Ghost Not Forgotten

XV: Then

*banner by Clickhappi (Livejournal)

He got down the stairs and searched the cold stone wall for a light switch. There was none, only cobwebs. Flicking on his lighter, he saw the light bulb floating from the middle of the ceiling with a rusty chain hanging from it. He reached up and pulled, lighting the room in dull orange.

It had been years since Stanley opened up his cellar for the town to see, giving him plenty of time to hide all sorts things right under the townspeople's noses. Bennet hadn't believed that it would be anything really too bad, since it was Stanley after all, but the good doctor had lived in the big city once, he was a lot more worldly than the rest of us in Keplar's.

He should have had something interesting in there.

So when Bennet saw nothing but piles of old cardboard boxes, rusted wooden gardening tools and some crates filled with rotted and shriveled roots and bulbs, he was pissed. All of this for nothing. Again. And now he'd have to answer to Stanley when the old man found out Bennet had cut his lock.

Bennet wondered if he would have enough time to get a new one on there before Stanley noticed.

He turned in circles, his eyes not believing this was it. He had imagined bags and bags of money in there, not the bank robbery kind of bags of money, but Stanley's own. He was a doctor after all, and we all knew he used to make a ton of money when he was a big city doctor. He was smart too, would invest or save it, Bennet was sure. So he had always leaned more toward the money stash idea of the mystery, as opposed to the dead bodies or government weapons.

And even though at first he only found spiders and dust and junk, he didn't turn around and go home. Something was singing inside of him, telling him not to give up yet and so he decided to play detective.

Carefully, and as quietly as he could, he began to sniff around the boxes and the shelves of tools. There was a steel drum of tractor oil in the far corner he knew had to weigh a ton, so he didn't move that. Instead he moved every box, every tool, every crate, everything movable, to look behind it, above it, below it, everywhere.

When that didn't get him anywhere, he looked in every crate, on every shelf, in every box for some sort of clue to the whereabouts of the fortune.

After a thorough search, he had nothing. Not a single clue or dime. He was beyond ticked now, just disappointed.

Then he began to think maybe I had been right. Maybe Stanley had been telling the truth and the only reason he got crotchety about people going down there was because he didn't want stupid kids messing up his stuff or getting hurt.

Aching with defeat and from so much lifting, Bennet made sure everything was back in place, double-checking and triple-checking everything; even checking for footprints. Luckily there wasn't much dirt on the floor, so a few sweeps of a nearby broom and his footprints were gone.

He felt so clever.

When he knew the scene was clean, he turned to flick off the light. The motion had his lighter falling out of his jacket pocket and skittering across the floor, into the corner of the cellar.

It had gotten behind the drum of tractor oil. He knelt down to pick it up and as he was wrapping his fingers around it, his eyes saw something they weren't meant to.

Hinges. On the floor.

They were almost the exact color of the cement and situated so they were hidden in the shadow of the drum and the shelves of old tools. Bennet crawled to the other side of the drum, the side that was up against the stone cold wall, and used the lighter to see the outline of what looked like a small metal ring, the same color of the hinges.

A handle.

Thrilled, he was soon on his feet to wrestle with the steel drum. It turned out not to be filled with tractor oil but with something more solid, like sand or dirt. Something even heavier than liquid.

He had to use all of his strength and determination to scooch it off the tiny door in the floor, not even worrying about the noise he was making. All he could think about was his discovery.

By the looks of the hinges – rusted and old – he thought he'd have to pry the door open. He yanked at the metal ring handle as hard as he could but the door flew open so easily he went flying out onto his back. It seemed the door had been in use for a while, not ignored like it seemed.

Bennet got back on his feet to peer down into the gaping black hole standing in the cement floor.

A room below a cellar . . .

He figured it was some kind of bomb shelter built back in the day when bomb shelters were popular. Apparently some thought a root cellar wasn't deep enough to save them from nuclear war, so the previous owners (Stanley had not been around Keplar's during that time) must have put in the room beneath it, just in case.

Bennet found it funny that Stanley hadn't mentioned that when he had shown his cellar to the town.

Using the lighter, Bennet spied a wooden ladder leading down into the secret room. Unable to resist, Bennet jumped on the ladder and made his way down without a thought.

It was cold and smelled of dirt, dark as moonless night. When his sneakers hit the cement floor, he used his lighter until he found a light switch. Flipping it on, it sent bright white buzzing light through the entire room, practically blinding him.

But he pushed through it, rubbing the blindness out of his eyes so he could turn around and get a good look at what Stanley Pike had been hiding.