For the next few days, I tried not to bring up the subject about
Orodreathin. The thought of me having to go there seemed to really upset
Luein and his mom. A few times, I asked them why the place was so
horrible, but then they would start crying all over again. After a while,
this started to really annoy me, and on the dinner of the third night I was
there, I decided I could not take it anymore. I stood up and cleared my
throat. Luein's mother seemed to know what was coming, and quickly ushered
Misty and Lenny out of the kitchen, then sat back down.
"I am tired of both of you breaking down in sobs every time I mention Orodreathin." I said to both of them with a stern voice.
"I have to go there, and watching you two cry is not going to stop me. If I do not get any help from either of you, then I will go out there alone, totally oblivious to the things that will be there. But if you help me, I might have a better chance to survive, considering the fact that you think I'm going to be blown to pieces the moment I step into it." I stopped, and looked intently at both of them. "Now will you help me or not?" Neither of them said anything, but looked at each other with sad faces.
"You are right," said Luein. "I was foolish to think I could stop you. And." he paused, and took a deep breath. "I am still coming with you." He finished, saying every word with much effort. His mother started wailing, and I looked at her without a smile.
"Now.Will you please tell me why this place is so bad?" I asked her, and she looked up at me with swollen eyes. Slowly, she nodded and wiped her tears with her sleeve.
"Orodreathin is a dreadful place." She started, and straitened up in her chair. "Your worst memories are all that fill your mind while you are there. Most people do not believe these tales, as there are also stories that Orodreathin was once a place of peace and prosperity." She said, and took a deep breath. "But a long time ago, something happened. No one knows for sure what it was, but whatever it is, it was bad enough to make the inhabitants there to go crazy. They started killing themselves off, and some people say this is because of the mournful thoughts that are left in there mind. That is why I am afraid for you, dear." She said to me, with the sparkling of tears in her eyes. "I do not want to see you come to the same fate as them. Any person who still believed Orodreathin was unchanged, and still a place of happiness went there, and never came back. Sometimes.we can still here the screams of the poor souls who are being tortured in their minds there." She finished, and shuddered.
"So.We need to go there to change that, and turn their souls of despair into souls of happiness once more." Luein said to me. "That is what we must do. And as you can see, that would take a miracle." I nodded in understanding, and sat back down in my chair, my mind now full of thoughts of the dreadful lives those poor people must be leading. "I guess I will be saving more than one village." I thought to myself, and found a couple of my own tears reaching my chin.
"That is so sad." I said aloud, and stood up. "We need to save these people as soon as we can. I can't bear to think about how terrible there lives must be." But Luein and his mother didn't say anything. They just hung their heads down low again.
"There is one more thing about them you should now, Jennifer." Luein said, his voice quieted down to a whisper. "They aren't people anymore. What I mean is after what happened to them, they sort of turned into an empty shell. On the outside, they might look like people, but on the inside, they are nothing."
"How do you know so much about them?" I asked, curious that he had so much information, but his mother answered instead.
"A while ago, one of them had escaped and wandered into our village." She said quietly. "Since our home is on the outskirts of the village, it was the first thing it came to." She stopped, as if not wanting to say anymore. "It wandered into our backyard, its clothes all greasy and holey." She started to cry again, and Luein walked over to comfort her. "I was in the kitchen so I didn't see it.b-but the girls were in the garden. And-And.They did see it." She finished, and broke into sobs.
"We heard the girls crying." Luein said, "And we rushed out back to see it coming towards them. But before we could get to them, it stopped, looked at us, and dropped dead on the ground.right at the girls' feet." I couldn't believe what I was hearing. It was no wonder Luein's sisters were shooed out of the room every time the subject was brought up. The scene must have horrified them.
"We didn't tell anybody on the village. We didn't want to start a commotion about it. There were enough rumors as it was, so we took the body and buried it deep in the forest where nobody would find it." He finished.
