"Let me get this straight," Ted said as I parked the car. "We're here to find three or four pieces of paper, with writing you can't read, last seen two months ago, conveniently located 'somewhere around here?'"
"That's about it, yeah. Come on, you knew what you were getting yourself into." I got out of the car and started walking around the place where the cabin had been. I could see the outlines of stone foundations outlining the ashes.
Ted walked up behind me, kicking little chunks of burnt wood around. "I thought we were going to a cabin with pages in it, not a hole in the ground with pages somewhere near it."
"A hole in the ground..." Something clicked in my head. Unfortunately, it was my jawbones. I'd been rotting a bit lately. "Ted, look for a trapdoor!"
"A trap..." Ted found the trapdoor. With his feet. Then his knees, then his butt, then his stomach. He caught the edge with his arms, but it crumbled, and he disappeared underground.
"Ted!" I ran over to the hole where the trapdoor had been. Not too close, though. The edges of the thing were looking pretty frayed, and I didn't see the sense in both of us falling in. "Ted, are you okay?"
"I think so," he yelled up from somewhere down in the darkness. "Just a little bruised." A pause, some shuffling sounds, and Ted yelled again. "Ash! There's something down here with me! There's something down here!" Then I heard a muffled scream, a long greasy slurp and an unsettling crunch.
I ran back to the car, jumped in, and slammed the door shut. I didn't start it. I couldn't drive away and leave Ted to die. It's just that I also couldn't make myself go down in that basement. Whatever was down there could hurt me, could destroy me. But I couldn't just abandon Ted. Shit. What the hell was I supposed to do?
Screw it. I'd lost enough friends. I got out of the car, grabbed the shotgun out of the trunk, loaded it, filled my pockets with shells, and headed down underground.
The basement stairs were mostly broken, so I just sort of scooted down the stairway on my butt. Down in the basement, it was too dark to see anything. I called out into the darkness. "Hey? Ted?"
No answer, what a shock. I shuffled forward, poking the shotgun into the darkness. I took a step, then another. My foot landed in something that went squish. I looked down, and that was a mistake. Not because of what was down there; it was just a mossy mud puddle. But as I dipped a finger in it just to make sure it wasn't something worse, I had that same feeling I'd had in my dream, the feeling that something was chasing me.
It was coming for me, I couldn't see or hear or smell it but I could feel the rush of its motion, the quick jerky way it dashed through that dark basement. It roared under its breath and dove at me, it was almost at my back and I ran. I leapt up onto the stairway, grabbed it with my free hand, and felt the rotten wood crumble to damp dust under my fingers. I fell backwards, staggering but managing to keep my feet, knowing that whatever had been coming for me was there. Whatever it was that I'd been running from for so long, it had finally caught up with me. And yet, for a moment, nothing happened. It was quiet and almost peaceful. I stood in the beam of light coming from the broken trapdoor, shotgun at the ready, and waited.
A hand reached out from the darkness. It was Ted's hand, I could tell that somehow, but I could also tell it wasn't really Ted's hand anymore. Not the Ted I knew. And he--it, whatever--spoke. "Deeper, come deeper inside this black pit. Oh, Ashley, we have such things to show you."
I grinned at it, that cocky-bastard grin I only get when I'm scared off my ass. "I got something to show you, pal," I said and I jammed the shotgun where the thing's face ought to be. I couldn't think of a good follow-up line on the spot, so I just pulled the trigger. A shotgun blast makes a pretty nice punchline all on its own.
I heard it fire, and saw the flash, but it didn't seem like I was hitting anything. Then I got that rushing feeling again, and some kind of force grabbed me from behind and threw me forward. My feet scrabbled on the ground like a dog at the end of its leash, but it was no good. I was flying, speed unknown, destination unknown, through utter blackness.
I thought I'd hit a wall or stop or something pretty soon. I mean, a basement isn't that big. But I just kept going forward--and down. Somewhere along the way I dropped my shotgun. I didn't hear it hit the ground.
Just as suddenly as I'd started, or maybe a little more, I stopped. It was still dark, but there was a little light, enough for me to look around. I was in a cave, a huge underground cathedral of stone. I'm not being poetic. It was literally a cathedral, right down to the rows of pews, some of them with Deadites sitting in them. Right down to the coldy lit stained-glass windows, each one with a different scene of horror and destruction and cool stuff. Right down to the crucifix over the altar, with a living, writhing human being nailed to it.
It was Ted.