Walpurgis Hallow

Don't Go in the Cellar

                Eddie Gabriel was having a rare sleepless night. It was the sort of night where nothing felt quite right, where even the moonlight streaming through the windows felt unnatural. His bed was soft enough, but tonight it might as well have been concrete. And every time he closed his eyes, he saw something that unfixed his hair and made his bones shake.

There was a door.

A solitary door, a bare bulb hanging above it, slowly creaked open, and beyond lay only darkness. Then something would gleam in the shadows and rush screaming at him before he woke up with a start.

It felt familiar, somehow. He could practically smell the chemicals, the ashes, and he could almost feel the stygian darkness choking his entire being. His nerves stretched tight as guitar strings, every clang in the nightmarish vision rattling them, and the final shriek nearly bursting his eardrums like a gunshot.

He awoke in a cold sweat. The winter had passed, thankfully, but despite sleeping in nothing more than boxers, he was drenched to the bone. The phone was ringing next to him.

"H-Hello?"

"Eddie? I can't believe you're still asleep! I've been calling for ages! I thought we were gonna clean your house today!"

Alice was too loud for...10 A.M.

Shit, I overslept.

--

Alice arrived at the house an hour later, Eddie having finished showering and getting dressed a mere 20 minutes before. He had barely finished eating a grilled cheese sandwich before Alice knocked on the door. Wearing a grungy white t-shirt and jeans, he opened the door and saw Alice in overalls, a pink t-shirt, and her hair tied back in a short ponytail.

"Don't. Even. Laugh. Eddie."

"What? Alice, you look cute! Besides, we're working in my basement. It's going to be dusty and dirty down there anyway."

"I can think of a few ways we can get the rest of this house dirty too..." Alice said, slapping Eddie's ass.

Eddie blushed.

"Did you just try to seduce me in overalls? You're cute, Alice, but I'm not Billy Ray Cyrus."

Alice grinned.

"Don't worry, I'm sure I can find a way to fix your achy-breaky heart, Eddie. Now let's get down to business and fix up your basement."

Heading down into Eddie's basement was an experience that was a bit more underwhelming than it would immediately seem. Mostly, it was just a lot of scattered paint cans, old baby furniture, broken chairs, and worn shelving. Boxes full of old clothes and books and records that were no longer in great working order. They got to work dusting off the boxes, thick clouds of dust billowing despite their best efforts to open the basement windows. Eddie took a garbage bag and threw out anything clearly broken—he hardly thought the children's records that had broken to pieces were really necessary to keep, nor did he think that he really needed to hang on to torn-up old Playboy magazines. Alice persuaded him that he did not need to hang onto them and he was hard pressed to disagree. More and more junk was thrown out, but then something caught Alice's eye. There was a door, hidden behind a large poster which had fallen aside, and which was boarded up. The nails were rusty and the boards looked old and weak.

"Eddie...what's this door? It's like...boarded up. Why is it boarded up?"

"I dunno. I think my mom used to keep junk in there, but it got too cluttered and dangerous..."