CARRIE

Chapter Thirty-Nine

We stood in front of the large door, Barry turned to look at us. “It has two locks,” he said worriedly. “What do you mean it has two locks, let me see” I and Leah walked up to the door and I saw it. There were two locks on this huge door. We had just one key, Barrie tried the first lock it didn't fit. I tried the second one and it opened. He breathed a sigh of relief, but we still had to open the first lock. “So what do we do not? The first lock is still not open” I asked him. "Now we find a way to open the first lock and get in” he answered. We had to do that quickly, anyone could be coming at any time, and it would be weird to see us just standing around in front of the door. We looked around for a key. It wouldn't make any sense to find a key just lying around but we didn't have a choice. We searched around for minutes without finding anything. I groaned in frustration, we weren't getting close at all. I looked up and saw Barry staring at the lock, “Did you notice anything?” I asked and waited silently for him to finish what he was doing when he didn't answer. After staring at the locks for a while, he pulled on the second lock. Moments later, he turned and raised the key at us smiling. I was relieved, “Ah thank God, I was starting to get worried”.

He opened the door and we entered into the room, it was fairly bigger than the first storage room. I entered the room and looked around, it was big. I put on my flashlight and looked around, Barry turned on the light and we could see the entire room. It was filled with books and shelves. I walked over to the shelves and looked at the books. The books were all occultic books. There was no secret room like the first storage, the didn’t try to hide it. There were hundreds of books on the shelves. I walked around the entire room to get a good look. It definitely was used as a library for their society. When walking around I noticed there were diaries of several people, they were most likely members of the society. I was still looking at the books when Barry called me, “Guys, come look at this”. I walked over to his side still looking around, it was a book with uncle Perry’s name on it. The books around were all journals of people named Perry. The journals were arranged in alphabetical order. Barry opened Uncle Perry's journal and read through the pages, he suddenly stopped at one page. “What?” I asked. “He mentioned Dad in this”. Why did he mention Dad’s name in his journal, sure they were brothers and all but why mention him in a journal about rituals and an occultic society. “What does it say?” I finally asked Barry. He read out what was on the page, "Today, the 15th, There was an argument between a member and the leader: I have been tasked to watch the member and make sure he delivers on his assignment.", "The leader said by any means necessary I know what he means, but I can't kill my own brother". WHAT! I stood in shock, why would he want to kill his brother, why would this leader want Dad dead. What connection did my Dad even have with this society. It was too much, we were all wondering what was happening, Barry must have seen we were about to give up so he just said we should continue with our search, and focus on what we came here for. “What do you mean? We can't just act like we didn't see all that!” I shouted at him and he responded calmly, “I understand what you're feeling, I feel that way too. But we're not solving anything by just standing around being depressed. We need to find out what happened”. I and Leah went to check other shelves, Barry suggested we go to an area where the books were plenty to cover much ground. “You check from that end, I'll check from here and we'll meet in the middle,” Leah said as we walked to the shelves. I checked the books and took the ones I thought we needed. There were all sorts of books, dark magic, ritual spells, and ghost forms, and I even found a white magic spell book on the bottom shelf. It was covered in dust, seeing how evil these people must have been, I didn't expect them to use it. I didn't find any key this time, this was probably the only room in this storage. That would be right, seeing as the books were staring at us when we walked in. They weren't hiding it so why have another secret room. I put the books in my bag as I got to the middle of the shelf. Leah had picked up a few books too. “Did you find any key or drive, anything besides books?” I asked her. “Nope, just books. There's absolutely nothing else” Leah replied. Barry was just about done also, he came over to us and I asked him the same question, “Did you find any key or drive?”. He shook his head and I sighed, “No key or drive. Just books”. He suggested we check the floor for anything, just in case we missed it the first time. After a few minutes, we decided to just leave, “We have enough books to check from, we'll use them” Barry said as we walked out. I locked the door behind us with the keys and put them in my bag. I remembered the leader, if we knew anything about him it would make this whole thing easier. “Hey, did you find anything about the leader in there?” I asked him. “Nothing at all, his journal was empty which I found weird, and his name didn't come up in any of the journals I checked. I'll just check the other journals for clues” He said as we entered the car. I thought about it for a moment, “We can just look up the name when we get home and see if we find anything on him there”.

“We don't know what he looks like, how will we identify him?” Leah asked. That was a good question, but we didn't necessarily need his picture. “We'll just check the articles about the name, if it’s related to a secret society we mark it down. Then we check others until we have two or three corresponding pictures” They all agreed to my idea and we drove back home to try it out.