"Oh. I-I'm so sorry." I said. I really wasn't sure what to say to something like that. "Well, just think of it this way. Luein and I are going to help these beings, so there won't be a problem anymore, and they will have good lives again. Think about that." I said, hoping to cheer them up. And to my surprise, it did. Luein's mother got up, and wiped her eyes again. She put her arms around me in a hug, and talked to me through muffled sobs.
"That's right. You go and help those poor people, and when you come back, I want to see bright faces behind you!" She said.
"Don't worry." I said to her, "You will."
The next few of days were spent packing and preparing for the trip. I noticed Luein's skin becoming considerably whiter every morning, as if he was living some sort of nightmare endlessly, but I didn't say anything. The final night finally came, and we were all situated around the table, eating our last meal before we were to leave. Luein's mother kept dabbing her eyes with her napkin, and his sisters eyes stayed down at their plates. I had a feeling they knew something was going to happen, but didn't say anything because they knew they weren't supposed to know. The rest of the meal went by without a word said, and I was starting to feel a little tense. I helped clean up the dishes, and hurried off to my room after words. The very last thing I wanted was to mention our trip and to have Luein's mom cry all over herself, especially in front of her daughters. I walked over to my bed and turned off the lamp by the nightstand, and crawled into the covers. For a while I just laid their, staring at the ceiling and thinking about the next task. I had to admit, from the stories Luein and his mom said about Orodreathin, the thought of going there scared me a little. I started imagining horrid things, like what they looked like, and the evil things they did to each other. I tried to shake them from my mind, but it was becoming harder and harder to concentrate on what I was doing. Before I could fully erase the thoughts from my mind, slept over came me and the image of a crude looking person flickered before my eyes a last time.
"I thought I told you to be careful with it! You know its going to brake! Its not made of stone you know!" I heard the voices saying, and I crept closer to the light coming from around the corner. A large painting on the wall across me caught my eye for a second, but then the voices had started again, so I looked back toward light around the corner.
"I know it's not made of stone! I'm being careful with it!" The other voice said, and I came even closer.
"Shhh!! You're being too loud! The first voice said, bringing his tone to a dull whisper. "Someone will hear us if we're too noisy. If we mess this up, oh, I don't want to even think about it."
"Yea, your right Amras. L-"
"Shhh!!!!! Don't say his name! What if someone's listening?" Amras interrupted, then suddenly they grew quiet. I walked a little closer, now extremely eager to what they were talking about. I knew I shouldn't have, they might have heard me, but they resumed their conversation without hearing my footsteps.
"I'll just set it right here on the stand, and we can go get the stuff, ok?" The second voice said, and I heard the sound of glass chinking on stone.
"No! We can't leave it hear! Some one might come and take it!" Amras said. This thing was obviously very important to them, and now I wanted to know what it was more then ever. They continued arguing, and I walked until I was right on the edge of the corner, just feet away from them. I nudged my shoulder on the wall to position my neck to look around, but suddenly the voices stopped.
"Did you hear that, Amras? I think I heard something." The second voice said. Then, they said something to each other I could not understand, and I heard them walk out of the hallway to another corridor. Now was my chance, and I took a step out from behind the wall. But to my surprise, Amras and the other guy were standing there right in front of me, both with smirks on their face.
"Well well well, look what we have here." Amras said, and pulled a sword from his belt.
"Yes. It looks like we have a little spy, listening to every word we say." The second guy said. "You know what we do to such pests?" He continued, and drew his own sword. They both looked at each other, and smiled.
"We exterminate them." They said together, and held there swords up in the air. With a swishing noise, they brought their swords down right on to my head, and I heard myself scream.
I woke up and sat up with a start, and felt sweat running down my face and back. I was in bed, still in Luein's home. Moonlight was spilling through the curtains into the room, so that a little light danced across the floor. But what was in my mind was not that two strangers had almost just killed me, but what was sitting on that stone table between them. It was my weather ball.
