+ Enter the Secret Passageway +
...
"Have you started with the assignment yet, Ruby?" Ivy said, half-smiling as she sat at an empty chair.
It was another one of those chummy conversations she'd try on me.
"You're not thinking of not submitting one in, are you?" she blinked, ogling her eyes and batting her lashes for some reason I do not dare understand.
Sigh.
"I'm reading. Aren't I?"
Try as I might, Ivy wouldn't leave me alone unless she got something out of me. That was just how she was. Then again, this is just how I am.
"Mrs. de Vera did give us three months to complete it. I guess I'll start as soon as the third month kicks in. But you seem interested with it. That's new~"
Again. Please lay off the 'chumminess'...
"It's just a journal I found at the underground section." I said, flipping another page.
"Underground sectio~n!?"
A librarian walked towards us, her heels making more noise than what was permissible, and raised a warning finger at Ivy and me.
"You actually went there?" she whispered.
To explain my friend's reaction, let me begin by saying that she usually overreacts with almost everything. The underground library section, included.
It was well known that Saint Maria's Academy held the largest collection of books in the capital. We even have an underground section full of books and who-knows-what, sort of journals stocked up under the entire area where the main building and the chapel are erected, ever since the foundation of both the school and the country.
No one ever went there though. It's a free for all, no admittance fee, but since the dingy part of school also had a dingy - otherwise - creepy story that lurked in its shadows...No one just had the courage to go and venture down it, I guess.
It was properly termed as the SMA (Saint Maria's Academy) Archives, or The Archives, for short. Though it's free for all, etc. it's been rumored that not even the school guards or the principal himself knew the exact way in. It's been years since anyone tried to recall about it or find it.
I did.
It was after school yesterday. The rain had started to pour and I had just gotten over carrying my umbrella everywhere with me. The clock ticked till 6 pm and still, it kept on pouring. The afternoon sky lounged into a mix of grey and orange as I watched from the window. The time went by ever so slowly...I started pacing through the hallway, and decided to catch up with my reading. It was a book I got for sale, entitled "Deadly Harvest" by Heather Graham.
I was reading it while walking towards the other end of the hallway where I was sure to find the stairs leading to the back entrance of the building. But to my surprise I had found the long coveted secret passage towards The Archives.
It's funny how things always turn up while you're blindly walking with a book stuck on your face.
The other end of that hallway housed the life-sized portrait of Don Juan Meluna - the topic of our history assignment. He was looking melodically heroic as he docked the Sta. Maria at the shores of the first of the three islands.
Two long tapestries, from ceiling to floor, hung on each side. On the right was a dim shade of yellow light.
Weird.
BINABASA MO ANG
Blood Ink (The Archives Book I): Editing
Vampir"Two deaths that happened in the distant past were revealed to me. Now there was a recent murder within the school that I had to witness for myself. And when I fled to a new found friend (though I wanted to be more than that) for comfort, he tells m...
