by Tim Lebbon
Curt nodded. “Or lecture.”
“Oh, no, I wouldn’t want one of those,” she said tartly.
Holden looked around at the others. Jules had a somewhat bemused expression on her face, perhaps more to do with how things had moved on so quickly from her performance than at what was being said. And Marty was frowning, his usually relaxed expression troubled. He turned from Curt to Dana and back again, and seemed about to say something.
Curt, too, shifted and raised his head a little, mouth opening to speak, before Dana cut him off.
“Okay, Jules. Dare.”
Good for you, Holden thought, and then he cried out as a huge crash! came from the corner by the kitchen. Jules screamed, Curt span around, Dana stepped back into Holden, his hands grasping her arms automatically and squeezing. She huddled back into him and that was their first embrace, her shaking, his heart pounding, and neither as a result of each other.
Even Marty jumped, though a second after the others. A cloud of ash flowed down from his joint, speckling the front of his shirt and jeans.
“What the hell was that?” Jules exclaimed.
“It’s the cellar door,” Dana said. In the kitchen and dining area, just to the left of the dining table and close to the hallway leading back to the bedrooms, a rectangle of darkness had appeared in the floor. Holden blinked a few times, as if dust was obscuring his vision, because for a moment he thought it was simply an area of blackened boards. There’s nothing below us, he thought, but then sight of the shadowy, upturned hatch drove that strange idea away.
Dust motes, agitated by the sudden opening, drifted in the air, dancing around the ceiling lights and the several lamps they’d lit and stood around the place. The amount of light in the room made it seem even darker down there.
Dana shifted out of his embrace, but only so she could reach down and squeeze his hand. He squeezed back, taking comfort from the contact as well.
Spooky... he thought, and Holden was not someone easily spooked. As one, they moved around the sofa and other easy chairs and edged toward the cellar door. Jules glanced back at Dana, wide-eyed. She didn’t even acknowledge the fact that her friend was grasping Holden’s hand.
“I thought... it was locked,” Marty drawled.
“The wind must have blown it open,” Curt said.
Jules laughed nervously. “What wind?”
They gathered close to the hole and looked down. There was a set of wooden stairs leading into the darkness, the first three or four steps visible, the rest hidden away. The wall to one side of the staircase seemed to be lined with sacking of some sort, gray and dusty. The smell that rose from the hole was age, and something else, something...
Alive, Holden thought. But that was stupid. He was smelling rats and other critters, their shit and their dead, their lives hidden away beneath this dilapidated old place. That was all.
“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 f
rom 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.
“Look at all this,” Jules said, and she was the first to slowly start examining the piles of stuff.
“Uh, guys,” Marty said, “I’m not sure it’s awesome to be down here.” He stood at the bottom of the staircase, the oil lamp back on the hook beside him, and he looked as if he’d be darting back upstairs at the slightest provocation.
But the others weren’t paying any attention. Jules and Curt were off on their own, each focusing on different parts of the basement, and Holden still stood beside Dana, peering around in wonder. He took a step and picked up an ornate music box from the pile of children’s toys. Removing his glasses from his pocket and slipping them on, he turned the box this way and that before pausing, seemingly holding his breath.
“Dude, seriously, your cousin’s into some weird shit.” Curt was across the basement holding a conch shell in his hands, turning it this way and that, and he brought it halfway to his ear—You can hear the sea if you press an old shell to your ear—before changing his mind and quickly putting it back down. He picked up a melon-sized wooden sphere that lay behind it. It was inlaid with dusty brass rings and lined with angular joints, and he turned it in his hands as if trying to find a way in.
“Pretty sure this ain’t his,” he said. “Maybe the people who put in that window... ”
Dana couldn’t take her eyes off the portrait of the girl. It was propped on a hardwood stand, and a black sheet hung over the portrait’s frame as if it had once been concealed from view. On the small vanity table that stood before it was a variety of personal effects: an old hairbrush; a silver mirror; and a leather-bound book. “Some of this stuff looks really old,” she said. “Look at this,” Jules said. She had moved across to the dressmaker’s mannequin, less spooky in the lamplight but still strange with the unfinished garment still tight upon it. She touched something hanging around its neck, an amulet, and as she held it in her hand she said, “It’s beautiful.”
“Maybe we should go back upstairs,” Marty said. He was still standing at the bottom of the staircase, looking around nervously, hands clasped in front of him. He’s actually scared, Dana thought, and the idea disturbed her. When no one answered him he said, “I dare you all to go upstairs?” And then Marty froze, and a small smile crept through his fear.
