You scramble over and kneel before the large chest. It’s older than anything you suspect you’ve ever seen in person, but still solid and strong, bound with iron. It appears to be locked, but the lock is also old, and simple, and therefore no match for the lockpicking skills you taught yourself from videos on the internet.
“Mom would never make me do homework first if she saw how handy the net has been for my practical education,” you utter crisply before removing the lock and raising the lid. A chill runs through you as a supernatural sensation emanates from the chest, along with a faint scent of... horse. Carefully you peer in, waving your cell back and forth to see what’s inside.
The chest contains only a single item, which appears to be a scroll of some kind. It’s large, and the papyrus is exceedingly limber and clean, however it’s rolled up tightly and sealed. Sealed? With seven seals? Where have I heard of that before? you muse to yourself as you lift the heavy scroll out of its container.
You notice that four of the seals, with the chop of a horse’s head and mane imprinted in them, are somewhat loose. Intrigued to the point of ignoring the niggling sensation of something seriously dangerous, you start to try to pry one of the loose seals open with your thumbnail.
“NOW IS NOT THE TIME,” a ghastly deep voice utters from right behind you! Heart nearly stopped, you drop the scroll and whirl about on your knees. What you see makes you fall back against the front of the chest. Before you floats a dark spectre, like an evil-visaged shadow, blocking out the yellowish light from the windows and leaning forward over you. The scent of horse has become overpoweringly strong. In one vaporous hand the human-shaped thing bears an old-style weight scale, the two ends wobbling as the spectre gestures toward you menacingly. It speaks again, “NOW IS NOT THE TIME, AND YOU ARE NOT THE LAMB. HOWEVER, YOU HAVE BEEN JUDGED... BARELY ADEQUATE.”
Moved to flee the fearsome sight, you try to leap to your feet and run for the stairwell, but your limbs are shaking so hard that you can’t catch your balance, and one foot plunges into a gap between the floorboards. Your body is pitched after it, in the usual way gravity works, and you crash through the attic floor in a shower of splinters and insulation.
You land hard and find yourself crumpled on the floor of the library, deep in the stacks where hardly anyone ever goes. Looking up, you can see the hole in the ceiling through which you plunged, but there’s no sign of the horrifying shadow.
“My goodness, Percy, what ever are you doing?!” exclaims the stern and elderly head librarian, Ms. Schift, happening upon you moments later. “Never mind, get up at once.”
Obediently, nay fearfully, you try to stand, but find that you’ve sprained or broken something in your right ankle. “Oh dear,” Ms. Schift says, and then she proceeds to help you stand on your good foot and regain your balance. The goodwill you’ve accrued by helping out around the library has thankfully paid off, and she doesn’t ask you more questions as you limp with her support back to the library common area and from there down to the school nurse’s office. Several of the smarter and therefore more attractive girls of your class stop and stare as you make your way, disheveled and wild-eyed, through the halls. Frankly, though, you’re just thankful to have survived what was almost certainly a brush with Death.
The End.
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