Lost in Refuge - Part 4

I turn the pages of my great-great-grandmother’s journal back to the first and re-read the words. This is a true story that few know. Someday maybe this will fall into the right hands, and they will fix this mess. Listen carefully…

“Sounds very poetic…” I mutter to myself. My cat, Patches, meows and rubs his head on my arm. "Dramatic."

I go back to where it says The Beginning of the End and try to let my brain process those words. Even more puzzled than before, I turn to the next page and start to read the curling words on pages yellowing with age.

I will start by introducing myself. My name is Felicity Marshall. I cannot truthfully write here how old this journal is, because I don’t know who will be reading it, or when they’re reading it—because, I’m sure, whenever someone DOES read this, I will probably be long since dead and buried. So let me get straight to the point. And bear with me please—this is going to be long.

For years and years, I have watched our world slowly deteriorate. I mean the people. Wars are everywhere. All people want now, all people think about now, are money and power. That’s it. No one seems to care about what really matters—love, Family, friends. And also, for years now I have been working with a company, called the ELDERS, short for Everlasting Life of Direct Enactment for Restoring Safety. I know, I know, it sounds rIdiculous, and I’m not entirely sure it makes sense, but I think they just wanted to have ELDERS stand for something. So now they’re known as the ELDERS, who are quickly becoming the group who ‘will someday save the world’. Sounds crazy, doesN’t it? Well, I can tell you that this is not craziness. I’m sure that whoever is reading this knows what the ELDERS have Done to our society.

“What is this, Patches?” I stroke Patches’ soft head. “This is crazy.” I shake my head and turn back to the journal.

I said I worked for the ELDERS. You must be wondering why I worked for Them if I hate them with such a passion. Well, beyond their knowledge, I was doing more damage than work on their “project”, as they called it.

On my deatHbed I saw them finish it.

Their project was a huge plot of land where they built a huge city and a huge wall surrounding it. They slowly, but surely, lured people to move to their “refuge in a cruel world”—to quote their ads. They started writing booKs and making shows on how safe and amazing thEir “refuge” was, and how horrible the outside world was.

Once their city was full, they shut it off to the outside world and gradually started enforcing their rules and laws. No one seemed to notice it or at least care. ELDERS took away any pet or animal besides cats, all plants, and anY books that weren’t related to their project or how they “saved” us from the, as they started to call it, the Out There. Freedoms disappeared rapIdly. And the worst part? No one cared. No one listened when I aNd one other friend of mine tried to convince THem about evErything wrong.

So I started to write this journal. I did find, however, twenty-two other people—besides my friend and I—who shared some of our Views. Together, the twenty-four of us formed the E.B.S. The E.B.S. stAnds for the Elders’ Bane Society. We strove to bring down their ideas of thiS life (if you can call it that), but wE didn’t get far.

I’m going to leave clues and a trail of hints, so if this does fall into the wrong hands, at least they’ll have a hard time trying to get to all of our progress and plans. I will include the first hint in this journal.

Here’s the hint: capitals.

“Capitals?” I raise an eyebrow. “I don’t think anyone can figure that one out.”

“Mreoow.” Patches jumped off my lap and disappeared into the kitchen. Capitals… what does she mean by ‘capitals’? Couldn’t be the capital of this city… could she be referring to all the capitals in this journal?

I flip back, once again, to the beginning of the journal, looking back through the writing. That’s when I notice it. Scattered throughout the writing, certain words have a capital letter in them.

I hurry to grab a pencil and paper and start to write down the letters that are capitalized—besides the ones at the beginning of the sentences. The first was I, in the word ‘ridiculous’. The second was N, in doesn’t.

“I N…” I murmur. In… what? Searching through the words again, I found a D in ‘done’. Then there was an H in ‘deathbed’.

“I N D H—that doesn’t make sense.” I frown. I found a K, an E, a Y, an I, N, TH, E, A, S, and another E.

I looked at the piece of paper that had the letters on them.

“I N D H K E Y I N TH E A S E. Huh. Maybe I missed some…” 

A sneaky F was hiding in front of ‘family’. So now it’s F I N D H K E Y I N T H E A S E. Finally, after searching through the journal multiple times, I finally find another T, an E, and a V.

“So altogether,” I whisper, getting excited, “it says… FINDTHEKEYINTHEVASE! Find the key in the vase! But what vase?”

I look around the room for any vases. There’s one on the top of that bookshelf, but that one’s new. What other vases do I have? Well, there’s that one in the kitchen… I scramble to my feet and rush into the kitchen. This one is old. But there isn’t a key inside it. Just a ton of dust. I sneeze at all the dust flying around me and put the vase back.

I don’t have any other vases. Maybe it isn’t in this apartment. But there are probably thousands of vases in this city! I groan.

But wait—the broken vase! Patches knocked it down yesterday! I rush back to the kitchen in elation, pulling open the garbage can. Thankfully there were only a few cans and all the shards of the broken vase in it.

I dump the garbage onto my dining room table.

Patches jumps up onto the table and gingerly picks his way across to me.

I search carefully through each piece. Finally—it must have been the very last piece I looked at—I lifted a shard, and taped to the bottom was a small, hard, golden key.

“Yes!” I pull the key off, adrenaline pumping through my veins. Taped beneath the key on the vase shard was a piece of yellowed paper. The writing is faded, but I think I can barely make out the words.

“Beneath—” I squint. “Beneath… the floor? Beneath the floor, you’ll… find the door? That doesn’t make sense. Hmm. Beneath the floor you’ll find the door, it opens with a… a… key.” I look at Patches. “This is very vague. beneath the floor you’ll find the door, it opens with a key. This door beneath the floor is down beneath the…sea. Look hard… is that an and? and your search shall be well… rewarded.” I blink. “Wow. I don’t think I’m going any further.”

I stayed up late into the night trying to puzzle out the riddle. In the end, though, I gave up, for tonight, to retire to my warm bed. I slept fitfully.

* * *

I feel the small slip of yellowing paper in my pocket as I walk nervously down the street towards the Sanders’. The key is there too, and the journal is in my backpack. When I reach the Sanders’ I knock on their door. Ria opens it and smiles at me.

“You’re late,” she says. “Everyone’s already here. Come on in.”

I nod and we walk in together.

“Hey guys,” Ria says as we walk in and get seated. “Myra’s here. Oh, and someone else came to visit us tonight.”

“Who?” Voices Ramona.

“Elena,” Ria smiles.

“Elena?” There are murmurs of confusion, but a dead silence falls on the group when Elena herself walks in.

“But… but you’re dead,” stutters Jacob. “You went to the Out There. No one survives that. It’s… it’s impossible.”

“I did,” I interrupt.

“You did?” Gasped Ramona.

“Yeah.” I nod, a small smile creeping onto my face. “And now I’m free!”

“Free…” echoes Ramona, and a look of wonder crosses her face.