Chapter 14
CONNER
As soon as the wall shuts, I’m plunged into darkness. There’s not even a hint of light coming from around the door.
It shakes slightly. I hear Reynold yelling at me through it. Then silence.
Huh. He gives up that easily? Maybe he thinks he succeeded in making me disappear. I get to my feet, thinking that maybe he has.
As I’m brushing myself off, a flame comes to life. I snap my head in that direction in time to see a long row of them leading down the hall flicker to life one at a time. Behind me, they do the same.
Only, it’s not a narrow wall I’ve fallen into. It’s a wide corridor; both sides are lined with bookshelves filled with books. They’re covered in dust and cobwebs. The carpet running along the floor in front of and behind me is dingy and old, but beneath the thick layer of dust, it’s rich in color.
What is this place?
I examine both directions before looking at the place where I fell through the wall, only… I don’t see any indication of where that door might be.
“Okay,” I murmur and turn toward the hall. This is clearly a place people used. Obviously not for quite some time, but still. It’s not some dank, hollow wall. It’s a hall, and it leads somewhere. At one end, I should find my way out.
Since both directions look the same, I choose one at random and start walking.
My footsteps leave impressions in the dust. Spiders scurry away from the torches.
I stop in front of one long enough to determine that the fire is certainly real.
It’s not some electric flame. I can feel the heat. See the soot and smoke.
I glance behind me, noting how much of a fire hazard this is. All these books. And they light all by themselves? My eyes trace the hole in the spiderweb and note that they clearly haven’t been lit in a long time.
Motion-activated fire torches?
Upon closer inspection, I see the mechanism under the fire. Like a torch. Uh… a modern torch. There’s so much clutter of books and loose papers that if there are motion detectors in here, I can’t see them.
Not that it matters. Locating them isn’t going to lead me out. I’m sure that more portions of these bookcases open and will dump me into another room in the castle, but how do you find them? What did I hit on the last that opened the wall?
Maybe it wasn’t how hard I hit it, but that the latch wasn’t completely closed. I hit it hard enough that it was dislodged the rest of the way.
How long had it been slightly ajar, and no one knew because no one was thrown into it or thought to push on it? Does anyone know this place exists?
I follow the hall, noting that the floor is sloped downward. Downward. The air gets colder as it goes. The corridor of books turns and then… ends abruptly with a solid wall of books.
Frowning, I look up and find a very large mask painted on the wall in the curved section above the ornate wood of the shelves.
“It means something more than membership in the club,” I say.
This isn’t a carving. It’s a painting. The builder likely didn’t put this here, but the owners. The people who commissioned it.
I stare at it for a long time, which is probably why I notice one thing different in this one than any of the others I’ve seen. It has pupils, and they’re looking in a specific direction.
Shifting, I try to follow the angle and stare at a section of the bookshelf. Is there something here? I examine the angle the eyes are looking at for several minutes before I begin poking around the bookshelf.
Is it as cliché as pulling a book forward? Is there a hidden button behind the trim? Is there a specific carving hidden here that I push like a button?
Ew, it’s so damn dirty! Ugh. Someone could dust this place once in a while. How long has it been since someone found this hall? Has it been forgotten?
I’m not sure what I hit since I’m literally poking, pulling, and shoving everything all at once, but the wall beside me clicks and slides forward slightly. A cool breeze comes from between the books. I stare, heart racing.
Adventures like these should be explored with at least one other person. Who knows what I’m going to find?
Taking a breath of dusty air, I grip the shelf and pull it toward me far enough that I can peer inside. It’d be cool as fuck if I popped out of the wall in the dining room or some shit.
That’s not what I see, though. It’s a large, empty room with filtered sunlight trickling in from somewhere overhead. I glance behind me down the hall and determine that I might not find another door before I die in there, so I’m going to need to move forward.
It’s empty of people, so I pull the wall open and step through. I have half a mind not to let it close behind me in case I need to go back the way I came and check out where the other end leads. But I step too far away from the door, and it swings closed before I can stop it.
The wall literally swallows it whole. There’s no sign of the door within the stone. However, I’m now staring at a portrait on the wall of a man. I don’t recognize him, but I do recognize the Longwood U crest on his lapel and the DIK pin on his opposite.
“What the fuck is this?” I whisper to no one.
I study his face, trying to determine if I recognize him. Have I seen his portrait in DIK? There’s a room filled with portraits of our alumni. Hundreds. Thousands. I can’t possibly recognize them all.
