The Skleros Family Mansion

The Skleros Family Mansion:
Nobody enters the Skleros mansion without Romanos' permission, though more than a few do so. The "haunted" wing is his own, barred off and inaccessible, though the servants swear there are noises from that part of the house, and the neighbors often see visitors emerge from side doors built of scrap wood and impossible to open from without. No paintings or images remain of young Romanos, all long since lost in a burglary in the dead of night along with all the young man's beautiful puzzle boxes. After so many years, nobody remembers what he looked like, though if they see the anemic-seeming man walking up the stairs in the middle of the night, the blood chills in their veins as they can't help but think him familiar. When they follow, though, he disappears into a shadow and is not seen again for the rest of the night. The mansion is, after all, haunted, so it's no surprise if an apparition appears now and again to walk the halls only to vanish after turning a corner.
The house caretaker must surely be mad, though. The second floor of the mansion is lit by bright lanterns of colorful glass constantly flickering through a spinning shutter propelled by a water mill wheel outside the house, an intricate and remarkable mechanism whose sole function seems to be to keep that part of the mansion in constantly changing, shifting patterns of light through curtains upon curtains of hanging beads and bells. Only the lights one brings oneself grant any clear vision, such as when nervous workmen in daylight nail home planks and boards or decorate with ceramic tiles the walls and floor, which themselves are canted dangerously to and fro as if built on the sides of low hills. The changes are often sudden and vexing, and seldom do the servants pause even a moment on their way to the attic, preferring to leave these sickening experiments to the workmen. It's never so great a drain on the family resources as to destroy their fortune. The work always continues through the night, though only one man works so late and always by only the light of the spinning lanterns. Nobody asks. For the most part, they don't want to know. The second floor has only one window, deep within, so even in daylight anybody who steps into the second floor is at the mercy of these artificial elements.
One particularly curious and brave servant ventured into the second floor, tailing the apparition. He heard the bead curtains rattle and followed after, emerging into the absurd cascading lights. He felt for a wall, fell into a ten foot pit and broke his leg. He was dismissed from the house not for his trespassing, which nobody even spoke of thereafter, but rather because he was no longer employable on account of his injury.
The workmen are the most reliable source of intelligence on the second floor. When they heard about the servant who broke his leg, they were sympathetic, but most had been down into the pit at one point or another to install new decorative facing for a pair of wooden doorframes. Neither had a lock which was in any way ordinary, and neither door was open. This was consistent with much of the second floor, the rooms of which apparently are neither level in their construction nor accessible without stepping up or down a sharp drop. Most of the walls are sticky with pitch or tar, which tends to track awkwardly about now and then. The workmen have been instructed to touch the walls as little as possible. Occasionally the workmen stumble over hidden compartments, usually empty, occasionally filled with broken glass, and occasionally with jewelry, women's clothing, or other paraphenalia with stranger implications. As these sometimes supplement their pay, the workmen never talk about the compartments, even to each other, unless it's a warning about glass.