I kept repeating the dream over and over again. They had my weatherball, Amras and that other guy. They mentioned something about getting into a lot of trouble if they were heard or found. "Then that must mean that they weren't in a safe place if they couldn't talk freely." I said to myself, and crawled back under the covers. It was still dark outside, but the light from the early morning was slowly making its way into my room. I did my best to remember everything they had said, and the memory of something crept into my mind. "The hallway they were in". I said to myself. "That hallway. I've seen it somewhere before." I racked my brain for the connection I was looking for. I just knew I had been there before. It seemed so familiar. "But when do I go lurking around in hallways?" I said again to myself. And then a thought occurred to me. "Castles. Castles." I thought, and sat back up in bed.
"Castles! That's it! That hallway was in a castle!" I said aloud, surprised at how long it had taken me to realize this. "That-That painting on the wall when I first entered the hallway." I continued again. And then I remembered, "When I first entered that hallway. The very first time I entered that hallway."
"I was in Lord Daeloneil's Castle! And the hallway! That was the same painting of Nerwen!" I sat there, staring at the wall in my room, amazed at what I had just discovered. My weather ball was in Lord Daeloneil's Castle. And I was all the across the mountain. "But." Said a little voice inside me, "It was only a dream. You have no idea if it was real or not." I didn't want to think that. I liked the fact that I had seen it, and knew it was in a safe area. "No wonder they were so worried, hiding out in Daeloneil's castle. They probably worried they would get caught by all the guards." I said, trying to reassure myself. "But again." That little voice continued, "What in the world were they doing in there in the first place?" I didn't like this question, and that was because I didn't have a realistic answer for it. I had no idea what they were doing there. "But they had almost said someone's name, remember?" The voice said again, and I thought back to what it was that they had said. They were afraid of being caught, or breaking the weather ball, and of what there boss would do to them if they did.
"It sounded like they were almost afraid of there leader." I said aloud, and tried to remember what they called him. "They said L- something." I remembered, and troed to think of all the people I knew that names started with L. "Well that's easy." I thought, "There's Luein."
"Luein isn't a part of any of this. He hasn't given me any reason not to trust him." I said, and then remembered how he protested going to Orodreathin. "Maybe he was part of all this, and didn't want me going any further in my journey. Or, he's just keeping tabs on me, and staying close to watch me, to make sure I don't get too close to his plans." I finished, and then shook my head. "That's a bunch of nonsense. I don't know what I'm thinking." I thought. "Well, the only other person who it could be that you know of is Lord Daeloneil." Said the little voice.
"No! It can't be him. Why would it be him?" I asked the voice. "Because for one, they are in his castle." It said, and I pondered this. It was true, and that would mean that he was their leader. That was probable. Daeloneil had enough power to have a secrete resistance to his kingdom.
"But it's not true." I said, and shut my eyes to block the images of Daeloneil being behind it all. I decided it wasn't true, and I wasn't going to believe it. "It was just a silly dream." I thought, and let myself fall back into my pillows.
And if I hadn't been so absorbed in the dream I had, I would have noticed the light spilling through my window. But I fell asleep, only to be woken up minutes later by a sobbing mother.
"L-Lets g-get up n-now." I heard Luein's mother say through a mouthful of sobs. "C`mon, time to get moving." She repeated, and opened my window. I tried to fall back asleep, and not notice she was there, but I knew too that Luein and I should get an early start. His mother walked out of the room and closed the door for my privacy while I started getting dressed. The events of the night started to creep back into my mind, and I couldn't help but think about them. I decided not to share my dream, or my thoughts about the fact that Daeloneil might be betraying me. I didn't need to bother Luein with anything more.
