Sometimes Falling isn't Down

Chapter 10

The door glided open without a hitch, sweeping over the rug toward you like the long trail of a ballgown, barely making a sound as it went. Some part of you had expected it to be locked, but there didn't even seem to be a latch to lock it.

A thick darkness blanketed the stairwell, the steps stretching lower and lower into the gloom. The basement couldn't really be that far below the ground, but even the bright light spilling around you from the hallway couldn't reach the bottom, making it appear to have no ending at all. Your shadow and the shadows of the twins draped down the stairs, the tops of your heads mixing in with the murky abyss and disappearing, like they were being swallowed up, the darkness laying in wait like a beast hiding in a shrub until it had the chance to consume the rest.

Flashes of shadowed hands stretching towards you and pulling you helplessly down into the suffocating obscurity made you lurch back, inadvertently smacking directly into Mabel.

"Ouch!" Mabel cried out, yanking her hand free of yours and reaching up to rub her nose. She looked at you through a scrunched eye, "What's wrong?"

The images fizzled away. You shook your head, suddenly embarrassed a little darkness was able to get to you so effectively. You weren't a kid anymore. The darkness was just darkness. A lack of light. Not a living creature waiting to eat you up.

"Sorry." You turned your attention to the walls, searching for a lightswitch, but there didn't seem to be one on either side of the doorway.

So you took your backpack off and pulled your flashlight out, pointing it down the stairwell and pressing it on. The beam sliced a thin line through the shadows, reaching the bottom with relative ease, revealing the final steps lay not far from where the dark met the light.

See. You knew the basement couldn't be that far.

Mabel's hand still held her nose when you glanced back, but at your look, she nodded along with Dipper and you nodded back. You stepped into the stairwell and they followed after, Dipper pulling the door closed as the last one through, shutting the light out with it.

The three of you followed the flashlights beam down, your footsteps making little noise on the carpeted stairs. You'd barely reached the bottom when the flashlight flickered, then all but died. You pressed the button a couple times, then smacked it a few more, trying to jostle it back to life, but it was determined to sleep at the most inopportune moment, refusing to even consider lasting a little longer. You smacked it one more time with a frustrated grunt before yanking your bag back off and digging around in it blindly.

"...Did it die?" Dipper asked.

You nodded. It took you much longer than it should have before you realized he couldn't see it.

"Yeah, but I have some extra batteries, just gimme a second to find them." You shuffled around the bigger things you could recognize right away, but your smaller belongings were harder to identify just by touch. Keeping so many things on you usually kept you ready for anything, but right now you were beginning to regret your preparedness- or at least your lack of organization that went along with it.

Once you made it out of here, you'd have to buy some textured stickers or something so you could tell what was what right away through touch and sight- maybe even buy some scented stickers so you could tell by smell too, just in case.

Something thumped, then began to shuffle against the wall not far from your head and you spasmed, clutching your bag to your chest and whirling towards the sound, but your heart quitting its job didn't suddenly grant you space for night vision in your toolbox of bodily functions.

Before you could start throwing punches or try to launch yourself back up the stairs, Mabel spoke up from the same spot.

"I'll see if I can find the lightswitch!"