Disclaimer: I don't own W.I.T.C.H.
It was dark, and that was all Will could see before her sight adjusted to the new environment. The stairway did not have any windows; the only source of natural light came from the door opening where she, her brother and parents stood. Her mother was the first to move, together with William she walked into the stair room. The small room contained only a platform that covered half the floor to where the stairs began, the walls and floor was made of naked grey stone just like the cold stairs.
"Dean dear," Susan said, "didn't you have a flashlight?"
"Yes, here it is," he said and took up an old Maglite from his pocket.
Will could see on her stepfathers face that he didn't want to go downstairs more than she did, but he probably wouldn't say otherwise in fear of never hear the end of it. Dean turned on the flashlight and used the opportunity the new light gave and took a careful look through the room. The light beam went up to the ceiling and revealed a lamp without a lightbulb, this was followed by a small curse escaping from Deans lips. Then he pointed the light towards the stairs and let it dwell by it.
Will felt cold and sick where she stood, as if an invisible force had taken grip on her, and before she knew it, she was walking as in a trance towards the frightening stairs. She came to stop at the top of the staircase and looked down into the unknown. From the abyss under her, she felt a dark aura of fright and terror rolling up. Will just wanted to turn around and run out of there, but unfortunately, her mother felt otherwise.
"Alright then," Susan said with an easy tone, "Dean, you got the light so you will have to go first and see that there are nothing wrong with the stairs."
Dean gulped and stared down to where the more unpleasant parts of his imagination had let him wander more than one night before. "Abandon all hope ye who enters here," said Dean and quoted what the ancient Greeks thought was written on the gates to Hades.
"You don't think you are exaggerating a bit now," said Susan mildly irritated. Dean smiled bravely to his wife and Will, and let his Maglite shine on the first step before he started to walk followed closely by Will and Susan.
All too soon, they stood at the bottom of the stairs, looking into the murky basement. Years later when asked what she felt when she stood there; she could remember the foul smell of damp earth and dust that lay still like air inside an ancient tomb. The basement was so dark that whatever lay outside the beam from the flashlight remained invisible.
Dean let his Maglite sweep over the surroundings and Will saw they had come into a room that was not too large, however, the dark and the lack of any interior made the space feel bigger than it probably was. The walls down here also served as foundation for the rest of the house, thick dark grey stones, once torn out from hard rock and later put on top of each other to keep the work of men stand for centuries. Some of the stones had deep cracks that split them all the way through, and around those cracks, black slimy mold thrived as if they were infested wounds. From the ceiling to the floor, Will estimated the height of the room to be three meters, the wide of the room approximately trice of this. At the other side of the room on the middle of the wall stood a lonely door. Due to the lack of anything else in the room, Will, Dean and Susan begun walking towards it.
"I wonder what's on the other side." Susan said to no one in particular, put her free hand on the doorknob, and turned it around. Any hope Will had that they could somewhat sneak inside in relatively silence was shattered by the painfully groan the door made when it opened. Was there something down here, it had certainly been alerted of their arrival by that blasted door.
Three people and one child stood and tried to look inwards. If the first room they entered had been dark, this one was pitch dark. Dean pointed his light through and forth in the room, but the darkness seemed to swallow it wherever he pointed it. Will felt her inner guardian instincts scream at her, probably with good help from her imaginations as her thoughts had wandered to the fate of the three people she had seen on the pictures. The light from the Maglite landed on a light switch to the right of the doorframe.
"Here, let me..," Will said and hurried over before anyone else tried to reach for it. If, against all her expectation the light worked, there would be light when she switched it on. If the light didn't work, she would take the chance and force it to work with her magic, as long as there were light bulbs of course. She turned on the switch and waited.
Nothing.
Dean was still pointing the light towards her and the light switch. "Perhaps it will work if I try it again," she said and smiled nervous to the adults. Without waiting for a replay, she turned the switch off, waited a second, and turned it on again, this time with a magical spark. And literally, by magic, the lights went on from the ceiling around them.
They all gasped. They were standing in a huge room, and all around them were boxes, chests, shelves, of every shape and size. There were a lot of old equipment from the asylum and some from the monastery period, a pile of books here and some medical tools there. Unfortunately, it was quite some distance between the old lamps, and some of them didn't have any lightbulbs inside of them, those areas were therefore dark.
Will looked around herself, as did her parents, even William seemed to be watching his surroundings carefully. "Wow, there seem to be a lot of stuff around here," Will whispered. "Did they never throw away anything at all?"
"You never know when old stuff can be useful, but this?" Dean answered her. Then he started to walk. He didn't turn off his flashlight because it was still useful were the shadows were too dark for the meager light from the lamps.
Will began walking around too, but stuck closely to Susan and Dean, as she had no desire wandering too far away. They opened a few chests and boxes to see what was inside of them, spoons, candles, more books, endless amount of papers with medical records, and surprisingly objects that must have been someone's personal belongings. Why this hadn't been collected a long time ago wasn't obvious for neither of her parents, but Will had a ugly feeling she knew which people these once had belonged too.
Dean opened an old cabinet and made a sound of surprise. "Hey Will, come and have a look at this," he said. Will turned around from the box she was studying and looked over to Dean,
"What is it?" she said.
"I think this must have belonged to the monks who lived here," said Dean and pulled out a huge black piece of cloth.
Will studied it for a moment before she said, "And what would that be?"
"This," the learned man said, "…is a monks robe! To think that they still exist after all these years. How do I look?" And with that he pulled the robe around himself and pretended to be a monk to humor her.