I finished dressing, and packed up my sack with my belongings. I had almost forgotten how light it was, and expecting it to be heavy, I accidentally flung it too hard over my shoulder and it hit the mirror off the dresser. I bent down to pick it up, but as I was reaching for it, my eyes caught something wedged in between the wall and the back of the dresser. My hand reached for it, but then I stopped. I looked down into the mirror now laying on the floor, and when I saw it in made me gasp. It was my weather ball! " "But how could that be?" I said to myself, and looked onto the crack in between the dresser and wall. "How is that possible? How could it fit back there? There's no room!" I thought again, and looked back into the mirror. There it was, just sitting in there as if the dresar had suddenely moved out 5 inches from the wall. I looked at the thing that was wedged in the wall and the dresser that had caught my eye the first time. It defiantly wasn't my weather ball, and I searched and felt all along the crack, feeling for it. It wasn't there. But the mirror still showed it as clear as day. I looked down again at the wedged object. I tried pulling at it, but it wouldn't budge. It felt like something metal, it was cold between my fingers. It wasn't that big either. In fact, if I hadn't been deliberately looking at, I wouldn't have seen it at all. I tugged at it some more, this time with a little more force, and it came out, throwing me backwards a little. I looked at it, and saw that it was an old key with strange markings on it. I looked at the mirror again, but this time, instead of my weather ball, it showed a key hole. A key hole behind the dresser. A key hole that this key would fit into, by the looks of it. I looked into the crack in the wall and dresser again, but didn't see anything. I got up, and looked at the dresser, looking at the place where the mirror was previously. I didn't see anything, and went around, inspecting the other side. I decided to move the dresser away from the wall, to see if I could see anything. With some effort, I was able to push out of the way, but not with out making a lot of noise on the wooden floor.
"Dear! Are you alright in there?" I could hear Luein's mother ask.
"Yes! I'm fine! I just hit the nightstand!" I yelled back, now aware to be more quiet. I turned back to the wall and saw the key hole there, just as the mirror had showed. I took a deep breath, and put the key into the hole and turned it. I heard a "Click" and slowly, as if like magic, a door melted into the wall where the dresser once was. A doorknob appeared, and my hand reached for it slowly. My fingers itched for it, I could feel them getting closer.closer.And then, suddenly, I heard my name. Like someone from far away was calling me. The closer my fingers got to the knob, the louder it got. I tried to block it out, but I couldn't. I turned my attention back to the knob, and felt my fingers close around it. But as soon as I touched it, the door burst open with Luein's mother.
"JENNIFER!" I heard someone scream, and then before I could do anything, the whole room went wavy, and something jerked me from behind and everything went black.
"I am tired of both of you breaking down in sobs every time I mention Orodreathin." I said to both of them with a stern voice.
"I have to go there, and watching you two cry is not going to stop me. If I do not get any help from either of you, then I will go out there alone, totally oblivious to the things that will be there. But if you help me, I might have a better chance to survive, considering the fact that you think I'm going to be blown to pieces the moment I step into it." I stopped, and looked intently at both of them. "Now will you help me or not?" Neither of them said anything, but looked at each other with sad faces.
"You are right," said Luein. "I was foolish to think I could stop you. And." he paused, and took a deep breath. "I am still coming with you." He finished, saying every word with much effort. His mother started wailing, and I looked at her without a smile.
"Now.Will you please tell me why this place is so bad?" I asked her, and she looked up at me with swollen eyes. Slowly, she nodded and wiped her tears with her sleeve.
"Orodreathin is a dreadful place." She started, and straitened up in her chair. "Your worst memories are all that fill your mind while you are there. Most people do not believe these tales, as there are also stories that Orodreathin was once a place of peace and prosperity." She said, and took a deep breath. "But a long time ago, something happened. No one knows for sure what it was, but whatever it is, it was bad enough to make the inhabitants there to go crazy. They started killing themselves off, and some people say this is because of the mournful thoughts that are left in there mind. That is why I am afraid for you, dear." She said to me, with the sparkling of tears in her eyes. "I do not want to see you come to the same fate as them. Any person who still believed Orodreathin was unchanged, and still a place of happiness went there, and never came back. Sometimes.we can still here the screams of the poor souls who are being tortured in their minds there." She finished, and shuddered.
