It was the next evening when it truly started. I fell asleep at around six in the morning, a couple hours after the letter was burned. I was awoken a few hours later by a knock on the door. It seemed that the sun was still up. I put some slippers on and went downstairs to see who it was, but Phel had gotten there first. She was talking to an officer in the doorway. He said something to Phel that made her scrunch her face, but I only heard the tail end of it, though I do have a guess now.
“—found?”.
“No, not yet. Have you heard any news about Don?”
“Oh, do you mind if I come inside first?”
“No, not at all, though do watch your step. The floor is further down than it seems.”
The officer came into our house. I yawned and rubbed my eyes. I do not remember when, but Phel had asked me to grab some wine from the cellar. The old wooden stairs creaked as I walked into the unnervingly dark cellar. The hum of the boiler grew louder as I searched and fumbled for the pull cord. There was a click before the room filled with the pale artificial glow of the LED light. Phel had always thought of that as a strange choice, but an incandescent light kept dark shadows that creeped me out when I was younger so much so that this light was one of the first things I bought with the allowance my parents used to give me. Dad always used to laugh saying that it was my little ward to keep out the cellar ghosts.
It took me a couple of minutes to find the wine in the messy cellar. After I grabbed it, I turned off the light before heading back up the wobbly stairs. My heart panicked as my step caused an extremely loud creak. I quickly removed my foot before carefully skipping that step and hurrying up the rest of the steps.
Phel and the officer were talking at the dinner table. I looked at the window, more accurately the light that was coming through the blinds, to see the day was dimming. I had to go to work soon. I handed Phel the wine bottle.
“Do you want to visit Dad with me?”
“Are they open this late?”
“I don’t know, are they?” She said while looking at the officer.
“No.”
“Then do you want to come tomorrow?”
“ I will when the winter is over.”
“Come on, you are an adult now, aren't you? Get over that.”
I shook my head and turned around before getting ready for work. She could believe what she wanted. There was no need to argue.
Although the sun was down, the sky glowed purple when I left for work. The cold wind passed through my jacket as I tightened my scarf. The snow crunched under my feet as the glow of the streetlights lit my path. My legs grew numb as the freezing wind passed through my pants. I was internally hitting myself for not thinking of that, a second pair would have been better.
The museum was warm when I entered. I hurriedly clocked in before heading to the curator’s office and sitting. My legs gradually regained their feeling as I looked at the whiteboard for what to do. Except for John, a janitor, I was the only employee here at this hour, and he too will clock out in an hour.
I was supposed to double-check the authenticity of 11 artifacts before cataloging and storing them. Then I was supposed to do inventory. I started my tasks. It was an hour and a bit before I finished the first 3. The fourth however intrigued me. It was the rose quartz that was mentioned in that clay tablet.
I searched for it for a second, it was in a 2ft by 1ft gray box. I opened it and removed the packaging, the crystal was huge yet flaked and blemished. It was about the size of my forearm and had some evidence of knapping on it. Perhaps someone made an arrowhead or something from the flakes, my curiosity was inflamed.
I put on some disposable gloves before gently tracing a few of the hit marks with my fingers. It was then that I felt a sharp pain in my fingers and something extra that moved with them. I looked down to see what happened. It turned out that I had dislodged a thin flake. It was about the length and size of the point of my ring finger to the first joint down.
The flake was beautiful; it was as thin as a sheet of paper and just as flat. The crystal flake seemed to somehow be polished, despite the unpolished state of the mother crystal. The flake, stuck in my finger, looked like a feather waiting to be plucked. So I did, I put the bloody flake and gloves in a blood-hazard bag, and then to the sink in the corner of the room to wash my hands.
After bandaging the puncture, I went back to work. I finished the documents cataloging the quartz. I stored the documents in the archive, before packing the artifacts up and bringing them down into the large storage room. Once more I went through the crowded maze of shelves while pushing a trolley filled with boxes. With my path guided by the humming orange lightbulb above me.
*tap*
Something had moved close behind me. ‘It must be a shelf shifting due to me passing by.’ I thought. My breath was tied and stuck in my throat, I didn’t dare to turn my head. I slowly moved forward listening to the wheels of the trolley rolling against the ground.
One time when I was 15 years old or so, I went out to the park with my mom. The park takes up about 10 city blocks and is a mix of a playground and some trees. That day I was thoroughly bored, so I snuck off to climb a tree. Someone followed behind me, I heard their shuffling footsteps that kept up with me. I didn’t dare turn around then, I kept my face neutral and slowly walked to the tree line. When I reached there something tackled me to the ground, thankfully nothing more happened. Although I never managed to see the person that tackled me.
At this moment I felt similar to before. I felt as if I was being stalked. I turned around calmly and something, that I couldn't see, pushed against my chest. I crashed into the trolley and panicked a little bit. When my palm touched the rough jagged glass-like exterior of the rose quartz.
The quartz glowed a pale red as I heard a loud pop, like the sound of cutting through iron. At the same time, a pink silhouette of an arm was coming out of my chest. The glowing quartz grew brighter as the arm began to pull and distort into multiple arched streams, like a choir of cast fishing lines that led into the quartz. The glow disappeared as suddenly as it appeared.
I do not know how long I lay on the ground after that. It was simultaneously both horrifying and underwhelming. Like being harassed for wearing a blue shirt, before a strange person pulls the harasser away. And that strange person was laying no more than a few inches from my face. I calmed myself for a few more seconds before picking up the quartz and examining it. It seemed like the ‘blemished' quartz was significantly less so. It was smoother and all the jagged edges it had previously seemed to be smoothed out. Don’t get me wrong those ridges were not gone, but they were rounded out. I held the quartz to the orange light and seemed to see something wiggling inside of it. I shuddered before putting it in its box and back on the trolley.
I hastily put everything where it belonged before hurrying out of the storage room. ‘What the hell was that?’ I wondered. ‘Was it the dead butterfly? No… if they were interested in me why send something like that to attack me? But, does that even make sense, maybe whatever attacked me is as common as dirt?’ With that thought, I shuddered before rushing to the curator's office and took the flake I had disposed of.
I stopped to think about what I should do next before remembering that the quartz only reacted when I touched it. I found some duct tape and hesitated for a second before taping the flake a couple of inches above my elbow. If I taped it to my leg, I would probably not notice if I lost it, and if I taped it to my wrist someone might find it.
I texted my boss that something came up and I had to leave, before clocking out and rushing out of the museum. As soon as I left, however, someone stopped me. It was a man heavily bundled in two winter coats wearing a scarf under their hood. He was carrying a book in his left hand.
“Excuse me, did something happen here?” He asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Something supernatural, did something supernatural happen here?”
Yo!