fewer dice #1

skull/spiderweb/spider/candle

Into the darkness of the cellar we pressed, faces grim, souls shuddering.  The lights had gone out with the storm, so we lit the way with candles.  It was much creepier now than it ever had been in daytime and with nice weather.  Actually, I think it wasn't even this creepy most nights, as long as there was no lightning ridden thunderstorm outside.  The place was clean and dull-looking as always, a cleaned up relaxing area for a family.  But that wasn't all that it was.

Janelle went to the wall behind the water heater and felt around for the hidden switch.  She grimaced and coughed as something clicked and the trapdoor in the floor popped open.  "Gross.  Fucking spiderwebs," she whined.  I didn't reply, but pulled the trapdoor open fully to reveal the rickety ladder to another level.

You ask why we continue the traditions?  Why we don't just walk away from the old ways?  It's not that easy, you know.  We might physically leave, but the voice would always be there in our daydreams and nightmares.  Sometimes more than a voice.  But only when we aren't doing what we should.

It always smells musty in the second level.  It's weird because it's not unfinished here, either.  The walls are cement or something, even painted.  But it still smells like an old root cellar.

Our candles make little headway in the thick air underground, but we do know the way.  It's something we do regularly.  Unlike in the house, we know there's nothing left on the floor from a game or visit, nothing that will trip us up.  This level is completely clean and empty.  It's like an insulation level.

We have to go down a spiral staircase to reach our destination.  I don't know why the access from the basement is a wooden ladder and now we have a metal staircase.  Seems like poor planning.  Or different designers who never even saw each other.  It's at least as old as the ladder, maybe even older actually, considering how wood tends to hold up in our climate, but it still seems sturdy and safe.  Doesn't jiggle or anything when the two of us go down it.

There it is, bathed in it's own aura.  The green skull.  It is the object of our worship, as it was for those who lived here before us.  All we have to do it...feed it.  We have absolutely no idea where it came from.  We don't even know how we found out about it.  It just happened one day that we both stood up from whatever we were doing and made our way down here, to kneel, to bow down, to chant.  The next time we came with the offering.  Janelle was the first to try to leave, she went to visit her cousins in Pisa, but she came back after a month.  She said it had been talking to her, in her head.  We tried to abandon the house together, but in less than two weeks we were receiving messages to kill each other, to stab the other while they slept, to grab the wheel and take the car off the road.  It sounds kind of like what schizophrenics describe.  But it's only when we are away from the house for too long.  We haven't been doing exactly what we're told recently, though.  We haven't brought an offering for a while.  It isn't...angry.  But something is up.  We do the ritual as usual on the new moon and go back upstairs.  There's a weird energy on this level now.  Not the insulation level, though.  That's normal.

Same with the basement.  I push the trapdoor down to lock it and it doesn't catch.  Janelle reaches behind the water heater to fiddle with the switch and gasps, drawing her hand back in a flash.  With both candles we can see a huge colony of spiders on the wall, surrounding that switch.  They seem to look at us with their shiny little eyes and grin with shiny little fangs for a second.  Then they scuttle off into the darkness.

It's even worse than a voice in a dream.