Lenore almost had everything she wanted.
In just a few short months, she'd graduate early from high school, start an internship at her father's new startup in San Francisco, and then head off to college in the fall on a full scholarship. Everything...
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Lenore chased after Victor as he descended from the porch. The boots he'd borrowed squelched as he stepped onto the grass, the ground softened and muddy from the melting snow.
"Wait!" she called, scrambling down the porch steps. A big drip from the eaves pelted the back of her head. "Do you even know how to work an old fuse box? They're not like the new ones at all—"
"The last place I lived in before we came to Eden was probably older than this place," Victor replied, stopping to look this way and that, searching for the cellar entrance. He spotted it in the alcove of the porch's edge and headed straight for it. "And its wiring was always acting up, too, so I had to learn how to fix it."
"Oh," was all Lenore had to say to that. She still thought it was a bad idea to head down into the cellar—though the weather was better, who knows how long it'd hold. In fact, a new layer of fog had started to creep forward from the forest, thick and wet.
Victor didn't sense her trepidation. He went to the doors and wrenched them open, throwing them back to the ground. A dank breeze drifted up from below, and the stone steps beyond the door descended into perfect darkness.
"Got that flashlight?" Victor asked, holding his hand out.
On her way out, Lenore had grabbed the flashlight her mother kept back at the backdoor for this very purpose. She hesitated as though it was her last defence against sending him down into the abyss. But he stretched his arm out further, insistent, and she had no good reason to refuse him. She handed it over.
He took it and clicked it on. The beam was strong, blinding even in the sunlight, and he aimed it down the stairs. The stone was glistening, sweating off the ice. Even with the flashlight's strong beam, it barely penetrated the darkness. Lenore swallowed hard, dreading having to go down into the dark. Victor did not have the same hesitation. He scraped off the mud from his boots and headed down.
Lenore took a deep breath and followed after.
As she reached the bottom of the stairs, she wound her arms around herself. She wished she had thought to don a coat before coming out. Regardless of the melting warmth outside, it was still cold as ice down here. The ceiling was low, and Victor had to hunch slightly to navigate the cellar, dip down even further now and then to dodge the old wooden beams that crossed the ceiling.
Despite the lack of height, the room was quite wide. The flashlight's beam glanced off the haphazard wooden shelves that lined the walls, once used to hold the jars and crates of preserved food.
Victor swore as his hip ricocheted off an old table lurking in the dark. The strange items on top—old jars, rusted tools, grimy sheaths of paper—jostled and clattered, knocking a swell of dust into the air. He coughed and pulled his shirt over his nose to keep the dust out.
"Damn, this place looks like the set of an old horror movie," Victor joked, swiping at the dust in the air. "I almost expect to turn a corner and find a creaky old coffin or something. Where do you think the fuse box is?"
