Chapter Two: In the Dark

They ate stale cereal for breakfast. They found milk, but sniffing it nearly made Karol throw up so they decided to eat it dry. The breakfast room was pleasant enough, with baby blue walls and a clean bay window. Cyril had probably used it for all his meals, since it was next to the kitchen and easier to keep in order than the massive dining room. Sitting around the breakfast table, Judith asked, "So, did anyone see any ghosts last night?"

"N-no," Karol stammered, glancing nervously between the others. "Why? Did you guys?"

"Hm…" Judith leaned forward on her hand.

"Spill," Raven said. "If ya saw somethin', speak up."

"I'm not sure." She idly stirred her dry corn flakes, not looking at the bowl. "When it was my turn to take watch, I felt… very uneasy. It's hard to put a word to the feeling. Not quite being watched, but as if I could feel that we weren't alone in the house."

Yuri found a chill run down his spine that had nothing to do with the clammy weather. "I didn't see anything, but I might have heard something. I heard it as I was falling asleep, and again when I was keeping watch."

"What was it?" Karol's knuckles were white around his spoon.

"My name." Yuri reached out to scratch Repede's head as he tried to remember more clearly. Repede hadn't slept much last night and was still fairly groggy this morning. "At least, that's what it sounded like. It could have just been the wind." It would be easier if he had a name like, say, Estellise, with a bunch of consonants and syllables it would be hard to mistake. "In fact, I would say it was definitely the wind if it weren't for the fact that I head it more from the direction of the bedroom door than the window."

Karol shuddered. "That's so creepy."

Yuri turned his attention to Raven. "What about you, Old Man?"

"Well… I'm not totally sure, ta be honest. At one point, I woke up when I felt the end of the bed compress, like someone was sittin' there. Then a voice said, 'Hello, again'."

"Did anyone see that?" Yuri snapped his eyes around the group, from Karol's terrified stare to Judith's stoic interest and Repede's drowsy eye. "There was always someone awake in the room. Someone must have seen that."

Karol and Judith shook their heads and Repede growled a negative. Yuri was certain he would have noticed something like that during the block he sat awake, but he also knew Raven wouldn't make something like that up.

Raven shrugged. "I don't know. I'm not positive I wasn't dreamin'."

Karol frowned, deep in thought. "Maybe you were dreaming… but with all the other stuff going on, you might not have been. I think we've seen enough to confirm there is definitely something weird going on in this house. We should stay until we get to the bottom of it and can clear the ghosts out for Pavel."

Yuri swallowed a dry, tasteless mouthful. "If we're going to stay any longer, we're going to need more grub. Someone should go back to town and get supplies."

"Good thinking. Who should go?" Karol looked around at the group.

"You go, Captain," Yuri said. Karol was clearly the most freaked out, and the kid could use a break from the house. "You should meet with Pavel when you're in town and give him an update, and it ought to be the boss of the guild who meets with the client."

"Good point." Karol nodded enthusiastically, on board with any suggestion that gave him a good reason to leave the house.

Repede seemed pretty antsy in here as well, so Yuri said, "Take Repede with you, just in case you run into monsters on the road back. You probably won't, but travelling alone is never safe and he can help carry things back."

Judith gazed out the window. "You should leave now. There are clouds coming in and it will probably rain later today."

"Yeah, ok. Will you guys be ok by yourselves?"

"Don't worry about us," Yuri said. "I'm going to check out the cellar, since we just took a quick look yesterday. We should search the library, too. Maybe there's some information in there."

"Ok, I'll be back this evening, probably."

Yuri opened the door to the cellar. "So, 'hello again', huh? What's the supposed to mean?"

"Ya got me."

They'd seen Karol and Repede off after breakfast and then explored the grounds, just in case. The grey sky made a dull backdrop as they wandered through the scratchy weeds around the house, made duller by their lack of any discoveries. Yuri wasn't sure what they'd been looking for, perhaps secret entrances or bodies hidden in the yard, but they hadn't found it.

