Chapter 3
Lights Out

When I woke up, the TV was off.

I struggled to my feet and stumbled out of the living room and into the kitchen. The coffee pot normally turned itself on in the morning. It had not this time. I grumbled and went over to it and started poking at the power button. Nothing.

I reached for the light switch and flickered it on and off and on and off.

Nothing.

"Damn it," I muttered, "The power's out."

I glanced at the slider glass door, at the snow that was outside it. Our breaker box was in the basement. Now, normal people can go down the basement steps. Me, I can't. Our basement stairs are almost perpendicular, that's how steep they are. And at the bottom is nothing but sheer rockface cement. I would need a pulley and some bungee cords to go down that thing safely. It's just not my cup of tea. Therefore, when I need to go into the basment, I go outside, around the back of the house and go in through the stormer doors... the stormer doors that were currently buried in snow.

But if Leighanne woke up and there was no power, I was sure to catch some hell for that.

So to the stairs I went.

I opened the door and stared down them. I reached for the light switch and flickered it a couple times before I realized what an idiot I was... I was going down there to see if a breaker had gone off, of course the lights weren't gonna work, that was the point. The steps looked even worse without a light shining down on them. I clung to the railing and started down.

One step. Two steps.

My knuckles were glowing from clinging onto the rail so hard.

Three steps. Four steps.

I was almost to the bottom - on the seventh of ten steps - when I tripped and my grasp on the railing failed me. I let out a whoop and felt gravity projectile vomit me from its grip and I fell forward, arms flailing, head-first into the cement wall.