A SECRET

Then Emma ransacked the carton with ease thanks to the beaming light of the flashlight, searching for the strange item that had got her curious enough to forget the reason why she had come into the attic in the first place. Looking further inside the container, she found it as she knelt on the floor on both knees beside the carton, and took it out with her left hand once her fingers felt the thickness of the material burrowed inside the carton. She grasp it tightly and placed the torchlight on the floor a few meters away from the carton with its light facing the carton and began untying the red ropes one after the other using the light to see the tiny strings that bound the fur against the wood. The profound silence in the quiet attic enabled Emma to take her time in loosening the ropes easily till the bear fur was left remaining to be removed only for her to discover that what she had thought to be a wooden scroll turned out to be a wooden cylindrical container as she slowly untie the ropes. Something odd fell off on the ground from the bear fur and hit the floorboard violently, clanging loudly in the tranquil room as soon as it touched the ground before it ricochet somewhere else in the dark without her noticing where it went when she tried removing the fur from the container and she scoured on the ground around the muddled carton with the torchlight, looking for what might have caused such a noise out of the blue and disappeared out of her sight without a single trace.

"Where did you bounce off to?",

She questioned herself as she stood up on her feet when she could not see it anywhere close to her and figured that it must have disappeared into the empty darkness which enveloped her as well as her torch completely as she kept wandering around the dark room searching the floor for the odd item with her flashlight.

"Youch! Darn it!",

She groaned loudly the moment she felt a sharp pain under her right foot after stepping on something sharp enough to penetrate her soft slipper as a result of the darkness that had blinded her from seeing the object lying on the surface floor utterly concealed from her sight by the thick darkness in the room, not far from where she was blindly scouring despite being with a flashlight. Stopping abruptly, she froze and lifted her bruised right foot from the object beneath the slipper. Then her own curiosity compelled her to take a look at what had inflicted injury on the bottom part of her foot with the torch after the soft slipper failed to protect her foot from getting harmed by the unidentified object though the minor accident only caused a superficial scratch on her foot and removed her foot away from the object for the flashlight to beam its light upon a golden round metallic object with a pointed tip now stained with her blood. The object glittered in the dark as the light descended harshly upon the object which she noticed to be some kind of gold pendant with a long twinkling metallic golden string forming a part which the strange pendant could be worn around the neck as a necklace.

Her fingers took hold of the object from the ground feeling the hefty weight of the object along with the string touching the back of her palm and raised it closer to face for her to take an even more closer look at some carvings engraved on the object probably when it was made. Although she had a keen eye for jewelries with flashy designs especially golden necklaces as well as bangles and could easily tell the seller's brand mark of jewelry stores in the city marketing jewelries similar the one she held in her arms, she had never seen such a remarkable pendant with its carvings resembling a fiery face of a creature with a bloodstained pointed nose exquisitely crafted along with some inscription to fit the colouration of the object. She couldn't quite figure out the meaning of the inscription and went back to where she had crouched near the carton.

"What could this be?",

She rhetorically questioned herself as she trudged back to the carton after being led into the heart of the darkness aloof from the carton but she got no reply to a confused question.

The bleeding from the wound below her foot had stopped but the pain from the fresh wound was still there, bugging her but she didn't bother about it and pulled off her slippers, walking barefoot on the cold floor which somehow reduced the painful effects with its coldness.

She kept the pendant inside her pocket since it was a pea sized object and small enough to fit in her pockets before she quickly took hold of the wooden container once again the moment she got back to the very spot where the stringed pendant had fallen off.

With luck, she wrenched open the lid of the container using her right hand with the other clenching the round cylindrical wood after placing the torch on the ground again for the second time. This time, she saw a old rough note folded narrowly inside in the container followed by a leather material made of animal skin rolled together in dorm of a note but was still narrowly tied with a tiny rope like the old paper and a black pouch neatly tied with a drawstring which fell off first on her thighs the moment she removed the lid.

A thought told her to read one of the notes first instead of checking what's inside the pouch and she took the first one which seemed more rougher and lighter than the other one. Then she untied the old note with her fingers and took the flashlight to see what could have written on an old piece of paper that her father didn't want anyone to know of it contents which got her even more curious and perplexed about his motives of hiding it from her for a long time until now.

Thanks to the beaming light emanating from the torch, she could barely read the legible italic handwriting using her mind to read what was used to scribble the words on it many years ago after finding some oily stains on areas of the note she least expected it would affect when she opened it wide to read the message with the torchlight though ringlets of her hair almost cast a deeper shadow on the paper resting on her laps.

"Dated October 19th, 1967, from the Garzaville Hacienda",

She said to herself after clearing her throat before she began to read the rest of the contents.

"Dear, Professor Livingstone,

it is as we had suspected. A lot of things have changed ever since your henchmen took away the remains of the dead King of Raza from my estate. I am deeply grateful for your assistance once again and I'm forever in your debt. Thanks to your advice, my family and I no longer experience the gruesome strange things inside our mansion that started a couple of weeks ago after the remains of Hemelion's corpse was kept at the guest house in the middle of the garden behind the main mansion and the tormenting nightmares no longer disturb our sleep. Sadly, Christine had taken ill as a result of my actions and she has been bedridden in her room with a strange kind of sickness that can't be cured and I strongly believe that she has been affected by the same plague. Her health has reduced drastically which keeps worsening each passing day and I fear she might not survive to see the next winter. Considering the consequences of my mistakes, I have given an oral instruction to you through one of your trusted henchmen before they left for Paris, to not in anyway try to involve architectural services for the aim of reaping benefits which you and I know would endanger the public, possibly the entire world if the remains falls into the wrong hands. In order to ensure things should go exactly as I planned, I have deliberately hidden a vital part of the map to the tomb and will not disclose its location in this message if ever it gets found even after my dying breath. Lastly, my sweet little angel, Emma is doing quite remarkably well, I must confess though I am still skeptic about her miraculous recovery from the malady inflicted on her by the same bubonic plague affecting Christine and it is my earnest concern that I pray that a plausible curse shouldn't affect you as well like what befell my household and me for I have been feeling a lot fatigued with similar symptoms affecting my health lately and I have not been as strong as I used to be since the last time we had a conversation face to face on the same issue.

Till we meet again, old friend.

Jones Williamson.