Chapter 4 4 Charlie's Castle Frozen in Summer Dusk 4
2174 Words
Rosie's Castle, the corridor outside the study on the first floor.
The cold marble surface was in his eyes, Zoe Miller was propped up on the floor with her right hand, clutching the table knife in her left hand, and the memories of the night flooded into her mind in an instant.
It still didn't work, even if the text message was left on the body, the wound retained after returning to the real world, but the message was still gone. During the day, the scratches were a jumble to Zoe Miller's eyes. She seems to have had her perception distorted by something.
Zoe Miller put the knife away and got up from the floor.
She had just gotten up when the door to the study was suddenly pushed open and Charlie came out of the study.
It was as if he just explicitly knew that Zoe Miller would show up at this hour, "Miss Emily, I happened to be waiting for you to join me for dinner."
"Yes? What time is it?"
"Almost eight o'clock, come with me, the servants have been waiting for a long time."
Zoe Miller glanced at the study, which had not yet closed its door tightly, and seemed to see a large incandescent bulb.
She asked Charlie, "What were you just doing in there?"
"Oh? It seems Miss Emily is interested in my little research." Charlie answers her question as she walks away, "That said, the knowledge in the heads of you visitors always amazes me. Someone shared the principles of the light bulb with me earlier, and I hired a group of skilled craftsmen who are working on it for me. I'll be sure to invite Miss Emily to come and see it when it's done."
Zoe Miller clenched her fists in secret as she listened.
It wasn't good that Charlie, an ancient man from the 17th century, knew more and more beyond his time. It meant that the only advantages Zoe Miller had, as a modern man, were only getting smaller.
"Have you only developed light bulbs so far?"
Charlie c****d his head and seemed a little amused as he said, "Speaking of which, I have a whole underground stash of interesting gadgets. I'll be sure to show Miss Emily around some day. After all, I'm looking forward to Miss Emily adding something new to my collection."
An entire collection...
"How did you get those people to name so many things?" Zoe Miller's voice turned serious.
However Charlie didn't answer positively, instead he turned to Zoe Miller , winking softly, "Well, Miss Emily will find out soon enough."
His voice sounded light and breezy, as if he couldn't wait to pronounce a death sentence on Zoe Miller.
The man was a real creep, Zoe Miller spat inwardly as she sensed the gravity of the situation. She realised that right now Charlie probably felt that she still had value, and therefore was still able to talk to her nicely, chalking up the illusion of being courteous to her in his words, and giving her the freedom to move around as well. But the moment Charlie really revealed his malice, I feared it would be the moment of her own death.
There wasn't much time left, and she needed to hurry and find the basement. She excused herself at the table for not feeling well and quickly left the restaurant.
Charlie watched her back as she left for a moment, slowly cutting off a piece of steak and placing it in his mouth.
--
The restaurant is on the ground floor, Zoe Miller exits the restaurant and arrives at a hall surrounded by three closed doors.
Zoe Miller counted the hours as she watched.
The first three days of his life had not flowed at all, and the day before that he had travelled for an indeterminate amount of time before meeting Charlie, and time could not be perceived accurately. Only yesterday, when she entered the dream, this morning in the dream world, was time perceived accurately.
She awoke at about 7 or 8 a.m., and then returned to the real world near noon, from which she learnt that she had spent almost four hours in the dream world last night before returning to the real world. Then she spent the entire day in the real world, while at the same time time time flowed in the dream world, and roughly eight hours passed in the dream world.
By that reckoning, it was likely that there would only be four hours of activity tonight as well.
Zoe Miller began her exploration with the door on the far right, only to push it open and enter another deep corridor lined with forbidding doors.
Zoe Miller tries them one by one, but all of them are locked and cannot be opened.
Next, Zoe Miller opens a second door down the hall and pushes it open to reveal a staircase leading downwards.
Zoe walked down the stairs, the whole hallway was dark and there were sconces on the walls at intervals, the candles in them gave off a dull glow.
Zoe couldn't help but lighten her steps.
Estimating the height of the next floor, Zoe heard the sound of conversation coming from up ahead.
"It's time for you to go feed." A low male voice said. It sounded somewhat older.
Another younger male voice said lazily, "Isn't that one dead yet? I thought it was time for all my work to be done."
"This is not something you should be discussing." The older male chided him in a low voice, "And don't forget, our job is to make sure he stays alive."
"Got it." There was some disbelief in the younger male's voice.
"Alright you hurry up. Are you ready for tomorrow's hunt?"
"I'll go as soon as I finish feeding."
Then there was the sound of the wooden door closing and the sound of an adult's footsteps, then getting lighter and lighter as if they were walking away.
Zoe tiptoed down the stairs and slowly poked her head out. There was a short corridor with several closed wooden doors on either side, dim candlelight, extremely low ceilings, and an overall depressing and dim look.
A man dressed as a manservant, with his back to Zoe, could be seen holding a candlestick in one hand and carrying a box in the other, and quickly disappeared around the corner.