We got back home and I went into the kitchen to grab a bottle of water first, all that checking books in secret libraries wore me out. “Do you guys need one?” I held up the bottle as I gulped some. “Yes, thank you” they both chorused. We emptied the bags of books on the floor and sat down beside them to examine them properly. Barry went upstairs for a while and came back downstairs with some books, they must have been from yesterday's storage room. He opened one book and was flipping through it, he turned it and looked at me. He showed the back of the book to me and Leah, “Do you know what that means?” he asked. I looked at the book well, it was just a single word written on the last page of the book. “Renacimiento”. I looked at him confused, I didn't even know what language that was. Leah cleared her throat and I turned to look at her, “I think I know what it means”. I arched my brow and she laughed, “Spanish classes were not for nothing, I learned a bit. I think it means reincarnation or rebirth”.

“Leah are you sure?” Barry asked. “Yeah I am”. Barry picked up the book and opened his laptop, minutes later he sat up. Like he saw something surprising. “What? What's wrong?” I asked. He just got up and bolted straight to the kitchen and came back with a lighter and candle. I was still confused about what he wanted to use them for when he lit the candle and held it under the book. “Are you crazy!? What are you doing?” I shouted as I tried to drag the book from him. He pushed me away with his free hand, and I fell. “I just read that some ancient societies used to hide their written texts and they were only visible when held over a flame” He explained. “I'm sorry for shoving you like that” He moved the candle under the page, he did it for a few minutes and nothing was happening. “Well I don't see any hidden texts, you're just burning the pages” I stood up and walked away. I was almost in the kitchen when Leah shouted my name, “Carrie come back it's working”. I looked back, I didn't believe her at first. “Come see!” She shouted again, I ran to where they were and looked at the back. The letters were faint, like it was written with a pen with no ink. The first few words were clear moments later. My eyes widened, “move it over the page evenly, get enough heat on them” I told Barry and he nodded his head. After a while, the whole page was visible. My mouth was open in surprise, “read it”.

"Well this part says, I just discovered the secret to immortality: I found the secret to rebirth. The mythical Lucifier's journal is not such a myth anymore, I found it. It says the secret to rebirth, a life for a life. That means someone has to die first". My mouth was still open. “Does that mean the sacrifice, the life, was Dad?” I asked Barry. He looked as confused as I was, “I don't know, I don't know anything that's happening anymore”. Leah got up, “We don't know yet. We don't even know if anyone did this rebirth, so we can't say if he was the sacrifice or not”. Barry dropped the book and went into the kitchen. Leah sat back down and I was just rooted to where I was. I was thinking about a million possibilities. What really happened between Uncle Perry and my Dad, was my Dad part of their whole society. I mean, I thought he sounded like he didn't want to kill my Dad in his journal. I had so many questions on my mind, the Leader's journal looked like it could answer a few of them. I picked up the book from the floor and the candle, Leah stared at me as I flipped the pages to the end of the book. Secret Society or not, there has to be a very important information at the end of the book. In fact, all societies I've read of or watched in movies did something like that. I didn't say a word, I just put the candle under the last page and carefully moved it along. The first letters were starting to show, my mind was racing. Minutes later, the entire page was visible. It was an address. There was something else at the bottom of the page, I squinted as I looked at it, I could only make out one word from it. It said, "Beware". But beware of what?

I turned to Barry, “write it down”. He scrambled for a pen and paper and wrote it all down. “Done, now let's do it for the rest of the pages” He got his pen ready. I picked up the candle and was about to put it under the pages when the book caught fire all of a sudden. “Jesus” , “s**t, put out the fire” I shouted as I looked around for what to use to put it ojtu. Barry dumped a bottle of water on it and grunted in frustration. “Did you mistakenly put the candle on the book for too long?” He asked, anger written all over his face. I looked at him with an angry face, “I hadn't even put the candle under the book when it caught fire. I don't know how that happened".

"f**k" He screamed in annoyance, "That was our best shot so far, it would have told us everything about their society".

********

All we had left was the address Barry wrote down from the last page of the journal. “ this is all we have left, I guess this is our best bet now” He waved the paper as he picked it up. “Hopefully whatever is at this address can tell us about the society and help us know more about it”.

