The Death Book

As she was not wearing shoes but only stockings on her feet, Cecilia gingerly searched the rest of the room’s contents while careful not to tread on a nail, which could be poking up in the floorboards. The space was definitely used as a junk room. More clutter and assortments of old household objects sat against the walls. She came to a chipped wooden table on which sat an oil lamp, its glass well dusty, signifying the time it hadn’t been touched. Beside the open trunk were a pile of books with an old candelabrum balanced on top, which was also covered in thick dust.
The single railed bed and lamp were clear evidence that someone had lived up here and it made Cecilia’s heart sink. She had thought the woman in her dreams to have been her mother, but now she questioned how accurate this concept could be. This attic was clearly a space suitable for a servant to sleep in, not the lady of the house who had it in her right to sleep in the grand bedchamber and even authorise how she’d like each room’s interior design to be decorated. Had the woman in my dreams been a maid or a nanny? But why would a nanny want to bring me to the attic? Cecilia wondered. No, that just doesn’t make sense.
The feeling of the cold was tempting her to leave the drab and forlorn attic, but instead, and she didn’t know what made her do it, she sat herself on the floor next to the pile of books. Setting the candelabrum to the side, she began to take a book off the pile and once quickly glancing at the titles, discarded them aside.

She came to a thicker and bigger bound book at the bottom. Its cover was black and felt like leather and its title was etched deeply making it difficult to read. Cecilia squinted her eyes in the dim light and ran her finger past it; feeling the indents she read: Death Book.