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To Sarah, her life is relatively insignificant in the grand scheme of things.
She is one of the House Staff, bound by the Evil of the Estate, but she wouldn’t call herself important because of that.
Arthur is considerably more valuable. She’s always known that, because he’s the one in charge; He’s the one who took in herself and Marvin, gave them a better life, better purpose, all for the goal he carefully crafted with his wit and plans. A goal of gaining power no mortal from their time period could ever attain. Controlling the Evil of the Estate to their own desires. Only then would her life be notable, she thinks.
But that’s only how she views it from her perspective.
She never sees the full picture.
She never remembers any of it.
The timeline loop continues over and over.
And yet her little life holds so much more value than she knows within these timelines.
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Her first death in the time-loop is the “standard” death, the one she’s most commonly fated to be on the receiving end of, after a long tiresome night. It’s the death where Arthur’s brother Joseph is freed by The Savant, The Big-Game Hunter, and that damned Journalist she’s grown to loathe the most, and she’s the one first caught out by him as he storms out from his imprisonment in the basement and into the Estate’s front garden. She always fights back, that never changes - But it doesn’t save her, no matter how much she may successfully wound him with her knife. Hook meets flesh every time. Sometimes the kill is quick and immediate as she’s tossed like an unwanted ragdoll onto the ground, the world quickly going dark around her before she can shout to warn the other two. Other times Joseph has to double-back to complete the job, as she slowly crawls away on the grass with the metallic taste filling her mouth, and she bleeds out last of her compatriots as she gazes up at the night sky, tears mixing with the falling rain, with Arthur and Marvin’s bodies not too far from her.
It’s a peaceful way to go, at least.
She’d never realised before how beautiful the stars are.
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The second death is different. The ongoing silent distrust between her and The Journalist boils over at the final hurdle with only 4 survivors left alive, and while The Savant reads out the rules of what they can only hope is the last Death Challenge of The Voted choosing someone of the opposite sex to save them, Eva gets a cunning idea while staring at The Butler and The Housemaid watching them all wordlessly from the side of the lounge. Sometimes she writes Sarah’s name, sometimes she writes Arthur’s. Either way leads to stunned surprise from everybody left that somebody broke the self-vote truce they all unanimously agreed to do. But neither Butler nor Maid will fight against it; They trust each other wholeheartedly to be more successful than their opponent, confident in their own abilities and the plans they’ve been scheming to come out on top. Such is the way of the rules.
If the time-loop decides Sarah doesn’t make it to her “standard” death, then her trust and confidence winds up being horribly misplaced. Sarah’s name will come out of the hat. She picks Arthur as her partner with no hesitation to her words - Of course she trusts the man she’s been in this Estate with for nearly 100 years by this point. And he genuinely put in the effort to save her, because for all of his manipulation and sinister intentions The Butler does feel affection for The Housemaid and The Groundskeeper, silently gives them love in the only ways he knows, and doesn’t want to lose either of them - He’s done so much to protect them both, to keep them by his side forever, because they’re the only people who have truly understood his ambitions.
But it doesn’t work.
He doesn’t understand how he could fail like this.
Of all people, him? Fail?
The Guests will cheer, typically for the The Big-Game Hunter, as they’re freed from their chair - And then they’ll all watch as the sounds of electricity spark and surge, and The Housemaid convulses and cries and screams with more emotion than anybody’s seen from her the entire night, until she falls silent from the electrocution, going limp in the chair in front of everybody.
The Journalist tries to avoid feeling much guilt for what she caused even as dying shrieks echo off the walls of the basement room and off into the corridor behind them. ‘This is what you deserve for getting Shane killed, for Justine and GloZell and Tim and everybody else in this hell-hole probably too,’ she thinks bitterly, all while she tries to hopelessly look away at the silent despair and anger from The Butler as he removes Sarah’s lifeless body from the chair in sombre wordlessness, holding her in his arms. She knows this was what had to be done, anything to save Lele from being the one in that chair instead or save Oli on the other side of the room being electrocuted himself.. But she also knows she’s not out of the woods yet. And something tells her that some form of karma is rapidly approaching for all of this.
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The war that The Soldier, Colin, brings is what causes the third kind of death. This time it’s not The Journalist’s grudge that fuels her vote specifically, but her own self-preservation instinct, because she knows that she’s the only one to not be in a Death Challenge yet, and she knows that several of the others are against her because of it. Because she’s not “experienced” it yet.
‘That’s not fair,’ The Journalist thinks, ‘Why do I have to be put in danger because I’ve not ‘experienced’ any of that nightmare so far? I’ve put in my hard work, I’ve proven myself in other ways! I’m not gonna die because of this!’
And she decides that she shouldn’t be the only one left they should be having that discussion about, because the three members of the House Staff standing over there with Colin haven’t been in any Death Challenge either - She distrusts Joey, but she distrusts his House Staff more. Joey never gets entered into that voting pile by Eva. Sarah does. Eva is spared for now.
By way of The Savant’s vote, The Mobster is always her opposition. The one Guest, of all of them, that she’s grown to feel some sort of care for the most. He’s sweet, strange, goofy, but charming in his own way. He’s shown her kindness by defending her when the others begun to gang up on The Housemaid and after she was drained and aching after being possessed, something none of the other Guests will give her in this time-loop, and that awakens something inside Sarah. Too little, too late. But it’s something. She’s been wanting to try and save him as a result; He would make a great member of the House Staff, he’d be a co-worker, an ally, and that would require Arthur’s serum to brainwash him but he’d still be alive and with her and that is the way she can show him kindness in return. But here she is, opposite him at a table with two battleship board-games and a revolver between them. She isn’t disturbed by the sight, not by this point in her life, but across from her she can see The Mobster’s eyebrows are furrowed in concern and the slight shake of his hands as he places down game-piece after game-piece, and she knows that he’s intimidated to say the least.. Especially when the gun gets brought into play.
One click on his side.
One click on her side.
One click on his side again.
Another on hers.
She's keeping count.
The bullet’s not here yet, but it’ll hit soon.
Very soon.
