly as if it was covered in snakes moving about. The sight was so repulsive that I jumped back and woke up. At first I did not think much of it; nightmares are normal. But that dream repeated each night after that.
At one point I could swear I started to hear that same humming sound when I woke up. It was just faint enough that I wasn't sure where it came from. I knew it came from the mantelpiece, but I couldn't prove it.