With the book clutched tightly in his arms, the ebony entered the grand white building. The building was filled with shelves and books of all kinds, tables lining up neatly, chairs pushed in, and cubicles lined at the side, away from the center of the building. There weren't many people inside, only a handful of chairs and cubicles were taken. The building was quiet, even the group of friends occupying one of the tables were only talking in hushed whispers. All in all, the perfect place for him at the moment.
Walking over to one of the unoccupied cubicles, he pulled out the chair, placing the book on the desk carefully before taking a seat but instead of opening the book, he stared at it.
The old tattered book laid there on the desk innocently but to him, it could answer his questions, help him find out about this mysterious person, find out what's wrong with their bloodline. Would he like what he finds in the book? Why didn't his mom tell his dad about the contents of the notebook?
Taking a deep breath, he slumped on the chair, looking up at the ceiling. "What's with me? It's just a notebook, nothing wrong with that. People own notebooks, what makes this so different?" he tells himself before sighing and turning back to look at the book, lifting it.
"What didn't you tell us?" he asks as if the notebook could answer him. "Why didn't you tell dad?"
Shaking his head, he sighs once more, bracing himself before opening the notebook. As he opened the notebook, a piece of paper falls out and falls on his lap. Staring at it, he shakily picks it up.
A picture of his family, whole and alive, smiling brightly at the camera, wearing their costumes. He remembered that day, it was the day his birthday, the day he got his costume as his birthday gift from his parents.
The photo crinkles in his hand, his handshaking. He takes a deep breath and shakily lets it out before shaking his head slightly.
"Just a picture," he tells himself, trying to calm down but he looks at the photo once more, a frown on his face before inserting the photo back into the book. Before noticing the notebook was filled with scribbles and erasures. He frowns at this before flipping through all the pages. The book was filled with his mom's handwriting and even handwriting he couldn't recognize.
"What is this?" he whispers under his breath before going through what his uncle and father wrote.
There pasted on the pages of a book was a handwritten story but as Dick read through it he realizes that no, it was a fairy tale. A story about a traveler saving a beautiful goddess in the dark forest during his travels and as a reward the goddess rewarded the traveler with a gift. The travelers gained powers, far more powerful than any human could ever be. The traveler then became the hero of a village after slaying the witch that took over the town. There he met his beloved and where he settled down for the rest of his life.
The story didn't seem that interesting, just another fairy tail but what caught Dick's attention was how the sentences, words were encircled and underlined. Messy arrows littered around the notebook, connecting words to one another. There in his mother's handwriting was the large word at the side of the fairy tale— 'CURSED?'
The word made Dick frown, so his mother knew about what the mysterious man was talking about but why have a fairy tail stuck on the first page?
Flipping the first page, he saw notes, questions about the fairy tale. Who was the traveler? What happened to the goddess? Who was the goddess? How did the traveler slay the witch? Where is this town? And yet, as there were so many questions, there were no answers.
Frowning he skipped a couple more pages, all of the questions written by penmanships he couldn't recognize. Pictures and drawings of people encircled with question marks around it. Arrows connecting pictures and sentences together. The pictures were old, most of them black and white, some gray. The drawings were smudged with age, ink splatters here and there. Some of the pages of the book were older than the rest, some stuck on, placed in between pages. Who else owned this book? Who were the people in the picture?
As he skipped through the pages of the book, a certain page caught his attention. A ripped piece of paper, the same penmanship of that who wrote the fairy tale from the first page. It was a continuation Dick realized, skimming over the writing on the paper.
The traveler lived in the village for the rest of his life… as he was slain by the curse of the witch who cursed the traveler as her final words, the curse only making it long after her death. The curse was that the traveler and his family would never live in peace so long as their bloodline continues. The night the curse took place, the traveler was murdered in his own home, his wife finding his body in the morning. Frightened, she took her children and ran away in hopes that the curse would not follow her or her children. The traveler's wife traveled far away from the village but what no one expected was for her to be burned alive by one of her own children. It was then that people realized that the gift of the goddess passed through to the children of the traveler and it was the cost of the life of the traveler's wife did they find out about it.
It was the true ending of the fairy tale, the horrifying ending of the life of the traveler. The story of the curse that will continue throughout generations as long as their bloodline lives.