A while ago, my friends and I had started a blog where we had posted pictures from our previous urbex experiences. The blog was not that popular yet, but once we shared some pictures of Ash House, Emlyn was confident our visitor numbers would skyrocket.
Since this place turned out to be a gold mine, the epitome of spooky, she might be right.
I snapped a few quick pictures, the first one showing as much of the room as possible, then another one focusing on a formaldehyde jar holding a lizard. I also took a few pictures of the golden hand, each time resisting the urge to gag.
“I’ll snap another picture of the library real quick,” I told my friends.
“Sure.” Emlyn dismissed me with a wave of her hand, and I hurried to the hallway, and then back into the library.
I took a picture of the desk, then of a pile of books, and a last picture showing the entire room. I was about to leave again, when an ice-cold finger rushed down my spine, freezing me to the core.
Something urged me to stay here and to turn back to the desk. A sensation I couldn’t quite place.
My feet walked toward the desk as if they had a mind on their own. Pausing in front of the wooden construction, my hand trembled as it reached for one of the drawers.
I had no idea why I wanted to open the drawer, but I knew I had to. I knew it with the same certainty I knew my own name. At the same time, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that the drawer wasn’t locked, that it would slide open and reveal something…
Something that would change everything.
I shouldn’t know these things, and on a superficial level, I realized that, but something deeper, a primal urge, pressed me forward.
I opened the drawer while cold hands clenched around my heart. A déjà-vu… The moment my hand touched the drawer, an image welled up in my mind of having done the exact same thing before.
But how was that even possible? I had never been here!
The drawer squeaked open and revealed a black box. Again, I wasn’t surprised, as if part of me had expected this. While the rational part of me was freaking out, realizing none of this was possible, the primal part of myself was as calm as a lake tucked between two mountains.
As I took the box out of the drawer, a clock chimed somewhere further into the abdomen of the house. Was it the grandfather clock in the entrance, the clock forever frozen at 5:13? Strangely enough, it would make sense if it was.
The box felt warm, like it was a living, breathing thing. Another impossibility but then again, all of this was impossible. Like I was in trance, my fingers traced the gold-laced writing on the box.
Do not open.
I hesitated, pulling my fingers back as if they got jolted by electricity. A box that should not be opened?
Who in God’s name kept a box simply for the purpose of never opening it?
“Faye?” Emlyn shouted, followed by two sets of footsteps resonating from the hallway.
In a millisecond, I took a decision. Opening my backpack, I slid the box inside, just as my friends appeared in the doorway.
“There you are.” Emlyn let out a sigh of relief. “We got worried.”
“I’m okay.” The backpack pressed into my back, and I felt bad for lying to my friends.
Omitting the truth was as bad as telling a lie, and I had never kept anything from them before besides when it was related to Ash House, but this seemed private somehow, too personal to share with them.
“Well, the last room is a bust. It’s locked.” Emlyn shrugged. “Want to head upstairs first? Austin is not too keen on entering the left wing.”
“What if it comes tumbling down, crushing us?” Austin’s cheeks had regained some color, but he still seemed as spooked as a little kid seeing a clown for the first time.
“It’s held up fine for the past decade,” I reminded him. “But fine, we’ll head upstairs first.”
I hoisted my backpack on my shoulder and followed after them, the box poking into my back with every step, reminding me of my secrets.
Chapter 3
The dust-covered mirror in the bedroom on the second floor of Ash House showed a distorted image of myself. The mirror had been cracked in seven different pieces, as if someone had slammed into it violently multiple times.
My black hair flowing around my shoulders along with my pale skin made me look like a ghoul in the fractured mirror.
I quickly snapped a picture, hoping the effect of the broken reflection would look as scary on the frame as it did in real life.
“Come on guys, the sun is setting.” Austin swayed back and forth, looking more uncomfortable with the second. “We need to go.”
“Why? You need to be home in time or your mommy will get mad?” Emlyn was teasing him again while she inspected the items on the vanity. “This perfume looks expensive.” She picked up the glass bottle and shot a whiff of perfume in the air. “Smells nice, even after all this time.” She titled her head to the left. “What do you think? Should I take it?”
“Hell no.” Austin turned toward her, fast as lightning. “You’re not taking anything from this house, and I mean it. It’s bad enough that we’re trespassing here; I don’t want us to turn into thieves either.”
Emlyn seemed slightly taken aback by his outburst. “It’s just a bottle. No one is using it, anyway.”
“We shouldn’t do it,” Austin insisted.
I walked toward them when the scent of the perfume entered my nostrils. The déjà-vu feeling was back, a bolt of electricity shooting through me.
I had smelled the exact same scent before, no doubt about it.
“Austin is right,” I said, trying to focus on the present rather than take an
