Excerpt: In All of Infinity

Before she could reach her room, she heard scurrying in the attic. She paused. The attic was the only room she had always been kept from, but that didn’t mean she didn’t think about going there. When she was outside looking up, she often tried gazing into the room via the window but had never been able to see anything. It was the largest room in the house, spanning the space of the rooms beneath it, which Reverie doubted was a familiar trait with Victorian architecture. Hearing the noise, she walked in the gathering darkness towards the inaccessible room. Just as she reached it, the scurrying stopped.

Reverie stepped closer and pressed her ear to the door, breathing calmly. She heard the opposite on the other side. Whoever was standing there, taking refuge in the attic, was gasping harshly. She jumped away, fetched a candle from the nearby stand in the hallway, and lit it immediately.

“Who’s there?”

She spotted something coming from beneath the door and jumped back when it slid across the floor. Looking hard, she realized that it was a key. It was dirty because it hadn’t been used in a long time. As she bent down to get it, she heard banging on the door.

“No! No!” the voice wailed plaintively. “No! Give it back!”