“What do you think you’ll find?” Kaitlyn asked, a tremble in her voice.
“Best thing we find is the hole that the cat came through,” Nicole answered. “A really small, barely cat-sized hole.”
“Worst thing we can find is a bunch of mudmen,” Alex added with a smirk that quickly faded and became a look of genuine worry.
Nicole and Alex followed David down.
The stairs, she noted, were old wood, probably never re-done since the centre had been built. The walls and floor were concrete. Other than pillars here and there, they were in one big room. When they shone the light around, they found a few other rooms behind closed doors.
“One’s probably a furnace room or something,” David said, as they looked at two doors standing next to each other. “The other one is the workshop where I found a bunch of the tools.”
“What about the others?” Alex asked, as the light moved and found two more.
“No idea,” David answered. “I found the tools and got out of here.”
“Scaredy cat,” Nicole said.
“Oh, I’m sorry, Nicole,” David said, “did you want to stay down here and look around by yourself? I can go back upstairs if you want. I was actually working on—”
“No, that’s fine.” She cut him off. “We need you down here. You’re our basement expert.”
She couldn’t see him, but she knew that David had puffed up a bit when she said that. She’d never called him an expert in anything—anything complimentary, that is. The thing was, they needed him down there to lead them around, and he needed to be calm to do that. If she had to stroke his little ego a bit, then so be it.
The basement was surprisingly warm. If it weren’t so very creepy and dark, it could have been cozy. It also smelled bad, on top of the usual dank, musty old basement smell.
“Well,” David said, as he pulled his shirt up over his nose and mouth, “based on the stench, I’d say there’s a few animals down here.”
“Yeah,” Nicole said, as she tugged up her own shirt, “but we haven’t seen any, so don’t worry about it.”
Something under David’s foot crunched as he walked. He shone the light down and stepped back. “Oh gross, gross, gross!”
“What’s going on down there?” Kaitlyn called from the top of the stairs.
“Nothing!” David yelled. “Ugh ... gross.”
“What?” Nicole asked, shoving past him.
“Ugh ...” he replied, scraping the bottom of his shoe on the gritty floor. “I found what the cat was eating before it came up with us.” He shone the light on a little pile of bloody bones that had once belonged to a mouse. “Gross!”
“You do know that there are at least four dead people hanging outside on a trap that you made, right?” Nicole asked.
David stared back at her blankly as if unable to put the two points together.
Nicole shook her head. “You baffle me.” She took control of the flashlight and walked past him. She felt the same squishy crunches under her feet as David just had. Ugh, gross! “It’s weird,” she said, as she looked at the tiny bones scattered around the floor. “Usually cats eat in one spot. At least, that’s what our cat used to do.”
“Our cat ate cat food,” David argued.
“Yes, but when she got outside she’d kill mice and voles and stuff and leave them in the same spot.”
“On the step!” David jumped in. “And if we didn’t see them or clean them up or whatever, she’d take them into the corner and tear them up and eat them there. That way she wouldn’t step in the mess later.”
“Wow,” Alex said, “I am really glad that I have a dog.”
Nicole was about to reply when she heard a noise. An empty box fell over in the corner, followed by a rustling noise. All three of them jumped with a yelp.
“Is anything wrong?” Kaitlyn yelled.
“No,” Nicole shouted, her heart racing. “We found the cat.” She turned to the boys. “Okay, the two of you. You have to shut up. If you don’t, the cat will run away and she will leave.”
“Don’t we want HIM to leave?” Alex asked. “Then we can know where HE came from?”
“Yeah, but—”
“Hey, Nicole?” Kaitlyn called.
“Ugh. David? If I shine the light back to the stairs, can you get there without falling down? Tell them they need to be quiet, unless something is actually wrong.”
“Yeah,” David said, looking back at the space they had just covered. “Sure. I am a basement expert after all.”
“Whatever. Just do it, okay?”
Nicole watched her brother dart back to the stairs, avoiding pillars, boxes, and mouse guts. When he got there, he gave her a thumbs up and headed up the stairs.
“Okay,” Nicole said, shining the light onto the pile of boxes, “I’m gonna hold the light, you go in there—”
“—and grab him,” Alex finished.
“Right,” Nicole said. “Just don’t hurt him, okay?”
“Hey. I love animals, okay? Why would I hurt the cat?” He moved toward the boxes.
“I don’t know!” Nicole said in a loud whisper. “I didn’t think you would, I just—”
“Nicole!” David whispered very loudly from the stairs. “Nicole?!”
“What?” Nicole whispered back. “I said be quiet!”
“They have the cat,” he whispered back, his voice cracking.
Nicole was confused. “What? Who has the cat?”
“Hannah and Kaitlyn,” he whispered, his breathing becoming heavy. “Upstairs. They have it.”
Nicole froze, staring back into the darkness that continued to engulf her brother. If the cat is upstairs. “Oh crap, crap, crap, crap!” she whispered. Slowly she turned her head back to the light, where Alex had just been standing.
It was just a pile of boxes. He was gone.
“Alex!” she screamed. “Where are you?!”
From the top of the stairs, she heard David, Hannah and Kaitlyn calling down, but it was just noise. She had to find Alex. If he got taken—or killed—by something, it’s my fault! Not again! She had to find him.
“Alex!” she screamed once more into the pile of boxes. She couldn’t move forward, afraid of