"Maybe it means the ghost is friendly," Judith suggested as they began the descent.

Yuri walked slowly, placing his feet on the sides of the steps where they were least creaky. He didn't trust them not to collapse and breaking his leg on rotting wood didn't sound like fun.

The air was cooler at the bottom, and mixed with a delightful medley of dust, mould, and rat droppings. Grey stone walls and concrete floors did nothing to help with the chill. In front of them stretched a long corridor, with rooms branching off. Yesterday, Yuri and Raven and come down here just long enough to conclude it was dark, cold, and creepy.

"Is that a bedroom?" Judith asked as she popped her head in the first door on the left. "Who would want to sleep down here?"

"Servants," Raven explained. "In a proper house, the basement would be well-lit and bustlin' with activity, but all the servant rooms were left ta rot with everythin' else."

Yuri peered in the room, really more like a cell, over Judith's shoulder. All it had was a white-sheeted bed with a brass-barred headboard and a couple of dusty shelves. "Even then, I don't think this would be a great place to sleep."

Raven shrugged. "Pretty run o' the mill for a servant's room. In fact, pretty swanky to get a room and not a mat in the kitchen."

Yuri wrinkled his nose. "This is why I can't stand rich people. With all those fancy guest bedrooms upstairs, everyone who worked here could have had a nice room."

"Yeah, the system's pretty screwed up." Raven kept walking down the hall. "But that's the way it is."

"Are these all bedrooms?" Judith asked, opening another door. "Oh, this one is actually a linen closet."

"Hey, perfect." Yuri grabbed a white sheet and shook out the dust. He threw it over his head and waved his hands out. "Ok, here's the plan: when Karol comes back, you guys tell him I've gone missing and you can't find me anywhere. I'll hide in a cupboard, and as soon as he walks by, I'll jump out and scare the crap out of him."

"That doesn't sound very nice," Judith said. "Besides, if you're going to go through all the effort to scare him, you could do a lot better than a bed sheet ghost."

Yuri whipped the sheet off, leaving his hair tousled. "Yeah, good point. Any ideas, Old Man?" Yuri turned, but Raven wasn't beside them anymore. "Old Man?"

"Over here." He stood in a doorway about ten feet down the hall, hand still resting on the knob.

"Did you find something?" Judith asked.

Yuri let the sheet drop without a word and approached, ready to pull out his sword.

"Nothing ta worry about." He stepped aside to let them see into the room. "Just, I think I found where ol' Cyril's body was discovered."

It was a storage room for silverware, with gleaming metal goblets and plates hidden behind dusty glass. Two huge shelving units flanked the walls, standing guard over a dark stain in the middle of the floor. The dark brown stain was roughly humanoid, like the imprint of the dead man had been scorched into the concrete.

"Pavel said he was found in the basement." Yuri entered the room slowly, eyes on the stain. "Seems like a weird place to find him. I wonder why he wanted a plate?"

"How did he die?" Judith crouched and examined the mark more closely. "It doesn't look like trauma."

"Heart failure, or so Pavel said. That was their best guess, at least, since he was already a month decayed when they found him. He didn't show any sign of trauma or injury."

"That's what I was going to say. The stain is pretty even, so it doesn't look like he bled out or anything. He must have lain flat and the blood, fluids, and decomposing tissue leaked beneath him and caused a stain."

"So, the old guy came down to the creepy basement to get some silverware, had a sudden heart attack and dropped dead." Yuri looked between the shelves. "I wonder what he was after? Considering how abandoned the rest of the house is, I get the impression he didn't come down here often."

"Look, his feet point to the door. Those round, dense spots at his feet would have been his heels. If he was on his face, the top of his feet would have pressed against the ground more evenly. That means he must have been facing the door when he collapsed backward, so he was on his way out."

