Behind The Locks || ONC 2024

Chapter 15: Behind The First Lock

Zack held a book Arielline was acquainted with during the massive fall on her first day at work. If the raw memory was undisturbed, her head had smacked the floor adjacent to its shelf.

Its spine had a symbol that served to remind her of the symbols on the key’s box.

That being plucked out of place, the secret opening had swallowed about four rows and three columns of bookshelves, and inside it was nothing more than a stretching thick fabric of darkness.

Arielline could hear it whisper ominously in a language of its own creation. The harder she tried to fathom it, the harder it became.

By the tone it set, nothing good could come out of it. Not even the slightest grain of compassion.

Mirabelle turned on her phone’s torch illuminating inside, but unfortunately the darkness was too thick to see through past a few steps.

It merely got a hold of a view of nothing more than a dusty-covered floor, explaining the smell.

Zack unstrapped his bag and held it by the front, unzipping it to fetch something.

He wasn't serious. He didn't want to venture inside god knows what.

“You are not serious about going in there?” Arielline quizzed profound agitation in her tone.

Even at her age she was afraid of the darkness under her bed, and it wasn't half as thick. Plus, whatever lurked in there was only but a mystery as jeopardizing as confronting the devil himself.

“Yes I am,” he answered, frantically rummaging through his bag.

“No, you aren't!” She had stood him for long enough and her wick of tolerance had burned down; first, he almost gave her a heart attack when he went missing during a precarious quake, and now he wants to give her another heart attack venturing in complete darkness.

“Yes I am,” he answered calmly as if he hadn't noticed that his sister was burning with over a hundred degrees of temper.

He shoved out the jar of salt and a torch from the side pocket of his bag.

Before Arielline could protest further he stepped in, against her sister’s better judgment.

“Zack! Zack! Zack!” He ignored his sister's calling from the entrance, but she wasn't going to let her go that easy. She scurried for his refuge out of what she could only assume was home for all but good.

If there was anything Arielline had learned was that whatever entity was in her was sourced from the library, and seeing her brother in a state like hers would be the last thing she could ever even imagine.

Nick, Mirabelle, and Dan were also in for the cruise.

Keys hanging loosely on Nick’s grip, they ventured inside.

On entering, the rumbling once again begun. It didn't take them long to notice the door shutting itself from behind them but at a much faster velocity.

Dan was swift. It only took him a few strides to get to the door and force himself through the narrow exit, fortunately, finding himself on the other side.

His highschool quarterback skills seemed to never have left him.

Nick had thought himself to be as fast but all he ended up doing was banging into a sinister door that had appeared in place of the exit.

“See what you did!” Arielline could not stop the urge to blame Zack.

“I didn't ask you to follow me.” That was true, but as a responsible sister how could she stand the thought of losing her brother to complete darkness?

More arguments wouldn't make them a way out. Arielline cramped down her ire with a heavy sigh.

Zack illuminated the door that had just appeared.

Its ambiance was like that of a typical old modeled one, but still stood like one that had not aged a day. But the dust covering it, its engravings were a sublime piece of artwork.

Inspired by inexplicable signs and symbols, that Arielline was getting used to, they were curved and twisted in an admirable vintage design.

On its right, a distance by Arielline’s waist, was a lock. It reflected with a pale silver, like everything else overflowing with symbols and signs. Its handle was shaped like a wave of the sea, an art she could call creative.

Nick pulled the lever but a relieving click noise did not happen.

Funny how it was still locked even after letting them in and one of them out.

“It can't open,” Nick blurted after several grail attempts.

Arielline was about to make a heroic attempt when suddenly the immense effect began gnawing through her veins the closer her hand got, she retrieved it before worse.

Zack ignored the gawky behavior of his sister and clasped the lever. Just like Nick his attempts to thrust it failed.

“Can you believe it that I've been recording this and there is no network to upload it!” Mirabelle budged in with a story completely out of topic. “How am I supposed to survive in here?”

She had survived three days when Mr Abraham took her phone —though it was said that she had almost almost turned into a zombie— what was a couple of hours before they figured something out?

Arielline couldn't help but wonder why there could be a hidden entrance in the library, and why and how it trapped them inside only to replace the exit with a door few men could handle.

Jingles of keys almost took Arielline by surprise. She had forgotten that her all time crush had with him the twelve keys.

“Can this open?”

There was only one way to find out.

He embedded one of the random keys in its keyhole, and cocked it in an instant.

A satisfactory click did not consol.

Arielline’s pessimism was always high, not because she couldn't stop it, but because she knew how optimism had broken her before and it never felt half of what she felt every time the lock denied opening.

Nick was about to immerse the forth key when he spared a glance at the predominant symbol on the lock; a replica of a cross, but atop the horizontally crossing line was an oval shaped loop in replacement of a vertical line.

He shifted from key to another comparing the symbols on their bows to that of the lock.

To their luck, one of the keys had the exact same symbol. He immersed it and turned gently.

A tender click sounded, breaking a smile across Arielline’s face.

He was truly the knight in shining, golden armor she expected him to be.

She didn't know she was staring at him until a bluish glow of the door called her off the reverie. All the signs and symbols around the lock and the fine mahogany glew in a bright sky blue.

Instinctively, they moved backwards.

It alarmingly grew brighter to the extent of dazzling their eyes’ resolve.

Before they could second guess themselves on their decision of unlocking it, it flung itself open, gushing a cloud of fog that threw all of them flying and strewn on the dirty floor.

It flooded the room and they were lost to each other in a world where seeing further than one's arm-stretch was a miracle.