- 3 -

When Penny awoke, she was lying on the floor of a dark room, her head throbbing as though someone had hit her over the head with a baseball bat. As she sat up, she rubbed her temples, trying to focus. Where was she? Better yet, how did she get her? A wave of panic swelled in her as she jumped up and started looking for a way out, ignoring the jab of pain her head as she did so.

“Eric!” she called, just in case he was somewhere nearby. She waited but heard nothing. She was alone.

It was dark enough wherever she was that she could practically feel it, so the first thing she did was pull out her phone. He battery was low and she had no signal, but she turned on the flashlight and started sweeping it around the room.

It was not a large room; there was a small bed in one corner, a chest of drawers in another. The window had been bricked up, so there was no way out through that. She saw two doors, one might just be a closet, but the other could be a way out. The first one she tried opened with only a little effort, but on the other side, she saw another wall of bricks. What kind of house was this? How on earth did she get stuck inside a bricked-up room? Those were questions she would have to answer later, right now she had to focus on getting out.

Taking a deep breath, she went to the second door. Before she touched the handle, she noticed markings like the ones she had seen downstairs. Shining her light on it, she saw that it was the same – except this time, their eyes were open. Maybe it meant something. She felt a chill, but took the handle anyway and pulled the door open.

A closet. She had gotten her hopes up on a closet. Rolling her eyes, she went inside and started to look around. There were old, moth-eaten dresses on wooden hangers, little shoes, and other things scattered around. It was eerie, to be sure, but Penny was not about to let her fear get the better of her. A floorboard creaked behind her and she turned, shining her light back into the room, but there was no one there. Finally, she found a small knobbed lever in the back of the wall that practically screamed “Pull me!” Instinctively, she didn’t want to touch it, but it was her only shot. She pulled the lever.

Immediately the floor under her feet started to shift. Jumping back as fast as possible, Penny managed to avoid getting drawn into the dark stairwell that was forming under her feet. She noticed something else when the floor started to move: the voices started up again. They were under her somewhere and they were louder than they were before.

“Hello?” she called into the darkness. The voices turned to whispers, but they didn’t stop. There was nothing for it. Using a shelf to keep herself steady, she started down the stairs. “If this is some kind of prank, it’s not funny guys!” she added, trying to keep her voice calm. No one answered.

Upon reaching the bottom of the stairs, they started to retract back into the ceiling. Penny whirled around, but there was nothing she could do. They were already gone.

She shone the light around her, but there was nothing nearby to help identify where she was. There were old children’s toys strewn around as though they had just been played with. Nothing looked dusty. There was light coming in from some distant window or gap in the ceiling, but she couldn’t tell where it started. Picking her way cautiously through the room, she followed the sound of the whispering.

Someone giggled and Penny turned around. Behind her, she saw someone in the shadows. “Hey,” she said, feeling a strange mixture of relief and fear. “Who’s there?”

The girl stepped forward. She was probably about eight, dressed in some weird old-fashioned dress, her hair in a braid. She was pale and looked scared rather than sinister. In one arm, she was carrying a ragged looking teddy-bear. If this was a prank, it was turning out to be a pretty elaborate one. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“I know,” Penny answered, “but…”

“You need to go,” the girl interrupted, “before they come back.”

Penny swallowed hard. “Before – before who comes back?”

But the girl didn’t answer. She looked past Penny, her attention seemingly drawn to something else. Penny glanced over her shoulder, but saw nothing. When she turned back, the girl was gone.

“Great.” Penny muttered. “Just great.” With an inward sigh, she turned and set about her search again. The whispering grew louder with every step until it seemed to follow her instead of her following it. She found another staircase, this time going down, but the stairs looked worn and broken. She was not about to break her neck going down those, so she kept her slow search. Finally, she found a window. It seemed to be the source of the light, but when she looked through the cracks in the boards, she couldn’t see anything.

“Whatever,” she sighed. She turned away from the window and noticed a door in the wall that she hadn’t seen before. Curious, she went to it and inspected it. The handle was it’s normal, brass self, but it was lock or stuck fast. She tried for a solid two minutes, but nothing happened. Suddenly, there was a thump on the door from the other side. Penny jumped back just as a second thump sounded, accompanied by a low growl.

Another one; the door shook and blew apart in a shower of splinters!

