Courtney was still staring at the door, a wistful, dreamy look on her face.
"Earth to Court," said Myrriah, waving a hand in front of Courtney's face.
"Wha'?" Courtney mumbled, snapping out of her daze.
"What do you mean, 'wha'?' You got it bad for him." Myrriah grinned and playfully nudged Courtney.
"I do not." Courtney fidgeted with the edges of the rose petals. "Okay, well, he's kind of cute, I'll admit that. I've always had a thing for geeky guys."
"Can't get much geekier," said Myrriah. She smiled. But Courtney noticed it was a weak, sad smile that clearly said, "If we weren't dead…" and then could be followed by a number of phrases like, "You could ask that guy out." She smiled like that quite often.
"Well," she continued after she felt that the growing silence was becoming awkward, "where to?"
Courtney thought about it for a moment. "I want to explore the place for a little bit. I'm sure there's plenty of rooms we haven't seen yet."
"Sounds cool. Where do we start?"
"I was thinking that we could," Courtney faltered for a moment, "uh, split up and search the house that way. I'll check this side of the house." She pointed to her right. "You take that side." She pointed to her left. "We'll meet back here in about, say, two hours."
"I'll see you then."
After putting her rose in a vase in the conservatory, Courtney ran to Madam Leota's room. It was nearly pitch black, save for the green light coming from the crystal ball. She happened to wander in right in the middle of a séance. A tambourine, a horn, a harp, a drum, and for some reason a stool, were floating near the ceiling.
"Harpies and ghoulies, old friends and new, blow on a horn, so we know that it's you!" Madam Leota was answered with a quick toot from the horn. "Horn toads and spiders, Piddle and Strum, please answer the roll by beating the drum!"
"Excuse me," said Courtney as something tapped the drum above her head. "Madam Cleo?"
Madam Leota exhaled sharply through clenched teeth. "It's Madam Leota! Le-o-ta! Not Cleo!" She cleared her throat, and then said sweetly, "What can I do for you, child? I sense a lot of turmoil in your aura, dear."
"Well, I've been thinking about what you said, and I'd like to help you. But only if you really can bring me and Myrriah back to life."
"Of course I can. I just have to be released from this accursed prison first. In order to do that, you have to read a spell for me. It's written in a title less book that's in the library. Get that and come back here."
"That's it?" She started to walk out.
"I almost forgot. When you find it, you must say the magic incantation. Cla-tu, vera-tu, nik-to." As Courtney turned to walk away, Madam Leota started laughing. "I'm just joking about the incantation thing, kid."
Courtney stared at her blankly.
"Just-just get the stupid book."
Courtney had been wandering around for nearly fifteen minutes, searching for the library. She opened a random door in the hallway. "Is this the library?" A shrill, earsplitting scream was her only response. "Guess not."
She walked back into the conservatory and plopped down on a large box covered in flowers. "How can a library be so hard to find?"
"Yer lookin' for the book depository, kid?" asked a muffled, raspy voice.
"Who said that?"
"I did. In the coffin."
Courtney jumped up and looked at the long box for a moment. "Oh, I didn't even realize that was a casket. Hello, and yeah, I'm looking for the library. Where is it?"
"Hmm," said the voice thoughtfully. "You know, I haven't been to the library in a loooong time." The coffin lid creaked open a couple of inches and two bony hands snaked out and grasped the lid. They pushed up slightly, but couldn't force the lid up any further. "Dagnabit! These dern nails! Back in my day we had proper coffins, coffins that would open easily if a corpse needed to get out. I had suggested that they put an easy-open lid on my coffin, just in case I was buried alive, but nooo! 'We'll know when you're good and dead,' they said. Well they didn't! And now I'm stuck like this!"
"I'm very sorry for you, sir," said Courtney. "But I really need to know where the library is."
"Oh, right, the library. You know, I haven't been to the library in a looooong time. Back in my day, libraries used to be called Readin' Rooms. But sometimes we called them Book Buildings. Now, me and my friends used to go to the Readin' Room every day after school, but we wouldn't read because back then you had to pay a penny to read a book, and a penny was hard to come by. But pennies weren't called pennies back then, they were called grainbacks because they had a picture of grain on one side. So, we would have to pay a grainback if we wanted to read a book. What was I talking about? Oh, yeah, after school me and my friends would go to the library. But we called it the Readin' Room…"
Courtney turned around and walked away.
Meanwhile, Myrriah was exploring a hallway. She peered at the purple wallpaper that had leering goblin like faces that seemed to stare back at her. She continued on, passing rooms containing creatures that pounded furiously on the doors and twisted the handles and snarled ferociously.
Myrriah stopped in front of a door that seemed to be breathing. It was bulging out as if it was about to burst at any second. She watched it curiously for a moment. Then she picked up the bronze doorknocker and lightly knocked.
The door stopped moving and a throaty voice asked cautiously, "Who's there?"
"Boo."
"Boo who?"
"I know you're stuck in there, but you don't have to cry about it." She walked away.
"Everybody's a comedian," the voice grumbled.
"If this isn't it," said Courtney as she walked through a set of huge doors, "I'm just going to-" She stopped. She had found it. She whistled. "That is a lot of books."
The library was an enormous room. Three of its walls were covered with towering bookshelves crammed full of books of all shapes and sizes. Several stern looking busts were perched on the shelves, peering down at Courtney with snooty contempt. As she walked further into the room, the busts turned and watched her, glaring at her as if they expected her to steal something.
A couple of dust coated rocking chairs rocked back and forth slowly. A lamp gave off very little light, but just enough to read the titles on the spines of the books. A ladder moved across the shelves as whoever was on it shuffled books about.
"All right," said Courtney with determination. "I've got to find a book with no title." She looked over the hundreds of tomes. "Right, shouldn't be too difficult."
A/N: The "Cla-tu, vera-tu, nik-to" bit is my homage to one of my favorite movies Army of Darkness. The guy in the coffin is another homage, this time to Grandpa Simpson. The chapter title is a line from a Simpsons Treehouse of Horror episode.