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milie Kats had only been locked in the basement a few hours when the first monster came. It was tall and skinny and had long fingers that made Emilie think of worms and snakes and other icky things. It peeked around the corner quickly and though everyone said that she had a big imagination, Emilie knew it was real. As long as it stayed on that side of the basement and away from her it was ok. Emilie was a practical girl.
Emilie had been walking to school, dressed in her new Pokemon T-shirt and her favorite faded jeans (Jeans that she refused to toss out, throwing a fit if her father even mentioned the possibility). It was a normal day in Narrow Lake, cold and cloudy, with but a light drizzle of rain tapping her in the face and causing her red curls to lose their natural bounce, making them resemble limp red spaghetti. It wasn’t what her mother called Drowned Rat Rain, but Emilie knew it could become so soon. She walked faster.
As she walked, she started to make up a song from the sounds the rain made is it dripped from her hair to the sidewalk. |
Plip, plip, plip
Skip, skip, skip
Plop, plop, plop
Rain won’t stop. |
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Emilie was pleased with herself, as she usually was when she came up with a new song or story or a great new game for her and her friends to play. She wasn’t sure what she was going to do when she grew up, but she was sure it was going to revolve around making things up.
Lost in those thoughts, she almost overlooked the cat.
Emilie was a great lover of cats, despite (or maybe because of) the fact that her father’s allergies made having one of her own impossible. This cat in particular was majestic (a word that she had just learned and was quite fond of) all white and fluffy just like the ones she pretended to own. It never crossed her mind that it was strange that an alley cat would be so clean and well taken care of, and when it darted through the half-opened basement door of a house, it never occurred to her not to follow.
Emilie knew the house was haunted, but she was never the type of girl to avoid somewhere that was supposed to be dangerous, especially when there was a cute, fluffy cat involved.
Emilie never knew what caused the old door to swing shut. At first she figured it was just a stray autumn wind, a common occurrence in Upstate New York in October, but as the hours dragged by, she began to wonder. Regardless of what caused it, the door did indeed slam shut and once it had, Emilie wasn’t able to get it open again.
As she kicked and pulled at the door, she screamed at the top of her lungs. She knew that the street this house was on was a busy one, and it was just a matter of time before somebody would hear her and come investigate. She kept this up for quite some time (as well as being practical and creative, Emilie was persistent) before falling to the ground and crying.
“And I can’t even find the cat.” Emilie said to herself miserably.
She sat there and sobbed for a few more minutes. Finally, she decided that the best thing to do would be looking around. Maybe there would be another way out or a telephone somewhere. Emilie’s grandmother had a telephone in her basement, just in case she had a “bad spell.” Emilie remembered thinking that her grandmother was a witch when she heard about “bad spells” but her mother explained it to her. She turned six shades of red that day.
As Emilie walked she took notice of things, piles of clothes and sealed crates (which she halfheartedly tried to open) cobwebs and fungi, (which were pale and white and made Emilie think of eyes) and a large furnace that sent an unconscious chill through Emilie’s body. Still, as interesting as those things were, they weren’t going to get her out.
“Might as well.” Emilie said to herself, plopping down by the door. She unzipped her red Pokemon backpack and pulled out the sandwich her mother had made her this morning. It was tuna fish and Emile was delighted to find that her mother had remembered that she preferred her tuna without celery. Emilie only ate half of the sandwich and didn’t even touch the package of fruit snacks before putting them back in her pack. “For later.” She said to herself. This was when the monster came.
“Hello?” Emilie asked, more interested than concerned. “Who’s there?”
She instantly wished she hadn’t said that. She had once snuck into the living room when her parents were watching a monster movie. There was a pretty girl on the screen who had said “who’s there?” and she ended up getting cut into pieces by a big man in a hockey mask. She remembered wondering why adults watched stuff like that.
Emile was a brave girl, but not quite brave enough to go around the corner and see where the monster went. Something about its weird fingers really bothered her, though she couldn’t quite place what, and besides, around the corner sat the creepy old furnace. Emilie was about to start trying to pull the door open again when the ground began to shake.
