You are wearing a western dragon mask.
That however is not what freaks you out,but the fact that the hallway behind you is not lit up by
energy saving LED lightbulbs,or even energy hog ( and now banned) incadescent light bulbs
but by gas chandeliers.
Thats right,the kind of lighting system not used for illumination in about a century or so.
You take another look at the guests in the party and realize to your horror
that they're either fanatics for early
20th century period costume
or they're ghosts.
So slowly you make your way back to the main entrance,trying to avoid getting stuck in the crowd gathered around the player piano thats playing some honky tonk tune while the negro piano player
pumps the bellows.
You manage to get out of this ghost story but forget to take off the dragon mask
or more closely examine the papers in your hand.
You escape unscathed and
put the dragon mask and the party ticket on your dresser
before you sleep that night.
The next morning you wake up and the dragon mask is still sitting there
on your dresser,its coloured amber glass eyes glowering at you apparently.
You avoid the thing put pick up the party ticket.
Its for a Animasquerade Party dated April 15th 1912 at a address which is obviously that
of the mansion you'd visited
last night.
You dress up and go out onto the street.The mansion is still there
but its all boarded up and overgrown with weeds and trees poking through its
ruined roof.
Clearly no living being except for you and possibly any other unlucky mortal
has walked through those main doors in decades.
So you head to the library and go through the town's century and somewhat
newspaper files.
It seems that on April 15th 1912 there had been plans to celebrate the
crossing of the worlds fastest passenger liner
the RMS Titanic
with a Animasquerade Party in the mansion
Most of the party guests were coming over aboard the Titanic
including the owner of the mansion
Mr Albert Rochschild and his wife
Elvina Rochschild
There was a newspaper image of Elvina and you were shocked to realize
she was the same lady who had first accosted you and demanded you go through the door to get
the dragon mask and the party ticket.
So you did some more searching in that library
and were shocked to discover she was still alive,and rather
frail,residing in the
Rochschild Retirement Community Home.
It seemed that her husband and all the other Animasquerade guests had perished when the Titanic
sank on April 12 1912
but somehow she had survived.
The juicy April 16th newspaper story told how Mrs Elvina Rochschild,wearing
a dragon mask eerily
similar to the one you now had sitting
on your dresser
had been shrieking
" Its cursed Its cursed" as the lifeboats crew
had pulled the nearly senseless woman out of the frigid waters
after the Titanic had sunk....
( which does smell a little musty,now that you sniff its insides)