The House

Chapter 14 - Day 2: Hunting the Key

The only disturbance I can clearly detect in the library is the sound of a clock ticking away, completely out of sync with all the other tick-ings going on in the house. 

Not another one! 

I am pretty sure that I did not hear it tick when I was in this room last night, but I cannot bet my life on it. I really hope I won't be required to. The dust is also not quite as thick as I remember it.

I scan the dusky room and spot the culprit on the desk near the window. It is a beautiful clock apparently cast in gold. Two carved towers support the round face, and a round pendulum hangs beneath the face. According to the clock, it is now two in the afternoon. According to my phone, it is only 11:43. The clock doesn't look like the kind that will be doing any bong-ings or dong-ings... I hope...

I cross to the desk and search through the clutter on the surface. Among some very old books in languages I cannot even begin to read are many ornaments and writing implements, and yellowed paper. There's even a quill and a dried-up inkwell - pretty - but no keys. 

I pull open the drawers, and amazingly none of them is locked or stuck, but none of them contains anything relevant either. One drawer yields a pile of old envelopes tied with a faded ribbon and a couple of worn sepia and white photographs. The images are grainy and damaged by age.

One is a portrait of a lovely young woman with huge doe-like eyes and softly curling hair escaping from a roll behind her head.

In another photograph, a group of sailors are posing next to a very old-fashioned ship. I cannot make out much of any of the photographs, not in the poor light, so I replace them in the drawer and turn to find another place to search.

There are no footprints disturbing the dust on the stairs leading down to the library section. Unless there is another way into the library, I didn't go in there last night. The display cases in the study are all locked, and their windows are too covered with grime for me to make out much of their content. 

They could be collections of some kind. I think I can make out the shapes of medals in one of them. None of the vases or bowls that decorate a couple of surfaces yields any keys. They do yield plenty of spiders and dead bugs, though.

"This is hopeless."

The room is filled with many valuable and beautiful items, but I'm not interested or awed right now. I just want to find that frigging key and clear up this mystery once and for all before I go completely insane. The dust is starting to get to me. I'm feeling grimy and am constantly fighting to suppress sneezes that might be powerful enough to launch me into orbit should they escape.

Closing the study door, I cross the landing to my bedroom. I need a shower and clean clothes... and a quick brain transplant because my current brain is not working very well. Won't my bedroom be the most logical place for me to hide stuff, whether conscious or unconscious?

Seriously?!

I greet the statue man guarding my door, his sad eyes searching for his love at the other end of the hallway. It's becoming a habit of mine. I try not to think about it and enter my room. The contents of the vanity drawers have not changed at all. They still contain only my hair implements and accessories. None of the vases and bowls in this room are hiding the key either.

I pull open the drawer of the little table beside my bed, and all I can see are the key to my bedroom door, my wallet, my Bible and my cell phone charger. Seeing the charger reminds me that my phone requires charging. I try to take it out, but it is stuck in the cramped space between the Bible and the front edge of the drawer. 

The Bible won't budge when I try to move it back. When I placed it in the drawer last night, it shifted to the back quite easily. I have to pull out the entire drawer to be able to remove the book so that I can get the charger.

Wedged into the drawer, behind the Bible, is a scuffed velvet pouch. One day, long, long ago, it might have been a dark purplish hue, but now it is faded and grey with old age. I do not remember the bag being in this drawer before. 

I would've noticed it because it was forcing the Bible to the front. I lift it out and hear a faint clinking sound and some rattles. I've heard this sound before, coming from the glued Matryoshka doll!

I've found the treasure... right next to my frigging bed!

I drop the bag on the nightstand because I need to fight the rising panic before I can do anything else. Up until this moment, I was still holding onto the hope that everything about me sleep-walking and operating on dolls were just a dream, imagination, or coincidence. Lying here on the table is proof. Now that I have it, I suddenly realise that I don't really want proof. 

What I'd wanted was for all of it to be debunked.

So, you're a sleepwalker who does weird shit while on your journey. Sounds like a good start to a how-to-deal-with-your-mental-disorder book. I don't want to open the bag. Seriously, if the pouch is not in the cellar, then why the hell did I go down there and where the hell is the key? Perhaps I really did walk through a locked door. 

I can hope... 

The string is quite knotted. Apparently, I didn't try to open it in my sleep. Now that would've been helpful. Grinding my teeth, I pluck and strain and hurt my nails until I finally feel part of the knot give. It takes some more effort, but the cord keeping the pouch closed is, at last, letting go.

I open the bag and up-end it on my bed. Startled, I jump to my feet, ready to dodge the mouse landing among the items. It must be dead because it is not trying to escape; in fact, it is simply lying where it fell.

It's not a mouse; it's a short braid of hair, looped and tied with a piece of lace. I've become seriously jumpy in the last 24 hours.

The braid is made up of hair from more than one person. One contributor had glossy brown hair; the other's was almost black. The braid, two intricately engraved rings, a rather heavy, smooth stone with some writing carved into it and a tarnished locket on a chain.

A treasure indeed, and it is giving me an almost overwhelming urge to cry. I scoop the items up and drop them back into the bag. I'm going to replace the pouch in the doll, glue it shut and go home. 

I'm done.

I'm done with being a weirdo, and I'm done constantly being attacked by emotions I do not understand. Well... I'm at least done with being more of a weirdo than usual.

I rise from the bed, pouch in hand and march out of the bedroom, pausing for a second next to the half-moon table; my eyes are automatically drawn to the lonely man perched there.

"Oh, bloody hell!"

I grab the statue, and with purpose in my step, I cover the length of the first floor.

"There you go! Happy now!" I snap, planting the man next to his lady on the opposite half-moon table. Not quite satisfied with their reunion, I set the pouch down and angle first the man and then the woman so that they can gaze into each other's eyes for all eternity. 

The woman tinkles slightly when I move her.

I frown and pick her up. Yes, she's definitely making a sound when she's moved. Turning her upside down reveals a plugged hole under her feet. She'd been broken and patched. The porcelain forming a lid over the hole comes off easily, and with the hole unblocked, out slips...

A key!

"Please tell me I didn't break the statue!"

I didn't break the statue; the scar is yellowed, and the material used to patch it is crumbling due to age and too many removals. I'm so relieved!

I hold the key in the palm of my hand. None of this is feeling familiar. Did I stash the key in the statue? From the size and look of it, it probably is the key to the basement. I don't want it to be the key to the basement.

I don't want to go into the cellar!

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