Emilie, who had lived her entire life in Upstate New York, had never encountered an earthquake, though she could assume that was what was going on. A crack appeared in the ground at Emilie’s feet and she backed up until her back was to the door. The crack stopped just before her sneakers and no sooner had Emilie expelled her held breath then a skeleton clawed out of the fissure.
Emilie’s experience with skeletons begun and ended with Halloween episodes of Saturday morning cartoons, where they were always white and clean and grinning. This one was a sickly yellow color and had cracked, jagged teeth. Sections of ropey skin hung from its body at random intervals and stringy hair of no real color clung stubbornly to its skull. It loomed over Emilie and for the first time that night, she screamed in blind terror.
“Yes, little girl, scream.” The skeleton’s voice was high and piercing and reverberated like the voice of the big nosed puppet with the stick that had so scared Emilie during her trips to the amusement park in Sylvan Beach when she was really little.
“We live in your closet, under your bed. When you sleep we watch you, waiting for your little feet to hang over the bed so we can grab them!” When the skeleton said “grab them” it lurched at Emilie. She closed her eyes bracing for an impact that never came. When she opened them again, the skeleton and the crack were gone.
For a while after, Emilie just sat there, hugging her knees to her chest and sobbing. She was a brave girl, and could handle a lot of problems but that . . . that was just too much. She wished that she had never left home that morning, that she hadn’t chased the cat into this horrible place, that she wasn’t even born, not being born was better than seeing something like that and . . .
A butterfly landed on her shivering shoulder. For a moment, it didn’t register that anything had happened; Emilie was so buried under her own terror and self pity. However, when the butterfly’s antenna brushed her cheek, it snapped her out of her funk a bit.
“How did you get in here?” Emilie asked, her voice quivering.
“The furnace willed it.” The butterfly said matter-of-factly.
“You talk?” Emilie asked, her sobbing stopping. With what had just happened, a talking butterfly seemed totally normal.
“Of course, everything down here does. It’s the nature of the basement.” The butterfly took off from Emilie’s shoulder and hovered a few inches before her nose.
“Can you show me the way out of here?” Emilie thought some of saying “sir” or “ma’am” after the question out of politeness, but had no idea how to tell if it’s a boy or girl butterfly and its voice was no help.
“Only the furnace can make something come or go from here.” The butterfly said, slowly orbiting Emilie’s small head. It was making her quite dizzy, but she was too polite to tell it to stop.
“Can . . . er . . . can you ask the furnace to let me out?” Emilie asked.
“No, only you can do that, and its hearing ain’t too good so you’ll have to go over to it.” The butterfly stopped orbiting her head and began to fly off toward the furnace.
“But . . . what about the monster?” Emilie asked.
“Don’t let it get you,” the butterfly replied calmly before disappearing. |
Emilie waited quite some time before venturing to the other side of the basement. She crumpled the empty fruit snack wrapper into a tight ball and tossed it into her backpack along with the discarded sandwich bag (complete with uneaten crust). It never once occurred to her to doubt what she had seen, as she was still at that magical age where things were exactly what they appeared to be, no matter how fantastical they seemed. Sighing and straightening her t-shirt, she took the first few tentative steps toward the furnace.
“The monster is going to kill you and I’ll laugh.” The skeleton’s voice said from under the ground. “He’s just waiting for you to step into his territory, just like when we’re waiting in your dark room for you to need a glass of water.”
“Shut up.” Emilie said, trying to sound brave. She continued to walk toward the furnace. The skeleton’s kazoo-like voice fell silent.
Emilie took a few more steps forward and almost screamed when the monster popped around the corner. It moved like lightning, and before she was able to even startle, it pushed its ugly face into hers. She could feel it’s breath on her nose, and was shocked to find that it didn’t smell bad. In fact, its breath smelled like roses and peppermint.
“Do you really think the furnace will help you, dear?” The monster asked, all cloying sweetness. As it spoke it wrapped its wormy-snaky fingers around her small shoulders and it was all she could do to not vomit.
“Go away.” Emilie said. She wanted her voice to sound powerful and commanding, but it came out little more than a wheeze.
“No, I don’t think so. I think we’re going to keep you here for a while. Don’t you want to play with us?” Emilie almost passed out right there; she could feel her mind slipping away. It would be so easy to just go away, to just fade into the beautiful beaches and forests that her mind showed her in her best dreams. Forests full of rabbits and deer and . . .