It’s this moment where the too-little-too-late kindness that Timothy gave to The Housemaid will change his course, sometimes at least. Because Sarah sees the way his hands start to tremble more with each passing second, the sweat on forehead, the tiredness in his eyes that he’s struggling to hide.. And she’ll take the bullet for him. Of her own choice, she discreetly moves one of her well-hidden boat-pieces and place it in the spot he calls next, and she calls out “Hit” in return, taking the revolver in her hand. And she realises that she’s the one who is starting to feel scared now, because she knows where that bullet is in the chamber by this point, and she knows what she’s about to do, what she’s about to throw away for someone she’s only known for a single night.. But..
“Mobster?”
“.. Yeah?”
“.. Thank you. Nobody has been kind in the way you are.”
“Y- You’re welcome, Sarah?”
“.. Stay alive, please.”
The bullet swiftly takes her life before Timothy can figure out what she means and try to stop her. He shouts her name, jolts and screams at the gunshot, before going still as he stares ahead of him and then sinks his head into his hands in silent shock, stunned and shaken as tears rapidly form in his eyes. It’s only when Colin comes in that he finally moves from his seat, returning to the house where the others wait for him. He sees the way The Butler and The Groundskeeper’s faces drop as they realise, turning to one another in horror as they lose one of their own. He wonders for the rest of the night why she would ever do that for him, and not even asking Arthur or Marvin in private nets him any resolution or answers. When he survives and leaves the Estate through the gates as morning comes, he takes it upon himself to try and find her family’s descendants in the modern day - To know the people that are tied to the woman who saved his life. It’s the best closure he can find.
Sometimes though, it’s The Mobster who is selfless for her in the same way he would’ve been for Eva, and despite her ability to read people she doesn’t figure out what he’s planning until the sound cracks the quiet of the area and she jumps and shrieks in surprise. Sarah returns to the house in shaken silence, eyes cold and trying to will away the tears pricking at the corners because she stubbornly refuses to cry in front of the other Guests. They ask a dozen questions, ask what happened to Tim and what happened in the Challenge, and she can barely answer them before her composure cracks. She dismisses herself and leaves to hide herself in the kitchen, her safe space, and buries her head in her hands in the same way Tim does when she’s the one to take her life, quiet sobs bleeding out into the corridor as the sound of the gunshot and her own scream echo in her mind for the rest of the night. The Housemaid has never been shaken by death. Not until this.
Neither his name nor hers will be slandered for the rest of the night, either way.
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It isn’t The Journalist’s choice that changes things with death four. It’s The Professor, still wrangling with the guilt that’s weighing him down since he killed The Heiress, pushing away everybody around him because he’s terrified of hurting them the same way he hurt her. But he’s also terrified to die, because who knows what awaits him for accidentally killing Sierra. He knows he’s going into the Death Challenge. It’s just a matter of deciding who he chooses to go in with him with his own vote, because everybody else is voting for him and he knows this. He writes the name of The Housemaid on a panicked impulse - After all, it’s not like she’s been that helpful either, especially not when he directly asked her for help on a puzzle earlier. If the others are voting him in because he’s not being “helpful”, then he can do the same too for someone else. Joey knows immediately that it’s Matt, and while the others don’t care much about the sudden change in the rules, The Savant of all people does. The two men argue. Sarah hushes them, quietly saying she’ll go as desired. It’s the rules, after all. The rules of these twisted games.
This way of dying is less common for Sarah, as she’s very smart with poems, riddles, and puzzles (she’s been in the Estate for a very long time with Arthur tutoring her in his ways, of course she is), and so the majority of time-loops where she’s in this specific Challenge result in her victory over The Professor. She watches him collapse and topple the dollhouse over, onto the floor, and she returns to the lounge, and for the first time everyone seems relieved and happy to see her be the one to return in a way that makes her heart flutter and her cheeks grow warm. But sometimes, his own intelligence comes through (he was not designated as The Professor for nothing, after all), and he beats her to the remedy for the poison. He watches her skin go paler as she starts to cough blood, and she hits at the door feebly to get out, shouting weakly for Arthur to help, until her energy is drained and she crumples to the floor, surrounded by delicate dolls with soft complexions and dark lips matching her own, and all Matt does is watch. Another person’s blood covers his hands.
By the time he trudges back into the main room with the doll and hears the various shouts and gasps and groans from the others, The Professor has become a complete shell of his former self. ‘This time it wasn’t an accident. This time I did everything to kill someone on purpose,’ he thinks. The next time he’s voted into a Challenge by the angry mob surrounding him, Matt bares no resistance or fight in him left anymore.
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Sometimes it’s never just a singular person’s fault - Sometimes the group as a collective bloodies their hands a second time. Sometimes their alliances begin to crack and disagreements start getting worse as the two groups go into the rooms to find what they need for the exorcism, partially because of the fake ritual that Arthur gave them without anybody even knowing it which fails to bind the Evil and set them free, but equally out of the personal grudges Guests have been starting to form for the last few hours of their own afford as personalities and choices clash with one another. It always culminates in the vote for the Death Challenge, sat in the main room together.
The Professor attempts to be bold and volunteer, but he backpedals quickly once he realises what he’s signing himself up for, earning scorn from the entire group for his cowardice and not having the ability to back up his bite.
The Big-Game Hunter’s kindness gets pushed too far as he scolds The Savant and Professor for lying to his face and voting him behind his back at the circus.
The Savant fights back, claiming that they changed their vote for perfectly fair reasons; He hadn’t been in a Death Challenge yet, and hadn’t been pulling much of his weight in the group much like Sierra.
The Heiress’ quieter nature gets dropped as she begins a several-minute long argument about how she’s trying to do her best and help where she can, but what is she supposed to do when nobody gives her the time of day to prove herself with the puzzles? Oli joins in agreement.
When The Journalist interjects that she didn’t want to help with the ritual earlier, The Mobster gets firm and scolds Eva, saying that NOBODY wanted to be in the middle of the ritual because they had no idea what was going to happen to them, especially given that they saw what happened to Sarah during the last time someone was in the middle of a creepy paranormal circle-
And then the Demons that have been haunting them since they finished talking to The Priest earlier, decide that they’re done waiting.
