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multimagical · 1 month ago

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The Ghost of Melbrew

Book 1 of 12 in the Multimagical series by Lillian R.S.

Masterlist

Chapter 5 - "A Strange Book"

Word Count: 3,800

Wattpad / Main: @lillianrs

Friendly criticism welcome

Continue reading below the cut and enjoy! <3

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The next day, It was Wednesday, and I woke up to my alarm blaring at 5am as I went through my usual morning routine. Cameron and Dominik had given me their phone numbers the night before. That morning, I awoke with a text from Cameron.

He texted me at like, two in the morning, to tell me to bring the book they gave me to school that day, and to be careful with it... Well, his exact text was:

"Yo dude u need 2 bring the book tmrw I wanna read that shit w my eyes at lunch n kai ll be back cuz he told me n he never read the whole thin he has his own vers but that aint important rn yea thx m8 b careful bc if u ruin that bk kim ll be mad bc she ws the 1 who had the guts 2 steal it in the 1st place ok ye that it thx"

...I really hope Dominik is the one who types out those reports they were talking about.

I placed the book safely into my backpack, said goodbye to my parents, and headed down the road to school. The morning announcements were as follows:

"Good morning Melbrew students. Today is Wednesday, September 28th, 2016. For lunch today, the cafeteria will be serving hamburgers, tomorrow will be pizza. The breakfast for tomorrow will be French toasts sticks. If you are going on Ms. Hogg's field trip this spring, your permission slips are due before Christmas break. Sign ups for the book and history clubs will be tomorrow, and they will be meeting every other week. Have a good day, Melbrew."

I went about my mundane day, and then lunch time finally came. I hadn't gotten a chance to talk to anyone yet, as the classes were busy, and the teachers were talkative. I was eager to start up a conversation.

"Wassup my dudes!" Cameron said as a greeting as he practically threw his tray on the table, making a loud sound. He slammed it down, causing some of his food to fly off the tray, making a few people to look towards us due to the sound.

"Jesus, dude. I thought you said the school's food was poisonous or something?" I said, Gesturing at his tray of lunch food.

"I like to live life on the edge, gambling with death is my favorite hobby! And if I do get sick I can sue them. They actually stopped giving out broccoli because all of it always had mold on it. It was like that for a few months until the kids decided to start speaking up about it and became persistent. They literally did not care, like it wasn’t a big deal."

"God, that's gross. They really didn't care?" I questioned.

"Nope. Don't get it, never will. Blows my fucking mind, dude." He said, and changed the subject, "Did you bring the book like I asked you to?"

"Yes, but you should be thankful. Trying to decode that message after just waking up gave me a headache!" I said, and pulled the book out of my bag. Dominik took it out of the case he gave me and flipped it open.

"So, what did you think?" He asked.

"It's pretty crazy, but definitely interesting. It feels like I'm in a mystery novel, but maybe that's just because I fantasize about it, like, all the time."

"Well, you're definitely in the right town for a mystery!" Cameron said, "This book is full of all sorts of things. A lot of it is anonymous re-writes of people's experience while being on the property, or in the graveyard right next to it. It's like you're reading some kinda ghost documentary, but it takes place where you live. It’s fucking cool, dude."

There was the gentle sound of a tray hitting the table right next to me, the complete opposite of Cameron.

“Is that the book?" Kai asked, monotone as always.

"Yes! It's here in all its glory!" Cameron said, and slid it over to him.

Kai flipped through the pages, a blank expression on his face. "I've never read this properly. You said it's pretty much a collection of stories, right? The ones that we have, but with a professional analysis?" His voice still monotone, not even changing pitch when he asks a question.

"Yup." Cameron said, "What about you? You bring yours?"

He said nothing, and pulled a book out of his own bag, the same one that he was reading in the library on Monday, on my first day. He placed the book on the table, "Kimi took this from the library a while ago. I only found out about it recently because she didn't want me to know."

The book looked incredibly old. Its grey, hardback cover was peeling back, and I could tell that it was a faded black, worn away over the years. Its thick pages were ripped, brown, stained, and wrinkled. It had scratches, and burn marks, and what even looked like blood stains. The previously golden accents of metal were now dull and bronzed. In the center of the book was the faded lettering of "Lord Lutho" both engraved and written over in black ink.

We opened the book, and were greeted with an unfamiliar language. And when I say unfamiliar, I mean I've never seen it before in my life. It was in some kind of language we couldn't even try to read, it looked like the same alphabet we use, but not exactly, it was slightly different. It almost looked as if the person writing just took a keyboard and just began spam typing nonsense, but with a pen and their hand... while also not knowing what exactly letters look like.

