Trade Ch 1
The boy shook with fear, unable to see anything in the pitch black of the basement but the glowing red eyes. He was trying so hard to be brave, but now, cornered and lost, with the monster approaching him...he screamed, again and again and again, finally finding his voice. The dark, evil chuckle of the monster bubbled merrily out of the darkness around him, and two hands like iron manacles gripped his arms.
"Well, now, and what have we here?" Amused, dark and sardonic and somehow hungry, laced the venomous tone as the red eyes, narrowed to slits, dropped to hover at his own eye level. The screams died in his chest, and he could only stare at the monster he'd released. The eyes tilted as the monster examined its new prey, and he waited for it to eat him, tear him apart, do something, anything, but it seemed content to inspect him. A slick, wet muscle moved along his throat, and the monster hummed happily. "Ah, so very tempting. You have no idea how tasty you are, child. And who are you?" A laugh, tinged with near-insane amusement, echoed about them. "Besides, of course, edible."
Half-choked with fear, but trying to be brave and adult, tongue stiff in his mouth, it took several tries before he could force his name out. "S-Sam. Samuel Van Helsing." The monster seemed to find this very, very amusing.
x
He'd seen them bring in the boxes a month ago, and when he'd asked, his normally genial and loving father had been brusque with him, warning him not to ask again. Eaten up with the curiousity of any 8 year old, he'd wondered and wondered, his mind forming great stories of what his father had hidden away in the basement. But the door to the basement was always locked, and he'd never found out. His father refused to talk about it, only forbidding him from mentioning anything about it to anyone, and telling him only that he'd find out when he was older. After all, there was an entire house to explore, they'd only moved in a few weeks earlier, and he could inspect all of it but the basement.
The attic was full of dusty boxes of old clothes, entirely uninteresting. He'd hoped for suits of armor and exotic old clothes like he saw in his books, but all that he got was yellowed petticoats and ugly curtains. Even the birdcage in the corner was obviously only for a long-deceased bird, not a small dragon or anything equally interesting.
The rest of the house was just a long series of boring bedrooms. The dumbwaiter had been interesting for a few days until he'd learned what it was. His mind had conjured up that it was the secret escape tunnel for pirates. He'd been crushed to see it pass him by, carrying a shepherds pie to his father's office instead. Not a single secret passage anywhere, either; he'd searched in vain for spyholes or walls of unusual thickness, pulling strings from doorway to doorway to measure the lengths of rooms and their interior walls, to find that none of them had any room for a secret passage after all.
The basement was always home to a healthy collection of dark corners, mysterious crates, and frightening creatures and he'd wanted to explore it, but his father had declared it off-limits from the very first. He'd heard people hammering down there, building something, and the Harkers and others had gone up and down the stairs on a daily basis. He'd made it halfway down to see a very prosaic dirt-floored hallway with equally prosaic gaslights before being spotted and promptly ejected. Still, he wondered.
And then the boxes arrived, and it looked like he'd never find out, not until he was too old to enjoy it. The best he could manage was to place his ears against the floors of various rooms and try to listen in. He'd found out that the unused, dusty music-room was the only room where he could hear anything form the basement, far far back in the house...and even with the help of a glass, it was muffled and unclear.
Father had left for the evening, and as soon as his horse was down the driveway, Samuel had grabbed the keyring from where it was hidden in the secret drawer of his father's desk, taken a candle, and gone to explore. He'd wondered if his father was a pirate, and the boxes contained his loot. His mind had filled with images of goblins and vast tunnels, but he'd dismissed those as clearly fantasy.
He wouldn't break anything, and he'd put everything back where he found it. If his father had trusted him, he'd have seen that his son wasn't going to drop something expensive or break anything valuable, no matter how his nanny worried. He'd just have to show his father that no matter how valuable or delicate or secret whatever was in the basement was, he could be trusted with it. Father had once had a whole lot of chains, and he held out a bit of hope that there was a zoo being built down there, and he was being kept out because of the lions and bears. But he wouldn't let them out of their cages if they were there.
And, knowing his father would never have anything REALLY dangerous in his house, and that he could run very very fast, he had taken his candle, unlocked the door, and gone down into the basement. He'd found a lack of cobwebs, just one room after another, clean and cold and empty at first. And then he'd found a room with boxes of dirt. Another room had an empty coffin propped against the wall; spooky, but empty, and he'd looked around for the mummy but found nothing. There was a table there with books, but he'd seen at a glance he couldn't read them. He could read English and a little Dutch, very well too, better than any of his friends, but these didn't seem to be either language, at least not mostly. There were a few boxes with more books in them, and some chains. Shovels and axes and some wood sticks. He found some jewelry, mostly silver church-looking stuff, but nothing near a pirate's hoard.
The last room had an extra lock on it, and two big boards resting in heavy brackets. He'd wondered at that, and had thought that perhaps he'd found the room with the lions and tigers. Careful listening had revealed nothing at all, no roaring lions or shuffling mummies, and he'd opened the door cautiously, prepared to slam it shut immediately. But nothing had happened. Nothing at all. And the dim light from his candle had shown only an empty room as far as he could see through the slit of the door.