CARRIE

Chapter Thirty-Six

We agreed on the time and got Mom up to speed on what happened today. Her mouth was wide open throughout, when we told her about the second room, books, and the diary. “I can’t believe your Dad kept all these from me.” She shook her head. There is no use worrying about what we can’t change. I knew it would be hard on them, that’s why I didn’t tell them about what I knew from the beginning, but, I didn’t expect it to be this bad. I wanted to tell her we were not even sure if Dad was innocent himself, but looking at her reaction, now is not the best time to do that. Besides, we weren’t sure ourselves so I just kept quiet about it. “Just be careful you guys, I mean it. This sounds like it’s getting more dangerous by the day, and I’m not there to protect you guys” She got up and hugged us again. “Promise Me”… “Alright Mom, we promise” I and Carrie said at the same time.

We cleaned up after dinner and after watching Tv for some minutes we all were ready for bed. “We all have a long day ahead of us tomorrow. Carrie, you and I have to check out the second storage and Mom is going to work.” Carrie was only half awake anyway. I woke her up and we all went upstairs to bed.

The next morning, I woke up late. I rolled over the other side of bed and looked at the time, 11:28 AM. “s**t s**t s**t” I jumped out of bed and into the shower. I was still wearing my shirt when I ran out of the room, Mom would have left for work already. Carrie would probably still be sl… I got cut off by Carrie’s voice from the living room. “Well look who it is, you finally decided to join us. Morning sunshine”. She knew I hated that word, and that never stopped her from using it. “You’re up early today” I scoffed as I entered the living room. Leah was here already. “I am, unlike you” Carrie smiled mischievously. “Hey Leah, how’re you doing?” I ignored Carrie and turned to Leah. “I’m good. What time do we leave for the storage room?” She asked smiling. I sighed and looked at my watch, “After breakfast,”. Carrie laughed again and I arched my brow, “What’s so funny now?” I asked. “You mean after you’re done with breakfast. Because we ate breakfast hours ago” She said still smiling. I groaned and scratched my head, “Fine, I’ll eat breakfast then we’ll be on our way” I walked into the kitchen and took some cereal pops from the cupboard and milk from the fridge. I ate my cereal in silence, at least that’s what I was doing until Carrie entered the kitchen to tease me again. “Woah slow down Champ, the cereal isn’t going anywhere” She put her arm around my neck. I shrugged her off, “I’m just enjoying my breakfast Carrie.” I looked up at her, “What’s the plan by the way, we should go over it again” I changed the subject and she called Leah to the kitchen.

“We go there, check the place out, search for clues and answers then leave there as soon as we can IF or when we find one” She packed the bag she was taking along. It was bigger than the one she took yesterday. I looked at her then the bag, and back at her. “In case we need to take more books with us” She laughed. I finished eating and we went over the plan again before leaving the house.

In the car, I looked up the address of the second storage room. It was the same company as the first one but different locations. The number was also different, 66B. "How far is the place?" Carrie asked. “About 40 minutes away.” I answered, my eyes on the road.

We got to the storage company and they were hardly any cars in their parking lot. “Dont forget the bag” I said to Carrie as we got down and entered the building. We passed just two security guards, and locating room 66B was fairly easy because it was similar to the one we went to yesterday. We stood in front of the large door, It had two locks. I turned to Carrie and Leah, and they came close to see the locks. “Two locks? But we only have one key. What are we going to do now?” Leah asked. I looked at the locks and the key for a while and tried opening the first lock, it didn't work. I tried the second one and it opened. “So what now?” Carrie asked. “Now we look around for how we can get the first one open. We can't open the door without unlocking both” I searched the locks and the floor. “It's not here, we've been checking for five minutes and we haven't found anything so far” Carrie was visibly frustrated. I mean, we all were. I looked at the second lock one more time, it looked like a corner was loose. I scanned through with my fingers and I noticed I could pull it out. I pulled it and at the back, there was another key there. I smiled and showed Carrie and Leah. “Ah thank God, I was already worried” Carrie sighed.

I opened the first lock and pushed the door open. We entered the room and it was bigger than it looked, way bigger than the room from yesterday. We put on our flashlights and I looked around, I found a light switch at the other end of the room and put it on.