Having to follow, Zoe softened her steps more carefully, walked down a short corridor, turned a corner, and there was another flight of stairs down which the manservant's figure had disappeared.
The walls of the entire flight of stairs were devoid of any place to place candles, and the only glimmer of light emanating from the corner, and constantly swaying dramatically, must have been the light from the candlestick the manservant was holding in his hand.
It was all one way, Zoe realised, if the manservant returned the way he came, she'd be run right into without even having a place to hide, but she had to take the risk.
The footsteps of the manservant continued, thumping and echoing in the small, dark space. And the light grew fainter as he walked away.
Zoe followed, counting the rhythm of the footsteps in front of her as she made her way down the stairs, one step at a time.
It was a spiral staircase this time, and Zoe turned two corners before hearing the footsteps of the manservant stop.
Immediately she stopped moving, pricked up both ears and held her breath.
There was a click - a creak - a click.
It seemed to be the sound of a key poking into the lock and then turning.
"Hey, wake up, dinner's ready!" The manservant's voice echoed through the space.
Zoe could probably ascertain that it was someone being held captive down there, and the manservant was the one who was going to feed him. Combined with Elizabeth's words, the one imprisoned here was most likely the previous intruder.
Immediately followed by another breathless voice, "Oooooh, aaaah."
Gotta get down there and check it out, Zoe made the decision that if she couldn't reach the intruder this time, she'd still have to get the manservant's key first on her next visit, and then she didn't know when she'd have to wait.
"You can't even eat, you have to be fed by me every time, really, I don't know how many sets of clothes I've soiled." The manservant grumbled to himself. This gloomy environment is really a bit oozing, he himself usually doesn't like to come to this place, at this moment, he even unconsciously started talking loudly to give himself courage.
Zoe listens to the manservant's words and slowly walks the rest of the stairs in the darkness.
When she reached the end, she took advantage of the fact that the manservant was just halfway through a sentence to hold her breath and poke her head out, quietly glancing inside.
It was only at that glance that she saw, by candlelight, a huge, iron barred, standing humanoid t*****e device facing her, with a man imprisoned in it, and the manservant had his back to Zoe, facing the man, with the candlestick and the food box on the floor beside him, and the manservant appeared to be holding rice in one hand, and a spoon in the other, feeding the man.
Zoe had expected that the manservant should be busy and talking to himself at the moment, even if she probed out, in such a dimly lit place, he would probably not be the first to notice her. Who knew that the underground space was even smaller than she had imagined, from the stairway to the t*****e device was only three or four steps away, and the door in the middle was greatly opened by the manservant, and even worse, the t*****e device was suspended in the air, roughly 30 centimetres from the ground, such a difference in height even made the eyes of the people in the mould cross the manservant, and at once saw Zoe poking out her head from the stairway.
"Oooooh!" The man in the mould suddenly began to struggle, he let out a shrill cry and his eyes focused on the stairway. He tried to make a sound, but he still had the t*****e device around his mouth, which made it so that he could only keep his mouth open, able to swallow things, but unable to speak properly.
Zoe quickly ducked back into the stairway.
But it was too late, the manservant was already in shock, and he followed the eyes of the man in the mould and immediately turned back to the stairway.
"Who's there!" He snapped.
There was no sound, even the man in the mould had stopped vocalising, the whole space was horribly silent except for the echoes of the manservant.
What to do, Zoe pressed herself against the staircase wall, her mind whirling. The door from the stairs to the hall was a passage with no forks and no place to hide, and the only place to hide was in the room behind the wooden doors, but as it stood, they looked more like servants' quarters, and it would be a fool's errand to break in while she was running away. Running all the way from here to the entrance of the hall was even more unlikely, she didn't think she could outrun a six-foot-six adult male.
What to do, a cold sweat broke out on her back.
Thud-
The sound of footsteps was very soft, yet still noticeable in the dead silence, as if they were stepping on Zoe's tense nerves.
Knock-knock-knock.
Two more footsteps sounded, and Zoe could already see the shadow of the manservant on the floor at the top of the stairs.
She grabbed the table knife in her sleeve, her only defence.
One more step, she thought to herself.
Just then, the man in the mould suddenly erupted from his throat with a scream, "Aaaaaaahhhh!"
"What..." The manservant subconsciously turned around and looked up at the person in the mould, and just at that moment, Zoe, who had been tensing up for a long time, rushed out from the stairway entrance like a stringed arrow, and with two steps, the whole person pounced on the candlestick placed on the floor!
There seemed to be a figure flashing in the afterglow of the manservant, however, before he could see and react, in the next second, only a clang followed by a dull sound was heard, and the entire space was plunged into darkness.
This was underground, and plunged into darkness was true darkness.
The manservant stood in the darkness with his scalp tingling, his body gradually stiffened, he didn't dare to move or make a sound.
Gradually, he heard the breathing of a third person from the darkness.
S-h-h-h-h-h-h.
The voice was close at hand, and it seemed as if there were a man in the darkness pressed up against his face.
- Writer
