Slattery Falls

by Brennan LaFaro

  The style of the late 1800s pervaded the house in decor and furniture choice, but setting that aside, it wouldn’t have been surprising to find an occupant. None of us expected a welcoming environment, but that’s exactly what we walked into. The living area inside the front door was relatively large, with a grand staircase to access the second floor of the house straight ahead. Never one to break tradition, Josh found a spot in the middle of the room and settled on the floor. Criss cross applesauce, as the kids say. Elsie and I joined him.

  “It’s been a while,” he said, letting the words hang. “Anybody need a refresher on ground rules?” Despite our predicament, the smiles crept uninvited onto our faces. I looked over at Elsie, who let her gaze fall down to her lap; hair covering her eyes with a big grin on her face. God, she looked beautiful at that moment.

  “Stick together, don’t steal, ‘husky’ means we bail, and don’t talk about fight club. Does that do it?” I asked.

  “Close enough.”

  Elsie shot him a sideways glance. “Close enough? You getting lax in your old age?”

  “What?” said Josh. “I trust you guys. Should I not?”

  “Speaking of trust, we’re inside now. You ready to let us in on your secrets, or do we have to guess what’s going to happen?” I asked.

  “Not quite yet.” He pulled the messenger bag close, wrapping one arm around it. “The ritual needs to be performed in the basement. I don’t like the idea of going straight there. We may not know much about the history of this house, but we do know that’s where they found all the kids, thanks to Ms. Stone. Presumably, that’s where whatever happened to them, took place.”

  “So you want to explore the house, make sure Weeks knows we’re here and give him plenty of time to get good and pissed off before we go to the place where all the bad shit happens?”

  “Sounds great,” said Elsie. “Josh, I don’t know if you put any thought into this, but let’s say we skip the part where we call out for spirits that want to talk to us.”

  “My thoughts exactly,” said Josh, “and Travis, don’t kid yourself. He knows we’re here.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  The living room opened in several directions, leading to different parts of the house. On the right side, a smaller living room—not the kind for receiving guests, more like the type every grandma has, where she covers the furniture in plastic and no one is allowed to sit. I believe it’s called a French room. The rear exit led to a hall that existed solely to accommodate a giant and moderately inconvenient set of stairs.

  After a quick look around, we entered the library off the left-hand side. It was nearly the size of the living room and contained books stacked floor-to-ceiling. I suspect that if Tedeschi knew what was in here, he might have been less hesitant to set foot on the property. Wading through and selling the contents of this room could probably have kept the town of Slattery Falls afloat for the rest of its existence. That almost two centuries had passed, and no one had the courage to come in and explore this house, made the skin on the back of my neck crawl. That’s how much the legend scared them. There could easily have been ten thousand books in this room, but we didn’t have time to peruse, so we moved on.

  On our way out the door, I thought back to Emily Stone’s words. She said Robert Weeks used some kind of magick to keep the angry townspeople at bay, and it quashed my dreams of riches, as a cold sweat broke out on my forehead. What kind of books might be in here?

  Across from the hall containing the grand staircase was a dining room—a large table and thirteen chairs filling the space. A bay window let in a modest amount of light, enough to show a small hallway at the rear. The passage appeared to be designed for servants, and sure enough, it took us back to the kitchen, complete with a pantry that made our kitchen look like a closet. It couldn’t have taken us over twenty minutes to go through the main floor. The welcoming atmosphere that we noticed upon our arrival had not dissipated at all. The lack of negative emotion and creepy feelings actually contributed to a disquiet that hung over us. The calm, peaceful mood made it feel like a goddamn trap.

  We climbed the stairs cautiously, despite how the exploration had proceeded so far. Opening the door to a large closet filled with towels, bedsheets, and spare clothes, we found the inexplicable phenomenon of preservation from downstairs mimicked. Everything inside should have been musty, moth-eaten, and worn by time, but these items appeared as though someone folded and put them away that very morning. There were two guest bedrooms, one above the French room and the other above the dining room.

