“Come on Darron. There’s nothing to be scared of.”
Emmet and Jake were already inside the old house, but Darron was hesitant to go in there. “Guys, it might not be safe. And we are definitely not allowed to go in there. It’s someone’s house, even though it’s abandoned.”
Emmet was already moving further into the house. Jake was still in the small entrance hall, shaking his head at Darron, before following Emmet. Darron was still not sure, but he also didn’t want to be an outsider. He looked down the street. There was no one there, which was to be expected, this far outside town, at this hour. He slowly walked up to the empty doorway and into the house. The walls were very worn down, but still had most of the wallpaper on them. It was ripped several places and had a faded yellowish tint to it, and some spots were even peeled back, revealing the bare bricks underneath. All the windows were removed and there seemed to be no furniture left. Even the kitchen was mostly taken down. Only a few cabinets were left hanging crookedly on the wall. Darron joined Jake in what used to be the living room. He was starting to feel more comfortable as he was exploring the empty house. “Who do you think lived here?”. He was running his fingers over the stone setting over the old fireplace. Emmet was examining the walls. “Probably old people. Look at these walls. You can see they had loads of pictures up all over. And the wallpaper reminds me of my grandmother.”
There was a creaking sound from the other end of the house. Darron and Emmet looked at each other when Jake called them. “Guys there’s an upstairs! And a basement!”. They could hear he was overly exited by this riveting discovery and before any of them could answer they heard him running up the stairs. The entire house was squeaking and creaking like it was about to come crashing down on them. Darron and Emmet ran through the small hall at the entrance and into a smaller room at the end of the house, where they found two sets of stairs next to each other. One going up and one going down. Both looked like they were very unsafe to walk on, but the boys still followed Jake upstairs.
The first floor was one big room with sloping walls on two sides. At the far end Jake was standing over what looked to be an old treasure chest. The chest, as well as the floor, was covered in a thick layer of dust, and the only light in the room was pouring in from a small window hole in the far wall.
All the boys gathered and stared at the chest for a good minute before Jake broke the silence. “Do you think pirates lived here?”. Darron looked at him with wrinkles on his forehead and the hint of a smile. Emmet didn’t even bother to look at him. “No, moron. It’s an old storage chest. They were popular back in the day, and many old people still have them for the aesthetic effect. I wouldn’t mind having one myself. They do look kind of cool.”
Jake nodded thoughtfully in agreement, but his understanding didn’t last long. “But… If it’s a storage chest, what would someone store, that they didn’t want to bring with them when they moved? It must be valuable because the chest is locked. I tried opening it before you got up here.”
For another minute they all just stood there in silence. No one had an answer, or even a guess at one. Darron squatted and looked closer at the lock on the chest. “I mean, we can find out. If we want.”
“Oh, right ‘cause you have the key do you?” answered Jake mockingly.
“Well, no. But we already waltzed into these people’s house and went through most of it. And this is a pretty old lock. I’m sure we could find a way to open it, if we set our minds to it.”
The other two exchanged looks. Jake shrugged. “Sure, Mr. Safecracker, lets see what these people were hiding”.
Darron frowned as he could feel the expectation from the others rising. His heart was beating faster and harder than he had expected, and his hands were starting to get sweaty, as he pulled out a small pocketknife. He opened the knife, inserted it in the old lock, and started wiggling it around. He wasn’t sure what he was doing, but it looked so easy on TV. He could feel different parts of the locking mechanism with the knife, and sometimes it felt like something was moving.
Emmet shifted his stance slightly and crossed his arms. “Maybe we should just try looking for the key? Maybe it’s around here, just covered in dust?” He looked around the dim, dusty room but couldn’t spot anything. Then he heard a click from the chest and looked down. “Did you get it?”
Darron slowly lifted the lid of the chest a bit, before looking up at his friend. “I think I got it” he smirked. They all held their breath as Darron slowly opened the lid of the chest so they could look inside. The chest was almost empty, apart from an old, worn-out notebook, resting on the bottom. They all stared at the book for a bit. Then Darron picked it up and opened it. It was filled with odd drawings of mangled birds, strange symbols, and naked, human-like figures. Among the drawings were handwritten text in a language none of the boys understood. Some passages were in English too, but the texts made very little sense. Some of it looked like attempts at writing poetry. Some of it looked more like spells or enchantments. Some of it was just random words smashed together without making any sense.
The boys sat down and looked through the book. They all found it very creepy, but also very interesting. About halfway through the book, there were a handful of blank pages followed by a series of pages with one word on each, taking up the entire page. These words were in English and were very clear: “NEVER GO INTO THE BASEMENT”. Darron flipped through these few pages again to look at them closer, although there was not much to see. There was no mistaking that message. Darron looked at his friends in silence. Then Emmet broke the silence, “Oh man, now we have to go into the basement!”. He was overly enthusiastic at the thought of going into the dark basement of an abandoned house outside town, in the middle of the night. The other two were less thrilled at the idea, but Emmet was already on his feet heading to the stairs. Darron and Jake got up and followed him. They left the chest open, but Darron brought the notebook. It was too interesting to leave behind.
A few seconds later, all three boys gathered at the top of the basement stairs. There used to be a door blocking the staircase, but now there was only a large hole in the wall. Emmet looked at the others “You girls coming or what?”, and then ran down the janky old stairs before the others had a chance to answer. In the basement Emmet was quickly swallowed by the thick darkness and disappeared completely from view. Jake and Darron stayed at the top of the stairs for a while. Jake tried calling to Emmet, but there was no answer from the basement. Darron was getting uneasy but Jake tried to calm him down “It’s ok. Emmet is just trying to scare us. Come on, lets go down there, there might be something interesting”. Darron refused, but Emmet insisted on going down. He started down the stairs but hesitated about halfway down. He looked back at Darron, nervously, “You coming?”. Darron shook his head, and Emmet continued down the stairs. Soon he was also completely hidden in the darkness of the basement. All of a sudden, Darron felt very lonely at the top of the stairs. He tried calling to his friends, but there was no answer from either of them. After another minute he decided to go and look for them. He turned on the flashlight on his phone and started down the stairs. He moved slowly and tried to see what was in the basement, but his flashlight was not strong enough to penetrate the wall of darkness down there. When he reached the foot of the stairs the light still only revealed a very small area around him. The basement seemed empty around him. He looked back up the stairs that were only barely visible from the small amount of light upstairs. When he looked further into the basement, his phone turned off, and the darkness closed in on him, in the blink of an eye. He couldn’t see anything in the basement and then he heard creaking, like an old door being closed. Darron looked up the stairs just in time to see the last light disappear, as the door slammed shut at the top of the stairs.