The doors to the lounge burst open as the lights flicker and shatter and the room shakes and things get sent flying, and noise erupts from the entire room as everybody screams and scrambles. Nobody can see anything much less the people they were bickering with beside them moments ago, but one by one people find each other and in the moment of desperation start to work as a team again - Tim holds the Holy Water tight in his hand as it pushes back the shadows, and Eva grips the Rosary while Oli clings to the Holy Bible that The Priest had given them, Lele begins to rapidly speak Spanish, some sort of prayer, trying whatever she can recall from Catholic School to the best of her ability while all she can hear in her own ears is shouting and stress and an awful scream of pain and heavy things hitting the floor coming from somewhere in the lounge that she can’t see.
It’s only when the Guests push back the Demons with their joint effort do they find where such an outcry came from.
Arthur lies unconscious against a fallen bookcase, voting-paper and hat scattered halfway across the floor as a head injury spills blood onto the wooden shelf, but that’s not even the worst shock. No, the worst shock is Sarah not too far away from him, her eyes pitch black once again as she lays sprawled on the floor twitching, dark veins and marks crawling up her skin as blood drips from her mouth.
Arthur is breathing still.
Sarah is not.
The Demons claim her life, the earlier seance practically inviting them to haunt and possess The Housemaid to the point of death, as punishment for the Guests internal feuds and inability to work together until it was too late. Arthur stops being able to look any of them in the eye once he wakes up and finds out. The amount of arguments decrease dramatically from then onwards.
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The Carnival Circus never kills her.
Most of the time it doesn’t kill anybody, like a glimmer of hope cracking through the darkness like the way lightning does during a stormy night. Only sometimes will it claim a victim. Sometimes a Guest will fall and disappear forever into the water-dunk, or fall from the tightrope with a horrible sound, or be swarmed and stampeded by the rowdy aggressive crowd who have lost their limited patience completely. And yet it never will take The Housemaid's life. She is never sacrificed in place of one of the Guests.
She instead stays by Arthur and Marvin the entire time, watching the Challenge in high amusement despite how loud things are in the tent (Sarah's never been one for rowdiness and loud noises, it makes her ears ring uncomfortably so when it's too much), politely clapping at the appropriate moments and trying to stifle their laughter all the while as the antics of the challenge amuse her and bring a smile she's not had on her face so far. Marvin and Arthur smile and chuckle alongside her on either side, their handsome faces aglow in her eyes, and her heart feels whole and warm the way it does when she's with them.
Sarah never leaves their sides.
She never wants to.
No matter how beautiful the dancing lights and faint jaunty music seem to her.
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Death six is a sacrifice of her life to spare one of the Guests downstairs. Distrust fills the air from everybody after that note (which she has no idea where it even comes from, nor does Arthur), and while the Guests spend most of their time aiming their accusations at one another thankfully, some eyes still land on the House Staff. Sarah always keeps her head down, saying little to nothing, hands held in front of her with her gaze looking away from them all at the floor. Making herself seem small and meek. It doesn’t always work.
It occurs when The Savant doesn’t get his name pulled for the Death Challenge; His beef with The Jazz Singer and impulse to write her name down is what saves Sarah and the others of the House Staff. But sometimes, there’s another shift in fate, and it’s not Joey, it’s a different pair of Guests who go up to play the ‘perverse games’ of Calvin’s. If The Gambler has managed to live this long and somehow escaped her usual death, she’s often the one entered into this Death Challenge instead of The Savant, giggling nervously about whatever these perverse games might be. It’s her who will spot the names left behind in Calvin’s Murder Journal, consisting of ones they don’t recognise and ones that they DO recognise but are clearly not dead like the Journal says they should be - Arthur was smart to give each of the House Staff fake surnames, after all. Justine’s not trusted any of them since things began to get strange and scary, and so when she spots ‘Arthur Fletcher’, ‘Sarah Hayes’, and ‘Marvin Jones’ in neat print it only makes her suspicion grow. ‘But if their names are in here, and they’re not dead, then.. Writing them again isn’t gonna work,’ The Gambler thinks while she and her Challenge Buddy (always The Hustler, who is always determined to write down Matt’s name but is always stopped) stare at the pages, ‘But I’m not killing anybody else downstairs; Not after fucking up with Andrea. It’s got to be one of the Staff, ‘cause I really don’t think we can trust them.. But how? How do we do it?’
They get their idea soon enough. They wait. They stay silent in the room amidst the mannequins for a while, whispering to one another as quietly as they can. Someone’s been sliding the notes under the door, telling them what to do, and they know it has to be one of the House Staff or even Calvin himself if he’s somehow still lurking here, and so eventually whoever is out there will come in to check if either of them are still alive. Neither of them are meant to die after all; It’s meant to be someone else. That’s the ‘rules’ of the game.
'Like hell it is.'
Justine’s determined to break the rules, break the game, especially after failing Andrea.
Eventually, after what feels like hours, the door slowly opens. Someone steps in, closes the door behind them, and takes a few slow steps into the room.
The Hustler and The Gambler descend upon them, raising a glass bottle each.
They do what they have to do to save themselves and their friends. Even if it means ignoring the screams of the woman as glass breaks skin.
Downstairs, The Jazz Singer and The Savant continue to talk, their argument slowly simmering down, tension starting to ease. Footsteps rush down the staircase, The Hustler and The Gambler return with triumphant yells as Justine holds the Artifact proudly over her head, and excitement fills the lounge as they hug and celebrate. The women don’t explain what they did. Nobody bothers to ask for the details on the perverse games. All of the previous anger between people disappears - She doesn’t completely regain trust in Joey, but GloZell is convinced enough that he never wanted the Dinner Party to go the way it has, and backs off with her temper.
None of them notice the absence of The Housemaid.. Until the blood pooling underneath one of the doors upstairs is spotted.
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The seventh death is also a sacrifice, the one Justine is usually fated to go through. But if it isn’t The Gambler’s death, it’s almost usually The Housemaid’s. The way in which she winds up under the earth varies, though.
Sometimes, people will sneak votes in. The Gambler will try to save herself, and sometimes she gets others on her side for it. Or The Journalist, still remembering vividly what she saw with The Renegade and knowing that Sarah has something to do with his death shortly after, the fire inside her sparking with anger and pushing her to act before anymore lives get taken by The Housemaid. Other times, they don’t make it to the vote, as someone takes matters into their own hands. The Big-Game Hunter may use his strength to knock her out with one of the shovels they’ve been using to dig out the coffin, tired of all the fighting that begins as soon as it’s unearthed. Or it’ll be The Hustler dirtying her hands, shoving the staff member into the dirt with angry shouts that it sure as hell won’t be one of them being buried alive, because she’s found The Housemaid a weirdo from the get-go (a pretty one, granted, but still a weirdo).
