November 1st

Night 0

It strikes you oddly when you enter the parlor to see Billy slouched against the front door.

He's still. His arms are limp at his sides. His eyes are blank, the bundle of red yarn matted to his head. What unnerves you, though, is how his chin is tucked into his frilly collar as if he's fallen asleep.

You walk with small steps from the dining room hall to the couch and pull your knees up to your chest. Billy is far scarier when he's still than when he's moving. It makes you think he'll pop awake one day and snap your neck. You wonder if he decided to fall asleep against the door, or if he was propped up there by the rabbit to keep you from leaving.

You rest your chin on your knees and stare at him. "Keep," was the phrase they used here and there. You suppose that's Billy's job: to keep the child where they should be. Keep them from leaving. You suppose he's designed to lure them in. Maybe he's a comfort to them. You remember thinking that clowns were all right as a child; now you only find them disturbing.

Billy is small potatoes compared to Witch and the rabbit, though. You appreciate that he hasn't tried to lie, hurt or cheat you thus far. You chalk that up to the fact that he barely does anything at all.

You curl up tighter and assure yourself that Billy won't hurt you. At least, not unless you try to leave. Why does seeing him drawn up at the door frighten you so much?

The rabbit has gone upstairs again. It'll let you know when it's time for you to go back to the cellar. For now, you can roam—though you can feel a sharpness in its stare these days when it ushers you down, almost like a warning. You know what it's hiding. It knows you know. It looks at you with that shrewd, unspoken understanding, and you know you've hardly won anything.

Tonight, you think you'll go down the black hallway again. Not into the kitchen, god, no. It's probably locked a thousand times over after your little break-in. You think of the other doorway you passed before the corner. Yes. One more room to scratch off.

You stand up from the couch and ignore Billy's looming presence as you approach the hall. You can't help but feel like you've forgotten something.

As you're about to walk in, something zips out past you and you stagger back from the doorway.

TVA beelines to the rose wallpaper and takes a sharp right just when he's about to crash, making for the hall that leads to the cellar. You catch your breath and take a tentative step back towards the doorway. That was probably it. You enter the hall.

You still rely on feeling along the wall to know where you're going in the pitch black. When you bump into the strip of door casing about ten feet down, your fingers cling to it.

You reach past it and try to find the door attached. Your hand waves through thin air, a dim red light catching on your palm. You can see your hand.

You blink and poke your head past the casing. It takes a few seconds to adjust your eyes, but you can see the inside of the room. Wooden tables line the wall opposite you, two square ones by the walls on either side. Resting on them are shallow plastic trays. Lamps of varying kinds stand scattered about the tables. Some are switched on, emanating that faint red light, while the two glass ones on the side tables are off.

Strung to the far wall are clothespins, holding photos that are too cloaked in darkness to discern. Of course. It's a darkroom.

You walk in hesitantly and approach the trays lining the wall. They're filled halfway with some kind of thin liquid—it looks like water, but you have to doubt that—and they're all labeled by the pair, in messy capital letters:

"DEV."

"STOP."

"FIX."

The trays on the two tables on either side of the room are blank. As you walk along the wall, you notice two photos submerged in what must be the developer. You can see a trace of their negatives, but barely more than that. You lean closer to the one on the left.