  “There’s no way these rooms could have housed all the workers reported to be doing construction on the house,” said Josh.

  The thought hadn’t crossed my mind until Josh spoke it. “Are we assuming this place is too classy to have them sleeping on the floor of that library?”

  “Probably not. Still, it’s strange. Unless their quarters were in the basement. Seems the most likely possibility.”

  We passed into the master bedroom and found nothing of note, although it was harrowing to see the balcony on which Robert Weeks had reportedly stood, using some unknown force to hold the gates against the invading mob. Then we came to the last room on the top floor—a study, or an office with bookshelves a plenty, in case the library was insufficient.

  We sat in the middle of the study, no one wanting to be the first to break the silence. I couldn’t help feeling disappointed, and I had to imagine Elsie and Josh felt the same. I can still remember how the sun felt streaming in through the window and coming to rest on the back of my neck. Warm and comforting.

  “If there’s going to be anything to see, anything to happen, the basement is where it’s going to be,” said Josh.

  “So we go right down, do whatever the ritual entails, and get the fuck out, right? It’s been fine so far, but I can’t help feeling like I’m being lulled into a false sense of security. Am I crazy?”

  “No,” said Elsie. “I’ve got that too. Call it paranoia, but it can’t be this easy.”

  Josh nodded.

  “Okay, Josh. If we’re all in agreement that the potential for something waiting for us in the basement is very real, I think Elsie and I need to know what you’re planning to do down there. We’ve given you the benefit of the doubt, but now it’s two minutes to midnight.”

  Josh put his hand over his bag, keeping his eyes on the floor six inches in front of his feet, but said nothing.

  “There isn’t any ritual,” Elsie whispered.

  “Of course there is,” I said. “It’s the whole reason we came here. Josh, tell us what you’re planning.”

  He didn’t move, save for a gentle rocking. Otherwise, you could’ve mistaken him for a statue.

  “Josh!” I said, angrier than intended.

  He shook his head.

  “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” I said, trying to keep my voice down, but coming up short of successful. “You knew I wouldn’t agree to come without a plan. You fucking knew it, so you made one up? And you knew I’d trust you. God dammit, man. That’s low. And you dragged Elsie into it, your fucking cousin by the way. Did you even give a shit about putting your family in danger?”

  Josh didn’t move a muscle, wouldn’t or couldn’t answer.

  I turned to Elsie. “How long did you know? Did he tell you?”

  “First of all, you can cut the shit attitude, right now.” She paused a moment, holding me in her stare and letting me ruminate on just how terrifying she could be. When she spoke again, a sense of calm had returned. “He never told me. I suspected the first time he refused to tell us what he was planning to do, but I hoped I was wrong. I also hoped that he had a secondary plan for when we got here.” And with that, she punched Josh in the arm. “Doesn’t matter though. Travis, I know I betrayed your trust, but if you knew we would wing it, you would’ve put your foot down in the name of protecting your damsel in distress, and we would’ve come without you.”

/>   “Without me? If I refused to make this trip, you guys would have done it, anyway?”

  “In a heartbeat. Because it’s the right thing to do. You may be skeptical, but there’s evidence that suggests children are still going missing because of this house and the guy behind it. If there’s the slightest chance we can stop it, we have to do it, even at personal risk.”

  About three thousand replies ran through my head in a second, and not one of them was the right thing to say, so I chose silence.

  “Travis, I love you. More than anything. That’s why I agreed to spend the rest of my life with you, but this is something I have to do. We have to do. I’m going to love you no matter what you decide to do, but we stand a better chance with the three of us, and if this show has as much to do with protecting my dainty ass as I think it does, you’re not going to do me any fucking good waiting in the car. Be pissed off at Josh, pissed off at me all you like, but do it later. For now, we trust each other. Can you do that?”