The Savant will, for the first time since the dinner party began, defend his staff member, raising his voice about the chaos. “You can’t just kill one of my staff, what the hell-!? Hey, hey stop this! Let go of her!” He yells - Sarah is scary, sure, she has a sharp stare and isn’t much of a talker either, but that’s not a fair enough reason to bury her alive like this. ‘Surely there’s another way, maybe Shane and Andrea are the only two we’ve got to kill and then everything will be fine, maybe- maybe if we just–’
“Come on Joey, it’s either her or Justine, which one’s more valuable to you here?” The Heiress argues back. Joey will feel the way his friend squeezes his arm tight, hiding beside him away from the other Guests in horror with tears in her eyes, and he soon stops arguing. The Mobster stands on his other side away from Justine, and though his face bares disapproval and upset at what the others are all doing.. He too goes quiet.
Sarah will yell and panic and resist, as any person would in that situation, as Justine would be doing in her place instead. She’ll shout for Arthur and Marvin mostly, begging for their help. “You promised-! D-Do something! ARTHUR! MARVIN! PLEASE, do something-!”
Nobody asks what it is she was ‘promised’. They simply hurry as fast as possible to close and cover the coffin until she goes quiet. Then they can stop worrying about her being the one in league with the evil, and everything will be fine afterwards.. Right?
When the back gardens go empty and the Guests all return meekly inside with Arthur trailing behind, still feeling a pang of guilt for what they had to do to a living person, The Groundskeeper will stop standing still where he is by the trees and dart forward, hurriedly digging at where he knows the coffin is, where Sarah is, his breaths growing quicker as he puts more of his strength into each shovel of dirt, all the while listening as close as he can for any sounds coming from below - Any sounds that can give him some sense of hope that she’s not completely gone. Once he makes it past the dirt the Guests poured over it, he pulls the coffin lid off so hard he almost breaks it.
Sometimes, she’s still hanging on alive, and he’ll carefully pull her out and into his arms (she’s always been so much smaller compared to him, short and slim to his tall and tough), and Marvin will apologise for him and Arthur letting that almost happen. He’ll pull Arthur aside later when everybody else is busy, tell her he got her out, and the pair of them will hide her away somewhere on the Estate, let her pull strings behind the scenes without anyone knowing she’s still here, and she’ll thank them both (but especially Marvin) for the rest of their lives that she wasn’t abandoned the way others have done in the past to her.
Other times, all he’s left with is an empty coffin, just the way it was when the Guests all raised and opened it.
The clues inside the Estate shift as if by magic - Replacing long emerald earrings with small humble pearls, red scarves for black lace, blonde hair locks for dark brown locks. Everything needed to talk to the new spirit replacing Caroline, the new piece held captive by the burial sacrifice.
Marvin cries alone outside in silence.
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Rarely though, she won’t even make it to that point to be buried alive within that hour. Because sometimes the eighth way she can die in the time-loop is through the group’s inability to properly conduct the séance they need to do to make it to that point in the first place, and everything will go horribly wrong at the hands of the group.
Sometimes the group searching for the birthstone will pick out the wrong jewellery. The Jazz Singer exclaims with delight as she finds a pair of dark green earrings immediately, and the trio don’t waste any further time on it, dashing downstairs to put their findings away in the dish. The Hustler will sometimes question if these are the exact right earrings, since she remembers that the ones in the picture were longer, but GloZell and Timothy tell her that they probably don’t need to be THAT specific; “So long as the earrings are green, that counts for the birthstone, surely,” GloZell says with confidence as she taps her walking stick on the floor, impatiently waiting for everyone else.
Other times the group trying to figure out what the ‘unique part of her beauty’ is don’t find it. They search the spare room top to bottom, quickly getting confused as nothing seems to match what any of them remember. The Heiress has already forgotten what the woman even looks like by the time they’ve gotten upstairs and the sheer number of wigs and items in the room is not helping her, the only things she recalls being the colours red and green. The Professor is too focused on discussing who he thinks is the one secretly in league with the Evil of the Estate (or rather his evidence that it’s Lele who is the one in league with it, to which Eva and Sierra spend too much time disagreeing and counter-arguing that she’s just strange in that way). And The Journalist is the only one who still remembers the woman’s face, but her hair colour is blurry; ‘Was it blonde? Oli said it looked blonde, but Sierra thinks she might have been a red-head, and I thought she was a light brunette to be honest before anyone else said anything. So which is it? C’mon, Eva, think..’
Rarely, those looking for the article of clothing come up blank. They know they need to be hunting for red scarf of some variety, but finding it in the guest room is proving harder than it seems for The Gambler, Savant, and Big-Game Hunter as they scour the room all over. They check under and inside the pillow cases, the bedsheets, the cabinets and curtains, under the bed and inside the small white log-burner in the corner of the room, and nothing seems to match a red scarf like the one they saw in the picture - All the while hearing the other group, one by one, find the things they’re looking for. Eventually, they find a red shawl that was hidden at the back of the shoe drawer inside the wardrobe, and decide that this is as good as they’re going to get to avoid spending too much time looking for this, and that perhaps it wasn’t a red scarf after all - “Wasn’t really a clear enough picture anyways,” Justine grumbles as they rush downstairs to the sound of everyone else waiting for them.
And in some instances, everyone will have the correct items with no issues, but the séance circle itself and the ritual regarding it turns out an absolute mess, true to Matt’s exasperation. Eva argues with Joey about the diameter of the circle as he counts 7 steps and she counts 8, Oli places the triangle further up in the circle than he’s supposed to while Matt attempts to correct it, and Justine struggles with the directions entirely. “Nobody here knows their shapes and geometry, do they? Think we ‘dun failed that maths test,” GloZell comments as she watches from the sidelines, earning side-eyes and glares from the others and a few hushed chuckles. Still, they think they’ve got it as good as they can, and Tim will read the incantation, all while Sarah sits within the seance circle - Arthur told her to do it, to volunteer, so that everything can go according to plan, and she’s never been one to argue with him (no matter how much worry she feels starting to pool in her gut over this). Shadows start to swirl around as the candle lights flicker and then begin to go out one by one. White hands begin to creep up through the sand that creates the circle, running fingers along The Housemaid’s skin and clothes and refusing to let her leave the circle no matter how much she begins to squirm and ask for it all to stop, her eyes slowly turning black. Some of the Guests will try to get into the circle, and Arthur will join them hastily because he’s the one that in private told her to volunteer for the séance, but the same happens - Nobody can get in to get her out. The way Sarah looks at the others carrying the most emotion they’ve seen thus far would be something most of them would consider a good sign, were it not for the amount of increasing distress and pain painting her face. “Help-- Please, please no-!”
