Featured by @fright for AAPIHM.
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A librarian gets sucked into a web of horror as she investigates a century-old disappearance in the new town she has moved into.
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Yvaine Agan had always led a quiet life and had expected to do the same when sh...
"Didn't she claim that she knew where Wilhelmina was? Maybe that's why her sister got killed! They wanted to silence her!"
The words of Amberly from their earlier meet resounded in her mind. Paisley Rose and Wilhelmina Andras, Paisley Rose and Wilhelmina Andras...what was their connection? Everywhere, Yvaine had noticed that Paisley Rose played some part or the other in the mystery behind Wilhelmina Andras's disappearance.
The death of her sister surprisingly coincided with the disappearance. Her own death occurred just days after in similarly mysterious circumstances and in none of the cases was the convict identified. And then there was that letter, thought Yvaine. Paisley Rose claimed that she knew where Wilhelmina Andras was. But how did she know? Could she be completely bluffing? But why would she bluff about such a thing? A million thoughts swirled in Yvaine's mind.
Instinctively her eyes traversed to the bedside table where was laid beside the lamp, the diary of Paisley Rose in all its morbid glory. Yvaine extended her arm lazily and touched its smooth surface with the tips of her fingers. Something told her that there was something more in it and not just empty, blank pages. It is just that she did not know how to read those unseen messages.
"Come on...there must be something you are missing," Yvaine muttered to herself, eyes scrunched in the inspection of the diary. What was Paisley Rose trying to tell them? This empty diary, could it be a mere repetition of the well-known proverb? And was it its only purpose? What you see is not what it truly is.
She was engrossed in these thoughts when the chill enveloped the room. The feeling of paralysis slowly crept into her limbs, numbing the fingers and creating goosebumps upon her skin. Cold sweat formed behind her neck and on her forehead and that was when the bone-shivering whisper resounded once more.
"Mina..."
Yvaine's eyes darted to the threshold. Instead of being empty, there stood the floating entity made of grey smoking, its ghostly eyes boring into her alerted ones. Although her heart raised its beat instantly, Yvaine did not try to pull herself away from it and she did it of her will.
"Are...are you Wilhelmina Andras?" Her voice came out in a husky whisper and for a moment the image of the beautiful girl from the newspaper took place on the phantom's face. Fighting the numbing sensation, Yvaine climbed down from the bed.
"D-o, do you know that we are searching for you?" Yvaine almost screamed as her bare feet made contact with the floor. It had turned so cold that she felt walking through sheets and blocks of ice. Nonetheless, she kept walking towards the entity, undeterred by the chill and the cold.
She was just one step away from the threshold when suddenly the entity started to move away and drifted towards the hallway and stopped near the staircase leading to the upper floors. Yvaine, hungry to find answers, rushed to the staircase when the entity floated further up the steps, followed closely. Soon the entire chateâu filled with the noises of Yvaine's noisy footsteps as she pursued the ghost of Wilhelmina Andras.
It was an incredible scene. The present chased the past, the past haunting the present. Through the dark corridors and halls and floors, two women of two vastly different worlds and time ran, one to know the truth and the other eager to reveal it. Shattering boundaries of time and fear, the chase was a spectacular vision, a vision experienced only by Yvaine.
The chase stopped abruptly in the fourth and the last floor of the chateâu when the entity stopped by a half-open moth-eaten door. And as it had appeared it dispersed into thin air while a heavily breathing Yvaine lumbered up the stairs to catch up with it. A crestfallen look evaded her face as she found out that Wilhelmina had left her.
"Why the hell did she bring me here?" Yvaine groaned to herself, making her way laboriously to the door when the entity had been standing only a few moments back. Sweat dripped down from every visible part of her body, taking away every cooling and refreshing effect of the hot shower.
The fourth and the third floor was never used for many decades. The little that Yvaine remembered from the very rare visits to the chateâu during her childhood, she recalled the grave face of her grandfather warning her not to go upstairs lest she gets possessed by demons and spirits. And now Wilhelmina's ghost had brought her here. What was the purpose, was she supposed to look inside the abandoned?
Thinking so, Yvaine was about to push open the door when her feet caught something and she almost tripped. Regaining her balance she looked down, finding something long and dark embedded in between two floorboards.
She bent down and pulled at it, trying to pry it out. After one strong heave, it came out, breaking the two floorboards from the middle. Huffing in agony Yvaine brought it in front of her, subsequently wiping the sweat from her forehead. However, she stopped mid-motion as she determined what was the object that she held.
It was a knife.
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