"So.We need to go there to change that, and turn their souls of despair into souls of happiness once more." Luein said to me. "That is what we must do. And as you can see, that would take a miracle." I nodded in understanding, and sat back down in my chair, my mind now full of thoughts of the dreadful lives those poor people must be leading. "I guess I will be saving more than one village." I thought to myself, and found a couple of my own tears reaching my chin.
"That is so sad." I said aloud, and stood up. "We need to save these people as soon as we can. I can't bear to think about how terrible there lives must be." But Luein and his mother didn't say anything. They just hung their heads down low again.
"There is one more thing about them you should now, Jennifer." Luein said, his voice quieted down to a whisper. "They aren't people anymore. What I mean is after what happened to them, they sort of turned into an empty shell. On the outside, they might look like people, but on the inside, they are nothing."
"How do you know so much about them?" I asked, curious that he had so much information, but his mother answered instead.
"A while ago, one of them had escaped and wandered into our village." She said quietly. "Since our home is on the outskirts of the village, it was the first thing it came to." She stopped, as if not wanting to say anymore. "It wandered into our backyard, its clothes all greasy and holey." She started to cry again, and Luein walked over to comfort her. "I was in the kitchen so I didn't see it.b-but the girls were in the garden. And-And.They did see it." She finished, and broke into sobs.
"We heard the girls crying." Luein said, "And we rushed out back to see it coming towards them. But before we could get to them, it stopped, looked at us, and dropped dead on the ground.right at the girls' feet." I couldn't believe what I was hearing. It was no wonder Luein's sisters were shooed out of the room every time the subject was brought up. The scene must have horrified them.
"We didn't tell anybody on the village. We didn't want to start a commotion about it. There were enough rumors as it was, so we took the body and buried it deep in the forest where nobody would find it." He finished.
"Oh. I-I'm so sorry." I said. I really wasn't sure what to say to something like that. "Well, just think of it this way. Luein and I are going to help these beings, so there won't be a problem anymore, and they will have good lives again. Think about that." I said, hoping to cheer them up. And to my surprise, it did. Luein's mother got up, and wiped her eyes again. She put her arms around me in a hug, and talked to me through muffled sobs.
"That's right. You go and help those poor people, and when you come back, I want to see bright faces behind you!" She said.
"Don't worry." I said to her, "You will."
The next few of days were spent packing and preparing for the trip. I noticed Luein's skin becoming considerably whiter every morning, as if he was living some sort of nightmare endlessly, but I didn't say anything. The final night finally came, and we were all situated around the table, eating our last meal before we were to leave. Luein's mother kept dabbing her eyes with her napkin, and his sisters eyes stayed down at their plates. I had a feeling they knew something was going to happen, but didn't say anything because they knew they weren't supposed to know. The rest of the meal went by without a word said, and I was starting to feel a little tense. I helped clean up the dishes, and hurried off to my room after words. The very last thing I wanted was to mention our trip and to have Luein's mom cry all over herself, especially in front of her daughters. I walked over to my bed and turned off the lamp by the nightstand, and crawled into the covers. For a while I just laid their, staring at the ceiling and thinking about the next task. I had to admit, from the stories Luein and his mom said about Orodreathin, the thought of going there scared me a little. I started imagining horrid things, like what they looked like, and the evil things they did to each other. I tried to shake them from my mind, but it was becoming harder and harder to concentrate on what I was doing. Before I could fully erase the thoughts from my mind, slept over came me and the image of a crude looking person flickered before my eyes a last time.
"I thought I told you to be careful with it! You know its going to brake! Its not made of stone you know!" I heard the voices saying, and I crept closer to the light coming from around the corner. A large painting on the wall across me caught my eye for a second, but then the voices had started again, so I looked back toward light around the corner.
"I know it's not made of stone! I'm being careful with it!" The other voice said, and I came even closer.
"Shhh!! You're being too loud! The first voice said, bringing his tone to a dull whisper. "Someone will hear us if we're too noisy. If we mess this up, oh, I don't want to even think about it."
