Vivian and Christine stood before the door to the sealed room.
“I hate going back into this room,” Vivian said with a discontented sigh. She inserted the key into the deadbolt and turned it. It wouldn’t turn. She jiggled and twisted the key repeatedly until it broke off. “Oh, crap,” she said. “Let’s kick this thing down.”
Vivian and Christine each hefted a leg and rammed a foot at the door, which burst open on the third try.
Once inside the room, Vivian and Christine noticed some crevices on the walls and a window riddled with spider-web cracks. One shutter lay on the floor while the other hanged lopsided. The closet door stood open which revealed a slanted shelf. Boxes and other items lay scattered on the floor.
The ceiling had a cavernous black hole with jagged edges around it. A large object lay below it. One corner was imbedded in the hardwood floor. The front of the object had two padlocks.
“What is it?” Vivian asked.
“Looks like some type of old-fashioned storage trunk to me,” Christine said.
“That thing must weigh a ton. Where did it come from?”
“Well, that’s apparent, isn’t it? Since you’d never known anything like this had been up there all this time, how was it put up there in the first place?”
“I don’t know,” Vivian said as she shook her head. “For now, I want to know what this—” she jabbed a thumb in the direction of the hole in the ceiling “—architectural layout is. One certainly can’t see the attic from here.”
Vivian stood directly beneath the gaping maw. She tilted her head back and squinted into the blackness.
“I’d wager it’s some sort of mezzanine,” Christine said.
“Apparently,” Vivian said. “I don’t ever recall such a thing being there when you, Blaine, and I were here all those years ago. The only thing beyond the mezzanine is the attic, and I know the attic like the back of my hand.”