Page 17 of Threads of Fate

“I know, but I wish we didn’t.” He whispers. “We could stay in bed and watch TV. Do absolutely nothing but learn each other's bodies.” He wiggles his dark brown brows and gives me a panty melting smile. “But I guess this does take priority. Let's get showered and then we can hop in the truck. We’ll see if we can find anything.”

Chapter 8

Dana

My stomach is in knots and I’m on a downward spiral of anxiety. What am I going to find? I hope it’s not bodies. Please, please, please don't let it be bodies. I’ll take a rabbit hole, I’ll even take more ghosts. If I have been living on top of a crypt I will hurl.

We are still sitting in his truck looking at my house from the driveway. My fingers fidget in my lap. I guess we will start in the basement and go from there. That’s all I have to go on anyways. We, or at least I need to find some kind of clue because so far nothing makes sense and everything is freaking me out.

“Alright. Let’s just go straight to the basement and see if there’s like a false wall or something. Then we can go from there.” I hop out of the truck with false bravado and head to my front door. Noah follows behind.

“Hey Dana! How are you?” I hear Mischa shout from her driveway. When I turn around she is dragging her trash cans at the curb.

“I’m…alright I guess. It’s been a weird twenty four hours.”

“I bet. I hope you didn't hit your head too badly with that fall.” She walks over to meet me in my driveway. “I came over earlier to see if you were fine but you weren't here.”

“No, we ended up going to the library and then went back to his house for a while.” I say pointing to Noah. “I’ll talk to you later, I’ve gotta get some stuff done and get some research done as well..” I say politely trying to end the conversation before I lose my nerve to go into my house.

“Yeah! Yeah! No problem. I just wanted to check in. I’ll let you go! Have a good night!” Mischa says cheerfully walking back to her house. “Oh! You should come over for drinks! Any day after four is fine. Just come on over! You can bring the ‘handsome stud’ too!”

“Thank you! I’ll definitely take you up on that.” I say as cheerfully as my soul can muster and turn back around and head straight to my front door swinging it open. “Okay,” I say, nodding my head and looking behind me to make sure Noah is with me. I grab his hand. “Let’s do this.”

I march us towards the kitchen and to the basement door. Fear starts to squeeze at me. I shake my head, open the door and flick on the light. There's no shadows, no ghosts and no sounds. We walk down the stairs into the small area. The room is only about ten feet wide and fifteen feet deep. Practically the size of a small bedroom. All I have down here is my washer and dryer and some boxes from my old apartment with mom. They sit on a metal shelving unit that Noah helped me put together. The rest of it is fairly empty.

One day I will have the courage to go through them but in my mind it just finalizes it I guess and let’s be honest, I’m not ready for that.

Noah walks the last few steps down the stairs past me. He heads straight to the back wall and taps his knuckles against the walls in various places.. I take my time walking down the stairs. Also, very, very glad that these stairs are the kind that a hand can not just reach through the back of the stairs and grab your ankles like you're a B rated actress in a D rated horror film. The down side is someone could be hiding under them. We’re not going to think about that though but at least the murderer couldn't grab my ankles.

Silver linings.

I get to the bottom and look directly ahead at my washer and dryer. The wall doesn't look like it's false. The wall is also concrete, so there’s no wallpaper to peel back to reveal pentagrams and Latin. Or some Enochian. Not that I would even know what that looks like.

Noah’s voice pulls me out of my musings. “Hey, Dana, come help me move this shelf please?”

I walk over and grab the other end and help shuffle it out from the wall. Noah turns back towards the wall. He starts banging his fist against it and I hear it. Dread pools in my belly and my uterus shrivels up.

Hollow.

“Fuck.’ I trudge up the stairs without another word and out to the garage. I grab the sledge hammers and a couple pairs of goggles. Who knew the renovation tools would come in handy for something other than renovating. Like finding a murder room. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. What's the chances the previous owner just wanted a smaller footprint of the basement?

None.

I know it. I wish I didn’t.

I walk into the kitchen and Noah is walking towards me. He reaches out for a sledge hammer and a pair of the glasses.

“Let’s put a hole in that wall and see what we find.” We go back down into the basement and start swinging. Noah on the right and I’m on the left. First swing and we have created a giant hole. Drywall.

Drywall that was covered in concrete to match the rest of the original basement. Ugh. We continue to make a hole big enough for us to peek through. I let the sledgehammer hang from my hand and walk up to the wall to peel back some drywall bits.

The first thing I see is cobwebs. Like a haunted mansion, horror movie cobwebs. Thick and everywhere. I look around some more and find what look like books and a chair. I pull back and let Noah look through.

“Well, do you want to check it out?” I nod and backup more so we can start swinging. I have to go in there. I don't exactly have a choice. I have no one I can turn to that knows what is happening and I don't feel like being dragged to hell. We finish up, knocking out a doorway sized path into the room. I drop the sledgehammer to the side and tuck the glasses into my shirt.

I step through the hole, careful not to break a leg. I have to grab my phone for light. I point the light swinging it from wall to wall. Taking everything in. Lots of dusty books, a couple of chairs. The floors is too dusty to see what’s written on it but I don’t think I want to know what the fuck is drawn on there. There's a small wooden table pushed against the wall. When I turn around back towards the hole we made in the wall there are quite a few boxes on either side. Why in the hell did someone board this up? Why not just get rid of this shit? How long has it been here? Did the previous owner know it was here and boarded it up? It seems like a real dumb idea to be honest. I would have tossed this shit and cleaned it up. Painted over the fuckery on the floor and called it a day.

“This is creepy as fuck. Why did they just board this up? I was expecting bodies or something equally as horrific.” I chuckle.

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