As we flipped through the old dirty pages, there were black ink drawings of different kinds of creatures, and what I assume to be a description of the magic they have, but we couldn't read it. There were pages on what I’d assume to be multiple mythical creatures, different kinds of aliens, different sections of angels and demons, it was weird. There was one page in specific that caught our attention, though. There was a drawing of two conjoined twins, holding a conjoined cat. The title read:

Sah Heirfix Gdrmhz: Prinsezzhz Noctis a Umbra Papilio. Lu sah mrtsg, drgs hszwvhz lu gris, za shadow dzh xzhg, a gsviv dvi gdrmhz.

"The something something, princesses Noctis and Umbra Papilio? Is that what it says?" Cameron asked.

"That's a good guess," Dominik said, "the only word I can make out in the second sentence is Shadow... isn't Noctis, Umbra, and Papilio Latin for Night, Shadow, and Butterfly?"

"Bro who do you think I am, someone who speaks Latin?" Cameron said, "You're lucky I speak English!"

"Are you sure this is real?" I questioned, skeptically.

"Mayhaps." Cameron said. "Don't you believe these creatures can exist? Because if you don't, you're gonna have a hard time here, mate."

"Who wrote this?" Dominik asked Kai.

"Someone named Lord Lutho, I don't know. That's the only name on the book. Just the words Lord Lutho." Kai went and looked the name up on his phone, but strangely nothing came up.

We didn't give the book much attention, it didn't seem real. Something like a fantasy book written to seem real for fun visuals. Couldn't quite figure out why it wasn't written in English though. Or any other known language for that matter. Or why there wasn't some actual name on it somewhere. Guess it was just for visual aesthetics, like an art book or something.

The rest of the day went on, and the dreaded biology class came about. Veronica was very vocal about how much she didn't want to work with me, and how gross and disgusting these projects were. She said she would pay me to do the whole thing for her, by myself, which actually sounded like a good idea to me.

This girl was a bitch, and an even bigger bitch to work with. She offered me 500 whole dollars right then and there if I would agree! You're telling me I don't have to work with her, and also get 500 bucks? Sign me the hell up! I took the deal. I decided to do the plant project, where I have to collect 15 different plants. That seemed like the easiest to me.

Once that God awful class period finally ended, I went and exited through the back doors as I do. Cameron and Dominik met me, but today Kai was with them as well.

"Hi, Emmy." Dominik said, exiting with Cameron and Kai.

"Kai's comin' wit’ us today," Cameron said, "he just told us he's got some good ass story from when he and Kimi were gone from school yesterday. Ya wanna come with? We're going to the apartments again."

"Pfft, you kidding? There's no way I'm NOT coming!"

"Great!" Cameron said, "The more people in on this shit the better! Kimi doesn't seem to agree, though."

"We ditched school and found something," Kai said, "we have to get Kimi now."

He, Dominik, and Cameron began to walk down the street to the middle school, and Cameron gestured for me to follow them. I quickly finished up with texting me mom. I told her I would be going to the apartments again, and then quickly ran to catch up with them.

"So what do you mean you found something?" I asked Kai when I reached them.

He shrugged, "We looked around the woods and found something."

"Okay but WHAT did you find?" Cameron asked, barely able to wait, voice laced with impatient, annoyed excitement.

"We will tell you when we get there."

We walked to the middle school, where Kimi was waiting. She immediately punched Cameron in the arm, gave me a dirty look, and went off down the wooded road leading to the apartments.

I stood confused for a moment, "...Why did she do that?" I asked.

"She fucking hates me, dude!" Cameron said, then laughed. We continued on and I followed the group down the streets, all the way to the apartments.

"Hey Mrs. Johnson." Kai greeted Cameron's mother as we entered their apartment room.

"Hello Kai! Hello Kimi!" She said, "And hello to you too, Emmy!"

"Hello!" I said back, and followed the group into Cameron's bedroom, shutting the door behind me.

"Gimme that juicy ass scoop, it should be illegal to make me wait this long!" Cameron said, crashing down on a blue bean bag chair, "Yo, Dom, pass me the cheese-its! Imma needa snack for this one."

Dominik rolled his eyes a bit, but grabbed the box off a shelf and tossed it to him.

Kai sat at his desk, while Kimi sat on top of it. Dominik took a seat on his bed, and I did, too.

"Well," Dominik said, gesturing to the room, "go on, tell us!"

"Kai and I were out skipping school at the baseball field yesterday. We were taking turns at hits until I got bored of it. We decided to go out and look in the woods around the place, but then we found something weird."