  Another three thousand potential replies, some close, but none of them just right. I nodded my head, not trusting my words.

  “Good,” said Elsie. “Get your asses up and let’s go.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  The burgeoning avalanche of nerves and anxiety as we made our way back through the house was almost unbearable, knowing every step could spring the trap we knew must be set.

  “Did you notice the entrance to the basement on the plans?” I asked.

  “No, and I didn’t notice anything when we looked around the first floor either,” answered Josh. “We can make some educated guesses. It might even be outside. Some of these older houses have the cellar access outdoors.”

  “There was a door in that massive pantry. I’d bet it goes to the basement,” said Elsie.

  “You are just full of surprises today,” I said.

  “Not the best time to be passive-aggressive,” she replied in a sing-song voice that seemed exceptionally out-of-place given the current setting.

  Josh stopped, scrunching his shoulders up to his ears. “I kind of felt like we had this sorted upstairs. It’s on me, I get it, but I can’t overstate how important it is we leave any issues we have for later. We don’t know what we’re going to find down there, what’s in store for us. I lost some of your trust, and I’m sorry, and if you want to yell and scream and hit me later, that’s fine. Now, we’ve got to have each other’s backs. Agreed?”

  “Yeah, sorry. I’ve got this,” I said.

  From the bottom of the grand staircase, we retraced our steps through the kitchen and into the pantry. I’d given this room a cursory glance on our first trip around the house. This time, even looking for the door, I still almost missed it, but sure enough, Elsie was right. On the back right side of the room, seamlessly blending in with the shelves where they would’ve kept food, stood a door.

  “Hey,” I said. “This house hasn’t been touched since the 1880s for the most part, right?”

  They nodded.

  “Clothes still in closets, beds still made up, a picture of the night the town came for Robert Weeks, but…”

  “There’s no food in the pantry,” Elsie finished. “How did we not notice this before? It’s a room full of bare shelves.”

  “It’s strange, no doubt, but I think we should keep going,” said Josh.

  We headed toward the door, Josh in the lead. Opening the gateways to scary basements fell to him, and I sure as hell wasn’t about to break from tradition now. He tapped on the knob three times, another custom, and then eased it open.

  A brick wall. While they had left the rest of the house alone, some proactive townsperson had taken the time to seal off the basement.

  “Shit, what now? We came all this way, and now we can’t even finish this?”

  Josh stared at the wall as though it might break down with a gaze. He reached out and placed his hand on the wall, closed his eyes, and left it there for a moment. Another moment.

  The first brick tumbled out of place, clattering down the stairs behind it. Piece by piece, the other bricks followed suit, revealing an endless, dark hollow. A chilly breeze blew out of it, reminding me of an exhale. The wind carried the scent of must and decay—the first inkling we’d received that not everything was sunshine and roses. Elsie grabbed Josh and me by our collars and yanked us back several feet.

  “What the fuck was that?” she asked, eyes wide and directed toward Josh. “You just knocked down the wall, like a superpower thing”

  He smirked. “Oh no, that would be much better. I didn’t take that wall down. It granted us access. I keep telling you, it wants us here.”

  “It wants us here?” I repeated. “You said it knows we’re here. That’s different.”

  “How? Two sides of the same coin. It knows we’re here and allowed us to explore its domain because…” The gleam in Josh’s eye was a little frightening as he left the sentence hanging, like a lifelong smoker grabbing that first cigarette of the day. Reading the curious expression on Elsie’s face, I could tell she had seen it too.

  “Because, it wants us here,” she said. “Josh, can we do this?”

  “You said it. We have to try.”

  Elsie nodded.

  We distributed flashlights from the messenger bag, and with Josh in the lead, started down the stairs. We treaded carefully so as not to trip over any discarded bricks, but they weren’t there. Each stair creaked, sounding like a scream announcing our arrival to the unknown avenue ahead. A typical flight of stairs couldn’t contain over ten or twelve steps, and yet we kept descending well past that number. I started counting once I realized we were going down too far. I got to twenty-seven, putting the number of stairs going to the basement around at least forty.

