Sometimes It's Even Darker

Chapter 9 - Spooks In The Attic

Tobi tries to sleep very vigilantly, but in the morning he drifts away to his dreams. He wakes up suddenly when he hears the creak of key locking him inside the house. He gets up and runs to the front doors in hurry, but they are closed, of course. He expected it but, however, he shouts out loud:
- Shit!
Then he approaches to the window and sees Aethernia walking down a path with her wooden trolley covered with tilt. When she disappears in a heart of the forest he cusses again and returns to his bedroom. „All right, all right”, he thinks „I must wait at least an hour. What if she forgot something? She would return and see me escaping, then she'd kill me with an axe. I have to pack the most important things and bide for the best moment.”
Tobi goes to the basement and finds a little backpack. He inserts a few bottles of water, a food that left from yesterday's dinner and some money inside („I will return everything with some nice bonuses”, he thinks, „but now I need it”). Then he sits on the bed and starts to wait.

***

Afer three hours Tobi is absolutely exhausted and even more frightened. He tried everything, but he's still stuck in Aethernia's house and the getaway gets more and more impossible. At first he tried to break glass in all windows in the whole house, as they were decisively shut. He tried for almost half an hour, but the windows seemed to be totally unbreakable. When he bruised his hands doing it he started to use poker, but it gave no effect at all. With a strong feeling of insecurity he tries to escape by the doors. Firstly he attempts to open the lock, then – to break it, but it's like made from titanium, so he strives to destroy the whole doors. It's all in vain.
Tobi have never felt more defenseless. His fear increases with every single second and he knows that if he lets it take control he will never escape from this prison, so he sits on the floor and tries to equalise his breath, to calm down. He succeeds and after a while he is calm and even a bit relaxed again. His mind is clear and his senses are fully awake.
- All right – he says, smiling – There must be another way out.
Full of new hope and motivation he looks at the doors for the last time, spits on them and turns away. Then he walks calmly to Aethernia's room.
It's opened. He didn't expect it, so he screams with a feeling of upcoming victory. He knows there's a ladder that leads not only to the bookshelf but to the trapdoor on the ceiling. There's an attic in Aethernia's house and there's also a tiny window in the attic. Tobi saw it from the porch a few times and he knows it's always opened.
Suddenly he hears the sound of thunder. The storm has come again, cruel and fierce. He can hear how the drops of rain tap gently, then more and more storngly on the tinny roof.
„My little drops of heaven”, he thinks. He reminds himself about his friend Ronnie Atkins and about the whole Avantasia. He misses them so hard. „Soon I'll be touring with them again.”
He climbs up, opens the trapdoor and tresspass the attic. It's stuffy, dusty and dingy, but the roof window is there, opened as he imagined. The water falls on the floor, leaks between boards and reaches Aethernia's room slowly, but Tobi doesn't care about it anymore.
He opens the window wider and the wall of rain hits his face. The sudden lightning dazzles him for a while, so he rubs his eyes and when he opens them, he sees lights in the attic. They are shining with the pastel colours, beautifully but a bit appalingly. Tobi freezes in awe. „Oh God”, he thinks „I see ghostlishts...!”
The lights have eyes, spectral eyes all over them and they are blinking formidably at him, making him stay in his place. The spectres are whispering silently something that Tobi can't even understand. When the first one permeates his body he feels sudden sadness and void. The lights comes out of him, shining far more intensively than before. Then they attack him. They all permeate him and taking something from the inside. Tobi can't fend himself while they are stealing his soul. He can't do anything but falling on his knees and screaming. The lights get more and more garish, their eyes capsize with pleasure, their whispers are eerie and extraterrestrial.
Tobi still screams when he falls down through the trapdoor.