"Yea, your right Amras. L-"
"Shhh!!!!! Don't say his name! What if someone's listening?" Amras interrupted, then suddenly they grew quiet. I walked a little closer, now extremely eager to what they were talking about. I knew I shouldn't have, they might have heard me, but they resumed their conversation without hearing my footsteps.
"I'll just set it right here on the stand, and we can go get the stuff, ok?" The second voice said, and I heard the sound of glass chinking on stone.
"No! We can't leave it hear! Some one might come and take it!" Amras said. This thing was obviously very important to them, and now I wanted to know what it was more then ever. They continued arguing, and I walked until I was right on the edge of the corner, just feet away from them. I nudged my shoulder on the wall to position my neck to look around, but suddenly the voices stopped.
"Did you hear that, Amras? I think I heard something." The second voice said. Then, they said something to each other I could not understand, and I heard them walk out of the hallway to another corridor. Now was my chance, and I took a step out from behind the wall. But to my surprise, Amras and the other guy were standing there right in front of me, both with smirks on their face.
"Well well well, look what we have here." Amras said, and pulled a sword from his belt.
"Yes. It looks like we have a little spy, listening to every word we say." The second guy said. "You know what we do to such pests?" He continued, and drew his own sword. They both looked at each other, and smiled.
"We exterminate them." They said together, and held there swords up in the air. With a swishing noise, they brought their swords down right on to my head, and I heard myself scream.
I woke up and sat up with a start, and felt sweat running down my face and back. I was in bed, still in Luein's home. Moonlight was spilling through the curtains into the room, so that a little light danced across the floor. But what was in my mind was not that two strangers had almost just killed me, but what was sitting on that stone table between them. It was my weather ball.
I kept repeating the dream over and over again. They had my weatherball, Amras and that other guy. They mentioned something about getting into a lot of trouble if they were heard or found. "Then that must mean that they weren't in a safe place if they couldn't talk freely." I said to myself, and crawled back under the covers. It was still dark outside, but the light from the early morning was slowly making its way into my room. I did my best to remember everything they had said, and the memory of something crept into my mind. "The hallway they were in". I said to myself. "That hallway. I've seen it somewhere before." I racked my brain for the connection I was looking for. I just knew I had been there before. It seemed so familiar. "But when do I go lurking around in hallways?" I said again to myself. And then a thought occurred to me. "Castles. Castles." I thought, and sat back up in bed.
"Castles! That's it! That hallway was in a castle!" I said aloud, surprised at how long it had taken me to realize this. "That-That painting on the wall when I first entered the hallway." I continued again. And then I remembered, "When I first entered that hallway. The very first time I entered that hallway."
"I was in Lord Daeloneil's Castle! And the hallway! That was the same painting of Nerwen!" I sat there, staring at the wall in my room, amazed at what I had just discovered. My weather ball was in Lord Daeloneil's Castle. And I was all the across the mountain. "But." Said a little voice inside me, "It was only a dream. You have no idea if it was real or not." I didn't want to think that. I liked the fact that I had seen it, and knew it was in a safe area. "No wonder they were so worried, hiding out in Daeloneil's castle. They probably worried they would get caught by all the guards." I said, trying to reassure myself. "But again." That little voice continued, "What in the world were they doing in there in the first place?" I didn't like this question, and that was because I didn't have a realistic answer for it. I had no idea what they were doing there. "But they had almost said someone's name, remember?" The voice said again, and I thought back to what it was that they had said. They were afraid of being caught, or breaking the weather ball, and of what there boss would do to them if they did.
"It sounded like they were almost afraid of there leader." I said aloud, and tried to remember what they called him. "They said L- something." I remembered, and troed to think of all the people I knew that names started with L. "Well that's easy." I thought, "There's Luein."
"Luein isn't a part of any of this. He hasn't given me any reason not to trust him." I said, and then remembered how he protested going to Orodreathin. "Maybe he was part of all this, and didn't want me going any further in my journey. Or, he's just keeping tabs on me, and staying close to watch me, to make sure I don't get too close to his plans." I finished, and then shook my head. "That's a bunch of nonsense. I don't know what I'm thinking." I thought. "Well, the only other person who it could be that you know of is Lord Daeloneil." Said the little voice.
