The Cinders of Dezu

23rd: The Red Room (2)

Raina had seen many doors like this in the castle. She had tried a lot of handles, some opened and she could wander and explore, while others were locked. She hadn't really been told to stay out of any particular room or area. The doors seemed to dictate this for her. This one seemed to have automatically locked. She didn't think the woman had enough time to have locked it behind her.

She looked around and spotted exactly what she had been looking for. Whenever she encountered doors like this, she wanted to know if her secret passageways could get her behind them. She just had to find a nearby earmark for a secret entrance. And there it was. At the edge of the hall way, very close, was a familiar misshaped indentation in the wood. Prince continued to balance on Raina's shoulder as she slipped down into the dark passageway under the floor.

Lighting was always interesting in the passages. It was always dark with just enough light streaming in from somewhere. It could be a part in the wood slats with light entering from a room to the side or above or even sometimes below. At night many of the rooms often had torches or lamps lighting them, so ultimately there was always just enough light to get around. It was like they were designed that way.

It quickly became clear the hallway was not going to take her where she wanted to go. Prince ran down her arm and scouted ahead, turning a corner that lead away from the direction she imagined the locked room would be. She huffed as she turned the corner after Prince and saw something move.
She froze. It was a ways down the corridor but something had definitely moved.

"H-Hello?" she whispered.

Silence.

"Hellooo," she said, a bit louder this time.

She couldn't be too loud. She didn't want anyone to find out she was in the walls.

"I can seeeeee you!" she said.

She couldn't. There wasn't anymore movement. No shapes. But she was pretty sure she saw something. She looked to Prince who was sniffing the air. She asked him through a short high squeak if he'd seen anything, though the question was much more simplified. Prince said nothing back and ventured farther. She followed him, confident in her small friend.

The corridor had stairs that went down a short ways followed by several turns. She approached a fork where she could head left or right. Prince took a left ahead of her and she looked in his direction as he scampered toward a soft light coming in from a room down the way. She looked right and saw... something. It was at the end of the hallway. The wall. Was it... painted? Maybe it was cracked. Really cracked. It looked like giant black splotches that expanded outwards toward the walls edges.

Raina walked forward. That couldn't be a crater, right? Wall damage would be the same color as the wall which was an off-white. Maybe the cracks weren't indentations at all. Was it raised? She kept stepping slowly towards it as her eyes kept trying to adjust and make it out in the dim light. The large black splotch trembled. A shiver went down her spine.

She watched as it shifted and animated like crayon scribbles on a toddlers piece of paper that had sprung to life. She could only glimpsed the shape of it for a moment. In a slinking motion it disappeared around the corner. Light from the hall had caught it for a split second. She could see the surface of it was a soot gray-black. The shape was made visible. An arm? An elbow, perhaps? Made, not of skin, but something wiry. Spindly.

Her breath caught in her throat. She turned around and started to sprint. Prince was on his hind legs again sniffing in her direction. When he saw the girl coming towards him, he turned and darted in the same direction. Raina pulled the root ball out from under her arm and held it in front of her as she ran. Her footfalls made the floor boards creak. She didn't care who heard her now. She was about to scream. Something was in her secret place. No one knew she was in here! She didn't even know how many people knew about the passages! How would they find her? Would she be caught in the walls forever? Would they even find her body?

She passed the light coming in through the slats in the hallway. She looked down at Prince running faster at her feet and saw the straight lines of the slats get interrupted by a square shadow before they turned into lines again. She passed it and saw the same shadow cast on her legs. A door! A side door! She almost slid to a stop and squeaked quickly at Prince before turning back around. She was terrified to look back down down the hall. She expected to see something chasing her. There wasn't. But she kept her eyes on the end of the hall where the thing had turned the corner just in case it came back.

She grabbed at the wall trying to find a way to open it. The secret doors on the side walls were tricky. They always had a latch on them, but they also were camouflaged, so you had to get your fingers into the wood indentation and figure out how the shape unfolded into a handle that you could turn and pull. She scrambled for it, looking over her shoulder again and again at the end of the hall.

With a click of the latch and a shove, Raina fell into the light, the root ball rolling from her hands and into the center of the room. The door opened upwards and destabilized something above her. Prince shot through the corner of the exit and jumped out of the way as something fell. Raina scrambled herself out and tucked her feet in so nothing could grab them. She slammed the door behind her and latched it shut.

Panting, she leaned back on her elbows and shimmied backwards from the door until she hit something on the floor.

"Ow!"

She turned around. She squinted at the light coming from the small window above. The room was small but tall. It had red walls that were covered in... pictures of black velvet? Portraits wrapped in black velvet?

She stood up. What was this room? She looked down and saw Prince sniffing the thing her elbow had just smacked. It was a portrait, face down on the floor. She must have knocked it down when she came in. She leaned over and picked it up. It was a little over half the length of her body but the frame wasn't too heavy. The black drape, slid from it and fell to the ground onto Prince, who squeaked. Raina pulled it off of him and put her hand out for him to climb up. He made his way to her shoulder as she flipped the frame around.

Raina's eyebrows furrowed. Her eyes slowly widened as she dropped the frame involuntarily. It scared Prince and he ran behind her neck before exiting to the other shoulder. She knelt down and picked the frame up again. She stared. She couldn't stop staring. It was enough that somehow, she forgot all about her fear in the passageways. She forgot, despite the fact that at that moment, inside the wall behind her, something slid past in the dimly lit corridor.