Ellie stared at her three companions. “Well, we’ve all had some experiences, haven’t we.” She had just told them about what she’d found outside and around the mansion. Ivy had described her encounter with Renard, and Ash had just related what he and Ivy had discovered in the library, and then his fatal encounter with some monster in the basement.

She studied Ash during his account. He seemed genuinely shaken up, something she’d never expected from a game environment. Was everything right with the game? Who knew what kind of glitches might still exist in a system this complicated? She hadn’t mentioned the worms. Her heart went out to him, as he seemed like a decent guy so far, and so obviously enamored with Ivy that it was kind of adorable, really, and he was a good-looking guy even without the game world enhancements maturing his boyish cuteness.

James said, “We need to go down to the basement, find that thing, and kick its ass.”

Ash visibly steeled himself. “Fine, but this time, we’ve got to do it together. Going off alone was a big mistake on my part.”

Ivy had a guilty expression.

Anastasia said, “I could show you around down there. My brother and I often used to play in the basement. There’s little down there except food and coal storage.”

James brightened. “That’s a great idea! You can stay behind me.” He puffed out his chest.

Ivy suppressed a snicker, then pulled out an Old West-style six-gun from some hidden holster and twirled it on her finger. “This time we’ll be ready. Let’s go.”

“Oh, my word!” Anastasia breathed, fanning herself. “Such determined people!”

“You better believe it, sister,” Ellie said with a wink. “Show us where it happened, Ash.”

Ash took the lead and led them down to the ground floor, then into a room off to the right of the foyer filled with old furniture and crates, where another stairway led down into the dark. Anastasia and Ash carried oil lamps. Ash drew a pistol that Ellie’s HUD identified as a Mauser semi-automatic. She herself gripped Elwood’s sword cane with both hands so that she could draw the blade in an instant.

James said to Anastasia, “Stay behind me.” The kid really was playing the chivalrous romantic angle to the hilt.

“There’s nothing dangerous down there, I assure you,” Anastasia said. “I live here. We have nothing to hide.”

James turned to face her and said earnestly, “I believe in you.”

Emotions flickered across her face too quickly to identify. “Thank you, Mr. Magician-al. I appreciate your forthrightness.”

As they descended the steps, the basement was a cauldron of blackness that seemed to swallow the light of their lamps. Lightning spat through the grimy windows on the far wall, casting stark, strobing shadows. Fat raindrops spattered the glass, and wind moaned through the house’s crevices as if trying to get in.

Two rows of pillars against a wooden floor supported by massive beams, some nebulous shelving and racks to the party’s right, hulking, immobile shapes that blocked the lightning to their left. The floor was dusty flagstones.

“Where did it get you?” Ivy asked Ash.

He pointed. “About twenty feet that way.”

As Ellie examined the floor, scuff marks in the dust suddenly sparkled in her HUD. She’d made another Perception roll. Ash’s footprints, mixed with incoherent scrambling. And then…

“Guys!” she said, pointing at the floor.

A series of footprints that could have been mistaken for bare human footprints—except they were huge. She knelt, and the party encircled them to keep from erasing them. The footprints were easily fourteen or fifteen inches long, with a big toe that half-resembled a thumb. “It wasn’t a gorilla, was it?” Ellie asked.

“Or a sasquatch?” James said.

“No,” Ash said, shaking his head vehemently, “it wasn’t shaped like a gorilla. And it wasn’t hairy like a bigfoot. It walked upright like a human, even though it had arms that seemed extra-long.”

“I assure you, there are no gorillas or any such creatures on our island,” Anastasia said.

“Then how do you explain that?” Ellie asked pointedly.

“I…I can’t,” Anastasia said.

“Follow the tracks,” Ivy said.

“On it,” Ellie said, “but, uh, you guys better cover me.”

“We’re ready,” Ash said, gripping his pistol.

“Is this before electric lights were invented?” James asked.

“They’ve been invented,” Ellie said, “but it’ll be decades before everybody has them.”

“Bummer,” James said.

The tracks glowed in Ellie’s HUD, and she followed them away from the stairway, toward the corner of the house she’d investigated earlier. As she got closer, one of the motionless bulks resolved itself into a boiler or furnace of some sort, situated between the two rows of pillars. Directly across from it, a brick wall jutted out perpendicular to the front wall of the house. The footprints led to the other side of this wall and behind it.