Stepping away, I find the room filled with portraits. One hanging on each curved wall. How many curved walls are there? Ten? Twelve?
The high ceiling is held up with tall pillars, but I’m distracted by the next portrait because he, too, is an LU and DIK alum.
Liam said that the Dark Island Boat Club is largely made up of DIK alumni. He said that. But what is this place? This can’t be part of the boat club, can it? If not, then what is it? What does it mean?
I follow the wall, and the next one isn’t from LU, but they’re still of the DIK brotherhood.
Once I’ve made a full circuit of the room, noting that there’s one corridor that leads out of the room, but who knows how many bits of all open to other hidden passages, I turn toward the center of the room and nearly feel giddy as I see what’s on the floor.
How could I have been so distracted by pictures of old men when an enormous mosaic of the mask is tiled into the floor?
Around the plain mask are the words ‘Society of the No Face.’
“I knew it meant something!” I say, grinning. Fuck yeah.
The question now is whether all these kids know that the mask means something bigger than just a club insignia littered throughout the house?
I’m inclined to believe that they know it exists. They’re part of it. Didn’t Jude liken it to Fight Club? You don’t talk about it. If you shouted its existence to the stars, it wouldn’t be a secret society.
I crouch down to get a better look in the dim light.
The mosaic is clearly old, constructed of little, tiny pieces of tile.
Half an inch by half an inch at most. It’s beautiful.
It needs some cleaning, of course. Like the hall and the portraits covered in dust, but I bet these tiles are vibrant if they’d get a good cleaning.
Do I tell them it’s here?
Getting to my feet, I freeze when a scream echoes off the stone walls. My body turns cold. My heart races, the fear so potent that my ears feel plugged for a minute. I stare down the one way out and debate whether I’m brave enough to explore the direction the scream came from.
In reality, I don’t have a choice. It appears that there’s only one way out of this room, so I head for the single corridor.
It’s dark, and this time, as I step into the shadows, the lights don’t magically turn on.
Knowing that the hall is probably covered in dust and grime and whatever, I trail my fingers along it so I don’t miss an opening or miss a turn and run smack into a wall.
As soon as I’m engulfed in darkness, a hint of light appears ahead.
Keeping my eyes glued to it in case it vanishes, I hurry forward.
The light never grows in size, but it gets slightly brighter.
When I reach the door, it’s an obvious door with a strange film over it.
A film I can see through, though the view is murky.
There’s a shape on it.
“I’m in a weird spy novel,” I mutter when I realize I’m looking through a painting. A very large painting. One with the lapel of the man pinned with LU and DIK insignia.
I trace my hand around the edges, looking for something to let me out of the picture. This time, I find a very obvious hook. A gentle tug has the portrait silently swinging open.
I’m getting good at this.
This time, I let the portrait shut behind me. There are three different openings in this room. Obvious openings. Not hidden openings.
Unlike every other place I’ve been since Reynold shoved me through the bookshelf, this room is clean.
Spotless. Someone has been here recently.
I’m not sure if that’s a good thing, but it tells me one thing for certain.
As I stare at the same Society of the No Face mosaic inlaid into the floor, the cleanliness of this room assures that the others do, indeed, know of the secret society’s existence.
That’s what the tattoos mean! They’re not members of the boat club. That’s just a front. They’re members of the secret society.
This room isn’t as bare as the one I was in previously. There are portraits here, too, but there’s also a table pushed against one wall with a book on top. As I approach, I think that I’m no longer in a mystery novel.
The cover is old leather, and the pages have yellowed. Some don’t fit in correctly anymore. The edges are rough and worn. The book doesn’t lie flat when closed, but bulges open as folded papers are shoved between pages.
No, this isn’t a mystery novel anymore. Now it feels reminiscent of a witch coven. Is this their grimoire? Is that what the No Face is a symbol of? Witchcraft?
The blank-faced mask is sewn into the leather cover here, too. No words. Just the plain mask. No decorations covering its surface.
My fingers hover over the edge of the book, wondering if I dare touch it.
Another scream has me spinning around, and I nearly echo the scream when I come face to face with hooded figures surrounding me wearing the No Face mask.
My witchy movie just turned into a horror when light glints off not one blade but half a dozen. Fear floods my body as I back into the table, staring at them. Oh my god, I’m going to be murdered.
One breaks away and approaches me quickly. There’s nowhere to run, so I tense, getting ready to fight.
They’re against me in a second, wrapping their arms around me. The familiar touch of his hand against the back of my head in that possessive hold has my breath rushing out.
“Jude?” I whisper.