Kai pulled out his cracked old phone, "I took some photos, but the quality isn't very good." He said as he flipped his phone to us. Through the cracks and bad quality, some sort of strange hole could be seen. "We got stuck in the rain so we couldn't stay very long."

"Yo, dude, that looks like a portal to Hell or some shit." Cameron said, taking the phone from him. “Oh my God, I hope it’s a portal to Hell, that would be so fucking sick!”

"I threw a stick down it. It's really deep." Kimi said.

"That's not the only thing that's-" Cameron started, but Dominik threw a pillow at his face before he could finish.

"What do you think it is?" I asked.

"We have no idea." Kimi said, "We wanna go down and check it out this weekend if anyone wants to come with us."

"Aw hell naw." Dominik said.

"AW HELL YEAH!" Cameron yelled.

I scoffed, "Oh, absolutely!"

"Anyone except for you." She said.

"Nope. She's comin' whether you like it or not." Cameron said.

"Can confirm. I'm coming, no exceptions!" I said. "I've wanted this for ages."

"I don't like her." She said, blatantly.

"Well news flash, kid, you're not the person who gets to decide who's a part of this group or not." Cameron said.

"I volunteer to not go in place of Emmy." Dominik said.

"How about after school on Friday?" Kai suggested, changing the conversation.

"Yeah, that should be good." I said.

"I'm down to fuck with death any day!" Cameron said, punching his palm with his fist.

"No." Dominik said. "I'm actually very busy on Friday, how about we change it to uhhh, to..."

"Okay then, so Friday?" Kai asked for confirmation.

"Yup." Cameron and I said.

"I- no! I did not consent to this." Dominik said.

"Friday!" Cameron and I cheered, while Dominik looked defeated. We continued to chant, "Fri-day! Fri-day! Fri-day!"

We all went on to relax a bit. I properly introduced myself to Kimi and Kai, and we got to know each other a little bit better. Neither of them were really big talkers, so it was mostly me, but Kai was much more friendly than Kimi, even though Kimi was much more talkative than Kai.

We all officially decided to come back to the apartments on Friday, after doing a bit of convincing with Dominik. We were going to take the nature trail that's down on that same road and follow it.

Kimi and Kai said that they remembered where it was located, and that it shouldn't be a problem to stray from the path a bit to find it. That way it'd be harder to get lost. At five o'clock we all went home. The next day was Thursday, the day for the club sign-ups.

The speaker beeped, followed by the typical static, "Good morning Melbrew students. Today is Thursday, September 29th, 2016. For lunch today, the cafeteria will be serving pizza, tomorrow will be ham sandwiches. The breakfast for tomorrow will be waffles. If you are going on Ms. Hogg's field trip in the spring, your permission slips are due before Christmas break. Sign ups for the book club, and History club, will be today in the cafeteria, and they will be meeting every other week. Have a good day, Melbrew."

It had brushed over my head for the past few days, but I noticed it now. What was Ms. Hogg's field trip? She hadn't mentioned it at all during class, not even once.

The day was average. I went and asked Dominik, Cameron, and Kai about the field trip, but they said they didn't know what it was for, either. Kai and I both had her as our biology teacher, but he said he didn't care enough to pay attention.

I wanted to ask her myself, but approaching that teacher felt like it was a death sentence. Unfortunately, I didn't have any other ways of finding out. I was curious about it, and if I wanted to know, I would just have to find the guts to do it and ask her directly... oh boy, time to mentally prepare myself, I suppose.

At lunch us four signed up for the history club, and a few other kids did, too. Kai snuck angry glances at them. Because of the presence of other kids, we'd have to hide the true nature of the club from them with a fake meeting. Once ninth period came to be, I took a few deep breaths as I walked down that silent, eerie hallway, thinking about what I was gonna say when I had to face that unsettling teacher.

"Um, excuse me, Ms. Hogg?" I asked, walking into her classroom, then over to her desk. I felt so nervous, which rarely happens to me... yet it's happened constantly since moving here, and it's not even been a week yet!

"What?" She said, voice lightly coated in annoyance, not looking up from whatever she was writing.

"I noticed on the announcements this morning that you are going to be having a field trip this spring, may I ask what it's about?"

She grumbled and mumbled a little bit before speaking, "I'm gonna be taking' everyone down to the ocean by the Pacific to look at all the different critters, but yins gotta pay for it. Ain't taking no one fo' free."

"Oh, how much is the price?"

She mumbled something under her breath, and went to dig through her desk before shoving a paper in front of me, "jus' take this and go sit down."

