Fabian's Wisp

The Encounter

"I should've known," she whispered, dropping her bags to the floor.

She'd never know what happened to her brother. She'd never know any thing about his time here. He had promised he would stay in this room. But the bed, the wardrobe, and window, it was all untouched. She could see a picturesque scene of the forests outside, the faint rays of morning sunlight, a light breeze passing through the trees. Life seemed so beautiful outside, ignorant of the constant repeat of a year that the outside world had moved on from long ago. A year that was only known by books and stories, paintings and music. To her it was just as fictional as a fantastical world with dragons and goblins. 

Perhaps he had stayed in another room. 

"He must have stayed somewhere else," she whispered, composing herself, picking up her bags again.

As she turned around to exit the room, she shivered, the hair on the back of her neck pricking up. 

What was this place?

Ophelia dropped her bags at the entrance of the door, quickly making her way to the next door beside the one she had just left. It was the same as the one her brother had told her he would stay in. Empty and uninhabited. How could this be? Over a hundred people had been there before her, and there weren't a hundred bedrooms in the house. Ophelia's heart had started pounding loudly, and she could feel her palms getting sweaty. She was stuck here. She was stuck all alone in this horrible house, this silent, dead, house. She was stuck in 1834. 

She ran to each door, there were a couple dozen rooms, and each one was bare and empty just like the first. They had almost the exact same layout and there was no sign of anyone having ever lived there. It seemed as if the last person to have stepped into these rooms was some maid from 1834. She had probably made the bed, swept the floor...and closed the door without another thought of it never being stepped by her again.

Tears sprung to her eyes as she slowly walked back to her bags on the floor, in front of the door her brother said was going to be his room. This couldn't be. What awful enchantment had been placed on this house? There must be some sign of her brother, of any of the people that had been Caretakers before her. 

There was still the library.

Dropping her bags in the first room, she closed the door and quickly ran down the stairs, the wet fabric of her dress brushing against her uncomfortably. In the middle of the main room was a long hallway, which led to the library. She had known this for a long time, and she had been afraid of the library. The Curators had informed her that it was a dangerous place, a place that needed to be sealed away from the world. 

She didn't care about that. She just wanted to find her brother, some trace of her brother.

As she ran down the hallway, she saw paintings on both sides of her, and windows which showed the snow covered ground outside of the house. The hallway seemed so long to her, like an endless tunnel, as she ran down its length. 

When she reached the end of the tunnel, she was facing a large wooden door. She reached towards the handle, then stopped herself.

Could this library be the place where they all died? If she entered, would she die within her first day of being there? 

"You won't die. I know that's what you are thinking. That's what they all think," a voice was speaking from behind the door.

Ophelia yelped at this, jumping back. A human voice, or what sounded like one, was the last thing she was expecting to be inside the library. The hair on the back of her neck stood up as the person behind the door addressed her again.