THE END

Chapter 10

"A star becomes a sun, under the pressure of darkness."

                -M.R Noble.

The room we enter is empty and through an archway I can see the next room is also empty. But it's surprisingly clean.

"A few months after the war, we moved the furnishings in the destroyed houses to the church and theatre where most people preferred to stay, then we cleaned the houses up." Greg says behind me. I didn't realise he had followed us.

"All the furniture?" Dad asks.
"The ones that were still in one piece were put to use and the others were burnt. We didn't touch the basements though. Most of them had impractical furnishings that were hard to move, so we left them alone."

Dad nods slowly as he leads us further into the house. We enter what must have once been a family room and right at the corner are the stairs that go down, leading to the basement.

"A couple of hours after that witch was done attacking us, just before the rainstorm started there was a sudden blast of light and we lost all electricity." Greg says when dad hesitates at the top of the stairs. "Luckily, we had some oil lamps kept, in case we ever lost electricity like some other towns did in the aftermath of the war. Here."

He hands dad one of the lamps in his hand. They were probably the ones he had in his place. He holds on to the other one.

The basement smells musty and is filled with dust and cobwebs. The lamp does little to illuminate the area but I can make out that this was once some type of entertainment room. There's a pool table gathering dust in the middle of the room, it was larger than I always pictured from the books I read. There's a chess board placed on a table in the corner. That table and a large loveseat are the only furniture in here.

A large flat screen TV is mounted on the wall. On either side of the TV are tall glass shelves. Some artworks are tucked away in the dust coated glass shelves, probably to protect it. Below the artworks are some big books.

Something draws my attention, and pulls me towards the shelves. Unconsciously, my body moves forward, my brain sloshing around in my head, my senses a little woozy. Before I know what I'm doing I've pulled open one of the shelves' glass doors.

"Bee, wait!" Dad calls out but it's too late.

The hinges protest loudly and then fall down to the ground loudly. I jump back in barely enough time to avoid it falling on me. The sound of glass shattering is deafening in the otherwise quiet room.

The hinges of the shelf had probably rusted over the past decades. Dad clears his throat as he steps forward with the lamp in his hand "Are you okay?"

I nod distractedly, one of the books had caught my attention. Glass crunches under my feet as I walk closer and pick it up. The book is surprisingly light. I run a hand over the thick leather cover, a coat of dust smearing my palm.

A loud humming starts in my ears as I flip the book open. A bright, warm light explodes from the book temporarily blinding me. A prickling sensation starts off on my right wrist and slowly escalates into a painful vibration. As my wrist goes numb the book slips from my hand and hits the floor with a thud. The light goes out, the basement going dark, as the book closes when it hits the ground.

"Holy shit, what was that?!" Greg shouts somewhere behind me.

My wrist itches so badly and as I lift it up to scratch it some strange symbols slowly etch itself on my skin. I've never seen the symbols before in my life but I can somehow understand what they mean.