Seven
I decided to take a closer look at my immediate surroundings and search for another way out of here. Any exit would do, even a boarded-up door or a rickety old staircase that was falling apart. I would have pulled nails out with my bare hands or scraped away the mortar from around the stones in the wall to get out of this dusty hole. But I found nothing.
I went back into the room with all the books and still found nothing. Not even a pipe or the tiniest air vent.
I wondered how long I could keep breathing this stale air before it poisoned me. I tried to put that idea out of my mind. I had enough to worry about already. But how could I not think about it when my throat was getting drier and my eyes were stinging?
I tried to breathe as deeply as I could to stay calm. I tried not to let dark thoughts fill my mind. If I wanted to get out of there, I had to keep my wits about me and do something.
There were some glass display cabinets up against one of the walls. I managed to move one of them away from the wall and found a low wooden door behind it.
The door was locked, but it didn’t look very solid. I jammed the screwdriver into the door frame by the lock and managed to break it open. The room on the other side was pitch black.
I fumbled for a light switch and couldn’t find one. Figuring I could use my phone instead, I held it in one hand as a flashlight and ventured into the room. In my other hand, I brandished the screwdriver like a dagger. It was kind of a pathetic weapon, but I felt braver having it.
The room was like a taxidermist’s workshop. Dozens of stuffed parrots sat on the shelves, staring at me with glass eyes that sparkled like glow-in-the-dark marbles even when I wasn’t shining the light on them.
The floor was almost completely covered with snakes and crocodiles. They all seemed to be looking right at me, as if they were trying to stop me from going any farther into the room.
If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s snakes. I knew these ones were dead, but I still had a feeling they were following me with their eyes and were poised to attack. Somehow I overcame my fear and managed to put one foot in front of the other until I reached a strange heap of creatures. Jumbled on top of one another were monkeys, ducks, bears, wolverines and other animals I couldn’t identify. They were stuffed and covered in dust, but somehow they seemed alive. As I drew closer, I thought I saw a furry paw moving, as if a monkey were trying to rise up from the pile of dead bodies.
There was no way I was going to stay there a second longer. I retraced my steps as quickly as I could and shut the door behind me.
I pushed the cabinet back against the wall as if nothing had happened and went back to the bookshelves. All things considered, I figured these books couldn’t be as dangerous as those animals.