"Good eye. You should be a detective, Judy." Part of her skill might be that she didn't seem at all squeamish at closely examining the stain of decomposing fluid, while Yuri found the whole sight deeply revolting. "But, all the cupboards are closed and the dust is undisturbed, so he didn't open any of them."

Judith stood, raising her head from the gruesome floor to Yuri's face. "So he came downstairs, walked into the middle of the silver room, change his mind, turned around, and dropped dead."

"That sounds like some kind of riddle," Yuri said. "You know, like 'a man walks into a bar and orders a drink. The bartender threatens him with a knife. The man says thanks and walks out. Explain.'"

"Yeah," Raven said, "except this actually happened and it might be key ta figurin' out what's goin' on in this house."

Yuri sighed. "Man, all this could have been avoided if Cyril had just dealt with-"

Bang!

"What was that?!" Yuri was already on his way to the door as he said it. He dashed into the dark hall, lit only by Judith's lamp because the door to the bright kitchen had slammed shut. "Oh, you've gotta be kidding me!"

Steps groaned under his feet and then the knob rattled as Yuri shook it. "Karol, if that's you, we're still down here!" Even as he said it, he knew it wasn't Karol. He and Repede had left over an hour ago and had no reason to be back until evening. "Dammit…."

"Do you hear anything on the other side of the door?" Judith asked. She and Raven stood at the foot of the stairs, not putting any more weight on the steps then necessary.

Yuri pressed his ear against the door. "No… not even wind or anything." Part of him wanted to believe it had been a breeze that slammed the door, but he wasn't that naïve. There were no open windows in the house, so if there was a breeze indoors, that would just raise further questions.

No matter how many times he tugged the door, it remained jammed. After staring at it for a few seconds, he tried smashing his shoulder against it. The hinges creaked and dust rained from the frame, but it remains stubbornly in place. Maybe he could get it if he had a running start, but space was limited at the top of the stairs.

Out of options, he thumped back down the stairs. "I don't think we're going to get it open."

"Do you think there's another way out?" Judith lifted the lamp so the light spread further down the hall.

Raven pulled his hands behind his head and sighed. "Doubt it. We can look, but it's not like we're gonna find a window in a basement."

"We might as well try," Yuri said.

"I like this one better," Judith said, swishing wine around her glass. "It's not as sweet."

Yuri wrinkled his nose. "That's why the other one was better." It was hard to guess how long they'd been stuck in the basement. Part of this was because there were no clocks and no light, and the other part was that they'd found the wine cellar and discovered an afternoon of wine tasting was both a great way to waste time and great muddler of the flow of time.

"Wine is a great invention." Raven leaned against the wall with his legs stretched out, and an empty goblet in hand. "Most food expires after awhile, but wine just keeps getting' better an' better."

"Too bad it tastes like rotten fruit." By virtue of finding most of the wine unappetizing, Yuri still had the firmest grasp on sobriety. They must have been down here for at least five or six hours, and his stomach growled. The lamp had barely any oil left, so soon they'd be left in darkness.

"My dad used to drink something like this," Judith said. She examined the label on the bottle in the fading light. "I think the grapes were grown in the same place. He let me try it when I was little. My mother was upset with him, but I hated it anyway."

"It's an acquired taste." Raven stretched his arms out, seeming to forget he still had the glass in hand because it clinked against the wall. "I didn't like it when I was a kid, either."

"I think the first time I had wine was…" Yuri searched his memories, made slightly more difficult by the alcohol making things fuzzy. "Sometime when I was a teenager. Flynn and I heard of a recipe to make it yourself so we gave it a try but it was pretty awful."

Raven wrinkled his nose. "That's… that's a crime against good wine."

"Who came up with wine?" Yuri glared at red liquid. "I don't think anyone actually likes it. That's how they came up with the aging process – everyone just put off drinking it and then claimed they liked it better that way to save face."