Butterflies . . .
The butterfly . . .
The butterfly said . . .
“The butterfly said go to the furnace!” Emilie yelled at the monster and it let her go. It was as if it had lost all of its power over her, curling upon itself in the corner, long fingered hands wrapped around its knobby knees. It watched her walk forward, reminding her of a kicked puppy. In a few moments, she was before the furnace.
It was one of the old models, big and bulky and looking for all the world like a giant iron octopus, tentacles wrapped around the ceiling at several points. Even though Emilie knew the house was abandoned, she could hear the fire burning deep inside it and she shivered.
Unsure what to do, she did the first thing that popped into her mind. Emilie kneeled before the furnace, bowing her head subserviently.
“Oh furnace, I am alone and scared. I’ve been trapped here for . . . I don’t know how long. It’s cold and scary and I’m sure my mom and dad miss me a great deal. There are monsters here and they . . . they scare me . . .” Once Emilie started speaking she often found it hard to stop. “Could you please let me out? I would be most grateful.” She was not at all surprised when the furnace responded.
Its voice was deep and reassuring, but not without a controlled violence. Emilie had read the Narnia series and had always imagined the lion Aslan’s voice sounding a lot like this. It was a voice that declared ‘I like you, and I’ll protect you, but don’t forget I’m a lion.’
“What you have faced is horrible indeed, and yes, I’ll let you out. But let it be known that what lies beyond that door is no salvation.”
“What do you mean?” Emilie asked, for the first time since standing up to the monster unsure.
“The outside world is a void now, full of monsters that hide beneath the skins of humans. Monsters just as vicious and horrible as those that you have encountered down here. The only difference is that here the masks slip.”
Emilie thought of werewolves, and vampires and all those other things that she had heard about that looked like humans and shivered. Could it be that the things she had seen in this basement were nothing new, but things that walk and crawl and howl beneath the skins of people she had met?
“Yes.” The furnace replied simply, even though Emilie hadn’t spoken. “But away with you now, the door is to open.”
As soon as the furnace stopped speaking, the door flew open and Emilie screamed. Outside had indeed become a void, a swirling vortex like those that cartoon characters often fell into in dreams. She saw dogs and mailboxes, trees and even houses flying by the door. However, what made her scream was what had kicked the door open.
It was a tall, lanky form that Emilie could almost convince herself was a man. It had no defining features, save a large glowing eye that was centered between the thing’s stomach and ribcage. To Emilie’s horror, it started to walk toward her unafraid. It called her full name.
“Emilie, Emilie Anne Katz?” The thing said, its glowing eye cutting through the dusty air, revealing floating dust motes that seemed like tiny fairy dancers to Emilie. Emilie was too frightened to move as it got closer and closer to her.
“There you are.” It said, and to Emilie’s horror, its one glowing eye swung away from its body and floated at the things hand. It reached for her with its other hand and grabbed her shoulder. She kicked and bit and swore, but the creature was far stronger than her. Finally, she passed out. |
Officer Davis scooped the limp girl off of the ground.
“Poor dear, you must be scared to death.” He said, remembering how violently she had fought him. “What ever possessed you to run away like this?” Now that his eyes adjusted, he had no need for the flashlight, which he flicked off before calling back to headquarters that he had found the girl.
“Yeah, she’s fine.” He said into his radio. “I think I might need stitches though, kid’s a fighter.”
“Yeah, it was the weirdest thing. She was all quiet before I opened the door, but it was like as soon as I opened it she saw hell. I guess it’s to be expected, what with her being down here for over 24 hours and all. This place’d do it to anybody.”
In fact, Officer Davis had felt odd ever since he had stepped into the basement. For some reason he began thinking about how, when he was a kid, he made his big brother bring him along on a trip to the drive-in. The movie had been Creature from the Black Lagoon and it for a few weeks following it; he was terrified of the Gill-Man. He shivered a bit as he carried the girl out into the sunlight, remembering how one winter day, when he was six years old, he could have sworn he had seen the creature, all scales and claws, under his bed. |
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