Disclaimer: I don't own any characters blah blah blah owned by Anthony Horowitz blah blah blah don't sue me.
Summary: Some rules are meant to be followed. Others were made to be broken. John decided the rule of not writing about his ordeals was one of the latter. Years later, Alex finds a notebook in the attic and decides he needs to know what it means. His decision changes a lot.
Slight AU (Alternative Universe), characters acting slightly OOC (Out Of Character).
'Cause you're a Natural
Chapter 2
Boxes. Who goes to such trouble hiding an attic, only for it to contain boxes?
To be fair, maybe the dust needed to be hidden, lest it give away family secrets.
The first few contained old clothes Alex had long grown out of but had too much sentimental value to get rid of, with more boxes filled with toys he used to play with. A cord hung beside a lightbulb that, when pulled, only gave enough light to ensure the boxes were no longer a tripping hazard. The old plastic Christmas tree was in the middle and, tucked away in a corner covered in dust inches thick, he could make out a box smaller than a computer monitor.
Alex picked his way across the attic and crouched beside the container. It looked like a plain wooden jewellery box with a metal buckle clasp. When he prised the lid open (the hinges were seized due to the amount of rust), there wasn't much to be seen.
An old phone with a charger, what seems to be a business card and a notebook. Once Alex confirmed the phone was dead, he stuffed it and the charger into his pocket to charge in his bedroom. He looked at the card. It was worn at the edges, with finger marks and written in a language he didn't understand. He didn't call the number at the bottom (it could be for anyone). Leaving it to one side for a minute, he opened the notebook and was disappointed when he saw it was written in the same language as the card. He realised a few things after he had flicked through the notebook.
It was handwritten over a long time frame (if the varying lengths and legibility of the writing and the different ink colours were anything to go by). Most of the pages began with "дневник" (1). Copying the word onto his hand (2), Alex put the box back the way it had been and decided to use the half-day he had tomorrow to ask the students of a nearby college. Hopefully, Jack would drive him home after.
Mind made up, he descended the ladder, making a point of turning the hook back the way it had been, before hiding in his bedroom.
"I already looked there," Jack declared when she found him a few minutes later.
"You mustn't have looked hard enough," he responded with a shrug.
She didn't seem convinced but dropped the subject. He would have asked Jack if she knew what language the word was written in, but he was confident she wouldn't know. Even if she did, questions would be asked that he didn't know the answer to. It would be easier to find out on his own.
(A.N:
(1) Correct according to Google Translate.
(2) This is something I do when there is no paper nearby.)