Excerpt from Lizabeth...

Lizabeth opened the wooden door and before her stood her grandfather, in his living room, with both arms outstretched to welcome her. A great relief was visible on his face that was worn out with long years of waiting. She ran towards him without a second thought and flung herself in his arms. He lifted her up and swirled on his place. Suddenly, everything changed and Lizabeth stood in complete darkness, perhaps all alone. She could feel cold sweat dripping from her forehead and a vein throbbing nervously in her temple. A fierce feeling of danger caught her and she panicked. She wanted to run but felt as if her feet were fixed to the floor. She cried but no sound came out from her. Her head was spinning and seemed ready to burst at any moment.
A loud sound of drums and several other instruments, all in a great chaos, began to fill the empty space around her. She knelt down in great pain with her head clasped between her hands. As her knees touched the floor all the sounds ceased. She looked up into the darkness and soon light began to spread around her, with no visible source. Everything around her seemed to emit light. All of a sudden, she felt very light and the burden of gloomy feelings was lifted up from her mind.
Now, she stood in a vast empty hall with a wooden ceiling. A spiral staircase rose from floor, a few feet from her, and climbed up, snaking into a gap in the ceiling. She went near the staircase and looked at its wooden railing. It had fine carvings of runes that Lizabeth could not decipher. She moved her hand lightly over them with great amusement.
As she was to climb up the staircases, she felt the light around her fading away. Very soon, she again stood in complete darkness and silence... silence that was broken only by a deep creaking sound originating somewhere in the ceiling. The sound grew louder with each passing moment and Lizabeth stood fixed at her place not knowing where to go. She strained to look for the cause of sound through the darkness but nothing was visible to her.
All at once, an earsplitting crashing sound accompanied by a shriek of a woman came and the ceiling above, few yards from Lizabeth, broke. She jumped back and looked at the broken ceiling where a big ragged hole was letting in blinding light. Dust and pieces of wood were still falling from it. After a while, the dust began to clear up and Lizabeth felt a little safer in the light. She was going to examine the hole more closely when something crashed down from the hole, onto the floor, with a thud. It was a woman’s body...
Lizabeth sat up in her bed drenched in cold sweat. She looked around her, hastily, in horror. She was in her own room. Its floral purple walls, in the soft pale light of a night lamp, appeared to be of a different shade. The golden embroidery of her fine silken bed cover shone brilliantly, casting its reflection in the small glass chandelier that hung in the centre of the room.
After few minutes, Lizabeth gained her senses. She got up from her bed wiping the sweat from her face and muttering to herself, “It was just a dream...a bad dream.”
The cold floor of her room offered a great comfort to her disturbed mood. She went to the table kept near a big glass window, to the left of her bed, on which were kept several books, an ivory pen stand, a clock and the only source of light in the room, the night lamp. It was still dark outside. She held up the clock in the light of lamp. It showed ten past three but second hand was not moving. The clock was not working. Lizabeth kept it back on the table.
She went across the room to the door, tying her silky black hair into a high ponytail that bounced over her shoulders as she walked. She opened the door making least noise and sneaked out of the door into the dark corridor. The dim light of night lamp of Lizabeth’s room was visible from the small slit left open in the door.