Morning all. Feeling a bit more normal today. Woke up about three am and was awake for two hours before slipping back into sleep, which is pretty much my standard. It oddly feels more natural than sleeping through the night. But regardless of sleep, we have a morning prompt to get into, so timers set and off we go.
I like this one. I need to figure out how this group got to the castle and why, but I do have a sneaky thought about that one. So lunch time outlining today.
Wednesday, October 22nd: The music has to be coming from somewhere.
“The music has to be coming from somewhere,” Austin shouted. I tried not to roll my eyes at the obviousness of the statement and kept searching. I met the others just an hour ago and already I more or less decided there would be no long term friendships for me coming out of this.
‘Just survive the weekend,’ I told myself as I continued the search. The music was coming from every direction and while it started off soft, it slowly increased in volume. Luckily the volume seemed to have maxed out. It was loud enough that we had to yell to be heard but not ear splittingly loud and it hadn’t gotten any louder in the last few minutes.
The building was a literal castle. Gray stone on the outside and well appointed and modernized on the inside. Still I knew that the new walls were smooth with no signs of hidden speakers. ‘They could be anywhere though,’ I thought. Just because the sound was echoing off the walls didn’t mean that was where the speakers had to be.
Each of our small group spread out taking different rooms. I was in some sort of study. There were walls with books and Knick-knacks interspersed, a large desk with a leather blotter and brass desk tools like a decorative letter opener, scissors and pen stand. There was a decorative paperweight that drew my eye but I knew that had to wait.
I started with the shelves. Reasoning that anything emitting this much sound had to be vibrating, I touched everything I could reach. Given the crashing sounds coming from other rooms I expected not everyone was being as careful. I moved around the room, finding nothing that was vibrating. I placed my hand on a brass bust of what looked to be a man wearing a hedgehog as a hat and wondered if I should take some of the books down and look behind them.
Abruptly the music stopped. The wordless musack version of an old sone I was certain I heard my gran humming when I was small snapped off like someone flicked a switch. ‘I suppose someone could have,’ I thought. The silence was stunning and I felt as though I was hollowed out by it’s absence. I lifted the hand away from the hedge hog hat wearing man and rubbed my sternum. Until the music ended I hadn’t realized how much the vibrations of it seeped inside my bones.
Gradually I heard the others. People calling out to each other, trying to figure out who actually stopped the music. I didn’t call back. I moved to the desk instead and picked up the paperweight. It was a round globe of glass set into a small ring of wood so it wouldn’t roll around. Inside was a large blue flower with thin curving petals. A puff of blue inside the clear glass.
I had the exact same paperweight on my desk at home. It was the only thing I had from my father’s side of the family and I had never been able to find any details about it. I looked up as I heard the sound of an intercom clicking on.
Ten til Midnight 