We both stared at each other asking with our eyes “So what now?”

Flaming Star broke the silence. “Which one should we pick?”

“I don’t know; without clues, I guess this is more of a luck thing.”

“So, let’s just ... pick a side first and then we chose which one of the four to go to. Are you alright with that?”

“Yeah, but I think we can enhance it.”

“What do you mean?”

I got closer to him. “I think if we split up, we can search more rooms in less time.”

“Great idea!” he said, but then he paused. “But what if we choose wrong? Will Mr. Skeleton pay another visit?”

“Don’t know, but we’d better be forearmed against it, especially now that we don’t have our magic. For whatever reason.”

We looked at the candles; two were out already! We needed to hurry.

“I got right,” Flaming Star said.

“Then I pick left.”

“Good luck ... um ... and be careful.”

“You too.”

I stood in front of the four doors, deciding which I wanted to go in, when I heard how Flaming Star was picking his door.

“Eenie meenie miney mo, catch a stickman by the toe … do stickman have toes?”

“Nice system you got there!”

“Shut up, trying to choose a path here!”

While he was taking his time with that, I chose the door that was second to the left and headed in. I shined my light around in the darkness. I was expecting the candles to light up but nothing happened.

The room had many shelves, on each were trophies and framed certificates. I decided to look closer. The trophies were on the bottom shelves and were easy to reach. There was something written on all of them so I started reading. The first trophy was in the shape of a closed book: it said “To the one that learned from the past and determined the future. National University of Vandersky 1823.”

For a second, I thought that the number doesn’t make sense. Was that a typo or I was reading the dates wrong? It certainly didn’t look that old. I took a look at the other trophies. There was a glass trophy in the shape of a star. It said, “For the one who knows its lessons by heart. National University of Denamore--Scroll Bridge- 1866.”

I was still confused by the dates, but I kept on looking at the other trophy dates. 1903, 1943, 1983.”

So there seemed to be a roughly 40-year interval between the trophies. But the next trophy was different. It was a medium sized silver cup that did look quite recent: “Make sure you learn something out of every second of your life. Time is precious after all. Novel University of Precious Thoughts-- 2002”

I was looking at it in the darkness, trying to make sense of all this, when I felt a hand on my back!

“Ah!” I jumped and dropped the Cup. Thankfully, it was Flaming Star.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa! Easy there!”

“I will be, if you quit doing that.”

“I didn’t do it on purpose!”

“Yeah, whatever.”

I was still catching my breath. There was something about this place that was unsettling and that alone was enough to build a great feeling of terror in my heart. So, whenever a simple thing happens, you jump out of your skin.

“So, uh, what about this room? The one that I was in seemed to be a guest bedroom.”

“This seems to be a trophy room. And something is bothering me.”

“Yeah, this whole place just ... “

“No, I’m talking about the dates of these trophies. They can’t be his, or they might not even be real. Unless ... Does Prof. Skull Mustache have magic?”

“Wait, unless what?”

“Never mind. Did you find anything?”

“Yeah, this!” He held up another black skull like the one I still had with me. “How about you?”

“Well, I certainly found something, but it doesn’t seem to be what we need.”

I knelt to pick up the silver trophy I had dropped. That’s when I noticed another black skull. I picked both of them up. I guessed that the skull had been inside the trophy and rolled onto the floor. “Or did I?” I wondered.

“Oh, so you found one, too. What about the cup?”

“Yeah! The trophies, their dates make no sense!” I shined my light at the shelves and the walls.

“What do you mean?”

“Look for yourself!”

He stepped closer and stared at them for a bit. As he stepped back, his confusion was visible!

“You see what I mean?”

“Yeah. Super mega legitimately. But I doubt we got time for this!”

I put the silver trophy back where it had been on the shelf and we headed back into the hallway. Five candles were left!

“OK! You better hold on to these.” He handed me his skull and I put both of them in the bag. “Now, we better hurry or that skeleton will show up again.”

“Wait! We can only cover so many rooms in the time we have left.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m saying if for whatever reason we couldn’t find any more skulls or whatever, we better have a backup plan.”

He stayed silent for a few seconds.

“OK, based on what happened already, if we can’t find any more clues in time and Mr. Bones comes back, I’ll try to grab its attention and make it chase me downstairs.”

“In pitch darkness?”

“There’s more room down there, and if anything goes wrong, I got a sabre.”

“And I guess meanwhile I’m searching everywhere.”

“Yeah”

“Fine! Just … be careful.”

“Always!”