“What were you ordering for everyone else?” Aaiden asks obviously interested.
“Sub sandwiches from the sandwich shop down in town. Is it any good? I’ve never eaten there, but I figured I would support local places and all that.” She smiles. I love her heart. She really does enjoy this small-town living.
“They do,” Aaiden tells her. “And they make a mean meatball sub.” He wiggles his eyebrows at her.
Aunt Irene laughs. “Alrighty then.” She pulls out her phone from her pocket and types it in. “Anyone else?”
“I’ll take a meatball too,” Blythe says.
“Yeah, that sounds fine,” Fiona tells her.
“I guess I’ll try that or turkey,” I say. I’m pretty sure the girls just didn’t feel comfortable asking for anything else.
“Okay, got it. I have a few of the workers running into town for us. They’ll be back when it’s all ready.”
A man bustles up to Aunt Irene. “Ms. Kelly, we had some questions about whether you wanted off-white or eggshell on the old servant’s staircase and the second library.”
“Oh, no. I wanted eggshell in the stairway and soft yellow in the library.”
“Okay, someone must have written it down wrong. And what about the carpet in the main library? Were you wanting that removed? Your son is currently in there and we didn’t want to ask him to vacate unless we had to.”
“I...” She turns to me. “I should probably take care of this. Are you guys okay to look around yourselves?”
“Sure. Didn’t Ezzie go to his friend’s house?”
“No, they cancelled.” She pouts her perfectly angelic lips. “So he’s off playing his game in the main library.”
I nod. “The big room, that’s what we called it.” I remember my mother sending me there to play when she had to talk to Uncle Eugene. “Violet, go to the big room and play with your ponies while Uncle and I talk.” We called it that because it was much more than a library.
“Ooh, the big room. I like that. I’ll put that on the blueprints.” Irene nods.
“Maybe we can start there then, or my uncle’s office. I seem to remember playing in the office when I was smaller; it would be nice to see it again,” I say, giving a sideways glance to my friends. If he was hiding a book, it would be in either the libraries or his office. Probably the office.
“That might be a problem, hun.” She points up to the closed double doors at the top of the stairs. “You see, there have been a few doors we have been unable to open. Your uncle’s office is said to be there, but we can’t find the key. And some of these doors aren’t on the blueprints at all. It’s like a mystery! I decided to leave them closed until after the other renovations are finished. Then I’m going to find the best way to crack open their secrets.” Her eyes light up. This is why she’s been so excited about renovating this house. It’s a challenge and a fun mystery for her. My shut-in uncle isn’t just interesting to the town of Concrete, but to my own family.
“That’s okay. We can start in the libraries. Go take care of your paint chips.” I laugh at her glee.
She swats me on the nose with the rolled-up blueprints. “They’re your paint chips, my love, I’m just here to help.”
I roll my eyes. “Our paint chips. What’s mine is yours.”
“Okay, fine, ours.” She kisses me on the forehead before running off with her paint guy.
I turn to my friends opening my arms. “Alright, mushy family stuff over, let’s find that book.”
As we head to the big room, Aaiden announces, “Has anyone ever told you your aunt is a babe? Did she like wear bikinis in California?”
I take a deep breath. “You know, I thought we would focus on the magical book instead of my aunt in a bikini.”
“Go right ahead, I can multitask.” He grins at me.
AFTER TOO MANY HOURS and a couple meals, we have gone through most of the books in the big room. Even Ezzie got bored of his video game, and like his mother he loves a good mystery, so he decided to help us. He doesn’t understand why we are looking for a book, but he’s game anyway. The library is expansive. Half of our rental house could probably fit inside this one room. There are stories upon stories of books and two twisted staircases leading to a bridge and a second floor. Aaiden is checking the higher shelves with Fiona. Aaiden believes if you have the ability to fly you would hide a book higher up. Blythe, Ezzie, and I are checking the lower and mid shelves. We cannot seem to find the thick tome we are searching for. I only saw it at night. Fiona told us what to look for; books of all shapes and sizes line the shelves. I’m unsure of the exact system my uncle used, but it looks like a mishmash cacophony of nonsense.
“I don’t think it’s here,” I say finally sitting down next to a pile of thick dusty tomes.
“I hate to say you’re right, but I haven’t worked this hard in a while and I’m tired,” Aaiden says.
“Don’t you have a job four days a week?” I ask him.
“Three days a week,” he says jumping down off the ladder, “They cut me back a shift, I’m not sure why.”
“Maybe it’s because you hang out with a bunch of girls,” Ezra says. He closes a book and starts tossing it up in the air.
“Hey!” Blythe protests.
“No, no, he’s probably right. Never forget, kid, girls have cooties and everything they say is a trap.” Aaiden fist bumps my cousin who grins widely back at the giant.
“We are never going to find it at this rate. We should have just gone to Madame Leticia,” Fiona says. “I have a shift tomorrow, maybe she can give me some insight on how she found it in the first place.”
“That is a good point,” I say; I do wonder how it got from my uncle to her.
A loud crash causes me to jump.
“Sorry!” Ezra exclaims, “I was just catching the book and it slipped.”
On the floor is the book Ezra was throwing up and catching. Inside of it the pages are cut out and a white envelope fills the space.
“Does that say what I think it does?” Blythe asks the room.
“It says my name,” I say. Written across the front of the envelope is my name.
“I knew this place was haunted,” Blythe squeaks.
“Our house is haunted? Cool!” Ezra smiles.
“Oh kid,” I start to deny it, but I stop. I guess being haunted could mean a few things. Maybe it’s not just ghosts that haunt things. Picking up the envelope I can feel something heavy inside. I open it and almost drop the envelope immediately. I pull out a heavy iron key. A key I’ve seen before. It’s the same one from the room of doors I imagined at the cemetery, the horned gargoyle at the top. I get the feeling all of the doors that wouldn’t open will now.
What else will it open?
I was right, the key worked. Inside my uncle’s office looks like it hasn’t been touched in a few years at least. A fine coat of dust covers everything. Paintings hang on the walls. There’s a large container in the corner with rolled up papers looking similar to Irene’s blueprints. Chairs packed with books are littered around the room. An oak desk takes stage in the center of the room. A green wingback chair sitting at an angle just waiting for Eugene to sit back down and continue on what he was working on in his final days. On the far back wall is a locked shelf, it looks like a cage attached to the wall, with knickknacks sitting on it. A hand written sign saying “Do not open” sits just inside the cage.