Chapter 3: The Poem That Was Very Weird - The Shiny Box In The Basement.
I felt the piece of paper in my hand. The letter. His letter.
"Aha! Gotcha.", I smiled at it.
Well, that was easy. All the thinking I had done was for nothing? Hmmm. Oh well, at least, the table ghost's not real. Waving the letter around and bobbing my head up and down - because I do that when I'm happy too, I grinned a little bit more when the sudden glint of light caused me to close my eye.
The nagging feeling of that 'something-is-wrong' came back and I looked again in the direction of the table leg.
This table is too much trouble, ghost or not.
I curiously moved again and checked around the same spot, that too, again. I was doing a lot of things again. Rolling my eyes, again too, I checked around once more when -
"Ow."
This time I felt it : the glass piece pricking my finger. But there was more, the glass piece was glued to something solid, whatever it was, it felt like a hard piece of paper. I held it and brought it away from the tugged carpet.
It was a card. Of course, it had a glued glass piece on it. The glass piece was roughly shaped like a... mask? Wait, what?
The card had a curious little arrow pointing to the right, indicating that whatever it was about, the writings were on the inside.
With a bated breath, I contemplated opening the card slowly, narrowing my eyes. Now don't mind me but, OH GOD WHAT IF THERE'S A SCARY PICTURE INSIDE? WHAT IF IT'S SOMETHING DANGEROUS? And what if I get arrested for having it in my house? Will I be taken to the jail, where I'd have to live with dangerous INMATES? Oh God, will I have to live without cinnamon rolls for the rest of my life? Oh God.
I am not a scared of a little piece of a paper, am I?
With that thought, I immediately opened the card revealing a -
A poem?
Did I literally just go through a thousand different emotions to find out that the source was a fricking poem, which probably was written by some crazy boy for a girl who was also crazy so she would accept his love and then get married? - That's crazy.
Oh wow. That's very crazy. I'm crazy. Well, I might as well read the poem and no, this is not me snooping through people's personal letters. This is me snooping through WHOEVER-THOUGHT-IT-WAS-A-GOOD-IDEA-TO-SHOVE-THIS-LETTER-UNDER-A-F**CKING-CARPET 's letter.
"Do not look onwards if you
Do not reside in this abode
And if you do, then this may seem out of blue
But the secret to me lies in the cold.
Now, it may seem like I do not know
How to write a poem
But that's just bullshit -"
I raised my eyebrow, amused.
"I assure you that I know.
Except that rhyming bit.
So I should go on without it.
Where was I?
Oh yeah, the secret to me lies in the cold.
And if you're that dim then I must tell that the
Cold means the basement, you dipshit" -
I snickered somewhat embarrassed but then snapped out of it because the so-called poem was gaining my attention.
Again to the poem :
"In the cold, lies my secret.
And in the cold, lies its key.
Now, you may ask how?
Do not fret, I shall show you that.
The dark carries the light.
And the lights shall pave the way forward.
E."
The poem ended with a small cursive E. Wait. That's it? What about the secret in the basement or whatever.
And that's when it hit me. The person who wrote the poem had probably lived here because he or she knew there was a basement here.
Of course, that person lived here, you idiot. I mean, the person had shoved this piece of paper down the carpet in this room, hadn't he?
Now, I was not interested in other people's secrets but if someone was willing to pour his heart out to me, then who was I to stop him?
What if someone had broken his heart and he was sad? No, no, what if all his life he had always loved that someone and she had pretended to love him too and - oooh, drama.
I was not a sucker for drama but since I had just moved here, which was today, I was bored. And, a girl needs some drama in her life, doesn't she?
The only drama I had had in my life was when I was 9 - I had thrown Aunt Mae's turtle because it was not playing with me and boy, did it cause me trouble. Aunt Mae had shrieked herself hoarse and mama had thrown a fit. The only person not mad at me was dad, only because he was laughing madly.
