Page 53 of Eye of the Beholder

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Page 53 of Eye of the Beholder

There’s a bed in one corner of the tiny room. It’s little more than a metal frame and a thin mattress. But there are chains attached to it, and there’s a large, dark stain on the mattress that looks suspiciously like blood. There’s more writing on the walls, too. This time I don’t read it. I don’t want to know what it says.

The others trail into the study, and Grant and Jack exclaim loudly. Their exuberance feels out of place in someplace as creepy as this, but I don’t say anything. I look at Virginia. She has one perfect eyebrow raised with disdain.

“That’s it?” she says. “That’s the room?”

Mina shrugs, barely paying attention. “I think it’s cool. I mean, horrible. But cool.”

Virginia scoffs loudly. “You would, Wet Willy.”

I feel irritation course through me. “Back off, Virginia.”

I watch Jack’s head swing back and forth between Virginia and me, his face apprehensive. Is he not going to say anything?

“Are you serious?” Virginia says, looking incredulously at me.

“I really am,” I say, grinding my teeth together.

Virginia walks up behind Mina, who’s still staring into the room.

“Go use your weird eyes to look inside,” Virginia says over Mina’s shoulder, and Mina looks back at her with a frown.

“No way,” she says, just as I’m about to tell Virginia off for being a brat.

“Just go look!” Virginia says again. “Make sure there’s nothing too creepy.” She gives Mina a little nudge. Mina stumbles forward and to the floor into the hidden room, and I frown. I follow her, intending to help her to her feet, but instead I whirl around when I see darkness overtaking us.

The last thing I see is the bookcase swinging shut behind us, trapping us in the hidden room.

17

Cohen

Ilet out a curse that my mother would have something to say about. I feel at the walls and find a light switch, but when I flick it, nothing happens.

“What a—” Mina, possessing more self-restraint than I do, breaks off. “You saw that, right?” she says, sounding furious—understandably so. “She shut me in here. You saw, didn’t you?”

“I saw,” I say, frowning grimly. I run my finger over my scar, thinking. Getting in was all well and good, but how do we get out? I am not spending the night stuck in a hidden room of an abandoned insane asylum. It’s just not happening. Especially when that room contains a blood-stained bed.

I run my fingers carefully over the hidden door that’s just closed behind us, but it’s no use in the dark. This stupid bookcase could have any number of trigger mechanisms in any number of places. I pull my phone out of my back pocket, intending to just call Jack and have him come get us out, but I don’t have any service.

“I already checked,” Mina says in the darkness. “No bars.”

“Jack!” I call, pounding on the door.

Jack’s muffled response comes immediately. “It’s jammed, man! We’re going to find someone.”

I turn on the phone’s flashlight instead. “Hold this right here,” I say to Mina. I need to hurry; I forgot to charge my phone after school, so it’s almost dead.

Mina takes my phone and holds it up so I can see what I’m doing. The bookcase is dusty; faint cobwebs clutter a few of the shelf corners. Clearly no one has found the hidden room in a very long time.

I wishwehadn’t found the hidden room.

And “room” is a pretty generous word. I would say “closet.”

“Why would they put this here?” Mina’s voice floats over my shoulder. “Do you think they added this later, when they turned it into a haunted house or whatever? Did they have concealed doors back in the day?”

“They probably did,” I mutter, running my fingers over the tops of the books on the top shelf. “Hidden rooms have been around basically forever—priests in England used to hide in priest holes in the 1500s when Catholics were persecuted. But I don’t know why there would be one here.”

“Huh,” Mina says, sounding interested. “I actually didn’t know that. It makes sense, now that I think about it. People used fake rooms in the Holocaust and all that.”