AllFreeNovel
Share Us
For the sake of it, I attempt to open the locket with a few of the keys, but while all of them fit inside, none of them are able to twist. Once I’m alone, with more time on my hands, I’ll try all twenty-nine, to be thorough. For now I get the gist — the keys aren’t the right fit. I’m sure that’s a clue to the puzzle, so I file it away for later, but the information doesn’t account to much.
The rest of the objects don’t seem to be related to the keys and locket. A palm-sized obsidian egg decorated with silver detailing in the vein of Faberge. A silver filigree ring in some gothic-inspired pattern. A miniature animal skull with ram-like horns. A golden coin, tarnished by time and what looks to be dried blood, decorated with a swirling symbol, like a snake eating its tail.
I rummage through them, as if rearranging them could reveal the secret code, but they don’t look like anything more than… trinkets.
“So where is the puzzle in all of this?” I ask.
Teizel quirks an eyebrow. “You’re looking at it.”
Great. I don’t know why I was expecting a different answer, but a selection of random objects a puzzle does not make.
“There’s a pattern that links the objects in that box, and one of them is missing. Figure out the pattern, and you ought to be able to find the missing trinket.”
So it’s like one of those logic questions on standardized tests in school, where you have a sequence of shapes or numbers and have to figure out what’s next. Rocks drag my stomach down to my knees. I was never good at those — much more of a creative thinker.
“Has anyone else figured out the pattern?”
Teizel shakes his head.
The news keeps getting worse. “Do you know what it is?”
He pauses. Shakes his head again.
An acrid taste coats my tongue. If Teizel himself, who’s been playing this game for two centuries, hasn’t cracked the code… what hope do I have to do so in two months?
My fingers tighten around the box, knuckles going white. I should’ve thought this through before accepting the bargain. Now, I’m on a racing train barreling toward my own death, and the answer to the puzzle feels as far away as everything I’ve ever wanted has been in my life. There enough for me to know it exists, but so out of reach I’ll never get it.
“Don’t lose hope quite yet, little one,” Teizel interjects my thoughts. “You’ve had the box in your hands for a whole of five minutes. You’ll start finding answers soon enough.”
I bring a hand to my lips and bite off the cuticles on my thumb, looking at the trinkets, cataloguing each one. The more I stare at them, the less sense they make, and the realization I’m in over my head drags me under, filling my eyes with tears.
I don’t notice Teizel’s moved until the cushion next to mine dips, and he’s by my side. When his scorching hot fingers make contact with the skin under my eyes, drying the wetness, I flinch. Teizel retreats his hand as if he’d forgotten himself for a moment, eyeing it like a foreign object.
“If I lose,” I say in a whisper, as if saying those words out loud could speak them into existence. “You will move on and do this to someone else, will you not?”
Teizel’s jaw ticks. “You say that like any of this is my choice.”
“Is it not?” Maybe he didn’t start the game, but he could end it by choosing never to play again, to rope another person into this.
“You have no idea what the past two centuries have been like for me.” Fire burns in his eyes. A tear sounds from behind me, and I whip my head around. The hand he’s draped over the back of the couch has transformed, growing claws, which have shredded the cushion’s fabric.
“You think I enjoy this morbid show playing on repeat, year after year. You think I’m playing it willingly.”
I steel my spine. I’m not backing out on this. “If you weren’t, you’d stop.”
Teizel makes a tsk sound in his throat. “You can paint me the villain all you want, little one. The truth is I’m doing what I must to survive. You’ve got no clue what this curse does to me.”
He’s right, I don’t. But he’s survived two centuries of people playing this cursed game, and it’s been deadly to everyone involved but him. I’d argue he’s getting the better deal. “Does the curse give you two months to solve an impossible riddle or die a potentially painful death?”
I hadn’t considered the pain until now, but as soon as the words leave my lips, it’s all I can think about. People fear death because of the unknown of what may await them after; that’s never been a question for me, and in turn, I’ve never feared death. Now, I realize it’s because I didn’t dwell on the act of passing itself. The thought claws at me with a vice grip.
I focus my attention on the black locket, and bite my inner cheek to stop any more tears. “Does it hurt?”
When Teizel doesn’t answer me, I turn to him. “Dying. Is it going to hurt.”
He grips my face in his hands with a force that startles me, but his hold is too firm for me to back away. His right hand is still clawed, and the sharp tips nick the skin at my temple. “That kind of discourse is not acceptable. I will not have you give up this quickly.”
I ball my fists on the edge of the box. “Why? Because it’d mean you wouldn’t get your little curse broken?”
