The suitcase came out of no where and then the floor came faster. As body and concrete collided, Eliana looked back, the case was covered in a brown worn leather and there were chipped sections where the fabric underneath showed through. There were many places where the stitching was frayed and the gold clips were dull and darkened. Eliana sat up and rubbed the various parts that had been affected by the fall. She looked around, there were a few staggering people around but no one she could ask her burning questions to. Her first question was obvious, who leaves a suitcase in the middle of a pathway and her second question was, where was she? This questions was more easily answered than the first. Her first clue came to her senses, the sounds of water crashing softly against a solid wall with the smell of smoke and polluted salt water. Getting to her feet, she began to dust herself off and adjusted her scarf around herself once more. As she looked up, her last clue stood blatantly in front of her. Holy shit, I've found the Titanic, she thought and continued to stare at the vessels massive size. Wooden boards stood in front of her and ran over the platforms edge, bridging the gap to the ship's doors.
"Okay." Eliana said out loud to no one. "That's a ship and I'm at a dock." Her second questioned was answered. With a sense of accomplishment she turned around again to find someone, anyone who could answer her very last question, how did she get here?
Her Uncle's house had always smelled of burnt toast. It was something that was blatantly noticeable the second the door was opened. Eliana was her Uncle's carer and went to visit him every weekend. This Friday afternoon Eliana walked through the front door to find her Uncle sitting at his favourite spot at the kitchen table. She placed her bag on the chair next to him and began to remove her white coat. He had just taken a bite out of his black singed toast slice and immediately picked up his cup of tea to gulp it down. After taking in a gasp of air to clear his throat, he looked up at her.
"Hello darling! How are we doing today?" Eliana pushed out her regular chair and sat down hard. She braced her head with her hand as she could barely balance the weight of her day.
"Trying to digest all the terminology of the day." She leaned forward more, the information became too heavy for her to sit up straight. Her uncle chuckled as he sipped his tea again.
"You wanted to go to Veterinary school. Lord knows why, you don't even like animals."
"I may not like them, but they're still better than people" The weight overpowered her and she laid her head down flat on the table, her arms folded in front of her. The joke made her uncle laugh even louder. He grabbed the walker from his side. Slowly, he proceeded to push all of his weight upon it and was able to stand. His left calf was void of muscle after a horrible accident when he was younger. This left him disabled and in need of help since his wife had passed 5 years ago. As he made his way to the sink with the dishes on the walkers tray, his left leg was stiff and seemed to act like a pirate's pegged leg. He began to put the dishes in the sink, they clattered as they hit the steel bottom. Eliana sat up and looked over her shoulder.
"What are we needing help with this weekend, Uncle Oliver?" He maneuvered the walker to turn and face Eliana.
"The attic." He said as he used his finger to point over to the square shaped door in the ceiling above the living room. Although the house was just one story, her Uncle Oliver was still lucky enough to have an attic to store the families belongings. Slowly he made his way to the living room to instruct her further. Eliana dramatically rolled her upper body in a circular motion and landed flat once again on the table's surface. "Oh come now, I promise you it will be eventful."
Eliana got up and followed her uncle.
"Eventful? What, have you been keeping a sitcom up there?" They both chuckled at the joke and Eliana pulled down the handle to the attic door and slowly lowered the latter to enter.
"You know how I like to keep the family history intact. I've got a ton of old artifacts up there. Should make for investigating." Half way up the ladder now, Eliana turned back to her uncle who started to make himself comfortable in his trusty armchair, a good book sitting on the arm rest waiting for him.
"So I'm to spend my weekend organising, while you get to stay out of the dust?" He wiggled his bottom deeper in the chair as if to prove a point. Eliana silently laughed to herself and continued to travel the rest of the way into the attic.
Once she had reached the attic floor, she ducted to avoid a giant spider web. She decided that the fastest way to get through all this garbage was to go to the back wall and make her way forward. Uncle Oliver had told her many stories about her ancestors. His stories mostly evolved around the strange happenings of her grandfather. She knew at some point she'd reach her grandfather's trunk, something of legends.