Penny covered her head just in time. Then, silence fell. Penny looked up to see a large, decaying man standing in the doorway. He was breathing hard, as though he had just run a mile. He was tall, dressed in old, ragged clothes. His hair was lank and dark; his skin was as white as a ghost. He looked at Penny, threw back his head, and bellowed as loud as he could. He charged at her and she started to run, not the way she had come, but to her left, down a long dark corridor.

Grabbing the first thing she saw that looked like a club, she turned to face the man. He was growling at her, walking like a fast zombie and too close for comfort. As soon as he got close, she hit him with the piece of wood in her hand, knocking him to the ground. He stopped moving and she took her chance. Holding her phone out in front of her so she shouldn’t stumble, she made her way as fast as she could away from the horrifying man. On either side of her, she passed several doors.

The first one she opened led to what looked like had once been a nursery. There was a crib in one corner with an old mobile hanging haphazardly above it. Children's toys were strewn around the room as though the child had only just left it. Penny turned her light to the other corner and saw a light coming from under the closet door. It grew steadily brighter, filling the room. “I don’t like this,” she whispered, knowing no one would hear her. She backed out of the room, and started searching for another one.

She looked over her shoulder – the man had recovered from her attack and was not far behind her – so she wasn’t looking when she ran headlong into someone else, knocking them to the floor.

“Penny!” it was Eric. “What are you doing all the way up here?”

“Up here?” she repeated incredulously, before she had time to think. Then she remembered the man chasing her. “Quick! We need to hide.” She pulled Eric up and, to her surprise, opened the first door she came to, pushed him inside, closing the door behind them just as the creepy man tried to grab Eric’s collar.

“What was that?” he asked, eyes wide.

Penny was too busy pushing a dresser in front of the door to answer right away. “Whoever or whatever it is, it can break through doors.” She paused, “I could use a little help, you know.”

Together, they moved a few more pieces of furniture in front of the door, but the man or creature outside was not even trying to get in.

“Now,” Penny began, turning to face him, “What did you mean, ‘up here?’”

“This is the attic,” he said in a tone that implied she should already know that.

“But that doesn’t make sense,” she replied, “I came down here.”

“From where? Last time I saw you…well, last thing I knew, you were behind me.”

“But what happened?” Penny persisted. “I was just about to climb the stairs, then I woke up in some weird room. What happened to you?”

Eric was scratching his head thoughtfully. “There was this door…”

“I saw it too,” Penny interrupted excitedly.

He shot her an annoyed look. “I wanted to get to it, but I couldn’t.”

“Why not?”

Eric shrugged. “I don’t remember. I woke up at the foot of the stairs.”

She wasn’t buying it. “Then how did you get up here?”

“Found another staircase,” he answered easily. He moved past her and started to look at something on the wall behind her. “I only just got up here when I ran – you ran into me,” he corrected. “Hey, come look at this.”

He was shining his flashlight on the closet door. “We should open it,” he said, his voice sounding odd. “I can feel… I can’t explain it…”

The door in question looked like all the other doors Penny had seen today. There weren’t any figures on the handle, it didn’t even appear to be locked since Eric took the handle and started to turn it. It did give her a vague sense of unease, however.

“Sure, why not?” she answered slowly.

Eric, his hand still on the doorknob, pulled, and the door swung easily open. At first, it looked like just another closet, but when he shone his light into the darkness, it did not reach a wall. In fact, there was nothing beyond it but inky black emptiness.

“I wouldn’t go in there if I were you,” a voice said behind them.

As one, they whirled around, both shining their flashlights in the direction of the speaker. It was the same little girl Penny had seen in the other room not ten minutes ago. Well, it looked like the same girl, but this one was grinning at them in a way that made Penny’s skin crawl.

“Why not?” Eric demanded, seemingly unperturbed. “What’s in there?”

“It’s not what’s in there, it’s where it goes.” Her smile widened. “It’s a tunnel.” She said it like it was a challenge.

Eric and Penny exchanged a nervous glance, both trying to ignore the fact that the girl had appeared out of nowhere,

“I’m going to take my chances,” Penny told the girl stubbornly. Anything to get away from that man in the hall. She turned and plunged into the darkness, followed only by the sound of the girl’s angry scream. When she found herself on the other side of…of whatever it was, she looked around trying to get her bearings. The voices intensified and she felt the pulsing she had felt before, but differently. Behind her, Eric emerged from the sea of black. She heard his sharp intake of breath.

“What the…?”