Dragon's Key--Complete

Chapter Three

The cellar door was in the kitchen where I had been only minutes before with Henry.  He was no longer there when I entered, but I looked at the door.  It was a thick, heavy door, meant to keep the temperature in the basement carefully controlled.  I didn't know much about wine, but I knew the cellar had been a serious thing for my grandfather.  He called it part of the family legacy and he hadn't been happy about the exploring I had done down there.

In the letter, I was told I should take chocolate, so just for the fun of it, I went to the cupboard over the fridge where I knew Henry hid the contraband.  He was a diabetic and wasn't supposed to eat sweets at all, but he had a stash of richly flavored European chocolate in this cupboard.  I got a step stool and climbed up, grabbing the first chocolate bar at my fingertips.  Replacing the stool, I gripped the keys in one hand, the chocolate in the other and took the few steps to the cellar door.

It only took a moment to make my way to the bottom of the stairs and I surveyed the large wine racks with a shake of my head.  Not all of it was wine, but I wasn't a drinker and so could not look on them with an informed eye.  What I did know was that some of these bottles had been here since the house was built.

I knew the door I sought was straight through from the stairs, on the opposite side of the cellar.  I navigated through the racks and glanced at some of the bottles as I walked through.  After the first rack, I stopped and blinked.  I looked again.  The entire rack was full of scotch.  Some were very, very old.  I knew wine wasn't something that continued to age and change once it was bottled, but scotch was one of those things that many people thought: the older the better.  The rack was full of bottles over a hundred years old.  I had a feeling that even a few of these bottles might be worth more than the house and all the lands.

The wine cellar was a fairly large room, likely nearly the entire basement and was carefully kept at a constant temperature and humidity.  I knew the room was kept somewhere around fifty to fifty-five degrees and I didn't like the cold.  I rubbed my hands up and down my arms as I stopped in front of the door that I sought.

Suddenly, I was nervous.  It almost felt that whatever happened when I opened this door, it would change my life.  Either I would be assured of a history of insanity in my family, or there were bigger and badder things in the world than I had ever imagined.  I unwrapped my arms from my body and looked again at the keys.

Some of these keys were quite old.  I turned them over in my hand, looking for something that appeared to match the steel door in front of me.  Back to the keys I went, sorting through everything that looked too simple, like your regular modern keys.  Those discarded, I tried one after the other until I found a heavy one that appeared as unique as the door.  It twisted easily in the lock and the handle depressed with the ease of regular oiling.  I swung the door wide, stepping back to allow it room to open out and then stepped sideways through the opening revealed.

What I saw initially confused me.  The room looked like the usual kitchen and living area combo you might find in an apartment, or as the British called it, a flat.  What was unusual was the location: behind the wine cellar in a very old house and secured by a fireproof steel door.

As I took several more steps inside, I noticed some unusual things about the room that made it different from the standard.  The kitchen was quite basic: tiny fridge as was common in Europe, a sink so small that I doubt it could handle regular use and a hot plate on the limited counter space instead of a full-size stove like I was used to in the states.

The thing that confused me most, however, was the sitting area.  There were a couple of antique high back chairs, and a rather worn soft.  What was strange about them was the placement.  Usually, you would find such things circled around a table, or around each other, facing inward.  In this case, the sofa faced a large set of windows in the wall while the chairs faced each other, to the side of the window.  There was a low table there, but it was not the focal point.  Everything seemed to be centered around the glass covered wall.