Dan removed his glasses and dug the heel of his palms into his tired eyes. Is that all Sterling wanted? A lesson in fairy tales? Though he didn't quite understand the need for such secrecy, he held himself to it, to the promise he'd made Kevin; he wouldn't mention this to anyone, even as a curiosity.
He wracked his brain, trying desperately to remember all that he'd read. Strangely though it wasn't his book of fairy tales that brought the story to mind to its mention in The Shining. The picture of the girl unlocking the forbidden room had scared the novel's protagonist, Danny, and it somehow seemed all like a strangely fitting coincidence now.
"Um," he replied, clearing his throat, his brow furrowed in pensive thought. "There's the one, Bluebeard. There are different versions of it; the way Perrault wrote it, he persuaded the girl into marrying him. In another, she forsakes all men, saying she'll only marry a man with a blue beard, thinking none suck exists. He comes and claims her.
"All the outcomes are the same: she's given a key and told not to look into the room whose door it opens. She naturally gets curious, and he catches her. In one version, her brothers' fortuitous arrival saves her; in another, she uses her wits to put him off until she can signal her family for help. They claim it's based on real occurrences, site a couple of possible sources."
Dan shrugged; he'd been reading too much of this shit lately. "Who knows. Is this... a lead of some sort?" he asked, pursing his lips.