"Ya've just never had the good stuff. My old man had a wine cellar with some o' the best wine I've ever had. Used ta steal it when he was out. Boy, did he ever ream me out when he fin'lly caught on. I'll take ya out some time, kid. Show ya some real good wine. Though…" He took another long swig. "This stuff's preeetty good."

"I think I'll pass." Yuri stood to stretch his legs. He brushed dirt from his pants and stared at the locked door with a sigh. "Man, how much longer are we going to be stuck down here?"

"I'm sure Karol will be home soon," Judith said.

"I sure hope so." The orangey light flickered on the walls, warning that it was minutes away from extinguishing. "Wonder why whatever this is wanted to lock us down here in the first place."

"Prob'ly doesn't like us in its house," Raven said. "I'd be pretty mad if some strangers came snoopin' 'round my house."

Yuri turned back to the others. "Do you think the ghost is Cyril's?"

"Could be," Judith said, nodding slowly. "Although, we already know that Cyril was not entirely sane. I think it's possible the house was haunted while he was living here, and that might have fuelled his insanity."

"The house was brand new when he started living here. Who…?" He smacked his head, which made him so dizzy he had to clutch the wall. Whoa, ok, maybe he was a little more tipsy than he'd thought. "Melanie."

"It makes a lot of sense," Judith said. "A dead wife who died tragically young, and her body left in bed and not given a proper burial. I'd be more surprised if she didn't stick around to haunt this place, and now she's upset that we're trespassing." Judith tilted her head in thought. "How do we exorcise a ghost? I know how to fight them, but this seems like a different kind of ghost."

"We need to find her fir-" the lamp died. In the sudden darkness, Yuri lowered his voice on instinct to finish, "…first."

Upstairs, a crack of light shone under the door, but in the depths of the basement it was ineffective. Yuri took a couple of steps toward Judith and accidentally kicked an empty bottle of wine. It clinked on the ground and growled as it rolled away on the rough cement.

"I'm here." Judith reached up and her hand brushed his leg. Using that as a guide, Yuri found the wall and managed to sit next to her.

No one said anything at first. Yuri's stomach rumbled and he prayed Karol brought back something delicious for dinner, because stale corn flakes had been a less than filling breakfast. "Karol will be back soon."

"Yeah, sure," Raven said.

"You know, Melanie," Yuri called out, his voice seemingly much louder in the silent basement, "if you're listening, it would be really nice if you unlocked the door. I'd appreciate it a lot."

Unsurprisingly, the door remained shut. Without eyesight as a distraction, Yuri's ears piqued at every noise. That scratching was probably a rat in the room next door, and the creaking was just the typical sounds of a big old house. But… was it just him, or were those creaks rather rhythmic? If he toyed with it in his mind enough, they sounded an awful lot like footsteps on the floorboards just above their heads.

He shook his head, and then rubbed his eyes to clear the resulting dizziness. It would be foolish to put too much thought into things observed when not-entirely sober. Still…

Yuri craned his neck to stare at the ceiling. "Do you guys hear something up there?"

"Um…" Judith thought for a moment. "Now that you mention it. Footsteps."

"I don' hear nothin'."

"Are you even listening?" Raven had indulged in more wine than either of them, so Yuri wasn't sure what to make of his observations.

Creak… creak… creak… The steps circled above their heads.

Yuri hesitantly called, "Karol?"

Silence. Yuri's heart tightened and he suddenly wanted to kick himself for calling out. The creaking began again, moving away… and toward the door.

"Whazzat?" Raven slurred. "Ya here the kid commin'?"

Judith immediately shushed him followed by Yuri whispering, "Quiet." He stopped himself from saying 'it heard us'. What heard them? Melanie? He wasn't afraid of some dead woman. After all the monsters he'd faced, he was confident she wouldn't be any major trouble. Still, the need to step quiet because something was coming toward them overran any logic.

A shadow passed the door and Yuri's heart skipped a beat. Maybe it was the alcoholic glow fading from his cheeks, but a sudden chill gripped him and –

BAM.