He picked up his laptop and searched for the address on the paper, “this is the building, it looks like somewhere an occultic society would use” He said as I and Leah crouched to see the building. It was huge, like the type of castle you saw in movies. He clicked on recent pictures of the castle. It was abandoned, with moss and trees growing around it. It looked like it had been abandoned for years, “What happened? Are the society not using this place anymore?” I asked. Leah shrugged, “Who knows?”. Barry opened a news article, and it explained why they closed down the place. It said the building was closed and abandoned after a series of weird sightings and occurrences happened at the place. A few residents around the place said they saw demons when passing the castle with One even claiming he was taken by a demon and returned a month later. “This place will definitely have answers” Leah smiled. Sure it would, that didn't make it any less scary. “BUT It's creepy, and this place we're all looking at definitely can't be safe” I pointed at the laptop. “You don't need anyone to tell you that, come on guys”. “It's not like we have a choice, Carrie. I mean, it's not like we want to do this, I know I don't. This whole thing is freaky to me, sometimes I think about giving up and living a normal life. But I can't, we have to do this. If you have any ideas, I'll listen to them though” Barry said as he looked at me. I had zero ideas, I don't even know if I was thinking about anything right now. I'm too exhausted, I just want to eat and sleep, go to parks, and hang out like a normal girl. “Fine, when will we go to this place?”.

He looked at me, “what?” I asked with my hands outstretched. “Well, It’s still early you know. So I was thinking we just drive by the place and check it out” He saw my expression so he stopped a bit, before continuing, “No I don't mean go in there today. We're not doing that, I understand you guys are worried, I am too. We'll just park and check out the place from a distance I promise”. I sighed, “fine, no problem”.

“Can we have some snacks before we go though? I'm hungry” I got up to go get some chips in the kitchen. He laughed, “Sure we can, we definitely can.”. We read some more books and journals. I searched for anywhere they mentioned the leader or even the castle in all the books, I didn't find any. The Castle was definitely a secret place, probably someplace only a few members, high-ranking members of the society knew. In the evening, we decided to drive down to the place before it got dark. We parked across the street, I peered at the building from the Car. “That's the place” Barry pointed. The building and the gate had trees growing around them. The windows were shut too. After a few minutes, Leah pointed at the gate, “look at that, by the gate”. We didn't get it at first until she pointed it out to us and we looked at it well. It was a hole in the wall beside the gate. It would've passed as a normal hole but it was too big to be a regular hole and too strategically placed. “I think that looks big enough to fit a person, what do you guys think?” Barry asked. I smiled, “I was just thinking the same, it definitely can. Looks like whoever it was wanted to avoid being seen entering the building.” I took some pictures of the building, the gate, and the hole. “That's smart” Barry said as he saw me taking pictures. We took more pictures to examine later. I looked up, it was starting to get dark. “We should leave soon,” I said as I put the camera back in the bag. We were about to leave when my eye caught someone standing by the gate. The person was standing under the tree beside the castle at first, I thought it was just a resident. This didn't look like a resident at all, he was moving close to the gate carefully, trying not to get seen. “Look Look” I whispered to Barry and Leah. They looked at the person and Barry turned off the car engine. We couldn't get a clear look at the person because it was dark already, just a silhouette of the person. He kept moving close to the gate, slow and steady. In a flash, he went into the hole and into the castle. I jumped and pointed. “I guess we know who made that hole there now” Barry said. “We should wait till he comes out and get a clearer look at him” he finished.

Minutes passed, the person still wasn't out. Maybe he wanted to wait till everywhere was really dark to come out. Either way, it didn't look like he was coming out anytime soon, “We have to go, he hasn't come out since and it doesn't look like he's coming out. Maybe he's waiting for the cover of the dark or something” I urged them. “We have to be more careful when we come here to check it out again. Whoever this person is, he's very cautious” I sat back in my chair, ready to go home. “You're right, besides it's not like we can see him clearly when he comes out anyway, the streetlights in front of the castle don't look like they work” Barry agreed as he started the car again.

We drove back home, ate dinner and watched a movie. In between the movie, Barry sat up and turned to me and Leah. “Guys, I say we leave home early tomorrow to stake out the place”. I agreed with him, “we'll need snacks and water so we don't get hungry. And a camera” I told him and he typed it out in his phone. “No problem, so it's settled then. Tomorrow morning”. I was too tired to do anything else, we just moved the books to one side. I got up after the movie ended and stretched, “I'm going upstairs to bed guys, I'm tired” I yawned. “Leah, are you still up?” I asked. She was just as tired as I was. She has probably been waiting for me to say that since we got in. “Nah I'm tired too, let's go. Goodnight Barry and Mrs. Cook”. I freshened up and slept off immediately I was on the bed.

