What Lies Beneath ▸ House of Anubis [1]

chapter twenty-four. house of scares

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            Just like Amber said, before school started the next morning we were met with the sight of the cameras being taken down (we did receive a rather creepy threat from Victor that he's still watching us when Amber, Nina, Patricia, and I came down the stairs this morning). But Trudy didn't come back yesterday; she'll be back with us by end of school today.

            "Guys, guys," Fabian whisper-shouts to four girls in Sibuna as we enter the hallway at school. We crowd around his locker, listening to what he has to say. "I woke up early this morning, and I went down under the stairs and found this."

            He opens up a leatherbound book and shows us the title page—"H.G Wells' The Time Machine?" Nina asks.

            I perk up. "Oh, I love that book!" Everyone looks at me strangely. "Yes, I read!"

            "Yeah, anyway, it's beleathered like it says in the clue," Fabian explains, handing the book over to me, "and it's about time travel, so it could be the only place where yesterday always follows tomorrow."

            "What did you find?" I inquire, opening the book up. "Oh, this looks like a first-edition. This is valuable... someone needs to take this book from me before I sell it or accidentally destroy it from reading it too many times."

            Fabian reaches forward and takes the book back. "Actually, nothing yet, but if it's in there, I will."

            Patricia lowers her voice as she says, "Amber wants to see the photo of Victor the ever-living."

            The photograph of Victor in 1925, aged not a day, has been kept in Fabian's possession the whole night. He looks around the hallway and hands it across to Amber, whose reaction is, "That is so creepy."

            "It gets creepier," Fabian says, which is something you never want to hear. He hands Patricia and Nina a photo and I look over to see it. Another snapshot of Victor, who looks exactly the same as he did in the 1920s. "There are two or three other ones, all from different years."

            "And that same Victor is on them all," Patricia says.

            "Do you think he's a ghost?" Amber asks. "Or, I don't know, a vampire?"

            "No, Amber, I do not. Although I do think it's confirmation of the existence of... an elixir of life."

            "Okay, so now we've got proof, can we go tell someone? Please, this is just getting too scary."

            Nina looks at us, agreeing, "We have got the photos to back it up."

            "Who do we show them to?" Amber questions.

            "It's not enough proof," Fabian counters. "Photos can be doctored."

            I sigh heavily. "He's right. We need more. Irrefutable proof that they can't possibly dismiss or get rid of."