And also that's a lie, that's not the only dramatic event that happened in my life. That's just one of the best drama I have ever had in my life so I thought 'hey, why not throw it out there?' No, you can't sue me.
So it wouldn't hurt to have more drama in life, would it?
If only I had known.
---
This was a bad idea. I was literally shivering with fear. Or was it cold?
How? How was it so cold here in the basement, when I was literally and figuratively sweating in my room. Well not figuratively, but I was sweating alright. I looked around for the lights but to no avail. What did it even mean, the lights? I was shivering here.
I scanned my surroundings and found that all the furniture and other stuff that dads use were all stored here. Nothing out of the ordinary.
I looked around cautiously this time with the intent of finding something peculiar, something out of the place in a basement, there had to be something because secrets had a way of showing themselves. There had to be something. There had to be... And then, voila. There it was.
A shiny metal box laid there, behind my mama's favorite steel cabinet - favorite because it was her mama's and because she kept her crockery in it. I picked it up and tried to clean the dust on it. How did I know when it was lying behind the cabinet? Well, it was peeking out.
And how did I know it wasn't ours? Well, I had never seen it before.
It had dust on it, which meant it had been here for a while now. Our furniture was here 2 days before us, which makes it the 3rd day of them being here. Them : the furniture. So they couldn't possibly have dust on it. At least not this much dust as the metal box has on it.
Which makes it easy to say that this was the secret. Or at least a part of it.
Why had the furniture movers not noticed it? I glanced at the box and turned it over. It had a keyhole under it.
Wait. Keyhole. 'Key to secret' - which means that it is indeed something and not a prank.
It could be.
The lights. The lights. What could be the lights?
I froze.
The dealer had said something about chandeliers in the basement not being removed because the previous owner had insisted for them to remain where they were. Of course, the light had to be the chandeliers. But how could someone hide something in a chandelier? Well, we'd have to see that.
Resting the box on the ground, I whirled around and stalked towards in the second room of basement, the one in which the dealer said the chandeliers were.
I gulped slightly, opening the door, as a wave of nausea washed over me.
Giving the door one last push, I stood straight and glanced in front of me. Then, slowly, I entered the room and that's when I felt it. The darkness.
I gulped audibly, something was off about this place. It felt dangerous and... And rotten? As if there was something dead here. And was it just me or had the temperature decreased even more?
Just breathing in the air of this room was difficult. There was a smell. A strange smell.
The whole area felt tainted. Yes, tainted. That was the only word for it.
My mouth suddenly felt dry. I eyed around, found the circuit board and pressed every single button on it. My heart was beating at a crazy pace.
The three chandeliers glowed a mysterious yellow.
This was not just a bad idea. Oh no no. This was a very very very very bad idea.
I tried to shake away all the thoughts and tried to focus on one thing : the chandeliers. But I admit, this time I wasn't doing it for drama or some other shit. I was curious. And like they say : curiosity killed the cat. Please don't let me be that cat, God. I don't want 9 lives. I just want to live this one peacefully. Please God.
Observing the chandeliers, the first peculiar thing I noticed was that on the shades of separate light bulbs - they were four and designed in an upward kinda way - surrounding the central light bulb of the second chandelier, an inticrate design, which looked vaguely familiar, was carved roughly on it. Wasn't the table in my room carved in the same pattern? My heart was thumping wildly as if it had always known what was about to come.
The second perplexing thing was that the every bulb of the second chandelier having the familiar design on their shades, were shining their lights on something inside their bulb shades, I knew that because I could see them as a shadow on the floor. It was a spherical something. And I also knew the shades were open from the above. I could see it from here.
Inspecting my surroundings, I found what I was looking for which was a ladder. I know it was not a good idea but I was curious now.
I climbed the ladder with heavy steps, because I was scared and after about 49 seconds - yes, I was counting, reached the height of the chandelier bulbs.
Breathing very slowly, I opened my eyes only to scream loudly, aghast and petrified at what laid in front of me.
My blood ran cold.
---
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