“It would be very unwise to travel into the depths of the earth without the proper support. A light, a map, and a companion are a must. Otherwise, one risks the high possibility of going down and never (ever) coming back up.”
–Guidebook to Gregar, page 2
To Orer, the basement smelled like, well, a basement. The scent of mildew filled his nose. It was a bit moldy and damp, and probably ten degrees cooler than the main level they had come from. They hadn’t even reached the bottom of the stairs, and yet he couldn’t imagine that they would discover anything suitable for a fitness room.
“Orer?” Kena asked hesitantly. “Do you think we should go back?”
“Too late,” he said. “I’m right behind you. Let’s get to the bottom and see what’s there.”
She was going slower on the stairs now, and Orer kept bumping her by accident.
“Kena,” he finally said, more sharply than he meant to, “can you move a bit faster?”
“Um, sure. I just don’t want to touch the walls and I don’t think there’s a railing.” Her voice was shaking now. Gone was the confidence from her earlier exposition on their good genetics. “Let’s just reach the bottom and run back up.”
“No way. We have to stay down there five minutes, or else it doesn’t count.”
When he was a boy, Orer and his friends would always dare each other to do things for five minutes. Eating worms, standing close to a wasp’s nest, swimming in the leech-infested creek; you name it, they had done it. A bit of that youthful edge was coming back now. Even if this dare was self-enforced, it just felt like something he couldn’t back down from.
“Alright,” Kena replied, sounding a bit subdued. “Five minutes. I’ll count down on my watch.”
Something flickered, and he realized that he was seeing the face of her watch light up.
“Hey, not until we get to the bottom!” Orer protested.
“Nope, time starts now. And then we’re out of here.”
At least she had gained some of the attitude back. Orer would take a sassy Kena over a scared Kena any day. He knew how to handle sassy Kena, but scared Kena seemed a bit unpredictable.
So he relented. “Alright. But no cheating.”
She didn’t respond.
Finally they were at the bottom. Apart from Kena’s watch, everything was dark. Orer groped for the wall, hoping something would give him a sense of his bearings. He moved forward, bumping into Kena and then moving around her. Maybe there were lights? He lifted his arms and flailed, as if by chance he would find a cord to pull. He felt nothing.
There was a scratching nose in front of them and to the right.
“Orer, what do you think it is?” Kena asked, voice back to being scared.
“Just a mouse,” he replied. “Or maybe the pipes.”
The scratching noise continued. Clearly, whatever it was, animal or other, it was not bothered by their presence.
“That is definitely not the sound of pipes,” she whispered. “Forget the five minutes. Let’s go back up.”
“Just wait,” he said, inching forward a bit more and putting his arms out again. If only they could find some light. He was curious about what was down here. Kena had likely been right that family secrets were down here. As he moved, the pace of the scratching began to slow. Maybe the mouse didn’t like them getting too close.
Suddenly, his foot hit something and it rolled forward. He crouched down and extended his arms again. There. His hands touched something on the ground, something cold and cylindrical. He picked it up.
“I found something!” Orer exclaimed in relief.
“Eww, drop it. I don’t want to know what it is.” The back talk had returned. Clearly, Kena was relieved as well.
He held it in his hands, doing his best to guess by sensation what he had found. Yep, just what he needed. He clicked the button, and the flashlight flickered on. He turned to Kena. “Shall we continue?”
The light had spooked her–her eyes went wide as saucers.
“Sorry,” he said, and turned the light on the room around them. Behind Kena had been some shelves leaning against a wall, with boxes taking up their space. In front of him was an unfinished basement–he could see that it extended far out, maybe to the length of the mansion. Cement floors and some brick walls. No shelving to be seen. At the far end was another door.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
Interesting, he thought to himself.
“Let’s go,” Kena said from behind him. He could hear her beginning to move away. “Can you shine the light over here, please?”
“Hold on a sec,” he replied. His heart was racing, but the promise of making it to five minutes kept him rooted in his spot.
Orer, I’m out of here,” his cousin said. He heard the shuffle of her feet and then her quick steps as they began to creak up the stairs of the basement
He turned the flashlight over to the place where they’d heard the scratching sound.
“Alright,” he said as he cleared his throat and turned around. “I’m right behind you.”
They rushed back up the stairs. Orer didn’t have time to listen for anything coming after him; he was too busy being focused on getting out of there. The flashlight bobbed in his hands as he scrambled–light hitting Kena, then glancing over the railing, and finally landing on the door they had come from. Steps taken two at a time, they burst through at the top and tripped onto the landing. There was a fumble as they tried to get their bearings.
“Orer, get off. You’re crushing me,” Kena complained, her voice muffled.
