Mary Overland picked her children up from Emma's primary school that afternoon. Her job meant that it was impossible for her to get both kids to school on time without being late for work herself, but every so often she would be able to get off early enough to bring them home again.
Emma dragged Jack across the parking lot to their mom's car, where she waited with an amused grin and open arms. "Did we have a good day?" she asked, squeezing Emma tight.
"Jack slept in," Emma replied automatically; Jack rolled his eyes. Still wasn't old, apparently.
Mary gasped and her eyebrows shot up. "It's the end of the world!"
"I know!" Emma exclaimed, relieved to find someone who understood. "I had to-"
"Wake up on your own and make your bed by yourself and get dressed-" Jack mimicked, falling tragically against the car door with a melodramatic sigh.
Emma poked her tongue out at him viciously and clambered into the passenger seat; Jack wrapped his hands around her torso and pulled her out again just as quickly. "I don't think so," he grinned, fastening her into the back seat. She poked her tongue out at him again; he tapped her nose in response and all was forgiven.
"Why the sleepy head?" Mary asked distractedly, glancing up and down the street before pulling out of the car park.
Jack bit his tongue. They didn't need any reason to worry about him. Besides, he was fine. There was nothing wrong. "Cold," he replied finally, remembering his excuse to Jamie earlier that morning. "I think the heating's busted in my room, or something."
"Mm," Mary murmured. "That's no good. We'll get it fixed before winter sets in."
Jack nodded, but he knew it wouldn't make a difference. The long and short of it was, between rent, school and the general costs of living, they didn't have the money to fix a hiccup in the heating. It was just one room, right? And Jack was eighteen. He could get by with a few extra layers at night, or if worse came to worse crash on the couch.
Not to mention that the real problem had nothing to do with heating.
/|\
"…And that's how division works."
Emma sat back in her chair, folding her arms and staring at the apple segments before her thoughtfully. "How come everyone else can't just get their own apples?"
"Sharing is caring," Jack said absently, looking out the window. "So now that we've gotten homework and life lessons out of the way, wanna have some fun?"
"Yay!" Emma slid off her chair and took off across the lounge room to the front door; the pitter-patter of little feet brought Mary's head up from the laptop.
"Where's she going?" she asked Jack, who was loping after his sister and chewing on a fat slice of apple.
"We've done her homework," Jack assured her. "We're just gonna go out. Explore or whatever. I'll stay with her."
Mary smiled gratefully at Jack. "Thanks, Jack. Don't forget you've got an assignment waiting for when you get home."
"Lucky me," Jack said drily, stepping out into the late autumn afternoon and pulling his hoodie tighter around himself. His mom was right: winter was coming on fast. Emma would need extra blankets.
Speaking of which.
Where was the little kid?
Jack's eyes swept their street up and down, but there was no sign of Emma. He wasn't overly worried. They played hide-and-seek all the time, even though Emma had spent most of her eight years thinking it was called hide-and-scare because Jack used to get so bored waiting for her to find him that he would jump out and attack her when she wandered close.
It was a fun game, and Jack was ready to play.
"Emma?" he sang out softly, stalking down the driveway and trying not to grin, lest he look like some stalker creep to all the neighbours. "Emma…"
There was nowhere to hide on the front lawn, unless Emma had miraculously turned into the postbox: he moved to the backyard. It wasn't anything special, more or less the same as any other backyard. A small table was set up on the porch for warm summer dinners and a sad windchime dangled from the rafters. Rows of bushes lined the inside of the fence, but there was nothing big enough for an eight-year old to hide behind.
Now he was starting to get worried. "Emma?" he called, leaving all pretense of a game behind. "Emma, where are you?"
"Jack! Jack, I'm down here!"
Jack whirled around at the sound of her voice, far away and muffled. Dropping to his hands and knees, he crawled along the porch, looking for any sign of his baby sister.
"Jack? Jack, are you still there?"
Her voice called to him in light-hearted sing-song, so she wasn't afraid. She wasn't in any obvious danger… Which only begged the question of what unobvious dangers she could be in.
"Emma, come here! Where are you?"
"H- Down here! Come on, I want you to see this!"
Already imagining the trouble his mom would get him in to if Emma got hurt, Jack ventured around the side of the house. A tiny door in the wall was thrown open, and Emma's voice drifted out to him from the blackness.
Jack skidded on his knees to the mouth of the passage. "Emma! Emma, get out of there right now."
Her face appeared almost immediately: he'd expected her to be further down. Her little hands and knees were scraped and dirty and dirt was smudged along her cheekbone.
"But there's something down there!" she explained. "I wanted to check it out."
This gave Jack pause. "Something like what?"