  It was difficult to tell how far we were from the top. We had left the door open, but since the pantry was an interior room, no light shone down to aid us. Like in the Hale House, the flashlights were technically working, but didn’t seem to give off as much light as one might expect. Finally, we hit what felt like a dirt floor. Not uncommon in a house this age. As we had gone down, the smell, which was powerful enough at the top of the stairs, only got stronger.

  “They took the bodies out of here, right?” I asked, pulling my t-shirt up over my nose.

  “According to an unsubstantiated journal entry from a woman of no historical significance, yes,” answered Josh.

  The floor plans included a detailed map of the main and top floors, but no details about the basement. We assumed an open room with the approximate size of the main floor, but the bottom of the stairs opened into a long, thin tunnel that stretched at least the length of the house. The walls were solid concrete about five feet apart, with no breaks, doorways or rooms to speak of.

  We did the only thing we could, pushed forward. There was no rush, not with over three hours before Tedeschi would return. Would he lock us in if we were still down here? No, of course not. Our car was still out front. But still…

  We turned every so often to track our surroundings, eventually losing sight of the stairs as they disappeared into darkness. And then there he was. I had turned to check the stairs, and standing ten feet behind us was Robert Weeks, more fully formed than he had been at the Benson House, evidently waiting to be noticed. Without losing sight of him, I slapped at Josh and Elsie to get their attention. Elsie let out a small scream, then quickly stifled it. As soon as he had our full attention, Weeks smiled, displaying the same grin that must have spread across his face when the people of Slattery Falls strung him up. He walked toward us and almost immediately dissolved into a cloud of dust.

  We stood frozen, eyes locked on the spot where Weeks had been, waiting on what felt like his inevitable return. I don’t know how long we would have stayed there except a bout of laughter broke our trance, and it came from in front of us—the same horrible, grating laughter that sent us fleeing from the Benson House.

  We spun around, but only concrete, dirt
, and darkness surrounded us.

  “He’s still doing it,” whispered Elsie. “Showing off that he can lead us wherever he wants.”

  “The alternative is turning around and leaving,” said Josh. “I, for one, vote against that. Least of all because I’m not convinced he would allow us to leave.”

  Nothing else needed to be said. Josh was right, so we continued on. We moved slower than before and checked our backs at least twice as often. In the silent dark, waiting for the next thing to happen, it was hard to tell how far we had walked, but it definitely felt like more than the length of the house. Finally, we saw a wall ahead. But this couldn’t be the extent of the basement, right? A long skinny tunnel? There had to be more. When we got closer, it became apparent that what looked like a dead end branched off in two separate directions at ninety-degree angles.

  We had a choice to make. The first of many.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  “Well, left or right, lady and gentleman. What’s our choice?” I said. “Or we could split up.”

  “Not on your life,” said Josh. “Elsie, thoughts?”

  We took a minute to study each direction, but there was nothing to be gleaned. Each tunnel looked identical and endless, like the one we currently stood in.

  “I think it’s a flip of the coin,” said Elsie.

  “Anybody opposed to left?” I asked. No objections. “Left, it is.”

  We headed down the left tunnel with as much caution as before. A small cry from Elsie stopped us in our tracks.

  “The other path,” she said. “It’s gone.” Sure enough, where the path to the right had been seconds before, a concrete wall as solid and unyielding as the ones on every other side blocked the way as if it never existed. You may not believe me since I’ve made it no secret that I opposed the trip in the first place, but this was the first point I sincerely thought about dragging the two of them outside against their wills. I still wish I had. We had gone from a tinge of supernatural to the utterly impossible in the blink of an eye, and it only reinforced Elsie’s notion that we were part of a game. Rats being led to the cheese. What would happen when we found it?