Janice was oblivious to the screams that followed her as she ran out of the auditorium into the changing room at the back. Locking the door behind her, she leaned against the door and couldn’t stop the tears that flowed in torrents. She couldn’t stop the guilt that stabbed at her chest.
Why did she run out of her wedding?
Maybe she could have endured it. How bad would a life with Dave possibly be? Sure he was erratic at times and the welts on her back from the day before when she had been at the mercy of his belt had not yet faded.
Still, she wasn’t the first woman that would go through things like that. And she wouldn’t be the last either.
She sighed in resignation but she was still plagued with worry. The Steele Conglomerate owned half of Europe and unfortunately, her parents’ business was part of the small corporations funded by it. Dave wouldn’t let the humiliation slide. She was sure of it.
She was distracted from her thoughts however as she took in her environment. What room was this? She had been in haste as she ran through the Church’s back hall. She didn’t know what room she had entered but it was no longer in use. Thick cobwebs lined the corners of the room and several years' worth of dust was on every single piece of furniture. It looked like it had once been a library and a well-stocked one at that. But she couldn’t be sure. Maybe it had been someone’s study?
But why would it be in the Church and how come no one has been in it? Her eyes were suddenly drawn to the marks on the floor. Or maybe someone had been here. She took in the footprints on the floor. The dust on the ground was so heavy that whoever had been in here surely would have known that it would leave evidence. She smiled wistfully as she noted her imagination getting the better of her again.
She decided to go back to her abandoned wedding. She would apologize to Dave and tell him that she had had some last-minute ‘wedding jitters.’ Hopefully, he would buy it. She was about to turn around when she noticed a loose floorboard. Maybe she wouldn’t have picked it up but her sharp mind immediately registered that it was about the same place the mysterious person’s footprints had stopped.
Looking at her ruined wedding dress, she figured she wouldn’t have been able to go to the auditorium like that anyways. That was the final encouragement she needed. She made her way to the floorboard and putting her ear to it, knocked on the floorboard. It didn’t sound hollow. It sounded like an actual door. It had that feeling to it.
Could it lead to a secret passageway?
Cursing herself for her unnecessarily curious mind, she took a deep breath and lifted the floorboard. She gasped when she saw the steps. She faintly heard her name being called outside, probably by her bridesmaids. There was no time to waste. She slowly lowered herself to the steps and closed the floorboard above her.
It should have taken a while to adjust to the darkness but she didn’t need to, there were lamps lining the walls of the passageway. She kept walking as each step took her more and more into the dark. Or was it the light? It was a world on its own. She saw beautiful statues and antiques she had seen in textbooks labelled missing. Everything that once was but was no longer here. Was that the plane that was never found? How could it fit into this passageway? Was this the home of the lost things?
Janice didn’t know how long she’d spent, marvelling at all the wonderful things she’d seen, wondering to herself how possible it was to spend the remaining days of her life in this unparalleled beauty when she stumbled on a single door. She was sure she had passed this wall in her wanderings but now a door was before her. On its body was engraved writing.
Whoever had written it must have known she could understand ancient Hieroglyphics. So she read aloud.
“You think you have seen it all, behind this door is a world unknown, if only you will take the fall.”
Janice knew the time had come to make a decision. She knew it was selfish of her to leave everything behind but this may just be her last chance for happiness. Or doom? Whatever it was, she knew it would be way better than her life here. So shedding one last tear for her parents she might never see again, Janice opened the door and stepped in.