Hours passed and multiple trash bags and been thrown to the floor below. Her uncle would cough in protest but Eliana would remind him how good it was to declutter, especially his odd collection of magazines from the 1950s. Suddenly Eliana reached the infamous trunk. Excitement flooded her body as she quickly began flipping the clips. The clips were completely rusted and flakes fell at the impatience of her finger tips. The trunk slowly let out a low and ominous growl as she lifted the top. The dust that erupted caused her to cough several times and she fanned a hand in front of her face. When everything settled the only noise that could be heard was the small roar of the television uncle Oliver wasn't watching. His snores melodically blended with the noise. Eliana's eyes quickly scanned the trunk's contents. Various old dusty books were stacked in no certain order. Papers and pictures lined the trunk's insides and Eliana's hand quivered as she reached to pull one off. The picture was of a group of children in black robes with a small emblem on the left breast. They all had their arms around each other, smiling as if someone had just blurted out a joke before the photo's final flash. Eliana smiled along with them. As she put the photo aside, she could have sworn she saw the people move out of the corner of her eye. Shaking her head of that ridiculous thought, she turned back to the trunk and her hands dived down again to pull out various books that baffled her…
"Uncle Oliver?" A faint 'yes' was heard above the sounds of laughter from some sitcom.
"Umm who is Bathilda Bagshot? I've never heard of her? Was she just a random author from England?" Uncle Oliver requested she bring the book down for him to examine. Eliana clambered down the ladder, the book in hand. Uncle Oliver took it and looked it over. He examined the cover with his hand, tracing the indented lettering with his fingers carefully. Turning the spine, he readjusted his specks on his nose as if he was focusing a microscope.
"A History of Magic." He read aloud. He chuckled once and sat quietly for a minute. The silence was just long enough to become slowly awkward. He looked up at her after a time and smiled. "Grandfather use to collect such obscure books. He used to tell me he study this at his boarding school in England. Ha. Can you imagine?"
"Studied what? Magic? A history of it? Like Houdini or something?" She began to thumb through the book's pages. Pictures and words blurred as the pages went from one side of it's binding to another.
"Couldn't tell you my dear. Father was somewhat of a strange one. Always seemed to be hiding something from your dad and I. Mother would never explain why sometimes odd things would happen with father. We just assumed he was a bit quirky. He was odd but he was a great father." Uncle Oliver's eyes could be seen scanning his memories. "There is always magic within us, he would say. Always wanted us to keep reaching for the impossible." She adjusted the weight of the book, back and forth in her hands. "My favourite however was that Fantastical Beasts book he had. If you find that one, make sure you set it aside and read it. Such imagination. I believe the author was a lizard of some kind." He laughed a little.
"A lizard wrote a book?"
"I believe the author's name is Newt something." Eliana rolled her eyes and proceeded back up the ladder.
Reaching into the trunk again she shuffled book after book looking for the title her Uncle had suggested. On top of a pile, sat the title Fantastical Beasts and Where to Find Them by Newt Scamander. She laughed silently to herself at the name of the author. She opened the book to the middle and began scanning the content. After a couple of sentences she closed it. She put the book down on her lap and looked over to the opened trunk. Her mind began to try and piece her grandfather's past together with the items she had found. What was a black halloween cauldron for? As she continued to stare at the trunk's contents, she noticed the edge of the trunk's lining was rolled in the middle. She leaned over the trunk's edge and pressed down on the corner. Her fingertips felt a crack behind the lining and quickly let go so that the corner rolled to its previous position. She looked closer and leaned in more, her torso practically inside the trunk. Curious, she peeled back the lining to find a cut out door. Slowly and carefully she tried to open the little door and eventually the door gave way as she pushed it sideways with her fingertips. White and thick cobwebs covered its contents but she bravely stuck her hand inside and pulled out an intricately detailed box. The box had a small handle and Eliana pulled it open slowly. Inside she found a necklace with two spheres surrounding an hour glass. She looked around her as if someone would pop out behind a box and bust her for having found something that her grandfather obviously wanted to keep hidden. After removing the necklace from the box, her fingers began to explore. As her fingers moved around the spheres, she noticed that they were both on an axis and could actually rotate around the hour glass. She smirked to herself and her hands delicately pinched the sides of the necklace. Just as she was about to give the spheres a spin, uncle Oliver broke her concentration.
"Eliana, come, let's make tea and continue this tomorrow." Without thinking Eliana quickly put the necklace in her back pocket and collected the Newt book. Before she left she shut the trunk and locked it.
