B. Larson - Creatures

“What do you think they’ll do if they catch us?” asked Beth.

“I don’t plan on finding out,” I said.

“I knew being your friend would end with something like this. I just knew it. You’ve been flipping off the adults since day one. It was only a matter of time. And now I’m guilty by association. Why did I have to be your buddy? All because you didn’t laugh at me that one day.”

“Shut up, Jake,” I said.

Jake had no intention of shutting up. “I should have just sucked up to Danny and Thomas like all the other guys. I should have been their court jester. I could have done silly little toad-tricks to keep them all amused, but noooo, I had to go with the rebel, the prankster, the powerless boy.”

“Jake,” said Beth, “Please shut up.”

“I’m tired already,” said Jake. “All day and night did he say?”

“Where are we going anyway, Connor?” asked Beth.

“They’ll expect the attic, they’ve seen us up there. So I’m headed for the basement.”

We got to the basement door and rattled the doorknob. It was locked. We stood there for a moment, hands on our knees, breathing hard.

“Locked,” I said. “We’ll have to find another way down.”

“This can’t be happening,” moaned Jake.

Beth just looked at me. No doubt she expected me to pull a rabbit out of my hat, as I had during Hussades. I looked back at her, thinking to myself there were no more rabbits in there. In fact, there wasn’t even a hat.

“Maybe we should really run for it,” said Jake, looking at me seriously. He had some of his wind back and could talk clearly. “Let’s just open a window and head for the woods. We could make it before the fifteen minutes are up.”

“Ten left now,” interjected Beth.

“Whatever, we have time,” said Jake. “We could be home in two hours and just forget this whole thing. What are they going to do? Make us move out of town?”

I looked at him seriously. “Maybe.”

“You think so? What about our families?”

I just stared at him. “If we shame ourselves in front of Vater I think anything could happen. Our folks could be too ashamed to stay here. People move out of Camden for a lot less reason than this.”

I turned my attention to Beth, who watched us closely. “You’ve got no big stake here, Beth. I think Jake’s right in your case. Just take off. No one will feel bad about it.”

“Except us, that is,” said Beth. “I’m not a quitter. You should know that about me by now. Look, Connor, we’ve been running away from things since I got here. Maybe it’s time we planned out some moves of our own.”

I looked at her and slowly, I grinned. “You really do think the way I do.”

Jake moaned. “Okay, I’m out!”

I turned to him and my grin vanished. “Jake?”

“No, I’ve had enough Connor,” he said, heading to the nearest window. He jimmied the lock, but it was frozen shut. He tried several more while he talked. “You are my best friend, but I’m not going to get run down in this spooky place. I’m bailing.”

I opened my mouth to argue, but Beth put her hand up in a gesture to stop me. Hard words died in my throat.

With a grunt and a crunching sound, Jake got one of the old-fashioned windows to crack open about a foot. He put one leg out into the snowy outside world. Cold air blew in, cooling our faces.

“Don’t freeze to death out there,” I told him.

He looked back at me, and I saw the pain in his face. He didn’t want to do this, I could tell. “I’m sorry,” he said.

I grabbed his hand and gave it a shake. He and Beth hugged, and then he was running around the side of the house, plowing through about two feet of snow.

I couldn’t believe Jake was gone.

Beth and I closed the window to cover his tracks, and then we ran further into the house, toward the back where the kitchens were.

We avoided the adults working there and slipped into the basement through the kitchen’s backstairs. This part of the massive basement was used to store food and cooking goods. The gymnasium section was far away at the other end of the mansion under the dormitories.

“How long?” I asked Beth. The first hallway in this part of the basement was dingy and dark. A single, naked 25 watt bulb hung down from the ceiling and glowed with yellowy light. We were surrounded by musty crates of vegetables and canned goods. The place had an earthy smell to it, the smell of dust and mold. She snapped on her tiny flashlight, examining her watch. I had neither.

“Five minutes, maybe less.”

I chose a passage at random and we ran into the darkness.

For several hours, no one came near. I imagined them combing through the attic, finding nothing.

“I hope they aren’t chasing Jake in the woods,” said Beth in a whisper. I looked at her, but could barely make out her shape in the darkness. I’d been thinking the same thing.

“He’ll be okay,” I said without much conviction.

“Why is your grandfather doing this? Why is he dividing up the family and putting us against one another?”

I shrugged. “We’ve always been a competitive bunch,” I said. “But this is different. I guess he thinks this is what he needs to do to make us tough.”

“So this is all about trying to show him how tough you are? This whole scary game of hide and seek, is just about impressing the old man?”

“Sort of,” I said. “Like I told you back on the bus, we are not normal people here in Camden.”

“I remember that, like a dream from a year ago. I had no idea.”

There were some thumping steps on the ceiling above us. I waved for Beth to be quiet. The steps slowed, and then stopped. It seemed like they were directly above us, perhaps in some hallway.

“What do you…?” began Beth, but I shushed her.

The steps began again, slowly moving above us.

“They can’t hear us down here,” hissed Beth in my ear.

“Those might not be human ears listening,” I hissed back, putting a finger to her lips.

We listened for perhaps thirty seconds. Nothing.

Then, suddenly, the steps started thumping again, fast this time.

“Come on,” I said, grabbing Beth’s hand and pulling her out into the hallway.

“You think they heard us?”

“I think so, we need to move.”

Somewhere in the distance we heard a door creak open and slam. Beth squeezed my hand. The hounds had come down into the basement.

So we ran again. We traveled deeper into the basement. I came to realize as we stumbled about in the dusty underworld that the mansion’s basement was fully as big as the main floor of the mansion.

Then we found the stone steps. They led down further into the ground. A single dim light bulb hung down on a wire. It looked very old, as if electric lights had been a new idea when it had been installed. I wondered how many decades it had hung there. I reached up and twisted the hot bulb, unscrewing it just enough that it went out quietly.

“What’s down those steps?” asked Beth in the heavy darkness.

“We’re going to find out,” I said, pulling her after me as we went down the steps. I hadn’t even known there were deeper levels, but I didn’t want to tell Beth that now.

The second level down was much older than the first. Instead of walls that were flat concrete, the walls here were mortar and stone. The stones weren’t bricks either, but real stones with rounded corners, they looked and felt smooth like river rocks to me. We found a lantern near the stairway with Beth’s tiny flashlight. There were very old wooden matches with the lantern. After burning out half the box of matches and singeing my fingers, I managed to get the lantern to light.