The Shadows' Empress (Part 8)

Roland sat on his bed thinking about how he was going to complete his task. There was no way he could open it by any conventional means. Which, to him, sucked. It seemed the most important things were never easy, and he hated that life worked that way. The young man listened, sitting quietly to the noise coming from outside of his room. There was none. He felt like people were listening to him through the door, but he had to get another look at the box.

            Sliding down onto the floor, Roland sat on the cheap, clue carpet on his bedroom floor. He scooted over to his left a bit so that he could reach behind him and slide the box out from it’s hiding spot while watching the door. No one entered his bedroom, so he slid the box into the light of his bedroom, making sure to keep it concealed behind his right leg so that if someone did open the door they wouldn’t see the box.

            As soon as Roland felt the old, wooden box against the outside of his right thigh he glanced down at it, then back at his bedroom door. He suddenly began to feel as if there were security cameras in his room where there were none before. Ignoring the feeling, he studied the box, noting the red symbols that he’d remembered from his dream. For a second, he contemplated breaking the box open. His dad would be going into town tomorrow to pick up some groceries—a task the kids rarely participated in. He could destroy it with one of the hammers that Jacob kept in the shed while the twins were busy playing outside.

            It sounded like a decent plan. However, despite how frail the box appeared, Roland seriously doubted he would succeed. If the virile young man couldn’t open a box that was barely holding itself together with his bare hands, there was no way a hammer would work, either. There was something about it that seemed supernatural. The markings had an innocuous feeling that meshed with a demonic one. And one of them was gone.

            When had that happened? There were seven when he put the box under his bed, and now there were only six. The area where the seventh symbols was felt cold under Roland’s fingers while the rest emitted a faint heat.

            And then he remembered the visions he’d had in his dream. The dream within a dream. Roland hated those.

            There was a brisk knock coming from the other side of the door. It sounded like it was coming from the top.

            “Hey, bud… It’s pizza night,” Roland’s father said, quite cheerily through the large wooden slab.

            Roland quickly pushed the box back underneath his bed, making sure his sheets were perfectly draped over the edge so no one would suspect anything. Then, he stood up and rushed over to the door and opened it up.

            “Pepperoni!” Jacob heard his son’s stomach growl and he laughed until he cried.

            “One large pepperoni…check,” Jacob typed Roland’s order into the memo app on him smartphone.

            The pair walked downstairs, and Roland sat on the couch to watch television with his younger siblings. They were watching cartoons until the pizza arrived at their house. It was also movie night, and they’d picked out a superhero movie. Spencer was huge fan of Harley Quinn, and Batman.

            Roland looked over at his dad who was placing the order as he paced around the kitchen. The phone in Jacob’s hand reminded Roland of when he took a picture of the map on top of the blueprints. He leaned to the right, sliding his own smartphone out of his pocket. He opened the photo gallery app. The first photo that came up was the picture he took of the map. In his dream.

            His heart began to pound in his chest as he turned the screen off and put the phone back into his pocket.

            ‘No fucking way!’ Roland tried to keep a straight face, maybe smile a little at his siblings rolling around on the carpet. But in his mind, he was jumping with joy!

            ‘I can’t believe that worked!’

            The joy didn’t last too long, though. Roland could even feel his appetite slowly dissipate when he realized that the vision he’d had must have been just as real as the picture he took.

            Spencer stared at his older brother, noticing Roland’s attitude go from “normal” to “my dog died” in just a few second. He climbed up onto the couch and hugged his older brother.

            “What’s wrong?” Spencer asked looking at Roland. The younger boy stared directly into his brother’s eyes the way he did when he was trying to read people’s minds. He couldn’t actually do so, but he liked to try.

            Roland smirked at his brother to reassure him that things would be fine. “I’m alright. Just had a weird dream.”

            “Like a nightmare?” Spencer asked?

            “Exactly. Been having them a lot, lately.”