AN

Sorry for the long wait, I blame writers block.  O,o

But now I has it all planned out! This isn't as long as I'd like, but its good enough, and hold on, because things between Mal and our favourite Analee are about to get steamy... ;) [just... not in this chapter.]

read, comment, VOTE! (:

Mal POV

I gripped Analee's arm, immediatly swinging her into my chest and shielding her eyes from the skull.  That was not something this seventeen year old needed to see, especially not in the dark.  The worst part was that I knew that despite being scared stiff, she'd still be up and ready tomorrow to move around it and down the passage that it blocked.

There was no way in hell that that was going to happen if she planned on going by herself.

"What the hell is that?" Analee choked out, wrapping her thin arms around my waist.  I slowly moved backwards, tugging her with me out of the cavern type room.  When we were safely in the hallway. and the door was shut tightly, I bent down, scooping her legs out from underneath her and hefting her into my arms.  "I can walk!" She protested, squirming around.

"Sweetheart, keep squriming like that and I'll begin to get the wrong idea," I warned, practically sprinting towards her bedroom. Analee went silent, just as I had expected her to, blushing.

I burst into her bedroom, stalking towards the bed and setting her down on her messy blankets.  She was pale, staring up at me with wide eyes.  That skull frightened her more then she would've liked to admit.

"Where are you going?" she called, as I turned to walk for her door.

"I'm going to tell your mom about the south wing.  It needs to be shut down, it's dangerous."

"NO!"  She moved faster then I had expected, scrambling off of her purple covers and diving in front of the door, holding her arms spread out to block my way. "You can't do that!"

"And why not?  That was a human skull, if you didn't notice.  That means that there's probably more.  We need to tell your parents."

"No! We can't! I spent the last eight years of my life trying to get into that wing!  You can't ruin that for me now!" 

This was ridiculous.

"Analee," I began slowly, "We don't know what went on in that wing.  There could be a lot more bones where that came from, or traps, or biohazardous material.  It's dangerous."

"I don't care!"  She slapped away my hands as I reached for the doorknob. "You can't tell them!"

"I'm telling them Analee."

"Mal!" she whined, jutting her bottom lip out in a pout.  "You caaaaaan't!  I admit, I was scared.  I didn't expect that.  Whatever I did expect, well, it wasn't that.  But it's just a skull!  We walk over them all the time in graveyards!  If you go tell my parents then they'll ban me from searching, and my mom will probably want to have people tear that wing down and then I'll never find out what happened to those kids, and I'll never solve the mystery of the south wing!"

I sighed heavily, watching as her chest heaved from her rant, before my eyes met hers.

"Fine.  But we do this on my terms. My terms," I repeated, when she looked like she was about to protest.  "Or I go to your parents."

"Name them."

"First off, you are not to go into the south wing without accompaniment.  And seeing as you won't tell anyone about it, that means I am to be with you every time you go in that general direction, got it?"  When she slowly nodded, I continued. "We will explore the wing, but as soon as I find something that can be deemed as dangerous, we're out of there, and your parents are notified, understood?"

"Yeah."

"Good.  You need to understand though,  if I find out you went by yourself, I tell your parents.  If I find you sneaking off to go there, I tell your parents.  If you so much as say you're going without me or someone else, I'm going to freaking kill you, and then I'll tell your parents."

"Uh huh," she nodded rapidly, "I promise, I won't go without you, or without telling you if I'm going with someone else."

"I want to know where you are at all times if you're exploring the house.  I'm not risking you acting all adventerous and suddenly finding a back way into the wing.  Knowing you, you wouldn't think anything of exploring it all, but you need to be more careful.  Here, hand me your phone."  She slipped around me with a narrowed gaze, making sure I wasn't about to sneak out, before grabbing her phone off the nightstand and handing it to me.

I took the blackberry, and opened a new contact, entering my name and number before hitting it to speed dial one.

