The broken lock
Chapter 18
An excerpt from the written diary of Delilah Tessel Rider, an Ambassador of the King of the Land.
Umbriere Day 27
Evening
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After Peter ferried me home from the weekend market this morning, Gerra grabbed him by his coat and requested—demanded, rather—that he help fix the lock to my bedroom door. I actually snorted. So that was what she meant when she said that she would get a repairman to have a look at it.
Peter grumbled, which was what he did whenever anyone asked him to do anything at all, but he trudged up the stairs to my room anyway to have a look. The two of us went along with him. He gave us a funny look when we stopped him just before he entered the corridor, and Gerra did her “asking permission” thing.
In the bedroom, he closed the door, and turned the lock. Tugged at the door. “Hm,” he said, because the lock seemed to be working fine; the door did not budge. He turned the lock again, and the door opened easily. He knelt down to try the lock with the door open, and the latch slid as it should. He tried it with its key from the outside as well. “I don’t see what the problem is here.” He frowned at Gerra, suspicion in his eyes, as though expecting her to pull out a wand and cast some evil spell on him.
“Tell him,” Gerra said to me. It was my turn to throw her a murderous look.
“Well, it locks and unlocks just fine, as you have seen,” I explained. “But sometimes it slides loose, I think.”
“Slides… loose,” said Peter.
For a second I doubted myself. Let me explain.
This house—and no doubt, the rest of the Hinterlands—still use locks from the Twelfth Era. These function with a latch bolt and key. Rather than a keypad, you know, with electricity and magnetism like the ones I was used to back in Kingsland. But it was easy to figure out, for me. At least, that was what I thought. But there were a number of nights where I was certain that I locked the door, only to wake up and find that it had unlocked, and the door open. I was positively terrified, of course, the first time it happened, and ran shrieking down the stairs to the kitchen where Gerra was. I mean, I knew that this mansion was haunted, but my room was supposed to be my safe space. Plus the dark corridor yawning open before me, with the possibility of a spirit mangled by dragon-fire deciding to manifest itself was too much for me to take.
The next day Gerra came up to check the lock out. It was working fine. I insisted that she stay for a while and see if there were any spirits that were causing this. She scolded me for treating her like some medium, and thinking that she had more sensitivity to them than I did—why did that merit a scolding?—but regardless, brewed us both some tea, and we sat in the room for a bit and watched the door.
After about forty minutes in, it happened. The lock clicked, and the door creaked open. My skin crawled. I could not help but feel like that there was someone standing there, in the corridor, looking at me. Gerra stood up, and actually walked toward the door. I grabbed her.
“What are you doing??” I whispered sharply.
“To check,” she said.
And she did. She walked up and down the corridor, calling at different volumes, sometimes gently, sometimes fiercely. Sometimes she simply stood and waited. I peeked out from my room at her.
“Is it a ghost problem?”
She was frowning. “Not that I can tell.” That was when she suggested getting someone to fix the lock for us. It was an old house, after all.
Which was why we were all, including Peter, sitting down in my bedroom now, drinking tea and watching the lock. I was actually hoping in my heart that whatever it was would not embarrass me in front of “the repairman”, and just unlock the door already.