“What do you think’s down there?” he asked.
“Why don’t we find out?” Jules said, shrugging. She seemed to notice Dana and Holden’s hands then, and smiled. “Dana?”
“What?”
“I dare you.” Jules pointed at the hole in the floor.
Dana looked around at everyone. She was nervous, that was obvious, but she was trying to brave through it. Curt nodded, Marty continued frowning, and she looked to Holden last of all. He squeezed her hand tighter, trying to communicate.
This is stupid, you don’t have to.
Then she let go of his hand and took a step toward the hole.
“Fine,” she said.
The group, the cabin, and the darkness below held their collective breaths.
This was the last thing she wanted to do, but there was no way she was going to lose. It wasn’t bravado or even a desire to impress Holden; it was what Curt had said. He’d made her out to be a whining wimp, and she wasn’t that at all. Not as wild as Jules, perhaps. Not as daring. But once dared, she had no alternative.
So she went down, but even as she did so, she wondered in the back of her mind if she should have simply refused and nailed the hatch shut.
“Dana,” Marty said as she stepped down onto the first tread. He plucked a small flashlight from above the kitchen sink and handed it to her. She switched it on and discovered that the light was weak and puny, so she wiped the front clear. That made no difference; the batteries must have been low, so she decided to turn it off until she really needed it.
“Yawn,” Curt said, and Dana didn’t even grace him with a look. What the hell was wrong with that dick? Too much beer, maybe. Or maybe back in the shower, Jules hadn’t been quite so accommodating as they’d all assumed.
The second tread creaked loudly, and the third, the creaks providing background to her journey down. The smell closed around her, and the heavy, warm atmosphere—heated, perhaps, by pipes passing beneath the floorboards to the cabin’s various rooms. She gasped, and the warm air she tasted reminded her of stale wet dog. She turned the torch on, but it was barely effective, the light serving more to deepen the darkness further around it than to illuminate close by.
“How long do I have to stay down here?” she called.
“Oh, you know, just ’til morning,” Curt said, and she cursed him silently. Prick. Later, she decided, she’d ask Jules just what was wrong with him all of a sudden. She only hoped her friend knew.
Half a dozen more creaking stairs and then she was at the bottom, standing on a rough, packed soil floor that was covered in dust and grit. Shining the light around she caught vague glimpses of shapes in the darkness, inanimate shadows, each of which seemed to possess a hulking, waiting stance. Even squinting she could not make out much: an old shelving unit, vague objects bundled here and there; a bookshelf leaning with damp, its shelves stacked with books whose titles had long since worn away; the flared mouth of an old gramophone.
She could see nothing more, yet she had a feeling there was plenty down there. She sensed the size of the room, yet even her breathing was dampened by the contents piled within.
So she moved away from the staircase and into the darkness, the torch her only companion.
Away from the stairs, the complete darkness gave the flashlight more power. Its beam penetrated further, and soon Dana confirmed just how packed this basement was, and how random its contents seemed to be. The light glinted from metal tools stacked against the wall and hanging from hooks along its length. Most were rusted, bright metal showing only here and there, and some of them seemed to be broken. She made out the gramophone in more detail, an old wind-up device that would likely fetch a decent price at an antique market. Beside it was a landslide of old musical instrument cases, some closed, most open to reveal their barren insides. Scattered across the pile like snowdrifts on a hillside, heaps of sheet music lay in silence.
Moving to the left, Dana’s heart leapt as the light fell across a humanoid shape standing behind a layer of thin, dusty net curtains. She held her breath and was about to flee when she saw that the shape had no head. She exhaled slowly and advanced, sweeping the hanging curtain aside. It was as light as a spider’s web.
Beyond, the decapitated dressmaker’s mannequin stood propped against a table, one of its feet broken off, as well. It wore a half-stitched dress, a lace affair that might once have been beautiful but which now was browned by damp and time. Dana wondered whom the dress had been intended for and how many times they had tried it on, standing motionless while a dressmaker pinned and folded, measured and cut. Whoever it had been, she guessed they were long dead now.
On the table beside the mannequin were several china dolls, their faces mostly broken and cracked. She found them more sad than troubling. Children had once played with these things and now, like the dress’s vanished owner, they were gone, leaving only their broken toys behind.
“Dana? Hey Dana.”
She moved further around the room, ignoring the soft calls from Jules. The cabin above was a different world now, a long distance in time and space from this trove of old treasures. Though disturbed, Dana also found herself entranced by this collection of a life’s leftovers. There was a toy chest with toys spilled around its base, including wooden animals, spinning tops, musical instruments, and gaily painted puppets. One corner seemed to be taken with a circus act’s equipment, and Roberto: The Limbless Man stared out at her from a billboard and several posters. Circus games, their origins and uses lost to memory, stood either side of Roberto’s posters, beautifully built, their garish colors fading down in the basement.
Bookshelves, furniture, hat boxes, mirrors, paintings, lamps, sculptured animals in wood and metal, a rack of movie reels—
And then the torch passed across a ghostly face staring right at her.
Dana screamed and dropped the torch, scrabbling to snatch it up again and backing against a wardrobe, its corner and joints soft and weakened by decay. Something fell inside the wardrobe—it sounded wet—and she slid away, torch and attention still fixed on the face.
Those eyes so probing so harsh so knowing!
“Dana?” Holden called from above. Footsteps rang on the stairs and timber creaked, and it sounded as if his voice and steps were coming in from a great distance, not just twenty feet away. Even as she realized that the glaring face was a portrait she was willing Holden to her, and hoping he would make the journey in safety.
Weird idea, she thought, and then Holden was by her side, holding her arm and looking at the portrait as well. It was actually a daguerreotype, she saw, of a young woman maybe fifteen years old. Her clothes were turn-of-the-century, and she stared with a grimness that typified portraiture of the time.
“You okay?” Holden asked. More clattering and creaking, and the others arrived behind him, even Curt looking concerned. Changed his tune, she thought. “Yeah. Sorry. I just… scared myself. It was stupid.”
“You called for help,” Curt said. “Voids the dare. Take your top off.”
Marty struck a match and lit an old oil lantern hanging on the wall, adjusting it so that the flame burned bright. It smoked for the first few seconds, burning off oil that had been coagulating for years, and then the orange light diffused through the room.
The others all gasped, and Dana caught her breath.
It’s even more amazing than I thought.
“Oh my God,” Holden muttered.
The basement occupied at least the floor area of the cabin above, perhaps more, and every dark corner seemed to be filled with creepy clutter.