The feet of the boy's pajamas shuffled silently across the deep grey rug. The painted eyes that lined the walls seemed to follow the boy as he walked past them, and he felt like he was shrinking. He set his eyes on the end of the hallway that he walked toward, but it seemed to be moving ever farther from where he was.
"Fa," cackled the raven. "A long long way to run."
"Please, raven, tell me what is going on," the boy pleaded as he began to try to run in a a panic down the hallway, but going nowhere.
"Shh!" the raven shushed him. "The eyes have ears."
The boy went quiet and stopped moving. He stood perfectly still. He looked behind him and at the paintings, wary of the shadowy things that he felt were hiding in the nooks and crannies of the dark weathered house. Seeing nothing, he looked back to the end of the hallway, and he was there. The boy stood, befuddled and disturbed, looking down into the stairwell at the end of the hallway that he had somehow traversed. He looked back, and saw that the hallway hadn't been all that long to begin with. He clenched his stuffed dragon tightly to his chest and shivered. He looked down the stairwell again. It curved down and to the left, and from the flickering orange glow, there was a torch or candle lighting it from farther down.
"Are you sure this is the right way?" the boy asked the raven.
"Do you see another way?"
The boy silently agreed and began descending the steps, hugging the brick wall as he went.
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