She sensed she was in a vaulted space, although it was impossible to know how large it was. The air was stale, tasting like burned ash on her tongue. She was the first person to enter here in decades, she was sure of it. The floor was hard and polished. Marble from the texture of the surface.
She needed some form of illumination.
Then she remembered.
The matchbook Caleb had given her.
She fumbled for it in the inside of her jacket pocket, her breath becoming more frantic as she pushed past notebook, pen, notes, keys and pocket-knife.
There it was.
She felt inside the cover and peeled off a single strip of match.
When she struck it, the flame illuminated a huge space, the size of a barn.
As she looked up, she immediately cried out. A reflex shout of surprise.
A hundred eyes were watching her from above.
Her gasp blew the flame out, plunging her back into darkness. She stood there now, her senses on the edge of panic, feeling backwards for the far wall. She could still sense them, staring at her, in the darkness. She was utterly exposed, without any defence or place to hide. Her hands patted around until they felt a small heavy structure at waist height behind her.
She crouched behind it, fumbling in her jacket for the matchbook again. Breathing through her nose to calm herself, she ripped another match from the book.
She could tell that after this one, there was only one left.
The match burst into flame, illuminating the whole room for a second, then contracting to cast a glow that lit her hand like a bubble.
In the second that the room was lit, she saw them.
The eyes were static, painted. Covering the whole of the ceiling, hundreds of them, staring down at her. Each eye was identical; five concentric rings around each other, the outside, deep blue, then the next black, then a white one, followed by an azure ring, then finally a black dot.
It was the symbol of the all-seeing eye: the identical one to her necklace.
She had found it. This was what her mother had wanted her to see. For the first time in her conscious life, she felt her mother communicating with her. For the first time, she didn’t feel alone.