The Lost Girl (Complete)

Chapter One - The Forbidden Room

With a sigh, Celestia finally managed to push open the stuck front door to the only home that she had known. It was nice, in a nice area with nice neighbours and even a nice street name. Sitting on Sunnyvale Court, the two-story grey building should have fit in nicely with the atmosphere but only if you didn't know that the recently departed owner had been an aggressive drug addict with a tendency to throw ridiculous parties and entertain men who should have never been allowed to set foot through the front door when there was a young and vulnerable girl upstairs.

"Home Sweet Home," She murmured, closing the door against the wind and flicking on the lounge room lights.

It felt empty, quiet and lonely.

Something that it had apparently been for long since before she had been born – there was barely any furniture aside from the basics and what there was had long since needed to be replaced. There were stains across the carpet and walls, spots of darkness decorating the roof and a lingering smell of alcohol and helplessness which never went away no matter how many times Celestia cleaned.

Trudging slowly up the creaky steps, she shivered underneath the thin dress and cardigan before pausing in front of her bedroom door. It had been the only sanctuary she had ever known aside from the library where she used to spend whole days pouring over books – stories of foreign places, magical creatures and beautiful romances.

If she had one thing to thank her mother for, it was the fact that she had never let her life creep up the steps. None of her friends had ever been allowed to past the bottom floor.

Feeling empty and tearless, she slowly tilted her head to peer further down the hallway.

There it was.

The mystery door, the locked door. The only place always forbidden to her.

For as long as she could remember, Celestia had been forbidden from ever trying to discover the secrets of that untouched room.

She had always been tempted, had even tried to shoulder it open one night while her mother was a ruined mess, but the lock was weird. A pushpin, and the wood was too solid for her to even cause a crack.

"Why not?" She whispered to herself, her eyes still on that door. There was a draw full of random keys in her mother's room and now there was no one left to tell her what to do. Her whole life had been filled with darkness and the knowledge that no matter what she did, how many rules she followed and how much she loved her mother, she just wasn't good enough.

Never wanting anyone else to be exposed to her home life, she didn't have any friends and there was no extended family anywhere that could have taken her in or at least helped to get her mother clean.

There was no one to care what happened and Celestia simply didn't care either. She felt like an observer getting ready to watch her whole life fall apart and it suddenly felt as though the only thing to do was find the pin for that lock and finally uncover all of those secrets.

Turning away, she practically ran down the staircase and through the house until she was standing on the threshold to her mother's room, her chest heaving with nervous excitement. Celestia tried not to glance at the bed where she had found Marie days before, cold and lost, as she turned to the dresser and the key on top of it.

"Ok," She nodded, walking those final steps and unlocking the top draw. She had thought that it might take hours to scour through the small space but sitting at the back was an aging envelope with the word 'Sang' scrawled across it. Feeling as though fate was stepping in, she slowly pulled it out and ripped along the side, her heart pounding as a straight bit of metal dropped into her palm. It didn't look like much but she knew that it would fit the lock.

The envelope fell to the floor as she slowly turned back and made her way up the stairs until she was shifting restlessly in front of that white and silent door. Using the fingers of her left hand, she located the small hole before gently pushing the pin, her breath catching when she heard the loud click.

The knob turned easily before she carefully pushed opened a door which she thought may have been left untouched for close to twenty years.

The storm was still raging strongly outside which meant that the only light came from the persistent flashes of lightning. She wasn't exactly sure what to expect, maybe a room full of memories from Marie's childhood, but she could honestly admit to confused surprise when she walked into the perfectly made up room of a teenage girl.

The carpet was a faded pink colour and it appeared as sparsely furnished as the rest of the house with only a still covered single bed, bookcase and old travel trunk. The built-in closet was hanging open with a number of arranged outfits ready to be pulled out at any moment.

Celestia stepped further in and flicked on the overhead light, wincing as it stung her eyes. She couldn't take it in. Someone had definitely occupied the space at some point and it was quickly obvious that it hadn't been her mother who was too large to fit into any of the clothes, and the tidy state of the room was a dead giveaway. Marie had never bothered to wash a dish, let alone keep her bedroom spotless.

"What on earth?" Celestia murmured, walking silently towards the bed where a beautifully polished violin sat next to a simple black case. She twisted around, "Who lived in here?"

There were no photographs anywhere and the books situated on the shelves were mostly all traditional prints which gave her no clue.

Had her mother had a sister?

It was the only theory she could come up with since she knew that there hadn't been another daughter and from Marie had said, the Sorenson family had only moved into the Charleston suburb when she was seventeen, so roughly twenty-two years ago.

Why would she have never mentioned anything about a sister? Could she have died?

It was sometimes common for the people left behind to leave a bedroom untouched as a shrine, so Celestia guessed that it was a possibility and her mother had just found it too painful to ever speak about.

Not finding anything, Celestia began to turn away in disappointment until her eyes caught on a small doorway, the outline almost hidden behind the bed and bookcase.

Her heart started beating heavily once again as she took a small step forward. Maybe there was still hope if she was right in thinking that that door led to a hidden attic space.

Well, she thought, only one way to find out.