Once the final candle extinguishes, all the shouting Guests are left with is sudden darkness.. Followed up with anguished screams that hush their panic like a blanket smothering a flame.
They know before the lights even flicker back on.
They’ve invited unwanted spirits.
They’ve killed her.
.. Now what?
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The Ungodly Machine will equally as rarely take her life. Despite the Guests eyeing The Housemaid up and down like she’s an abnormal entity stood beside them after the few events that’ve happened so far at the dinner party, her ability she’s honed since becoming part of the House Staff to put on a deceptive mask, pretending that she’s meek and scared and tense about everything as though she’s been forced to deliver them the severed head and arm, is convincing enough for some of them to believe it and decide to back off for the time being.
Some. Not all.
And so occasionally, the names of the Staff will go into the pile, the Guests judging and distrusting them more than each other despite how much infighting and finger-pointing will have already begun by that point - They’re more willing to throw a group of strangers under the bus than they are one another, for now, anyway. It’s a death not too different from the Ring Toss Challenge with the electric chairs; Her name is drawn, and though she looks stunned and confused, she takes it with dignity and grace. Now to simply choose who gets the role of being the partner made to try and save her. At least, this time, she has more options to choose from.
Everyone is capable of saving her, just as they are of saving one another.
But just because they can be capable of saving her, doesn’t mean they always will.
The Savant will usually do what he can, because despite her stoic face and tendency to stand and stare at him from a distance wordlessly he’s still technically her boss (in some way, at least), she’s a staff member of his estate, and she’s been well-mannered, diligent, and courteous to him so far since he got the letter and moved himself in - He’s felt sort of like an intruder in what’s now become his own home, because these three have all been living here before he arrived, but even with their oddities and quirks Joey has been well-cared for by the House Staff, and he wants to reciprocate that. Besides, people are starting to get accusatory that he got Shane killed already, so if he could save Sarah and clear his name, then..
The Journalist’s hands are shaking if she’s chosen, on the rare instance it happens. Her fire inside has yet to burn into anger, right now she’s still more scared of The Housemaid, and so she never really knows what to do in this instance. She knows she should fail on purpose, pretend to be stupid, so Sarah can’t cause anymore harm the way she’s already done; But Eva also knows that if she does fail and let Sarah die, all eyes will be on her. If the other Guests aren’t suspicious of Joey, then they’re suspicious of her for being the last one alone with Shane alive, and if another person dies on her watch she can only imagine how much worse it’s going to get for herself. Whatever happens with her at the helm is practically a 50/50 split.
The Big-Game Hunter does as good as he can do to try and save Sarah. He’s a good man, a kind man, and while everybody else has been pointing fingers and getting riled up (assuming that they’re even taking any of this seriously, which he knows one or two of them aren’t) Oli has been more focused this whole time on getting things done and doing what he’s got to do. And right now, looking at the woman in the tube beside him, he can see some of the weariness in Sarah no matter how much she tries to steel herself and appear composed, and he knows that he needs to win this for her. ‘Maybe she’s not as bad as half the others are trying to make her out to be.’
The Fixer tries her best every time, because she’s not one to judge any of the House Staff as to how good or bad they are, not yet. She barely knows them, after all, and Andrea herself hasn’t been much of a talker either at this party to be honest, despite her best efforts to get involved and help everyone else. Perhaps if she can save Sarah, she can help the meek Housemaid open up a little - Maybe she just needs someone a little less bombastic and chaotic than some of the others here are to come out of her seemingly introverted shell. And maybe, by helping her, she can help herself too and the way others view her. Maybe they’ll let her help more. Maybe she can properly become part of the group.
The Gambler struggles, regardless of whoever it is in the Death Challenge itself. Sometimes she proves to be smarter than she believes she is.. But when that happens, it’s rarely for Sarah’s safety, especially since she doesn’t trust her as is. Still, she feels a pang of guilt if she watches The Housemaid die in front of her, and she’ll complain to the others about how she should’ve never been picked for this to begin with and that it’s Sarah’s fault for choosing her.. Yet all the while she tries to ignore the way her hand shakes and the fact she can still see Sarah’s pained grey eyes staring back at her out the corner of her view, carrying something within the way she looks at her that Justine will never be able to learn the meaning of, and disappearing the moment Justine turns to see the ghost of the woman she let die.
The Jazz Singer doesn’t really bother; She only pretends she’s doing anything, making minimal progress, so her competitor trying to save the other person doesn’t start getting suspicious. GloZell doesn’t trust Sarah at all, not since the party began to die down shortly before dinner was called - She’s quiet, too quiet, almost secretive, and all she does is stand and stare with a blank face when she’s not directly providing service, her gaze a little cold and off-putting. She doesn’t buy the scared act that Sarah’s been putting on when she’s brought in things like that bloodied head and severed tattooed arm - Best to get this weird woman out of the way before anyone else gets hurt for her to drag in body parts to scare everybody else. She was planning to get rid of her anyway if she was able to convince Joey to let her move in.
The Heiress also doesn’t put up much fight for The Housemaid; Not for Sketchy Sarah, absolutely not. If it was one of the other women, one of her fellow YouTubers, she would have put in some actual effort to at least try and understand what the hell any of this machine nonsense was all about and how to make the Ungodly Machine malfunction. But Sketchy Sarah’s not one of them, and Sierra is still convinced by this point that none of this is even real either way. ‘It’s just a prank, or a fun fancy YouTube video idea Joey’s got. Sarah’s probably not even Sarah! She’s probably just a hired actress, or a really niche YouTuber I’ve not heard of. She won’t actually die if I screw this up; He’ll come up with some fun story reason why she returns later with Shane. It’s gonna all be over in the next hour or two probably. It’s fine! It’s fine.’