"Oh, uh, okay, thank you!" I said, and took the paper to my desk. Veronica came in soon after and scoffed at my paper, disgusted.

"Are you really thinking about going on that gross field trip?"

"Huh. It's almost like someone is paying me 500 dollars to do the project." I said, "I think it would be a wise investment to get all the help I can with it." She rolled her eyes at me, the bell rang, and Ms. Hogg got on with her class.

I thought a field trip to the ocean would be pretty cool! It also said the pay fee was only $20! I tucked the paper away into my bookbag, and walked home once the school day had ended. Completely opposite to Tuesday's pouring rain, it was a sunny sky with warm air and cool winds.

"Wow, look hun! She's home today!" My mom said when I came inside.

"Holy cow! Does she actually like us?" My dad said from the kitchen, preparing dinner.

"Of course I like you."

"Really?" My mom said, surprised, "You like us better than those boys?" She winked.

I internally cringed and laughed awkwardly, "Yeah, okay. Is it okay if I hangout again tomorrow, though? We all have plans. Cameron, Dominik, Kai, Kimi, and I."

"Of course you can, sweetie!" Mom said. "As long as you don't talk about murders or ghosts."

"Okay thank you," I said, and ran up the stairs to my room. I rolled my eyes when I was out of sight. Oh, the cringe. I was ready to hit my head off the wall for three consecutive hours now.

I changed into pajamas because I didn't have any other plans that evening. I decided to turn on the little television in my room and see what was on. All of my social media timelines were dry and I didn't feel like reading at the moment. I didn't have the mental capacity to actually do anything… maybe I should've went and hit my head off the wall for three consecutive hours?

I began flipping through the channels, watching for a few seconds to decide if I wanted to stay, but nothing was really catching my eye. That is until I got to the local news station. How strange that the news is the only interesting thing on TV.

I've watched the local station before, but usually it's nothing good. Just a dry old story of, "Wow, look at this beaver dam in the river!" Or, "This squirrel forgets how to climb! #funny" and small town stuff like that.

This news story, however, was very different from the usual local reports. It was about this woman whose house was allegedly being haunted, according to her at least. I flipped to the channel when they were inside the house talking about the supposed spirit. She said that that she'll wake up and find the magnets on her fridge in different orders, or will hear strange bumps in the night. She said everyone in her family denied getting up and doing it.

I wondered who she was, exactly. Her name was Laura Nova. I noticed that she lived in a house down at the base of the hill, by the library and mansion. The same side of town I was on. One of her daughters then came on screen, her name was Ava Nova.

I knew that she was ten years old, and I think that was the age of a fourth grader. She showed the camera her scars on her neck, saying that she'll wake up with them randomly. They were in the shapes of scratches, but they didn't break the skin. Just red marks that seemed to stay. They then brought in a priest and were blessing the house and all that stuff.

They went on to talk about how they found a mysterious little key that they hadn't seen before. Well, actually, it was anything but little, it was two feet long! Ava found it in the basement while she and her older sister, Nora, were cleaning up. It was old, gold, and didn't go with any lock in the house, obviously. They said it was weird but they weren't sure of what else it could be, that thing was huge! Because of that, I assumed it was just a decoration.

Once that story was over, I got out my phone and went to text the chat I was added in. I didn't notice until now, but Cameron had named it, Stupid Name for a Group chat. I rolled my eyes and opened the empty chat.

You: hey first text

You: anyways

You: do you guys know Ava or Nora Nova?

Cameron: yuh ik nora y

You: Ava, Nora, and their mom were just on the local news station. Ava has scars all over her. They think they're haunted

Cameron: YO DUDE DAY SICK

Cameron: DAT

Dominik: I was watching that, I'm casual friends with Nora, she's a girl in our grade. Don't know her that well, though. It's been going on for a few weeks now, but the paranormal activity has only just started recently

You: I think she's in my gym class now that i think about it???

Cameron: u shld tlk 2 her

Cameron: in gym

You: I will

Cameron: Gud I gtg c u tmrw its sleepi time

You: It’s… five in the afternoon????

Cameron: i was up til 3 am yestefr day dont judge me

The conversation ended there, and I turned off the TV. I decided to continue reading my book. I was still relatively at the beginning of the book. I started reading when I got here, called The MMR. It stands for Multicolored Monochrome room. It was about a 9 year old girl named Crynn who could see things that others couldn't, which led the cast somewhere strange, with even stranger people. It was a good book to put me in the mood of strange discoveries.

As I slept that night I wondered if what those two found in the woods could be my world's MMR?

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#lillianrs #the ghosts of melbrew #multimagical #writers on tumblr #tgom #tgom C5

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