They moved quietly, weapons ready. Ellie kept glancing over her shoulder to make sure Anastasia wasn’t up to anything nefarious, like putting a dagger into James’s back. In the glow of the lamps, she looked more exasperated than anything.

Ash took several quick steps and assumed the lead with his lamp, driving back the incessant shadows. His gun hand trembled visibly.

Ellie rounded the corner of the brick wall, cane first.

The footprints led to the backside of the wall, which proved to be about four or five feet thick, and there lay…an iron grate at floor level, measuring about two feet by three feet. No adult gorilla would get through that opening. Ellie approached the grate, which was held shut by a lever and latch, and opened it with a rusty creak.

The oddest stench she’d ever encountered struck her in the nose. Not quite the decay of death, not quite vomit, not quite chemical.

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

“Holy shit, dudes!” James said, clamping a hand over his nose and mouth. “Is that real? You smell that, right?”

They all agreed they did.

“Oh, we never open that,” Anastasia said.

“Why not? Where does it go?” Ash asked. “What’s in there?”

“It’s an empty space leftover from when the house was expanded,” she said. “Over a hundred years ago. Before Jean-Paul’s time, it was just a cottage.”

“And whatever attacked me came through there?” Ash asked.

“Seems so,” Ellie said.

“Hey!” Ash said with pleased surprise. “I just completed a sidequest!” He held up his gun. “Cool!” Its magazine extended by four inches while they watched. “Major weapon upgrade!”

“Lucky,” James muttered enviously. “How do I get a sidequest?”

Ash went on. “Upstairs, I heard something crawling through the walls, like huge rats, coming down from above. It was that thing crawling around in there. How high does this empty space go?”

“The attic perhaps?” Anastasia said. “I’m not certain. I never went in there. Gilbert warned us against it.”

“And you never asked about it?” Ivy said skeptically. “Do you always do what Gilbert says?”

“Armand crawled in there once when we were perhaps eight, but there was nothing to climb. It’s like a chimney inside.”

Ash knelt at the opening, holding his lamp and peering into the space. “The bottom has this black sludge in the bottom of it.” He poked it with the barrel of his gun. “Kind of like tar, but less sticky.”

Ellie grabbed his shoulder. “Do you see any worms?”

He paused at what must have sounded like an oddly specific question, then said, “No, but I do see…” He set the lamp down. “Wait a second.” He flipped onto his back and said to all of them. “If anything happens, you yank me the hell out of there. Okay?”

The three of them exchanged glances.

Ivy was the first to answer. “You got it.”

Ellie found her heart pounding as Ash eased the lamp into the space with his left hand, then scooched backward on his back ever so slowly, following his gun, so that he could see up into the space.

“Looks like it goes all the way up,” he said, his voice echoing within the space, “further than the light can reach. The bricks are covered in scratch marks. Claw marks. Something uses this space like a highway.” He scooched back out again with a shudder, then turned and withdrew something shiny. “I spotted this.”

From his hand dangled a pocket watch on a chain, with bits of black sludge clinging to it.

“May I see it?” Ellie said. “I’m the antiquarian, after all.”

Ash handed it to her.

The metal had an odd, greenish cast or patina so that Ellie couldn’t tell if it were silver, gold, or something else. She popped it open. The watch face was somehow opaque, as if the glass or crystal had been sandblasted or etched. But there was an engraving inside the case front.

“‘To my dearest Zacharias, my love always, Jacqueline,’” she read. She turned to Anastasia. “Do these names mean anything to you?”

Ash piped in, “I saw the name Jacqueline in the family tree upstairs. Her name had been erased, but not very well. It said she was born forty years ago, but there wasn’t a death date.”

“Family bible?” Ivy asked.

He nodded.

“Who erases names from a family tree?” Ellie said.

Anastasia blinked a couple of times, then said, “Jacqueline was a…cousin of mine, but she disappeared about the time I was born. I’ve heard Renard speak of her, at least until Delphine and Gilbert tell him to shut up.”

“And Zacharias?” Ellie asked.

“That is the name of the carpenter we employ to do maintenance around the house. He lives in Silver Cove. He’s worked for our family his whole life.”

“How old is he?” Ivy asked.

“Somewhere in his forties, I would guess.”

“So Zacharias and Jacqueline were having an affair,” Ash said.

“But Zacharias is still around,” Ivy said, “and she’s not.”