The Professor does try if it’s him who is chosen, because by this point in the timeline he’s not lost all faith in himself just yet. Even if he agrees with the others that Sarah is an odd one within the house staff (he’s half-convinced she’s a vampire, honestly, with the dark-red lips, shadowed black eyeshadow, and skin that’s several shades paler than any of the YouTubers he arrived with), she’s still a person stuck in this awful situation like the rest of them in his eyes, a woman who has just been trying to do her job and gotten seemingly roped into bloodied heads and severed arms against her will. None of them want to die, none of them should die, and Matt considers her part of that too. Shane should be the last. He hopes he’ll be the last.
The Mobster, kinder than his role title in every timeline, will put his all into saving Sarah. He feels bad for her already, seeing the way half the others jumped to accusing The Housemaid as soon as Shane died and watching them all move away from her as all she does is watch with a forlorn look - Tim jumped to her defence, because what gentleman wouldn’t? He sees a quiet, tired looking woman, unable to speak up for herself as she’s isolated for things she’s being forced to do, now having her life put on the line by somebody else here, and Tim refuses to let that happen. ‘That’s not fair,’ he thinks. He’s fallen completely for the facade she’s put up, of course, but Tim doesn’t need to know that. Not when he’s seeing past it and the other masks Sarah’s put up on herself to try and hide the vulnerability he’s somehow seeing.
The Hustler tends to half-ass it; She’s always somewhere in the middle of the issue, perched on the fence. On one hand, she trusts her girls with her life, and only Andrea seems to be on neutral territory with Sarah, while the rest don’t trust this weird goth chick with their lives. On the other hand, she does have a conscience despite her fiery attitude, and while she absolutely gets why half the others don’t like the Housemaid, similar to Tim she’s picked up on the way Sarah’s looked so far when delivering the bloodied head and severed arm, and she sees the way Sarah looks in the Ungodly Machine’s tube, and she too falls for the clever ruse and decides it’s worth giving it an attempt. 'At least it’s not Matt in here.’
Arthur and Marvin, of course, put everything into rescuing Sarah, because she’s one of them and none of their little group are meant to be in these Death Challenges; This isn’t part of the plan at all. Whoever put her name into the mixture will surely be found out, either by the other Guests or by one of the House Staff, and may God help them when they’re eventually caught. But that’s something The Butler and The Groundskeeper prioritise for later, because The Housemaid is at risk here, and they refuse to lose her. Not her. Not Sarah. Arthur will always wind up down there either way, being the one to bring the Challenge competitors to the basement, and so in almost every scenario even when it’s not him actively being the one in charge of rescuing her he’ll try to find a way to mess with the Ungodly Machine he knows all too well about as subtly as he can. Marvin meanwhile is smarter than he looks, he and Sarah having both learnt what they know from Arthur and The Evil itself all these years - Whoever he winds up against is usually intimidated by him, because he’s quiet like Sarah and yet his stature is all the more imposing, the tallest member of Staff and the physically strongest too by the looks of it.
Sarah can only watch from inside the tube of the Ungodly Machine, ignoring the way her heart is starting to race in a way it shouldn’t, because she shouldn’t be scared of this, it’s not in the plans for her to die, she’s not part of the invited Guests meant to be part of this, and yet somebody threw her in here anyway. It makes her blood boil; Yet another reminder of why she chose to stay with Arthur and Marvin in the Estate. Why she chose to abandon humanity after they had abandoned her, and seek out her revenge through the power of The Evil they’re seeking. Why she hid the real Sarah behind mask upon mask to shield her vulnerable core from the cruel world that broke it all those years ago.
And yet now, she has to have hope. Hope in another person, another human.
Maybe even the very one who put her into this situation to begin with.
How ironic.’
So she puts on the right mask, the right face, to appeal to whoever is standing on the other side..
And hopes it’ll be enough to save her from asphyxiation.
∘₊✧──────✧₊∘
Sometimes, the events of the night won’t even get a chance to begin before she loses her life. Death ten. The last one.
It’s her cosmic punishment for what she does to The Renegade, because it’s by his hands that she dies this time.
The Journalist will get gently shooed down to the lowest floor of the House, and she’ll nervously scurry down the stairs back to the rest of the party at the sound of dinner being called without a second glance back. She doesn’t know what Shane has planned nor why he’s not following behind her after they both just saw The Housemaid with a literal dead body and blood splatters on her, but her brain has activated fight-or-flight now and she’s not going to argue with being told to listen to the flight side of it, so Eva quickly takes her leave the moment that he tells her its best to head out.
Sarah tenses up her body as The Renegade slowly turns back to look at her, because she knows immediately what this means. “.. You should head downstairs, Renegade, sir,” she says, trying again to see if he’ll budge.
“Should I?” He raises an eyebrow, struggling to keep a steady face amidst the nerves he’s feeling, because holy shit The Society Against Evil was right, ‘there really IS an evil darkness lurking here, and it’s not working alone.’
“Yes, you should,” she answers coolly, “You don’t wish to upset your host, hm?”
The Renegade makes a suppressed laugh-like sound, head lowered to look down at the shorter woman. “As if he won’t be upset already over what you and the other staff are doing. Whose body was that I saw? Why do you have blood on you?”
“What body?” Sarah asks innocently, but her mouth twitches and shifts into a more sinister smirk than anything that could be described as innocent. Shane grits his teeth and acts on instinct, grabbing her by the collar and pushing her against the nearby wall to pin her quickly and suddenly enough to where even her own combative instincts take a moment to process it. The Housemaid can only gasp quietly as she feels the air leave her lungs and the sharp jut of the wooden wall panels jabbing into her back.
“Don’t play dumb, Sarah, you’re not the type. That was the Society member I got told would meet me here, wasn’t it? .. You killed him, didn’t you-!?”
She chuckles softly, something that might almost come off as cute if the look on her face didn’t read otherwise. “Ask me no questions and I will tell you no lies, Renegade. You and your.. Cult, are the ones intruding on our territory, either way.”
Shane steels himself, anger slowly beginning to bubble as he shoves her harder against the wall, pinning her a little more firmly as she hisses in quiet pain. “Cult?! You have an ancient evil haunting this Estate and keeping it stuck in this time, there’s been death after death happening here, and we’re the cult-!? What the hell is wrong with you?!”