Will looked at him and gave him an honest smile in reward for his somewhat childish attempt. That was one of the reasons she liked her stepfather, he was a kind man, with a good sense of humor and self-irony. When he did something funny, you didn't laugh of him, you were laughing with him, and above all, she knew he loved her mother. That was the most important of all. The teenage witch momentarily forgot her fear and went to the cabinet where Dean stood and pulled out another robe for herself. It was way too large for her, but she put it on. Then they walked to Susan who had her back against them and stood bend over a pile of moldy old books.
"May I have the book of hymns." Dean said in a low voice to his wife.
Susan jumped quickly around and eyed two robe-clad people who stared at her with an innocent glance and folded hands. "So, I see you two have time for fun, perhaps we are finished here then. And by the way, your robe is several numbers too big for you, sister." Susan said with emphasis on her last word and smiled to Will.
"If God will, I will grow to fit into it." Will said gravely and bowed her head for her mother.
"I am not sure you will grow to fit into that thing no matter how much you pray," Susan replied, whereupon Will and Dean chuckled. However, their good humor ended when one of the lights nearby started to flash. "Maybe we should hurry to get finished her so we can go upstairs again," said Dean.
He went back to the cabinet and lay off his robe. Will was going to do the same, but she decided to keep it on, the basement was a chilly place and the robe warmed her surprisingly well.
"Are you going to keep that on?" her mother said.
"Yes, it is a bit cold down here I think, so will keep it on for now if it is okay. Besides, I think it looks cool on me. I look like a real witch, or what do you think?" The truth behind her statement passed her parents completely.
"Alright, if you feel cold you can keep it on for now, but I don't want to see you take it with you home to impress your friends, it is probably rotten and filled with moth." Said Susan.
They did however start to explore the basement again, and the eerie feeling from earlier came back and laid down like a pressuring atmosphere around them. None said much as they all felt the shadows growing darker the further into the room they went. At the far end of the room, right in the middle and half-hidden behind a pile of moldy clothes, was a door. It was to Wills surprise smaller than the first door they had entered when coming into this room. She felt colder the closer she came to the door and a dreadful feeling wormed into her. Will prayed silently that neither her mom nor Dean would see it as she tried to walk away. But just when she thought her prayers had been heard, she heard the three little words she desperately didn't want to hear.
"Look. A door!" her mother said.
Will turned to her mother and uttered with a shaky voice, "Why don't we let it be mom, there's probably nothing more there than even more junk and old journals, and we really don't need to see them."
Susan eyed her daughter, "Oh come on Will, where has your sense of adventure gone? Lets' have a last look before we leave." said her mother.
This time her stepfather came to Will's defense, "Will is probably right; we don't need to know what's behind that door, and it is late, the lawyer will be here anytime soon so we should go."
"If none of you wish to have a look, than I will, I am not a scaredy-cat like the two of you." With that she handed over William to Dean and begun to clear away the old clothes.
Will and Dean did nothing to help her; they stood frozen like statues of stones and watched the woman remove the last obstacles in front of the door. Will just wanted to run away, she could feel the unmistakable signature of something made of dark magic coming from behind the door. Inside her mind, she could hear the silent voices from shadowlike people who screamed at her warning not to enter. No matter what they would find on the other side, it gave her a feeling of terror she never had known. She weighted her secret being a guardian against the unknown threat, and found the wellbeing of herself, her parents and brother to be the most important. Under her black robe, she secretly pulled out the heart of Kandrakar from seemingly nothing and made herself ready to transform.
Susan had cleared away everything that blocked her way to the door when she casted a glance over her shoulder back at her three companions. Dean was holding their son in a strong and secure grip, his face however told her that he clearly wished to be elsewhere. He was probably afraid of the dark, and Susan found it amusing that someone who was adult thought of the lack of light to be terrifying. But it was her daughter that made her wonder. Her face was one of pure terror and she seemed to be on the verge of actually panic. Under the black robe, Susan could see Will nervously fickle with something, or perhaps she twisted her fingers against each other. A struck of doubt held her back from opening the door, but only for a moment. She turned back to the door, laid her hands on the wood and pushed it. The door went inwards.
Shhhhhhhh.
The sound of air being sucked into the mysterious room made the hair on their necks rise. The door only opened a little before it met resistance. Susan looked down and saw the bottom of the door pressed against soil, she realized it was the ground floor, strange. Not stones or wooden planks to walk upon, just old dry soil. She pushed on harder, the door opened more, and more until the opening was big enough to let all of them see inside from where they stood.
The light from the room behind them casted a weak and narrow beam of light that cut right through the dark room. The beam went inwards for twenty or thirty meters and just before the light ended, it shone on the only visible thing there. A closed wardrobe.
It was a plain wooden wardrobe, perhaps two meters tall and one and a half wide without any signs or markings of any kind. Susan stood in the doorframe, but didn't dear to walk inside. The whole thing seemed to absurd and the smell of mold and decay inside was overwhelming and made her unconsciously think of a grave chamber. The absolute darkness made it impossible to see if there was anything else in the room beside the single furniture.
Time stood still as all sound and motions came to a halt. Why would anyone use a whole room to store a single wardrobe? And why not place it together with the rest of the junk in the other room? Although it was impossible to see if there was anything else in the room, Susan got the feeling that it was nothing else there and she suddenly wished she never had opened the door after all. So without lingering for any moment longer, she pulled back and closed the door securely after her.
Hi, a little note at the end of this chapter for the readers who isn't too familiar with the comics. Since this story take place after the witch girls got their new powers (around halfway out in the comics they learned to access the core of their magic, something that also made them much stronger), they don't need the heart to transform, so when Will take out the heart here, it is only to comfort/calm herself a little.