She
was so preoccupied with her own thoughts that she didn’t notice when Rob passed
out in his room, and so she found herself lying on her bed in the morning,
dried tears on her face, her throat sore, and her legs tired.
It was nine when she awoke, and she found
that the bookcase had been slid away from the door. She walked to her parents
room and saw their bed empty and made, and then checked downstairs to find that
they were not there either. There was a note on the fridge about them having
gone to the grocery store to get groceries. She took her medication and ate a
bowl of cereal and returned to her room.
Awhile later she became aware that had Dave
woken up and was at the lax treatment he received from his father for staying
out so late. She heard the conversations between Dave and Neil, Dave and Rob,
and Dave and Elys. She’d been trying to keep them tuned out initially, but
there was something gripping about the situation. She began to wonder what the
Candle Crown was.
Her parents returned but she stayed
in her room. She ran a search on Candle Crown and found an old archived
newspaper article from the year nineteen twenty five.
Walter Gage was found in a warehouse
down by the river by policemen on December fifteenth. He’d been wanted for the
murders of his two brothers, his sister, his mother and father, three women
he’d worked with, and five men that he’d called his friends. He stammered and
didn’t resist arrest, saying that there had been a falsehood perpetrated by the
Candle Crown. He’d raved about the murders being a promise he’d been told to
keep, but otherwise, he failed to give any real motivation for the murders.
Another article Asta found said that
on the day he was to be electrocuted, he testified to having done the murders,
and to not feeling bad about any of them. He only reported that he was
disappointed that no one else would go what he went through.
There was no mention of a cave down
by the river, though, certainly not an Ember Cave. She searched Ember Cave and
came up with a few results from other towns but nothing to do with Falling
Rocks. When she searched Walter Gage she came up with more results related to
his murders, including a fortune teller named Harriet Lynn who helped police
find him. Harriet Lynn claimed to know his secret location but only offered it
up in return for something that the police found at the scene of the crime.
Asta guessed that it was probably the fabled Candle Crown.
She searched for Harriet Lynn but found only
an article detailing her murder at the hands of a man named Tarral Normandus
Extremus. Tarral claimed that she had cursed his family, and was found by a
court appointed psychiatrist to be insane. The article went on to mention that
he’d had two children, both of whom had ended up being adopted. It didn’t
mention the names of his son or daughter.
“What are you looking at there?” Her father
said, having walked into the room. Asta hadn’t heard him. She’d been in her
head.
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