“Oh, Renegade, I think you are smart enough to put the pieces together on your own, aren’t you?” Sarah glares at the man towering over her, and it’s only at how close they are now that he can see the faint red hue circling her now slightly constricted pupils, hidden discreetly in cool grey eyes, and he internally curses at how he let himself be swayed to take this field mission just because other YouTubers he knew were getting caught up in this mess.
The smirk on her face widens a little further. “Or maybe I’m expecting too much of such a naive boy like you. I see why The Savant wanted you here; You’re not much different from him.”
Something snaps in Shane at the mention of one of his friends. Of Joey.
With his spare hand, he reaches to grab the dagger he brought with him tucked away on the inside of his jacket.
Sarah reacts the same, a knife being drawn from a pocket inside her apron.
Everything goes hazy.
The Renegade walks away from what he’s done, shaking from nerves and adrenaline as he seeks out the bathroom to clean off, patch himself up, and go join everyone at dinner. He’s only a rookie in the Society Against Evil, his conspiracy theory investigations for his YouTube channel leading him down rabbit holes he had never thought existed - Never did he think any of this would bring him to actually kill a person. A bad person, he knows this, but still a person. He wonders if anybody will care that The Housemaid died here, whether she had family somewhere once. Then he tries to get rid of the thought from his mind, because he needs to focus on the mission at hand he’s been given and she was going to harm people if he didn’t stop her. That, and she left some nasty marks on him - He needs to bandage those and hide them.
He heads down to the others with a forced smile on his face, apologising that he took so long in the bathroom and joking to Joey that he really should’ve told everyone where to even find it before the dinner party began. Nobody makes any comments about hearing any of the commotion that happened upstairs, instead flinging a few jokes of their own about various topics. He sits at the table with everyone laughing around him, and the only feeling within his chest is the heavy hope that this means that the horrors will be over. That the other Guests can just finish dinner, party a little, and head back to their own time, without anything else happening to anybody. That the note in his jacket pocket, and the letters he’s left behind back home in the event anything bad happened to him, remain untouched.
But the night never truly ends.
It always begins with the discovery of a body.
Anybody’s body.
Even if it’s not The Renegade’s own.
The other Guests will be confused and scared at the dead body of The Housemaid who had been serving them drinks barely 15 minutes ago, and Shane will stand trying to nervously calm down the situation as though he has no part in what’s transpired, as though this isn’t his doing. As though he wasn’t cleaning blood off his hands earlier. He notices the way Eva is side-eyeing him whenever she gets the opportunity too, and the look on her face tells him that she probably knows what he’s done, but that’s not what worries him. He can explain to her when he gets the chance that Sarah wasn’t a good person.
What worries him most is the looks coming from The Butler and The Groundskeeper to the side of the hallway that everyone is clustered in, the place he killed her in.
Because every now and then comes arctic-cold glares from the two men as they delicately handle the body of their compatriot, trying to see if there’s anything they can do to save her from a fate already sealed, and The Renegade desperately pretends to not notice each time.
As if hoping that feigning innocence to either of them will work.
∘₊✧──────✧₊∘
The time-loop continues over and over.
The method may change, the order may be different, but lives are always still taken either way. And inevitably, the story reaches its eventual climax - The Savant corrupted enough by his own actions to allow the Cursed God to break him again and again, a single mistake turning into condemning himself and everybody he knows countless times.
But everybody knows the story of Pandora’s Box.
The evil that it contains..
And Hope.
The first time Joey opens Pandora’s Box and the Cursed God takes control over him, Hope leaves the Box too. Hope takes the form of branching timelines, different from the contained time-loop that officially makes its mark at that moment. Different timelines where things are different. Where things are better for everybody.
Often Sarah still dies in those too even when others don’t, because of her role within the overarching story she’s been written into as one of the bad guys is dictated by things beyond her knowledge and outside of her control completely. But in some she stays dead, everything going cold and yet calm as she opens her eyes and her soul arrives to the World Between Worlds like the souls of the others when they die across the timelines. Here, she approaches the looming church shrouded in the mist, where she is to be judged and sent to a peaceful afterlife. Because, despite her actions, something lies beneath the surface of her darkened soul that the Society Against Evil guarding the World Church and powers beyond mortal comprehension housed within can detect; Something which gives more of a story than her actions tell. She isn’t subject to continual deaths of various agonies, no matter how much she may deserve that fate to some degree. Her soul spends its afterlife with others of her kind, finding kinship she didn’t know she wanted with people she never thought she would meet, and it’s a blissful result as she rests peacefully with both new friends.. And her two old lovers.
Alternatively, in other timelines, her soul is snatched by The Collector after she dies, brought tenderly to the The Museum of The Dead to preserve her and others forever in the safety of exhibit glass. In some instances she, Arthur, Marvin, and others of their kind like The Sorceress and The Carnival Master will be placed together in their own unique exhibit, the ones that the YouTuber Guests would be otherwise occupying. Other times, she’s alone in a specific place where The Collector thinks she looks most beautiful and in her element, frozen in a sleep-like state and unaware of anything happening. At times she will be woken up from that state by somebody, somebody coming to make amends or offer rehabilitation and redemption like The Savant who is seeking to fix his mistakes before he falls too far down the rabbit hole, and she’s dragged into a rescue mission that changes everything and ends the time-loop forever. And at other times, she will simply be left to sleep eternally in her exhibit in the Museum, away from anything in the living mortal world that could harm her. It’s better than what could be happening to her.
There is one timeline where the time-loop repeats so much, that changes begin to happen unbeknownst to anybody and things begin to bleed into one another from across the cycles - Invited Guests who weren’t there initially, items and clues from times beyond the 1920s, the butterfly effect slowly nudging the loops in a different direction the way it doesn’t in other looping timelines. And it’s due to this that when the Estate Massacre survivors bind the darkness within the Estate with the Artifacts, there’s a moment of weakness in the chokehold the Cursed God has on the world.. And an external force of good and light notices the vulnerable spot within the timeline, and is able to reach through and take the most recently deceased souls it can get ahold of and carefully bring them out of there entirely. Sarah’s is one of them. The timeline loop breaks, as with missing souls that are written into the script of the loop unable to take their place, the script itself falls apart. The Cursed God’s hold slips, and The Savant is finally given his freedom in this timeline.