Emma shrugged. "I dunno, I just had a feeling."
"Huh." Jack smiled a slow, cat's smile as the plan formulated itself in his head. "Looks like we're gonna have to investigate."
/|\
"I still don't understand why you get to go down there and I don't," Emma mused, watching Jack tie the rope around his waist.
"Because I'm older," Jack said simply. "More responsible. Whatever."
Emma frowned. "But you could get hurt."
Jack grasped her shoulders and smiled comfortingly. "I won't," he promised. "Now, remember what I told you."
Emma sighed. "If you tug on the rope, I have to pull, and if you tug really really hard I have to call Mom," she recited dutifully.
"Good girl." Jack clapped her shoulder and turned back to the little door. "There's probably nothing there, anyway."
"If there is, you have to show me."
"Deal."
Flicking the torch on with his thumb and shining it in his face to check that it worked- it did- Jack started the awkward three-legged crawl below their house.
He had expected some kind of earthen room, long and low and held up by crumbly brick stacks or whatever it was the people normally had under their houses. Not this. No matter where he shone the torch, he couldn't see: it was a darkness he had never known before. The ground under his hands was rough and gravelly and hurt to crawl on; he wondered what could have possibly motivated Emma to come down here in the first place.
Before he knew it, the tunnel sloped down sharply. He picked his way down carefully, ignoring the tiny voice of common sense that told him how stupid he was being. Jack had learnt how to block out that voice long ago. What fun was life if you didn't have a little adventure in it now and again? This particular venture, he knew, wouldn't throw up anything particularly interesting: they very rarely did. Still, he never liked to pass up an opportunity, just in case.
Besides, he'd promised Emma. He had to have something to show for it.
Down and down he went, he wasn't sure for how long: progress was slow with only one arm and two legs. He hit his head on a low, sloping roof several times and glanced back behind him more than once, wondering if he should start turning back. The rope still had a fair bit of length, more than he would have expected, but Emma would worry if he didn't get back soon.
Just a little further, he decided. No-one builds massive tunnels under a house for no reason.
Of course, all of that depended on just how far a little further was.
He continued on until he was hit in the face by a gush of cold air. He paused, confused, and crawled on cautiously. Maybe he'd found some old abandoned mine, or a secret underground facility, or maybe even discovered a new species of bat-
"What the-?"
What he had found was none of the above- at least, not as far as his imagination could stretch. He had crawled out onto a small ledge jutting out of a wall made of jagged black stone, decorated here and there with sprouts of sharp, wicked-looking black crystal. Dim, grey light filtered in from far-away windows- but that's impossible, we're hundreds of feet underground- and bounced off sharp, spidery stalagmites.
Far below, on the ground, the only item of note in the massive cavern was some weird, half-demolished sculpture, flickering with a handful of weak, golden lights. Elsewhere, the ground was littered with jagged rocks and stalactites jutting up from the rocky floor and promising a messy end if he fell.
The longer Jack lingered, the more his unease grew. There was something… wrong, with this place, something that made him want to run back to his mother and fling himself into her arms, something that made him want to burrow under the bedsheets and pretend the outside world didn't exist…
He didn't realize he was running until he was back inside the depths of the tunnel. The torch was jammed messily between his teeth, its light bobbing jauntily just ahead of him. All he could think of was that unfamiliar, abject terror, something he hadn't felt in years and had no wish to experience again. Up and up he went, fuelled as much by his fear as he was by his desire to escape it, until…
"Did you see anything? Was there anything down there?" Emma bounced eagerly on the balls of her feet as Jack leapt out, cut and scraped and wild-eyed. He fell back against the door, forcing it shut under his weight and taking a moment to catch his breath and get himself under control.
"Jack?" Emma knew, she knew immediately that something was wrong. There was something in his eyes, something she had never seen before… "Jack, are you OK?"
"Fine," Jack said suddenly, sitting straight. "I'm fine. It's- there's nothing down there, Em. Just a bunch of old bricks and dirt and stuff."
"Oh." She looked disappointed. "Can I have a look?"
"No!" Jack's voice was unusually sharp; she shied away. "No," he said again, more gently this time. "It's… You know, it's gross and dirty and old and you could get hurt or sick or something."
Emma looked at her feet uncomfortably. She knew Jack well enough to know when he was hiding something from her, but she also knew that whenever it came to an argument between them he always won out.
"Emma, look at me." She obeyed, and their identical eyes locked. "Promise me you won't go down there. Promise."
Jack held out a crooked pinkie, and after a moment's hesitation she wrapped her own little finger around it and squeezed.
"Promise."
Jack was only looking out for her, after all.