Once you reach the top, you look around: not a soul.
You drag up the ladder, and close the trapdoor. The room is wooden and mostly without interest; a few large dusty boxes, some wood siding resting in a corner. It's a standard attic, complete with a circular window letting in the full moon's light, which falls on-
a treasure chest! As you walk towards it, you hear a rustle to your left, and turn to see a woman who looks both familiar and strange.
"You can't be!" she says, as she peers deeply into your eyes.
"You're not 'J' are you?"
You tell her your name, and explain your adventure so far.
"Wow. Sorry..." she says, as a single tear falls from her left eye.
"It's been so long since I saw anyone else. I'm Hazel. I came here alone on Halloween, probably like 17 years ago. I... I lost count a while back. I just can't believe I'm not alone anymore."
A pregnant pause occurs.
"I know how to get us out of here. We need to smash a window and escape. But, it's more complicated than that. I overheard a weird conversation one night up here: yes, someone or something is keeping this house the way it is. It's a dark seal or curse of some sort, intended to trap as many people as possible here. The voice said the curse would break if someone ever got out of the house, after being cursed! I think then, the house wouldn't 'work' or something. But it's impossible to leave when the curse is working. This is because you can't break anything important in the house when you're cursed. I can't break windows: I hear the glass shatter, but I can't move through it, and it doesn't change. But: the curse works only when a very specific candle is lit. It never burns down, believe me, I've spent days waiting for it to do just that. You can't move it or break it in any way. But you can blow it out for a couple seconds. And in those two seconds or so, all Hell breaks loose: The roamer - I've never seen it up close but I've heard it, and it's scary enough - it goes berserk. Maybe we could overcome it when the candle's out. We can definitely break windows then. I broke one near the candle a bit. I think this way we can get out. The candle's in a small crawlspace underneath another trapdoor behind that box over there."
Hazel points to a box over on the other side of the attic
"I worked it all out years ago: one of us stays in the candle room, blowing it out over and over. The other jumps down into the main hall and breaks a window in the basement - after the place with all the eyes - then makes their way back up to the candle room, and we both exit through that window. But it's really risky: The only time the basement is safe is when the roamer is in the hall, so this means one of us has to fight it off, and run down the basement to the window. We can listen up here together for the roamer's steps."
She pauses and looks at you dolorously.
"But since the roamer will probably follow whoever's in the hall, the one down there might have to jump out through the window themselves. I think the curse will break for both of us, even if only one of us does that - but this is an old house... I don't know if the curse is keeping the house together: it might just crumble when the curse breaks. I always thought I'd be the one to run down there, but... You look younger than me. You haven't been through what I have in here. I've already lost so much time... I know it's really dangerous to go down there and run from the roamer, and break the window, and maybe even run back, but it might be even more dangerous to stay behind and have the whole place fall down around you."
You can tell that what she's saying is true.
"So I'm staying here and blowing out the candle.
You can get cursed by taking one of the coins in that chest over there, so the curse will break even if only you jump out of the window. I think it's our only hope. Go on. Check out the treasure chest."