"No! It can't be him. Why would it be him?" I asked the voice. "Because for one, they are in his castle." It said, and I pondered this. It was true, and that would mean that he was their leader. That was probable. Daeloneil had enough power to have a secrete resistance to his kingdom.
"But it's not true." I said, and shut my eyes to block the images of Daeloneil being behind it all. I decided it wasn't true, and I wasn't going to believe it. "It was just a silly dream." I thought, and let myself fall back into my pillows.
And if I hadn't been so absorbed in the dream I had, I would have noticed the light spilling through my window. But I fell asleep, only to be woken up minutes later by a sobbing mother.
"L-Lets g-get up n-now." I heard Luein's mother say through a mouthful of sobs. "C`mon, time to get moving." She repeated, and opened my window. I tried to fall back asleep, and not notice she was there, but I knew too that Luein and I should get an early start. His mother walked out of the room and closed the door for my privacy while I started getting dressed. The events of the night started to creep back into my mind, and I couldn't help but think about them. I decided not to share my dream, or my thoughts about the fact that Daeloneil might be betraying me. I didn't need to bother Luein with anything more.
I finished dressing, and packed up my sack with my belongings. I had almost forgotten how light it was, and expecting it to be heavy, I accidentally flung it too hard over my shoulder and it hit the mirror off the dresser. I bent down to pick it up, but as I was reaching for it, my eyes caught something wedged in between the wall and the back of the dresser. My hand reached for it, but then I stopped. I looked down into the mirror now laying on the floor, and when I saw it in made me gasp. It was my weather ball! " "But how could that be?" I said to myself, and looked onto the crack in between the dresser and wall. "How is that possible? How could it fit back there? There's no room!" I thought again, and looked back into the mirror. There it was, just sitting in there as if the dresar had suddenely moved out 5 inches from the wall. I looked at the thing that was wedged in the wall and the dresser that had caught my eye the first time. It defiantly wasn't my weather ball, and I searched and felt all along the crack, feeling for it. It wasn't there. But the mirror still showed it as clear as day. I looked down again at the wedged object. I tried pulling at it, but it wouldn't budge. It felt like something metal, it was cold between my fingers. It wasn't that big either. In fact, if I hadn't been deliberately looking at, I wouldn't have seen it at all. I tugged at it some more, this time with a little more force, and it came out, throwing me backwards a little. I looked at it, and saw that it was an old key with strange markings on it. I looked at the mirror again, but this time, instead of my weather ball, it showed a key hole. A key hole behind the dresser. A key hole that this key would fit into, by the looks of it. I looked into the crack in the wall and dresser again, but didn't see anything. I got up, and looked at the dresser, looking at the place where the mirror was previously. I didn't see anything, and went around, inspecting the other side. I decided to move the dresser away from the wall, to see if I could see anything. With some effort, I was able to push out of the way, but not with out making a lot of noise on the wooden floor.
"Dear! Are you alright in there?" I could hear Luein's mother ask.
"Yes! I'm fine! I just hit the nightstand!" I yelled back, now aware to be more quiet. I turned back to the wall and saw the key hole there, just as the mirror had showed. I took a deep breath, and put the key into the hole and turned it. I heard a "Click" and slowly, as if like magic, a door melted into the wall where the dresser once was. A doorknob appeared, and my hand reached for it slowly. My fingers itched for it, I could feel them getting closer.closer.And then, suddenly, I heard my name. Like someone from far away was calling me. The closer my fingers got to the knob, the louder it got. I tried to block it out, but I couldn't. I turned my attention back to the knob, and felt my fingers close around it. But as soon as I touched it, the door burst open with Luein's mother.
"JENNIFER!" I heard someone scream, and then before I could do anything, the whole room went wavy, and something jerked me from behind and everything went black.