Something slammed into the door, and a rain of debris sprinkled to the stairs. Yuri couldn't help jumping and Judith's hand landed on his elbow.

Yuri swallowed and breathed, "The hell was that?" He found himself edging closer to Judith, telling himself it was because she was warm and the basement was freezing. Rarely had he ever desired light more, but the inky darkness of the basement messed with his head. Was that movement in front of him, or just his mind making something up to fill the emptiness?

And then another sound prickled in his ears. He didn't notice at first because he was so focused on listening for footsteps, and his brain didn't know what to make of music notes. That's what they were, though. The soft plinking of piano keys drifted to his ears, singing a melody of warm, sunny days.

Whispering, he asked, "You guys hear that, right?"

"Yeah," Raven answered.

"Good, so I'm not just crazy."

It wasn't a complex song. Notes came one at a time, high and sweet. They carried images of green hills and gentle breezes into his mind, and even though he couldn't even begin to know who was playing the piano, he found his chest loosening at the sound. It seemed like a folk song, perhaps, with a timeless melody he felt he already knew even though he'd certainly never heard it before.

The song wasn't the least bit scary, but sitting in the freezing dark which his heart still hammering, it almost seemed to mock him. The music told him to relax and be at peace, but his surroundings told him to keep his guard up. Yuri hadn't forgotten the footsteps or that awful dread when they'd come toward them. Where were they now? He couldn't hear anything but music.

"Judy, darlin'," Raven piped up, "I just gotta say… never thought ya'd be the type ta cling ta people when scared… not that I'm complainin' or nothin'. Ya can stay on my arm as loooong as ya want."

If possible, the room grew colder, but that might just be because Yuri's heart momentarily stopped beating.

"What are you talking about?" came Judith's voice from right beside Yuri. "I'm over here."

The pause was so thick it added another layer of darkness.

"Then… who…?" Shuffling as Raven jumped to his feet. "What the hell!?" Glass shattered, Raven swore, and that thump sounded like his body hitting the ground.

Yuri was on his feet before realizing he'd decided to stand. "Who's there?" His sword swung out but in the darkness he didn't know where to point it.

"Put that away!" Judith was still on the ground, her tone sharper than his blade. "You're going to cut someone in this darkness. Raven, are you hurt?"

Raven groaned.

The lighthearted music clashed with the tension tight in Yuri's heart. "Show yourself!"

His hair fluttered and he shook off a shiver. The sweet notes of the song twisted as the next two were off-key and then it cut off completely. In the distance, something banged on the walls, getting softer and softer.

"Where are you?!"

Another bang, and blinding light streamed into the basement. Yuri squinted and raised his arm, just able to make out a short silhouette at the top of the stairs. Then there was a bark, and a few seconds later a familiar figure pounced on Yuri.

"What are you guys doing down there?" Karol asked.

Yuri had never let out such a deep breath. He sheathed his sword and ran his fingers through Repede's warm, thick fur. "Don't come down!" he shouted when he saw Karol head for the steps. "The door slammed shut and locked us in."

Judith helped Raven to his feet and he brushed off dust. His wine glass had shattered and he looked shaken, but no worse for wear. Yuri didn't want to spend any more time down here, so he hurried up the stairs and into the kitchen.

"That's weird," Karol said, eyeing the door. "It wasn't locked when I opened it."

"Did you hear the music?" Judith asked.

"Is that what that was?" Karol frowned. "As soon as I walked in, I thought I heard a piano cut off. I heard Yuri shouting and came to check it out. Are you guys ok?"

"We're fine," Judith said. "Thank you for rescuing us."

"Yeah, no problem… boy, this house gives me the creeps."

"I'll say." Yuri leaned against the counter. He didn't think he'd ever been so glad to see Karol before. He'd thought all three of them being trapped down there was bad, but that was nothing compared to realizing it hadn't been just the three of them.