And so Sarah wakes up in another place and time entirely that’s alien to her - Alive, but alone for the first time in decades without either Arthur or Marvin to turn to for guidance. Her mission? To prove she is capable of redemption, that salvaging her soul from death was worth it. And she doesn’t believe that’s possible, that this all feels like a waste of time because The Housemaid knows her own sins and knows she’s just a monster, and somebody like her can’t be fixed, can’t find whatever redemption means for her. But then she starts to meet new faces she’s never met before with their own ideas and thoughts and love to give, and the path she starts to walk with these people greets her with adventure and thrill and tenderness and apology. Everything begins to slowly change, her understanding of the world and even herself growing and altering as time goes on, learning new things about life and who she is as a person that alter everything in a way she’d never imagined. And Sarah comes to slowly realise that despite her actions, the relapses in her violent tendencies she still has and the struggles and discomfort she still faces when she looks at herself in the mirror, that maybe redemption isn’t as impossible as she had been made to believe.
And then there’s timelines where the Estate Massacre ends before it even begins, with no votes nor bodies; Because while Sarah is always destined to end up at the Estate, her path up to that point swayed and selected by the people around her against her whim, sometimes Hope’s effect will let her leave the Estate grounds without having to give up her life. Sometimes, instead of baring the judgementalism and ugliness of humanity that led Sarah to where she is, the Guests share kindness and optimism instead. The Hustler will let her dry and plait her hair after taking up a dare from The Professor to jump into the pool before dinner’s due to arrive, and thank The Housemaid for the help. The Fixer will ask about her makeup, and The Gambler joins in on the conversation as they both wind up offering to share some modern brands that they think The Housemaid might like if she decides to leave the 1920s time-bubble. The Mobster will offer to help her with carrying trays of empty drink glasses back to the kitchen, complimenting at how well The Housemaid keeps everything so clean and organised where he struggles to back home.
Sometimes, when The Renegade and Journalist catch her bloodied hands in the hallway, it doesn’t end in anybody’s death. Instead, despite the knife blade pointed at them, the two will attempt to de-escalate the situation, ask questions, ease the tension - Both of them know as YouTubers and as people that whenever there’s conflict, there’s always more than what meets the eye.
And both of them know that life and the actions of others can drive a person to do horrible things.
It’s Eva - the woman who condemns The Housemaid’s life in other timelines - who makes the cracks in the iron walls Sarah’s built up around herself for decades, breaking through the numerous masks the woman has worn to hide herself to the point she barely remembers who the real Sarah is. She bites at the right opportunities within the conversation, asks about what Sarah has gone through, listens to the anger and upset and pain that the older woman’s endured and what Arthur saved her from and gave to her. And Eva and Shane know immediately that there’s manipulation involved, extensively so, from the way Sarah speaks about her superior - Manipulation of what Sarah’s experienced that have shaped her into a killer acting out of a self-destructive revenge against humanity, because that’s the only way she now believes she can have any power over her life. But they don’t bring that up, not right now; Now isn’t the time. Instead, they offer Sarah a way out of the maze she’s found herself lost in, because Sarah comes from a time where her traumas and mental health were hardly discussed or treated with any dignity and compassion. And Eva? She understands trauma. What it can do to someone.
“.. Why do you care? Why are you helping?” Sarah asks, voice strained and quiet. “You don’t know me.”
“Because I don’t like when I see situations happening, and don’t say anything. There’s so much more to life than all of this - It’s a ride, a story, and it can be hard and scary, but it can also be so- So beautiful.” Eva answers, fighting back tears of her own as her voice wavers for a moment. “I don’t care if I don’t know you. I want to be able to help others see that too, even if they’re a stranger.”
The Journalist opens a hand.
The Housemaid takes it.
In the end, the Society Against Evil are able to send more of their people in on Shane’s signal, an indicator to them that the situation has settled enough to where they can safely handle it without casualties. Arthur is arrested, while Sarah and Marvin are interrogated and questioned, and the Artifacts are hunted down and safely secured without the lives of the Guests being thrown under the bus so the Evil of the House can be bound and defeated. It’s the Big-Game Hunter who is able to talk Marvin down, the strong but gentle man able to reach through to The Groundskeeper who was more similar to him than he first thought. He, too, had suffered - And he too was swept up by Arthur and into the Estate, promised shelter, safety, affection, and revenge against those who had done him wrong, much like Sarah, and Oli feels an ache wondering how somebody could do this kind of thing to vulnerable people at their worst. The two of them end up on a sort of parole, aiding the SAE in the background by being a different perspective on dark enemies the Society comes up against and estimating what their actions would be based on their own understanding. At the same time, rehabilitation programs are organised for them at the request of Shane, Eva, Oli, and Joey once he’s clued in at long last on the situation going on - And it’s a rough journey of rehab, not only having to unlearn all of the dangerous and destructive tendencies that had been ingrained in them both for nearly a century by 2016, and not only coming to terms with accepting that they weren’t fine at all despite spending all that time convincing themselves that they were okay after everything they’d gone through.. But also having to face realisations and secrets that had been suppressed and buried deep beneath the surface of their souls, and the surface of the Estate itself. Everything had changed in the world since they’d became one with the Estate and its Evil, and everything about themselves began changing too, and it was overwhelming and stressful and intense.
But this time, Sarah and Marvin had people. Multiple people. Those that understood them, that were willing to understand them, and wanted to help them through the change.
Marvin takes up furniture building and decorating, as well as the relaxing adventures of hiking, taking scenic photos of his walks that soothe his soul and bring a smile to his face. Sarah takes up mountains of novels to read, as well as (to everybody’s surprise, including her own) clothes modelling, which slowly helps her low self-esteem to recuperate. They get to know the Guests they were once going to erase. They find friends. They find themselves. They miss Arthur and what they had with him, they always will, but they still have each other in their journey of self-discovery.
Idealistic endings. A far cry from the countless time-loops of death and misery wrought upon everybody in other timelines.
But Hope could ask for nothing more.
It’s the best that they can do for these people.
For the Guests, for their friends, for all the victims caught in this tangled net.
Even for Sarah, despite how she may view her “insignificant” life every time, across every universe.
No life is insignificant.
Not to the Hope of Pandora’s Box.
∘₊✧──────✧₊∘