THREE WISHES

THREE WISHES Part 5

I'll save the basement for last.

Truth be told, I didn't realize the pantry even contained a trapdoor until I began searching it. If I had, I might have searched it first instead of last.

After over an hour of searching inside every box and container in the extremely orderly panty, I turned my attention to the trapdoor in the floor.

With the moon high overhead outside, I opened the trapdoor and peered inside. The limited light from the pantry illuminated a ladder, a few shelves and an off-white floor.

Retrieving my flashlight from my pocket, I removed the black light filter and I stuck it, and my head, down into the floor to look around some more. With the bright light from my flashlight, I observed the single room contained more shelves lining the four walls. The shelves contained boxes, jars, cleaning supplies and other items commonly found in a pantry.

With no threats in the cellar I could see, I went down the iron ladder bolted to the wall.

My feet crunched on the white gravel floor as I climbed off the ladder. Walking around, I noticed everything in the sub-pantry appeared covered in a thin layer of dust. Not bothering to search anything in the basement as it obviously hadn't been disturbed for some time, possibly even years, I wondered about the white gravel floor.

Why gravel?

Shining my light down, I also noticed the ladder, bolted into the wall, appeared to extend down into the crushed gravel floor instead of ending. By kicking some of the gravel around, I realized the floor, and the end of the ladder, lay a couple of inches under the crunchy surface layer.

Assuming the gravel floor might be designed more for drainage than functionality, I climbed back up the ladder and into the pantry. At least that was my plan.

I didn't make it.

Halfway up the ladder, a glass jar fell off a shelf and shattered on the ground. Startled, I jumped back down into the sub-pantry, kneeled, creating a smaller target, and reached into the small of my back for the subcompact pistol I kept there.

With my flashlight illuminating the tight chamber, searching for threats, I left my gun in place before I drew it. I didn't see the need to pull it. A jar had simply fallen off the shelf and broke on the floor, most likely caused by my presence and weight on the ladder.

With the mystery of the falling jar solved in my mind, I began picking up the broken glass shards and placing them back on the shelf. As I did, I couldn't help but notice some oddly shaped pieces of white gravel, strangely smooth on some sides, intermixed among the normal stones on the floor.

I wondered if the small white pieces were gravel or was the gravel intermixed with something else. But what else would it be?

Focus, Nash!

Of course the floor consisted of gravel. If it contained pieces of bone, the police dogs would've detected it. Dismissing the thought from my head, I cleaned the remaining shards of glass. As I collected the broken pieces, my hand brushed the solid floor underneath.

What's that?

Pushing more of the gravel out of the way, I exposed a portion of the true sub-pantry floor, uncovering something carved into the floor underneath. Clearing more and more of the white rocks and pushing them to the side, I uncovered the entire carving. Standing, I observed my discovery.

Someone, someone a long time ago, had carefully etched strange symbols into the stone floor. I recognized the sign carved into the floor, known to the practitioners of black magic as a Yantra, but more commonly known as...

A Magic Circle.