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The long corridor, which runs nearly the entire breadth of the house, has gotten noticeably darker. Trying not to think about how late it must be already, or how much you still want to do in this house, let alone out on the Mount, you move as quick as you can with your ailing light over to the linen closet. Distressingly, it seems that this room is even darker than the sitting room you just quit, though surely that must be more to do with the space being smaller and much more crowded in than the candle failing that much in the span of six or so steps. Surely.
Not looking to linger here - or anywhere else in this house, for that matter - you set down the inkpot on some pile that you judge to be flat and stable enough, then you alight upon the wooden rack from which you pulled the sheet currently languishing underneath the Nine-Dozen, just a-waiting on oblivion. From the stacks on the rack, you draw out another sheet of the similar size and seemingly the same thickness and quality, then you hold it underneath your left arm while your right hand opens up the rucksack that you pilfered from this very room. On a thief's impulse, you pinch a second fresh linen, then you take yourself from this room before you can burden yourself with a third, carefully closing the door behind you ... only to remember as soon as you step away that you left your inkpot in there. Blushing and swearing at your stupidity, you reopen the door.
Once you bring the light to bear on the clutter of the closet once more, you find the inkpot exactly where you left it ... but when you reach for it, you are overcome with this inexplicable wave of black, rolling and roiling terror. It passes as quick and abrupt as came on, but as your feet feel as if they are rooted to the floor and your breath is now thin and laden with gasps and hitches, you find that it takes you more than just a moment or so to process what just happened. On one hand, it is now clear that those trills of panic and paranoia that you were experiencing earlier were not your nerves failing on you. This has to be induced somehow, there is no doubt in your mind anymore about this. But this certainty brings you no satisfaction or comfort - only alarums. You have had starts and fits of fear inside and outside of the sitting room, not to mention up and down this hall; so you have nothing to suggest that this is caused by proximity to the Nine-Dozen ... save for the fact that you had no such fits until you were on the second floor. But now you must wonder; was all of your bouts of panic down in the basement your own, or was at least some of it the artifice of some outside influence? Well ... you are either carrying as much of the Strangeness as you were when you first came up the servant's stair, or less, so it doesn't seem as if it correlates there.