There were lots of books too in this room, but they were all occultic books. They didn't even try to hide it like they did in the other storage room. There were also records, journals of different people and years written on them. I walked along the long rows of shelves and looked at the books. I walked over to the records section, they were so many names. They were arranged alphabetically. It looked like a library that a large part of their society used. The names were most likely names of the members, their diaries. I looked for the letter P, and after some minutes I found it. “Perry Sawyer, Perry Smith, Perry Stevens..” I stopped. I called Carrie and Leah over as I took the book from the shelf and opened it. I flipped through the pages and something caught my eye that made me stop, it was my Dad’s name. “What does it say?” Carrie asked. “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.” Carrie looked at me and I continued reading, “The leader said by any means necessary. I know what he means, but I can't kill my own brother”. I paused as I read that. I read it again silently this time. “WHAT? Kill his brother? Why would he want to kill Dad?” Carrie asked. I asked myself the same question, why would the leader want him to kill Dad, his brother? What relevance did my Dad have with their society? I read through the other pages to try to find an answer. He didn't give any reason as to why he was ordered to do that, my Dad’s name wasn't even mentioned after that. “There’s nothing here about Dad again. Let's just move on, find out what we can and focus on that later” I said as I continued checking other books. I told Carrie and Leah to check the other shelves and corners. I looked for the leader’s name in Uncle Perry’s journal. I then checked for his own journal, I found it minutes later. I grabbed it from the shelf and opened it, it was empty. I stared at it for a while before putting it back. I was about checking another wing when I thought about it again. Empty as it was, it could have a clue of some sort. Knowing about the leader would help us understand what really happened and why he ordered Uncle Perry to get rid of my Dad.

After checking the books on the shelves and taking the ones we needed, I walked over to Carrie and Leah. They had already taken some books too. “No key here, or flash drive” Carrie sighed as I stopped behind them. “That's weird. There are still a lot of things to find out, surely it doesn't end here. Let's focus on the floor this time” I tried cheering them up and encouraging them to check more. We checked the floor and a few more shelves, but we didn't find anything. “Let's just go, we’ll check the books we have for clues and go from there” I zipped up my bag and locked the door behind us. “So did you find anything else on the Leader in there?” Carrie asked as we walked back to the Car. “Nah, nothing at all. His journal was empty, and his name didn't lead to anything useful in all the journals. I'll just check all the other books we've collected so far for clues” I entered the car and we drove back home.

Back at home, emptied the bags on the floor and went through the books. I went upstairs to get the one I kept from yesterday. The first book I looked at was the most interesting I found so far, the leader's journal. I opened it and looked at it again. I turned it around and examined the back, there was just one word written on it. “Renacimiento” “What does that mean? Do you know what it means?” I asked Carrie. We looked at each other, Leah coughed a little and we both turned to look at her. “I think I know what it means, from the little attention I paid in Spanish classes. I think it means reincarnation.. Or rebirth”. “Are you sure that's what it means?” I asked sitting up. “Yeah I'm sure” Leah answered with a wry smile. I picked up the book and carried my laptop. I looked up “renacimiento”. I read a few articles on them and one particular one said some ancient secret societies would hide words written in papers or books, and they'd only be visible when soaked in some special liquid or under fire. I sat up quickly. “What's wrong?” Carrie asked, sitting up too. I ignored her and ran to the kitchen to get a lighter and a candle. I lit the candle and held the book under the candle. “What are you doing?” Carrie asked as she tried to stop me. “Stop" I shouted sharply. "I'll explain to you guys. I just read that some ancient societies used to hide their written texts and they were only visible when held over a flame" I explained as I moved the candle over the leaflets of the book. “Well nothing is happening, the page will probably start burning soon” Carrie stood up and walked to the kitchen to get a drink. Several minutes later, I was about to give up and drop the candle when some letters began to show. “Carrie!! It's working, come take a look” Leah shouted. Carrie ran over to where we were and looked at the book. The letters were starting to show, slowly but surely. It took a while to get the whole page visible, but when it did I put the candle to one side and held the book up to cool a bit and read properly. I read it out to Carrie and Leah, “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" I stopped reading. Does that mean their sacrifice was Dad? Carrie asked me the same thing and I shook my head, “I don't know, to be honest with you. I'm not sure I know anything that's going on anymore" I dropped the book and went to the kitchen to get a bottle of water. This whole issue is getting complicated by the minute, Uncle Perry sounded like he didn't want to kill Dad in that journal, but we all know how much he hated him. I wasn't sure if I was the only one that thought about that. I went back and saw Carrie holding a candle over the last page of the book. I could understand that, there should be some important message at the end. I stood behind her, silent but my mind was very loud. I was thinking about if my Dad was actually part of their society. I mean, if he wasn't why mention him at all. Minutes passed, the words on the last page were starting to show. A few minutes later, the whole page was showing. It was an address, "write it down" Carrie turned to me. I got a pen and wrote the address down, there was also something scribbled at the bottom, I wrote it down too even though it was barely visible. We were about to repeat the process for the other pages when the book caught fire all of a sudden. "s**t s**t, put out the fire" Carrie shouted. I put out the fire and put my hands on my head in frustration.