The Forbidden Key

The chest was bolted shut. I stared at it, sitting among scattered papers, in a cloud of thought.

He warned me not to open it, but he was gone. The last paper was in there, and even though I was flooded in notes and stories, that paper was the key. I held a hammer. If I dropped it on the chest, would they hear? I decided to chance it. It thundered against the chest, but to no avail.

Footsteps. They heard it.

They stormed in, and rained threats on my head, but those threats weren’t without action. They took me to the place I dreaded most, a rounded hole in the forest beside that old mansion. A hole shaped like a funnel, rounded, with a slippery slope leading down, down, down. It was deep enough not to see the bottom, and wide enough to fit at least four people. They threw me down, and showered the papers over my head as I fell.