After helping Uncle Oliver into bed for the night, Eliana flung herself onto her bed with a bag filled with her study material. Reaching down, she pulled out her Vet terminology book and opened it to where her notepad and pen was. A couple hours past and the vocabulary became ancient text that she kept trying to decipher. She could feel the bags under her eyes slowly pulling down on her face and she ran her thumb and pointer finger across them to try. As she removed her hands a gold glint caught her gaze. Turning towards the nightstand, the gold text of the old book caught the light and shimmered, beckoning Eliana to open it. It didn't take much convincing for her to stop studying and start reading something more entertaining. Shifting herself deeper into the bed's comfy paradise, she opened the book and began to read. The words filled her head and she starred intently at the contents. What was this book playing at? Werewolves? Mermaids? What the hell was a Billywig? Eliana never got to meet her grandfather and now more than ever she wish her Uncle's stories had some truth behind them, she wanted to know why he had such an obsession with magic. That's when she remembered the necklace and delved deep into her pocket and brought it out. It's chain was ridiculously long and she realised she could probably wrap it around her three times in order to make it a normal length. Placing the chain around her neck, she let her fingers drag across it's chain, feeling each and every notch. When her fingers reached the spheres, her fingertips immediately felt at home at their sides. Rubbing her fingertips back and forth she could feel the sphere longing to spin. Slowly she started to spin the spheres, something inside her wanted to see them spin as fast as they could go. Quickly, she snapped her fingers against the sphere's edges and watched as everything, including the necklace, began to blur.
Then she wasn't there anymore. The bed, the room, the house, nothing was the same and she found herself tripping over this suitcase, in the middle of a port, God knows when or where. This brought Eliana back to her first question. Who owns this suitcase?
Click.
Slowly and unsure of the noise, Eliana turned around and looked down at the suitcase. The clasp on the left side had become unhinged and was sticking upright like a flag pole. Kneeling down next to the case, she slowly pushed the clasp down again until she heard a firm click. After a beat, the clasp flung itself open again and the right side followed. All the blood from Eliana's face drained to her toes as the case began to open. As the cover began to fall to the ground, in what felt like slow motion, Eliana felt a strong tug. The sensation was as if she was falling and flying at the same time. Suddenly the port and ship had been left behind and Eliana was falling down a wooden ladder. She quickly stuck out her elbows to try and catch herself but instead she fell to the ground with a booming bodyslam.
"Ouch…" Eliana growned into the floor as she lay in her imprint on the wooden floor. All around her were the sounds of clattering glass and banging of metal buckets against each other. She slowly lifted her torso off the ground with her hands and began to cough and sputter from all the dust debris. Once she was sitting on her knees, she looked around at her surroundings. Shelves upon shelves covered the walls, each containing a row of glass bottles or metallic rusty buckets. Odd tools sat on the work benches on either side of her and she used the closest one to help her get on her feet. Books of weird looking recipes, plants and a black cauldron met her gaze as she started to walk. Reaching the end of the work bench immediately to her left was a door way. Eliana cautiously peeked her head out.
"Hello?" She called out. Eliana wasn't quite sure what to do in this instance, for surely if she encountered anyone inside a suitcase, she would instantly go insane. Hadn't she already gone insane? She was inside a suitcase, she fell inside a suitcase and was now walking around inside it. This suitcase had a shed in it. Was she high? Was she hallucinating? Had her uncle accidentally put one of his pills into her tea before bed? A million questions came to the front of her mind, so quickly and so intensely, that she almost didn't notice the sea monster lion creature passing by the door. As her vision came into view and the creature locked gazes with her, Eliana knew she was having one bad acid trip. Somehow, someway, someone had slipped acid into her system and now she was having a crazy episode. The sea lion's stance told Eliana she wasn't welcome and it began to slowly advance on her, never losing eye contact.
"WHAT. IN. THE. ACTUAL. HELL." Eliana drew a deep breath in after every word that fell from her lips. The animal started towards her slowly and patiently. Eliana knew exactly what behaviour it was mimicking and she quickly realised she was running out of space to retreat in the shed. As she continued to step back, her heel caught on the bottom of the ladder and she flung her hands back to balance herself against it. The sea lion thing was now in the door way and getting ready to pounce when suddenly that flying and falling notion struck Eliana. The image of the sea monster cub pouncing at her blurred, she could feel a hand grasp her shoulder and pull.
"Merlins' Beard where did you come from?!"
