Justin Black ran as hard as his short, skinny legs would carry him, that nightmare granny still hot on his heels and seemingly gaining.
That ominous bell tolling in his ears as she chased him down hallways and around corners he had no memory of encountering in this place. Too afraid to look back, with those heavy footsteps so close behind, for fear of seeing steely claws reaching down for his shoulder. Even in his frantic frame of mind, though, he found a moment to wonder why he didn’t just turn around and shoot her, yet all he could come up with were grim visions of his weapons having no effect, much like a couple other monsters he been chased by before, in other places he had no plans to revisit.
That, and the chilling intuition that if she caught up with him, that was the end.
Legs straining, lungs burning, sides on fire, he wondered how much longer he could keep this up, running for his life down seemingly endless hallways.
He blinked, wiping sweat out of his eyes, and caught a glimpse of a side passage, which he immediately veered down, barely evading a swipe from that ghastly granny’s cane and buying himself a very short lead.
Ahead of him, he spotted the grand stairway, though he was fairly sure he and Max originally ascended the far, right-hand, branch going up. It mattered little to him, though, if it meant he was almost to the front door. Taking his cues from a childhood of running away from hostile locals, he seized his opportunity as he hit the stairs.
At the central landing, he made like he was heading for the door, as his pursuer surely expected of him, but then turned a sharp left, onto the other stair branch, leaving his trailing foot dragging behind just enough to trip her up on the main stairs, sending her tumbling all the way down to the bottom with a desperate snarl.
Which was a good thing for him, since he also tripped on that foot-tangle, his lead foot landing just short of the next step, sprawling him out across that upward staircase. Gasping and cursing under his breath at every bruise the steps left on him from head to toe, he struggled back to his feet. Finally standing on shaky legs on the landing, he looked down the center stairs for any sign of his attacker.
It took him a moment to piece it together because all there was to be seen down there was what looked like a jumbled bundle of twigs wrapped in a moth-eaten dress splayed out on the floor, lying just inside what appeared to be a faint circle scrawled upon the floor in the great hall below, which he didn’t even remember noticing when they passed through earlier.
Breathing a sigh of relief, he stepped forward, looking to make good on his escape before anything else could assail him, tripping on a curl in the carpet runner.
Catching himself against the junk room door, Justin kicked the rug aside in a fit of nerves, sending a small, tarnished silver skeleton key clinking across the floor, trailing a frayed belt cord dangling from it. Figuring Granny Twig there must’ve lost it in the fall, he reached down to pick it up, almost on impulse, noticing as he did so that the rug he kicked was also covering up a trapdoor on the stair landing. Spotting a keyhole in the latch, he was not surprised to find the key fit perfectly.
Even unlocked, the hinges were stiff and dust-clogged, the hatch itself heavy and reinforced to support the weight of being walked upon, so it took some effort for him to heave it open.
Revealing a rickety spiral stairway leading down below the ground floor, far enough that even his flashlight couldn’t quite provide any view of the bottom.
He hesitated for a long moment, catching his breath and weighing his options, wondering what possessed him, to keep pressing his luck like this, yet also sure he was on to something very important, he made one last check below on his fallen foe, to make sure the thing stayed down, before finally taking the plunge.
Down the narrow, creaky steps he wound, past the ground floor, surely past the basement, before finally emerging in a cavernous chamber.
His light caught a faint, dusty gleam of gemstones and precious metals, of fine jewelry, but he didn’t much care for how it was all displayed, adorning rag-clad skeletons, all chained to chairs in at least three circles. The dusty outlines of concentric circles dominating most of the floor, any other furniture, mostly cabinets and display tables, having been moved to the edges of the room. The circles were all accompanied by arcane runes and symbols at specific points, along with tipped-over candles at regular intervals between the chairs, all pointed outward.
Several ragged skeletons sprawled on the floor amongst the chained ones, or just outside the circle, giving all the impression of fleeing something, for all the good it did them.
Much like the attempted escapees, only the three charred skeletons in the center of the ritual circle bore no jewels, save for two wearing matching rings, all having fallen away from an altar at the heart of the whole horrific spectacle, and he found himself drawing nearer in spite of himself to get a closer look.
Quickly wished he hadn’t, as he laid eyes on the centerpiece of this macabre menagerie, gasping in horror at the jade disk sitting upon the altar between the only two upright candles in the whole room. Though carved of stone instead of gold, he still recognized all too readily that five-pointed star with the dragon’s head, snout and four horns forming the points of the star, the negative space occupied by characters he was pretty sure would match the ones on the gold disk he found once upon a time, in another haunted house. He stood for a long moment, trying not to dwell on the last time he found a troublesome trinket like this, and what came after.
Half expecting the whole chamber to come alive with dancing furniture and skeletons if he so much as touched it, he pondered Shades’ theory about that other malevolent entity’s limits, wondering if he should take it at all.
Deciding to score some other treasure first, just in case, he helped himself to some of those nearby jewels, deciding that their current bearers no longer had any use for such finery.
About a dozen pieces in, he froze in mid reach as he heard a heavy thump from way up at the top of the stairs.
Followed immediately by a rustle of twigs on the stairs above. The faint creak of steps. The voice of an old hag mumbling. Drawing nearer with each footstep.
Justin killed his flashlight as he ducked behind the altar, scrambling for a hiding place. Stuffing a gold necklace in his pocket, figuring there was no longer anything he could do about the stuff he already took as he crouched down. Concluding that an energy blade would have to be his key to the trapdoor this time, he figured his best bet would be to wait for Granny Twig to move further into the room, away from the door to the stairs, before making a break for it.
As his fearful nemesis entered the chamber, the distorted, eldritch figure seemed to emit an eerie, iridescent light, shimmering off the walls as it moved among the morbid furnishings. Somehow also generating an insectile buzzing in his mind that made it hard to concentrate.
Much to his dismay, though, its hunt never seemed to seemed to take it very far from the stairway door, keeping its patterns confined to a range that would always intercept him about halfway there, pausing periodically and loudly sniffing the air, and he began to fear that coming down here might have been the biggest mistake of his life.
Again recalling how they escaped from the entity on that other island by taking the gold coin out of its reach, Justin decided to risk it, figuring he had nothing left to lose down here. In the Benton marketplace of his lost childhood, snatch-and-run was always a risky move, often inviting at least a dozen pairs of pursuing feet along for the ride. Always better to take advantage of a moment of distraction to palm something. Better still, his old friend, Jesse Fletcher, once showed him some good ways to create a few diversions of his own.
Reaching slowly, quietly, into his pocket, he fetched out some random bauble from his earlier gathering. Waiting, struggling to focus against that buzzing in his head, knowing he would have just one chance. He waited until Granny was at the far end of the search arc, then tossed it into the far corner, through a different doorway that he noticed only now, as he was looking at it.
The thing snarled and rushed off in the direction of that sound.
Justin wasted no time snatching up the disk as he sprang from his hiding place and bolted for the stairs, dodging among the morbid obstacles ranged about the room.
In the midst of that mad rush, he briefly swung his flashlight beam behind him, hoping to blind his attacker as he heard a loud, snarling hiss somewhere behind him.
Author's Chapter Notes:
macabre menagerie