******

The next day, we woke up very early as planned. Minutes later, we were ready as we gathered in the living room. I already packed the camera, some books from the storage, snacks and water in a big bag. I took a bag big enough to contain all the snacks and water we could need, seeing as we would be there possibly all day. “Is that everything we need? Did we forget anything?” Barrie asked as we stepped outside. “Nope. Books, Snacks, water and a camera, all here. Oh, and a note too” I added.

On our way down to the castle, Leah suggested we buy some burgers and fries, that way we could keep the snacks for later. We stopped at a fast food restaurant and got some burgers, “Get me a large Cola too please” I shouted as Barry got down to buy them.

We drove to the castle after and parked across the street. I brought out the camera and note and placed them on the dashboard. We were looking for anything suspicious, out of the ordinary. After settling down, we decided to have our fast food breakfast. I ordered burgers, fries and a large Cola drink. I brought out a couple of books as I dug in my burger. I opened one boom and started reading, it was about the rituals to summon spirits and demons.

"This says the ritual to summon a demon needs a human sacrifice too and the demon possession spell requires the blood of someone close to you" I jotted that down on a sticky note and placed it in front of me. That would explain why Uncle Perry killed Dad. It makes sense, if Uncle Perry and the Leader were working together. The Leader gets a human sacrifice and Uncle Perry gets his demon possession, but what did he need that for. I mean, why a demon possession spell, what did he want to be possessed for. I continued flipping through the pages and found other interesting things. I found out a few things about the Lucifier's journal Uncle Perry talked about. It was supposed to have all the spells one could need. It could grant all the power in the world but some also thought it was deceiving, it deceived people to think it could grant everything they wanted, but all it was doing was borrow them for a short period of time then take them back in ten fold. It ruined civilizations, it caused wars, hatred between family and friends. So it was sealed away, in an undisclosed location. Of course, some people ignored that and went looking for it. Majority of them failed and died along the way, but someway somehow my Uncle found it. It didn't mention where it was though, and I didn't want to know. According to one of the books, of all the powers of the Lucifier's journal, its greatest was the power of rebirth. That was the main reason why people sought after it. Rich, influential people, powerful people of our world sought after the book for this reason. It could grant immortality, eternal life. It could also bring back someone that was long dead, as long as there was personal information of the person available. DNA, hair strands, personal belongings like brushes, clothes and the likes. Pictures and a bit of dirt from the person's grave. According to the book, it was a piece of flesh, but if it was to bring back someone that had been long dead then dirt from the person's grave and grace site would do the work. It required a human sacrifice to work. I mean, that was expected. A life for a life, I wouldn't believe anything like that any other way. I read about the demon possession spell too. It needed the blood of someone close to the person that was casting it. Although I had no idea why one would want a demon possession spell, but there were weird people in the world so I wouldn't say I was surprised. The demon possession spell needed things similar to the rebirth, like personal belongings of the caster. The caster had to create a ring with salt and candles, no lights in the room besides the candles. There was a spell or incantation to recite, and you also had to say the demon you wanted to possess you. You had to repeat its name.

The process was supposedly a deadly one, it was fifty-fifty chance. The demon could refuse the contract and it wouldn't work, or it would work but the demon would still refuse and could kill you. According to the book, there has only been one person that successfully casted and completed a demon possession spell. It lasted a month, the demon tore through his chest and killed him. It then took on his face and lived as the person for a whole year. The man's family noticed eventually and when it saw its cover was blown, he killed the entire family and disappeared.

I looked at my watch and back at the building, "It's been hours, nothing. No one has entered or come out for hours" I was frustrated. It could get a bit annoying, being cramped in a car for hours and what you're there for isn't even really there. Well, at least I was making progress with the books I guess. Barry held my hand as he tried explaining calmly, “I understand how annoying it is Carrie, but we planned for this. We knew this was very much a possibility when we decided to come here, I mean you can't say you expected to see the person crawling in and out of the hole. Even yesterday, it was dark before he came and thanks to you, we noticed him. All I'm saying is just have a bit of patience, okay?”. I smiled at him, always trying to make people feel better and explain properly. “I understand, thank you. I'm much better now”. Leah chipped in too, “He’s right Carrie. We expected this, besides at least you're making progress with the books” She pointed to my sticky notes. I had no idea I had written this much, I was so engrossed in the books. I sighed, “you're both right. Thank you, let's just have some snacks and water then get back to it” I took some chips and water from the bag and opened another book.