Twilight Fan Fiction ❯ Jacob and Bella Cullen Mansion Adventure ❯ The book ( Chapter 3 )

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:revision: Jacob bit his lip to keep from laughing as he pulled me off the floor. “God Bella, chill. It was just a-a…um. It was a…it was either a munchkin or a really gigantic bat.” I shouldered him aside as I strode into the house. Now was so not the time to be cracking jokes. “Ugh!” He covered his nose with his face, futilely trying to block whatever it was he smelt. “It smells horrible in here!” I stopped in my tracks, taking a curious sniff. “What’s up with you, Jake? It smells fine! A little musty, maybe, but other then that, it’s fine.” “Can you not smell that? Ugh, it’s awful! It’s over-the-top sweet.” “You...” I rolled my eyes. Jake could be such a baby at times. I groped behind me for a second and sought Jacob’s wrist. I found my desired purchase and yanked, pulling Jacob next to me, inside the spooky mansion. Eagerly I strained to see what lay on the ground floor. My spirits rose when I saw something covered in a dusty white sheet, a lá B-grade horror film. I pulled off the sheet, and my spirits plummeted again. It was just a piano. Not a coffin or a corpse or anything horrible and fascinating; it was just a grand piano, shiny and seemingly brand-new. I reached out a finger to touch the glossy paint, but recoiled. I just couldn’t mar that perfect, lustrous white paint with an oily fingerprint. I…I just couldn’t touch it. It was far too perfect to be defiled. “Come on! Maybe we can find a body or something in a bedroom!” I bit my lip in anticipation. Ever since Jake and I were young, the roles were always kind of reversed between us. I was the more adventurous one, the half of our duo that wanted to see how far up the tree I could climb. Jacob was the shy, gangly, awkward one, who was always perfectly content to play quietly at the tree’s roots, watching me as I climbed, higher and higher. (Eventually the tree branch broke, and Jake was also content to be the first to doodle on the cast on my leg. But even that dumb cast didn’t deter me from my adventures. After two months and it came off, anyway.) I turned as I felt Jacob wrench his hand out of mine and rush to the doorway. “No way, Bella. No way in hell are you getting me to go any further into this place. It’s majorly creepy!” “Jacob...” I whined, stomping my foot into the carpet. It made no noise, but an eddy of dust swirled up around my ankles. “Come on, Jake!” I walked over to my best friend and interlocked my fingers with his. “Remember that haunted house we went to last Halloween?” Jake whimpered, but nodded.
“That wasn’t scary at all, was it? It was really lame, remember? Even you laughed at it.” Most of it, anyway. He wouldn’t go up the stairs to the ‘mad scientist’ lab. Jacob cowered and I felt his fingers grab onto mine almost to the point of pain. But he also took a step, and I took that give in his resolve. “Come on. I promise that if we both get scared, we’ll walk out.” Jake bit his lip. “Promise?” I nodded and squeezed his hand encouragingly. “I swear.” He gulped convulsively and started to keep pace with me. We walked past the piano and further into the room, eventually stumbling onto a set of double doors with little porthole windows set in them. They, like the carpet, were covered in a fine layer of dust. I pushed open the door with my hip and pulled Jacob through the doorway. There, in the center of the kitchen, was a long, ornate table. And in the center of the long, ornate table was an ancient looking book. It’s leather bound, and the very edges if it’s pages are leafed in gold. The cover is cracked with age, and I trace the foreign letters bearing the title. “Whoa….” I whispered softly, running my hand across the ancient book as if it was some holy artifact. Which, for all I know, it may very well be. Then again, who would leave a holy artifact in an abandoned house? “What is that?” said Jacob as he peered over my shoulder, his free hand still covering his nose. I rolled my eyes at him and said “Dunno. It looks like a spell book for a witch or something.” I removed my finger from the binding. “At any rate, it’s not in a language I recognize.” Jacob slides the book over to himself and reluctantly let go of my hand. He looked briefly at the cover and scoffed. “This isn't a spell book Bella. It’s like an encyclopedia…on werewolves, vampires, and-” he broke off and read some of the title “-their, quote on quote, ‘bitter feud since the beginning of time.’” I stared at him skeptically for a few moments, “What are you playing at? You cannot possibly read this!” Jacob thrust his chin out defiantly. “Is that a challenge?” I ignored him and flipped the book open, pointing to the top of the first page. “Read this.” He looked at the passage for a moment before speaking. “Throughout the vast shadowy world of ghosts and demons there is no figure so terrible, no figure so dreaded and abhorred, yet looked upon with such fearful fascination, as the vampires, who is himself neither a ghost nor a demon, but partakes the dark natures and possesses the mysterious and terrible qualities of both. However, there is one type of vampire that is said to be on the side of goodness, and a mortal enemy of all evil vampires: the Stregoni Benefici.” I looked at Jacob for a long moment. “Jake! That was amazing! How did you read that?” Jacob looked at me like I had grown two heads, like that cool calf we saw in a museum once. “What are you talking about Bella? This book is written in plain old English.” I shook my head fervently and muttered, “No, it’s not! It’s in some weird language!” Jacob’s eyebrows scrunched together and put an arm around my shoulders. “Bella? Are you okay? Did you hit your head when you fell?” I grabbed the book from his hands and pointed to the text, “that is not english.” I stabbed the passage with my finger. “Ugh, fine whatever it isn't in english! Who cares about that damned book! Lets go into the basement that should satisfy your adventurous spirit.” I walked down a flight of stairs I hadn't noticed before, feeling somewhat uneasy leaving the book behind I slipped it into my backpack. Heading down the stairs for the start of our adventure. Little did I know that, that book would become of such great use to us as we traveled into the dark basement. [A/N – I know it sucks but stick with me it'll get better soon