“Sorry,” rushed out of Orer’s mouth as he got up, removing the weight of his left knee where it had been on Kena’s back. They both stood and brushed themselves off.
“We’re in agreement,” Kena told him, pointing a finger, “Gram does not find out about this.”
Her ponytail was now loose, hair falling all over her face. In short, Kena looked out of sorts. Usually, Orer didn’t have the patience to be bossed around, much less from someone like Kena. Stress, however, can work wonders on a personality, and he found himself concurring with her. He couldn’t care less that she was the one telling him what to do. Going to Gram hadn’t been on his mind, anyway.
He nodded and turned off the flashlight. Somehow, it had stayed in his hand this whole time.
“Pretty nice,” he said with a smile he wasn’t feeling. “It was worth it, if only for finding this.”
Kena groaned and began walking away. “You’re too much, Orer.”
It was just then that he realized he was missing something.
“Hey!” he called after her. “How long did we last?”
“Fifty-eight seconds,” she said back. And then she was gone.
Drat. They hadn’t even lasted a minute? He could have sworn it had been longer. Time’s funny nature, it seemed, had played a game on him.
Now that he had paused, Orer realized he was shaken up. He began walking the opposite direction Kena had taken, and rounded a corner to get some distance from that door. Then he leaned against the wall to gather his composure.
He wasn’t going to tell Kena–he couldn’t tell Kena–or else she would freak. But when Orer had turned on the flashlight and shined it in that corner where the scratching noise came from, the first thing he had seen were a large pair of eyes and a fleshy figure reflecting back at him.
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That night, Orer didn’t sleep well. He happened to look out his bedroom window a couple times and imagined some more strange creatures running along the line of trees. Every time he laid his head on the pillow and shut his eyes, he saw those other eyes staring back at him. And when he finally drifted into a cumbersome, jaunting repose, his dreams were haunting. Eyes kept following him, coming closer and closer, chasing him out of his room and out of the house and into the woods beyond. And when he reached the woods, a large bird was chasing him with beak and talon. Orer couldn’t escape, couldn’t get away. As he ran from the bird, he realized he was running towards hundreds of pairs of eyes that watched him and waited. Darkness was all around.
The bird screeched, and Orer jolted, sitting upright in bed. He glanced at the time. It read 12:01.
Great, just great. He put a hand up to his face and wiped away a layer of sweat. Orer wasn’t one to have mental breakdowns, but if anything came close, this was it. He laid back down on the pillow and tried to go back to sleep, or onward from the nightmare mayhem and into restful nothingness. But try as he might, he just couldn’t keep the flood of thoughts from entering his mind and keeping him awake. At one point, maybe three a.m., he got up and began to pace the room, trying to do anything to calm the anxiety. It didn’t help. Instead, he began looking out the window more, wondering if every shadow from the trees was a living, crawling being instead.
A multitude of theories came to him–maybe Gram ran some sort of secret experiments that the rest of the adults in their family knew about, and everyone was too afraid to say. But that seemed too extreme for the woman he knew her to be, and it didn’t make sense that Kena and he would be allowed to spend a whole summer here if that truly were the case.
Or maybe some person was living down in the basement and had been hiding out there for a long time. He couldn’t imagine Gram ever really being in the basement, anyway. Didn’t elderly people avoid stairs?
But then he remembered that Gram had been more than content to go up to the second level, and in all likelihood, her bedroom was probably up there as well. So stairs aside, maybe Gram just was more willing to risk the chance of taking a tumble on those stairs and not the ones in the basement. Fair enough. Orer didn’t think he would ever go down there alone, either, and he was only twenty-two.
Whatever it was, he was going to ask Gram eventually. Promise or not, he didn’t owe Kena anything. Regardless, at some point the two of them were going to have a conversation about everything she’d discovered from her Wi-Fi-hunting. His cousin was surprisingly more adept than he’d expected. He wouldn’t admit that to her, of course.
The flashlight was on his nightstand, exactly as he had left it as soon as he went to sleep. Figuring that since he was still wide awake and there was nothing better to do, he grabbed it and went back to the library. The guidebook still on the same table, Orer brought it back to his room. Time for some more reading.
He lay back down on his bed. Having read the whole section of The People of Gregar, he moved on to the next part titled The Creatures of Gregar.
“The great families, of course, are not the only individuals who reside in Gregar. The creatures here are fascinating in their own right and deserve to be described. It is expected that no prolonged encounters will occur between humans and other beings, but the Reader may digest this information as appropriate for the work of their particular household. Seeing no reason to order them any differently, these creatures will be listed and explained alphabetically.”
Whether it was due to the fact that morning was finally breaking, or the words just simply weren’t registering in his mind, Orer finally drifted off to sleep with book and flashlight still in hand as the sun climbed over the treetops.