Behind The Locks || ONC 2024

Chapter 14: A Secret Opening

No. No. No. It wasn't in her. She wasn't it. No.

She found herself subtly shaking her head in disagreement, though she knew some part of it was true.

Dan and Zack had noticed the swift movement of her fingers; as if she had just touched an electric wire.

“What just happened to you?” Zack's mouth was as fast as his eyes.

“Nothing,” she contradicted.

Dan’s meticulous eye squinted in doubt. Turns out he had picked up some stuff from his dramatic girlfriend.

Talking of the devil, a shadow arranged itself at the front door before a fair olive skin popped out. Mirabelle.

She was attired in a fun dress containing all colors of raggs draped around it. She could somehow be compared to a chameleon. Plus the hairband knotting her hair into an elegant ponytail there was no doubt she was made out of a spectrum of colors.

Her heels were blue; the only thing with a solid one color.

Her phone held in front of her face, probably recording the entrance scene into the library, and a moleskine book on the other hand, she stood in front of them.

“Did you find anything?” Arielline changed the topic before some truth was figured.

A light flashed from behind her phone before she blew a bubble from a gum she was chewing.

#My friends around a table with some witchcraft things on it.

“No, but I stole her diary,” she finally uttered, holding the book in her hand forward.

Mirabelle was exemplary at impromptu, she didn't have to fuss around with nothing in hand; that being one of the reasons Arielline had no doubt that she wouldn’t come empty handed.

What she did doubt was if Mirabelle's conclusions fitted her shoe.

“But I'm afraid she tore some pages off,” she shoved her phone away as Arielline snatched the book from her grip.

She turned over the cover to the first page and was relieved by the date; Sunday June 14th 1942

Of the bitty apprehension they had about the ghosts; their existence rotated about the mid nineties, so she could have written something of significant aid.

Most of what the first pages contained were stories about boys. She must have been one hormonal teenager. Arielline could already tell who inherited it.

She rifled page to another, reading every single detail of the fancy hand-writings of Mirabelle’s grandmother.

On nearing the center of the book, she got smacked by ripped pages. Only but torns lingered in the gutter, the papers missing.

Not one, not two, but a whole four months was ripped off; from Thursday March 17th 1949 to Monday October 4th 1949. There was no doubt that that was when the ghost attack happened.

“Where are the rest of the pages?!” Arielline ranted out of disappointment.

“I think she burned them. She told me that that was how she handled her nightmares,” Mirabelle blurted.

Dan snatched the book, unintendedly spreading the hip of salt across the table. Arielline took heed and jumped off the chair to her feet behind it.

To her luck, the fake grin on her face did as it was expected to. They ignored her queer motions.

Sure enough the book was empty of the details of the dark days. They had been torn off from her grandmother's teenage life.

Most of what it mentioned was Oliver. Guessing, he was Mirabelle’s grandfather.

“Is there something else you could find?” Arielline quizzed, her composure crumbling.

“My grandma is hard headed, she couldn't say a thing. She almost caught me rummaging through her things. You know what that would have cost me?” She switched her gauze from the phone screen. “Three meals.”

One of her hobbies was eating. It explained a lot.

A frown settled upon Arielline’s face. She always knew what happened when anxiety got the best of her; only the worst of heartbreaks came through.

Zack packed everything back in his bag, including the strewn salt, and swung it to his back.

“Where do you think you are going?” Arielline enquired, hiding tears of disappointment behind her eyelids.

“I told you, I've got a ghost to catch.” If that look that followed was borrowed from a movie, then he was a terrible mimic.

He set off into the book sections with his giant bag hanging loose, like a mental asylum escapee.

Nick held the twelve keys and was trying to read the Egyptian symbols, but he was no better at it than either of them.

Tracing back from the day the fog befell her, she could tell that something happened to her, but that something could be the ghost entering inside her.

Was that possible? Was it logical that two souls could coexist in one body?

She could have blamed her imagination and exposure to fictional movies if Nick and Mirabelle weren't stunned by her wounds healing, or Jeepers Creepers seeing the bluish effect, but whatever was happening inside her was making her rather weaker than heroic.

Out of the blues, an abrupt rumbling arose.

It came with ear-splitting noise and trembled the library. Bookshelves danced to the quake and everything else heaving like a bus on a rocky road.

A series of clangs of mechanics colliding and rattling followed, savagely, filling the air.

A squeak that almost left their ears bleeding sold out the core of the noise; it was in the library.

“Zack!” Arielline could not stand the thought that her brother was somewhere within its walls, and she couldn’t locate him.

She took off in teetering steps, ignoring the peril in stepping on an unstable floor, for the alley he had taken screaming his name.

Nick, Dan, and Mirabelle surrendered to the risk of falling and followed halfheartedly.

Before they knew, the rumbling ran low and a mild hiss sounded, the ground going back to its normal peaceful state.

“You might want to see this guy's,” Zack interjected his name’s calling in a section far by the wall.

They didn't hesitate.

The last thing someone could expect in a library is a secret opening which was precisely what they budged into.