text: Prologue: He wraps a sweatshirt around his clenched fist. Takes a deep breath, closes his eyes, and sends a quick prayer to the universe. His arm pulls back, and on the exhale, he thrusts his swaddled hand through the windowpane. The air puffs out of his lungs, a burst of relief. The hardest part is done. He gazes around his surroundings; no one has seen. The shards of the window are scattered on the ground inside the dark, cavernous opening he’s created. The pungent odor of the basement emerges, a discomforting mix of mildew, dust, and - decay? He truly believed the legend wasn’t true; he wasn’t going to let this place get the jump on him. He grips the windowsill, using the hoodie to protect his hands from the stalagmite shards of glass protruding from the windowsill, and swings himself forward and down into the dark. Dust rises from where his sneakers meet the cement floor, and he’s in. “This isn’t shit,” he says to himself, underwhelmed. His heart pounds, but gently. Not fear, just a rise in blood pressure. He’s not scared. He’s not scared. The basement, obscured by an opaque layer of dust in the air, is an archive. Stacks of boxes, piles of dilapidated furniture, rows of absolute junk crowd the small space. The ceiling hangs low, so that as he combs the rows of refuse, he is forced to duck beams coated in cobwebs. The smell lingers; it reminds him of the time he saw a long-deceased possum on the way to his bus stop before school. Death and waste. He wrinkles his nose and bars his arm across his face. Deeper, and deeper, he walks toward the back of the basement, looking for it. The ceiling continues to droop more and more the farther back he walks, until he is forced to crouch onto his knees. The ground is wet; his jeans are immediately soaked through where they contact the ground. “Uck!” He swipes a finger through the muck on the floor; it’s a slimy, mucus-like substance. His stomach turns. The darkness is so heavy in the cramped space that he can’t see it, can’t see what’s coating his pants and hands. Willing himself, he raises his hand to his nose and breathes in. To his relief, it isn’t shit, vomit, or anything else he’d been imagining. The smell of mold is still strong in the air, but this stuff smells like metal, like iron. He gets back to work. Byron said that the door would be on the back wall, so he sidles up as far as he can wedge himself to the back of the basement. At this point, the wall can’t be taller than three feet; he reluctantly props himself on his elbows, and feels a sickening squish as his stomach greets the slimy, damp floor. He makes a mental note to kill Byron if this turns out to be a hoax. He guides his hand along the wall, searching for a crevice, a crack, any kind of indentation. Mostly he just feels the dirty coating on the cement wall; this must be the foundation, as low as the house goes. Frustrated, he crawls back and forth across the wall, but he can’t find a single break in the wall, and he’s officially soaked in this awful guck. “Fucking hell.” He feels frantic, angry. “Fuck this shit!” He digs at the crease between the wall and the floor with his fingers. “Where - the fuck - IS IT?!” His fingernail catches, and rips from the nail bed. “MOTHERFUCKER!” he yells, and grips the bleeding finger tightly, applying pressure. His head slams into the ceiling, rattling his shoulders and spine. He rolls over onto his back, pain blossoming quickly through his torso. His temper flares, and he wants to react by lashing out, punching the wall, running away, but the ceiling is so, so low, and suddenly, he feels trapped. The sticky walls close in and bury him, and he feels his chest lock up with dread. His limbs feel heavy and bogged down by the muck on the floor. He can’t breathe, he can’t see, he can’t move, he can’t, he can’t... His ears are ringing and he needs to stop the awful buzzing in his head, so he lets his head slam backward, down onto the floor. Thud. A hollow thud. Not cement, but wood. Not on the walls around him, but on the floor, beneath him. He rolls himself around to his elbows once more. Everything has gone silent. He feels along the space where his head was a moment ago, and he holds his breath. He trails his remaining fingernails up and down, left and right, across the floor and he feels it: a crack, about three feet long, underneath his body. He follows it, and finds another crack at a 90-degree angle. It’s a square. A door. He slams his open palm around the square, and the hollow thud resounds throughout the tiny space, sending dust up and into his lungs. He suddenly feels leather instead of cement: a strap, bolted to the ground. He grips it, and pulls upward, straining. No movement, so he yanks the strap sideways in all directions. It rattles, but it’s clearly stuck. He wrenches his arm into a different, radically uncomfortable angle, grits his teeth, and pulls as hard as he can, until the wooden panel finally gives way with a violent shift, throwing him onto his side. The opening under the panel emits a frigid blast of cold air, and he gazes down into the shaft; it’s pitch black, the darkest space he’s ever seen. And the smell. “Oh god,” he gags. The damp stench of roadkill fills his nostrils. Fuck, he thinks. He has to go down. He can’t turn around. He can’t let Byron think he’s a chickenshit for turning around. But, fuck, that smell. And the goddamn ache growing in the back of his head. He reaches into the darkness, trying to grasp a ladder, a rope, something solid, but there is nothing. That pitch-black darkness is a void. The passage is big enough to fit through, but he doesn’t even know how deep it is, where the emptiness ends. He looks around for something to throw, but the back of the crawlspace is barren, and the piles of junk are far behind him. He awkwardly reaches his arm back into his pants pocket; all he has is his wallet. Well, here goes nothing, he thinks. He rolls his eyes, picturing the many ways in which Byron will inevitably owe him for this, and throws his wallet down into the dark. He waits. He hears nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Fucking hell, he thinks. It can’t really be bottomless, can it? Whatever it is, a crawlspace or a well or a vast empty fucking pit, it has to end somewhere, right? He maneuvers his cramped, awkward body until his legs dangle into the emptiness. “Byron,” he groans. “I’m going to fucking kill you if I die.” He lets his fingers slip from the edges of the trapdoor, and he jumps.