"I'm on speed dial, don't hesitate to call me if you get into trouble. I'll come get you.  Got it?"

"Yes!" She squealed, leaping in my general direction.  Analee threw her phone onto her bed before attacking me in a tight hug.  "Thank you, thank you, thank you!"

"You're welcome," I said, stiffly.  Hesitantly wrapping my arms around her slim waist.  I was guessing she was quite the tough girl, having gotten over that human skull pretty damn quickly.  What me gag was the thought that if the skull looked like that when we found it, ninety years after the wing was closed, what had it looked like originally?

Ally POV

I sent Mal a quick text as I headed out of my room, dressed in clothes I used for exploring before heading down to my staircase.  I was beginning to think that my favourite bedroom looked strange, almost as though the size of it didn't fit with the architecture of the house. 

Mal was in the office, having left a few moments after I had hugged him, claiming he had to finalize plans for his trip, which was in two days. I had asked him to find anything he could on Anne Marie Belhodden, hoping that maybe he could use his connections to dig deeper then I could on Google.

Surprisingly, he said yes.

So currently, I was hoping to find some clues her bedroom.  I headed through the door and up the familiar set of stairs, reaching the common room without even glancing around before I headed directly for Anne's room. 

I slid through the doorway, standing on the hardwood with my hands propped on my hips.  I did have to admit that seeing the skull had slightly scarred me.  Each time I turned around, I expected it to come popping out at me.  I had not exactly planned out how the hell I was going to sleep tonight, especially when every time I shut my eyes I saw images of people having their heads cut off.  That was a nightmare in the making.

Anne's room looked exactly like it had when I had left, not that I had expected it to be any different.  As far as I knew, no one knew about this room.  Other then any ghosts tht might live here... Okay, not a good thought right now.

I headed for the far wall to the left, pursing my lips as I studied it.  It had never really struck me before, how oddly shapped the wall was.  Probably because I spent most of my time in this room, not the one next to it, so I never really realized that the wall that was on the other side of this, to the left was flat and perfectly straight, while this wall jutted out a good three feet.  Maybe it was just the fact that I was so used to the architecture of my time, that it never hit me how odd it was to see some sort of projection like this in a Victorian home.  Usually, random walls like this meant hidden passageway. 

I can't believe I never thought of this before.

This part of the house was far enough away from the south wing that exploring shouldn't lead me anywhere near it.  I glanced at the furniture first.  A table was the only piece of furniture attached to the wall, and when I say attached, I mean that the table was nailed directly into the room, which was... odd.  Seeing something like this in a place that was Earthquake prone, I would understand, but we weren't exactly on a fault line where I lived, and seeing as none of the other furniture was nailed down...

I stepped lightly over to the side of the outcropping, skimming my fingers down along the wall, searching for any spots that gave way.  I found none.

I switched to running my fingers along the floor, hoping that maybe somehow, they had created a foot lever that would give way to a passage.  They hadn't.

After about an hour of searching, I sighed and leaned back against the table.  This was getting ridiculous, and Mal was probably looking for me.  I braced my hand on the leg of the table, preparing to grip onto it to hoist myself up, when my thumb hit something that moved.  I froze, dropping my jean covered butt back onto the floor, and scrambling under the table. 

Besides the fact that the table was tiny, and I could really only fit my upper body under it, and ignoring the cobwebs that had formed since I had last cleaned, the table was really a perfect piece of work.  Complete with staining, engraving and trim.  Trim that, if not under close inspection, looked like it was stationary.  It wasn't.  I used my thumb to gently twist the wood of the table, silently praying that I wouldn't break it off. 

And my eyes widened.

Right there, underneath the trim, was a button.  Small, round and wooden, it almost blended into the leg of the table, but I saw it.  With slow, hesitant fingers, I brushed over the button, before throwing caution to the wind and jamming it in.

And jumping out of the way. 

I pulled out from under the table just in time to see the walls begin to shake. 

And then the wall began to move.