The Academy of Mortal Mysteries – by Pamela DuMond #6
The architects had thoughtfully laid out the main room we entered, with passageways leading to and from the primary space.
Down this room’s center ran three columns of massive oak desks, their surfaces thick with dust, spindly spiderwebs shivering with every puff of wind gusting through broken windows.
A rat scurried across the stone floor before disappearing behind a sagging bookshelf.
A raven, perched on a broken window frame, kept a watchful eye on our intrusion with suspicious eyes.
Rickety wooden ladders, missing a few rungs, leaned against the library shelves, sagging with age.
“This place doesn’t look like an Academy,” I said.
“It used to,” Remy said. “But after the incident, after the Ancients tried to shut everything down, the Academy took matters into its own hands and transformed itself into—I don’t know how to say this— something else. ”
“What?” I shivered.
“I’m not sure.” Remy’s gaze swept across the room. “It’s like the Academy couldn’t decide whether to preserve knowledge or save all the bones, so it picked both.”
“How does an institution, a structure, an Academy wake up one day and decide it has agency?” I frowned.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Probably followed on the tracks of AI. One day it’s a tool benefiting humans. The next it grows smart enough to realize humans can benefit it.”
I shivered. “I think this place looks like a tomb.”
“Agree,” Remy said.
My attention drifted from the books in one tall stack to one particular wall of crypts, where something caught my eye—a name partly visible beneath years of grime. Those letters appeared eerily familiar, and the skin on the back of my neck prickled.
I approached a sliding library ladder mounted to an iron rail and gave it a hesitant push. It moved with a screech that set my teeth on edge. I wheeled it toward the tower of crypts and a sickening crack split the air.
The upper section of the ladder splintered and boards fell. I dropped onto the ground and covered my head with my hands as Remy dove on top of me. The frame disintegrated and rained down upon us in chunks and splinters.
“Ma belle,” Remy said, covering me. “Are you all right?”
“Yes. You?” I crawled out from underneath him and caught my breath.
“Yes.” He stood, brushing off his clothes, and smiled. “Très bien.”
For the first time since I’d spotted him earlier at the library in Chicago, I smiled back, then swiveled and eyed that crypt with the intriguing name.
“It calls to you,” Remy said.
“Yes.”
“Try that one instead.” He pointed to another ladder that looked marginally less decrepit.
We made our way to it, then dragged it around the rail.
This time, Remy held the base steady as I climbed step after step toward the mysterious crypt, each rung creaking ominously beneath my weight.
My hands trembled—memories of panic attacks from climbing similar ladders a few years ago at Preston Academy threatened to overwhelm me, and yet I’d come so far since then. Why was I panicking now?
“You’re doing great,” Remy called from below.
I reached the crypt and a chill shot down my spine. I leaned forward, rubbed my elbow against the crypt’s face, and smeared off decades of dust. My breath caught as the inscription emerged:
My name. My birthdate. And where the death date should be? Nothing. Just a space, waiting for the date of my death to be recorded. I recoiled and the ladder shivered beneath me.
“ Whose crypt is it?” Remy asked.
“Mine,” I said. “It has my name, my birthday … just no death date.”
“Touch it,” Remy dared, his voice tinged with fascination.
“I already did,” I said, my voice shaky.
“Touch it, close your eyes, and ask what it’s telling you. Ask it for a message .”
“ I’m supposed to be the one delivering the messages, not asking for them,” I said, feeling my cheeks flush warm with blood despite the chill in the air.
“You think you know everything, but you do not,” Remy said. “Just do it.”
Every survival instinct inside me screamed to climb down that ladder right now before I had a full-blown anxiety attack, but I suspected Remy might be right. I stretched out my fingers and placed them on the cold marble on top of the empty death date.
The vaulted mausoleum shuddered.
A deep rumbling coursed like an earthquake as I clung desperately to the ladder. The blue-gray gloom rippled like water, colors bleeding into the monochrome world—gold, crimson, emerald—as if someone had spilled vibrant paint into a black-and-white photograph.
The transformation was as sudden and complete as if Dorothy had stepped from Kansas into Oz. Dust vanished. Spiderwebs disappeared. The crypts receded into the walls, replaced by gleaming bookshelves filled with leather-bound volumes.
And we were no longer alone. Young people in a variety of colorful uniforms and attire strode purposefully between the desks, which now gleamed with polished wood and scattered papers. Some carried books, others scrolls, none taking any notice of us whatsoever.
The Academy had awakened.
“What the …” I shook my head.
“Just as I suspected.” Remy laughed. “This time you weren’t the Messenger, waiting to bring a message to an unsuspecting soul somewhere in time.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, hands trembling as the scene below filled with more color, the chatting of more and more persons, and the hum of energy in a different world, a world I had never seen before. “If I’m not that person, who am I?”
“This time, Madeline Blackford, you’re the message. It’s time the Academy returns to life.”
I didn’t know what to do, and that’s when I spotted a familiar face.
She stood in a corner of the room, a low smile on her lips, staring up at me. She was a dead ringer for my mother.
“Mom?” My hands started to tremble.
She moved toward me, making her way through the crowds of students.
“Madeline,” Remy said, his gaze bouncing between us. “Come down off that ladder.”
“I can’t,” I said, frozen.
“Yes, you can. One step at a time, ma belle.” He stood at the bottom and reached a hand up toward me.
I held tight and took a step down, then two, then five. I paused and wiped sweat off my brow.
“Almost there,” Remy said.
My heart pounding, I reminded myself that a key to fighting anxiety was deep breaths in and deep breaths out. I bit my lip and kept going. Five more rungs. I descended the last seven until I landed on solid ground.
Remy embraced me and swung me around. He kissed both my cheeks. “You did it, Madeline.”
“Always knew you could,” the woman said, smiling at me. She was older, some silver in her hair, twinkle lines around her eyes, still pretty.
“Mama?"
“Madeline.” She pulled me into the tightest hug and whispered, “I told you when you were six years old that if you were brave and strong, and if we were both lucky, one day we would see each other again. And here we are, baby girl. Here we are.”
“Here we are.” I broke into tears and wasn't sure if I could stop. Then I realized and pulled away from her. “I love you mom. But I'm in love. I've met him in so many lifetimes. He finally knows who I am, and I can't just leave him.”
“So don’t,” she said and took my hand. “You're no longer just a Messenger, Madeline. You're a Seeker. You possess abilities you never dreamt about.”
I shook my head. “I don't understand.”
“There's a way for you to bring him here.”
“ Not another incarnation?” I asked, surprised.
“Present day Samuel,” she said. “You can learn how to bring him here, to you.”
Stunned, I glanced around at all the colorful persons in this technicolored universe. I hadn’t planned on this. Could I help Samuel learn to time travel and join me at the Academy? Or would I just be risking both our lives?
“Madeline,” my mother said. “What are you thinking?”
I bit my lip. “I think I'm going to try.”
THE END