“Bad breakup?” James said.

“I think we need to have another talk with Gilbert,” Ash said.

“Wait,” Anastasia said, as if remembering something. “Her name is on one of the crypts in the family mausoleum. I remember it well. Armand and I used to play in there sometimes.”

“Could she be buried out there?” Ivy asked. “Secretly? Maybe they just haven’t kept up with the family tree in the bible?”

“You know this island like the back of your hand, I’ll bet,” Ellie said to Anastasia.

“I do indeed,” Anastasia said.

“What’s in the sea caves? Have you been in them?”

“Waitaminnit,” James said, waving his hands. “We’re getting off-track. Why is Zack-bro’s watch in there? Didn’t you say he still works for you?”

“He does, yes. He was here just a few days ago,” Anastasia said, doing some work in the...in the study, I believe.”

“Where I found the rose petal,” Ellie said, “And the blood. And the ladder marks on the ground outside. Someone snuck in through the study.”

“Something is still fishy,” Ash said. He spotted a poker near the furnace and grabbed it, started poking around in the sludge at the bottom of the bricked up void. With the poker’s hook, he withdrew a belt-buckle with the same greenish patina as the watch, then a pocket knife. Shaped pieces of wood had once decorated the sides of the knife, enwrapping the folded blades, but the wood was gone, even though the rivets that had held the wood in place were still there. “What is this black stuff?”

“Alas, I do not know,” Anastasia said.

Ivy, Ellie, and James all shook their heads.

Ash scowled and dug around more with the poker until…

“A ring!”

Ash wiped it off on his handkerchief, a plain band with the same greenish cast. With the pocket knife, he scraped off some of the patina to reveal…

“Gold,” he said. “This is a wedding band.”

“Was Zacharias married?” Ivy asked.

Anastasia shook her head. “A well-known bachelor about town.”

“You guys want to hear what I think?” Ash said.

“Let’s hear it,” Ivy said with thoughtful interest.

“I think we just found our perpetrator. Or what’s left of him. I think this guy, Zacharias, I think the same monster who got me, got him. And these things are what’s left of him. This stuff is all metal. Undigestible things.”

Ivy snapped her fingers. “He was secretly married to Jacqueline Delacroix.”

“And Geel-bear,” James said with exaggerating gravitas, “didn’t like it.”

“So he plotted revenge,” Ellie said. “He stole the diamond and then…something got him, because he didn’t get out of the house.”

“Ash’s buddy,” James said.

Ellie went on, “Something killed his horse down there on the beach. The crabs were eating it like they were hiding evidence.”

“That’s a working theory, but how do we know that he stole the diamond?” Ivy said. “What we have here might be the really weird remains of a lover gone wrong, but how do we know he was able to open the safe and grab the jewel?”

“How would he know the safe combination?” Ash asked.

“He’s had twenty years to crack it,” Ivy said.

The two of them shared a glance and a smile.

Suddenly a grand orchestral fanfare surrounded them, and a wall of three-dimensional text made of fireworks exploded all around them.

CONGRATULATIONS! You have completed Level 1 of your mission: Discover who purloined the Delacroix Diamond.

The basement disappeared into a white haze.

Galadriel said, “Congratulations, Elwood Velásquez. You have leveled up. You may now apply your accumulated skill points.”

“Oh, goody!” Ellie said, clapping her hands. “Show me how to do it.”

You have succeeded at these skill checks and gained points in each. Ancient Art +2 Anthropology +4 Archaeology +3 History +2 Investigate +2 Natural History +3 Occult +2

“So those are randomized and automatic?” she asked.

“Yes,” Galadriel said.

You also succeeded in checks of Perception and Insight, resulting in 8 skill points you can apply to whatever skills you wish.

“Cool.” She pulled up her character sheet, and the studied the list of available skills, considering what might help the most in this scenario. She was feeling solid on her character’s primary skill set, those of an antiquarian. “Considering there are actual monsters we might have to fight, let’s put all eight points into my sword cane skill.”

On her character sheet, her Sword Cane skill glowed momentarily with a light chime and changed from 40% to 48%.

“Now,” Galadriel said, “since you have leveled up, you may allocate two points to increase your character traits.”

On her character sheet, the traits were all pulsing with glow. “This mission seems like Perception is huge. Let’s put both of them into that.”

Her Perception increased from 11 to 13, with another pleasant chime.