“Oh wow, take a look at this,” he said, and he walked a few steps to where a bunch of old film reels were stacked. Beneath them was a super-8 projector, and piled beside it several small suitcase-style containers that Dana thought might contain more reels. The plinth they stood on was circular and built up of regular stones, its tabletop a board of thick, roughly cut wood. It looked like an old capped well.
Dana frowned, wondering what a well was doing in the basement of a house; or rather, why a cabin would be built around a well.
Marty plucked a reel from its rack and started examining it.
“Porn?” Curt asked, but Marty didn’t reply. He started unspooling it, holding the film up to the light and moving it slowly through his hand, mouth open in wonder.
“What is it, Marty?” Dana asked, but whatever story was playing before his eyes, it seemed to hold him entranced and distant from them.
So Dana turned and approached the portrait, staring into the girl’s eyes and trying to blink back the certainty that they stared back. Perhaps it was something to do with the way the portrait had been formed, the material behind it, or the manner in which it had been slightly faded by the basement air, but the girl’s eyes seemed so alive.
She picked up the book and brushed dust from its cover, revealing the word “diary” in extravagant gold lettering. Opening the cover, she looked up, suddenly afraid of what she might read.
I should close this, she thought. Put it back where it belongs, place it exactly in the rectangle of dust it left on the table.
And we should all stop doing what we’re doing...
She looked around at the others, all of them seemingly entranced by this place and consumed by the small part of it they were each examining. Holden was winding the small handle on a music box, and the haunting metallic music filled the air, pinging from note to note and somehow bringing tears to Dana’s eyes. Curt was frowning as he worked sections of the wooden sphere, pulling rings, sliding wood against wood, clicking sections into place as he worked on transforming it into something else.
Jules had removed the golden amulet from around the dummy’s neck and was holding it to her own neck, staring into a dusty mirror to see how it looked, and Dana thought that in the mirror her friend looked as old as everything else down here. Jules searched for the clasp as if to try it on for real.
Don’t try it on, Dana thought, her own desperation surprising her. She tore her eyes away and saw Marty unwinding more and more film, leaving it to stream around his feet as he watched his own private moments against the lamplight, mouth and eyes wide, and she knew that even if she shouted right then it might not be enough. The music box’s music filled the basement, an incidental theme to Marty’s movie, and Curt’s puzzle box, and Jules’s effort to undo the amulet’s clasp— Dana looked down at the diary and started reading, and from the very first word she imagined them being spoken by the girl in the portrait.
Then she wrenched herself free.
“Guys!” she called. The music box stopped, and the others all paused in what they were doing. When they looked at her, Dana saw some measure of relief in their eyes, as if they each had found their tasks challenging and draining and were glad to be distracted. “Guys, listen to
this,” she said. The others came and stood around her, and then it was just Dana and the book.
She had opened the diary at random, and the words sprang out at her and clasped hold, taking her away from her own time and back to when they were written. Above her the cabin was different, and if she hadn’t had her friends around her she wasn’t sure she could have held on.
She took a deep breath and started reading.
“‘Today we felled the old birch tree out back. I was sorrowed to see it go, as Judah and I had sat up in its branches so many summers...’”
“What is that?” Jules asked.
Dana paged back to the inside front cover. She’d already read the inscription there, but she didn’t want to get any of it wrong.
“It’s the Diary of Anna Patience Buckner, 1903.” “Wow,” Curt muttered. “That’s the original owners, right?” Jules asked. “That creepy old fuck called this the Buckner place.” No one commented, no one questioned.
Dana continued reading from where she’d left off. “‘Father was cross with me and said I lacked the true faith. I wish I could prove my devotion, as Judah and Matthew proved on those travelers...’”
“Uh, that makes what kind of sense?” Marty asked. “You know,” Holden said, “it’s uncommon that a girl out here was reading and writing in that era.” “‘Mama screamed most of the night,’” Dana continued. “‘I prayed that she might find faith, but she only stopped when papa cut her belly and stuffed the coals in.’” She stopped, breath held, and looked up at the others. No one said a word. The silence was heavy and loaded, and she wanted to read on. She looked back down. “‘Judah told me in my dream that Matthew took him to the Black Room so I know he is killed. Matthew’s faith is too great; even Father does not cross him or speak of Judah. I want to understand the glory of the pain like Matthew, but cutting the flesh makes him have a husband’s bulge and I do not get like that.’” “Jesus,” Marty gasped, “can we not—”