Guardians of the Diamond Book One: The Rose

Chapter Three

We stepped into the passageway, ready to discover its secrets. I turned on the flashlight I had retrieved from under my bed earlier and tried not to shine the light on the coffin for Ashley's sake. I was unsuccessful.

"Is that a coffin?" Ashley asked with her nails digging into Matt's arm. She then gulped loudly before continuing with, "A vampire's coffin?"

"No, Ashley," Matt replied as he rolled his eyes and detached her hand from his arm. "What's with you and all this talk of vampires lately?" He looked to the right corner of the passageway where the casket was placed. "But, wait a second... is that a coffin? What is it doing down here?" He paused before asking, "There's not anyone in there, right?"

Jessica and I looked at each other. I raised my eyebrows and cocked my head. She shrugged and gave me a half smile.

I looked to my other two siblings. "No dead bodies," I said quickly. "But, it might actually belong to a vampire. How's that for something fun? Yay." I grimaced.

"WHAT?!" Ashley shouted before bursting into tears. She sat on the ground as she sobbed and heaved.

Matt knelt down beside her and rubbed her back gently. I sighed and waited for her to calm down. This happened a lot when she got scared or just overly stimulated, as Gilda put it.

When her loud wailing finally turned into a quiet sob, I explained, "Jessica and I found a nameplate inside of the coffin that said 'Property of R. K. Rose.' And we found this inside of the coffin." I pulled the ID from my pocket and handed it to Matt. "It's the same man─or vampire, I guess─that was at our door last night."

"Well," Matt started slowly, trying─and failing─to keep his annoyance with me under wraps, "how exactly does this prove he's a vampire to you? Maybe he's saving the coffin for what he wants to be buried in. I'm sure plenty of people do that. And the ID, well, it's an ID. Everyone has an ID. There's nothing weird about that. And anyways, can we go back to my question of what the hell a coffin doing in our basement?"

"Language, Mathew," Jessica scolded for Ashley's sake. "And technically the coffin is behind our basement, not in it."

I shook my head. "I don't know what going on, Matt. It's just... I get this feeling that something isn't right. And a vampire seems like an obvious choice to pin the not right feeling on."

Matt ran his fingers through his hair. "Okay, well, let's just look through this thing," he said, gesturing to the passageway. "I just want to know what it leads to." He took a step forward before turning back to look at me. "Oh and by the way, vampires aren't real."

Figuring I had no concrete evidence to prove my theory at that moment in time, I kept quiet.

Matt led the way as we explored the passageway with our flashlights guiding our path. Jessica had to basically pull Ashley behind us, but after about a minute of protesting, she silenced and walked next to Matt with her arms crossed and a sour look on her face.

We came across a couple of plain, dark brown, wooden doors but, sadly, they were locked and we could not get them to open, despite my insistent banging on them. We gave up and kept walking.

I studied the passageway as we moved. Someone put a lot of effort into creating it. The floor, ceiling, and walls consisted purely of cement. There were carvings that semi-resembled hieroglyphics at the tops of the walls, but none like I'd ever seen before. Lanterns glowing a strange green light lined the walls. I didn't bother questioning who was keeping up with their maintenance.