It was a surprisingly lengthy stairwell, longer than they expected. The farther they walked down, the darker it got. The more rips, tears and blood stains they saw in the stairs and walls. The screams echoed less, and seemed to be right next to them.
They're hair stood on end, shivering about what could be down there. They turned a sharp corner to find a bit more stairs and then the ground floor again. Sally gulped. "I-I don't want to go down there. I don't belong here. I've been down here before, too, with Billy to do laundry, and I don't like Jeremy. Can't we go s-somewhere else?" she begged. Aimee hugged Sally, "We cannot, my sweet, you must hold my hand though." and so Sally did.
As soon as they stepped on the basement floor, they couldn't see anything but a flickering lamp illuminating the words "HELP ME" scribbled on the wall with black chalk, which was lying on the floor.
Next to a rotting corpse.
Sally let out a yelp, but Toast covered her mouth. They heard another scream, killing their eardrums. "If we don't stop him, our ears will stop working before our heart does," Toast cried. Aimee nodded. They carefully stepped around the skeletal body and looked down a hall. There were red handprints covering the walls, wallpaper peeling off and spiders coming out of the deep holes in the ground. It didn't smell very much, in fact Toast had realized there wasn't a scent. As they tiptoed through the corridor, they thought they heard distance cries coming from the walls. Children begging to be let out. Men crying and saying to not go further. It made even Toast chilled and scared. He couldn't imagine how Sally was feeling. He glanced at her, but she was emotionless. He saw some tears dropping down, but other than that, she was standing up straight and looking straight ahead. Aimee looked petrified.
After what seemed like an eternity of misery, they reached the bolted door leading to the lair of Jeremy Lincoln, the insane, lost half-brother of Papa Acachalla. "Uncle Jeremy is very scary. You shouldn't come in, I should go in and do it," Sally offered, shivering. Toast shook his head. "I have to see what we're dealing with," he said. 'Aimee, come with me too." She nodded. Toast pulled out a dull steak knife, modified with gripping, an electric handle, and other things; the ultimate lock picking tool. After a few short seconds, the rusty lock landed with a thud on the wooden floor, sending dust upward. Once again, Toast opened the door.
Cold air blasted his face, and the smell of death attacked his senses. He instantly shut the door again. He gagged. "That smell...What's in there, Sally?" he asked. She looked down. "That room he's in is the laundry room, where Billy and I washed Papa's undies. That might be the smell," she asked. Aimee smiled a little bit. But then Sally cringed. "Or the tons of dead animals and rotton foods we had to throw to Jeremy to stop him from crying and screaming," she said. Aimee grasped her mouth. Toast gulped.
"Got it, rotten food, dead things, good. Great." Toast pulled out from his pocked one of his radar devices. He clicked it on, and it started to beep. Slowly, he opened the great door and poked the device in. With a blast of beeps, the device broke, sending sparks flying everywhere. The smoking device fell to the ground. Toast looked down at it. "Oh my Lord," he said. "That's never happened before," he shuttered. He cracked his neck. "Alright, let's get this over with. Aimee, Sally, follow me," he said, flicking on a big flash light. He was scared to point it directly into the center of the room, so first he pointed it at the floor. He saw nothing but brown floor before hundreds of roaches started to trip and crawl over each other, scattering away from the light. He heard Aimee gasp. He choked down vomit reaching up from his stomach and took a step into the room. As he looked around with the flashlight, he saw animals of different kinds. Some were nothing but bone, some were half torn, meat taken from it. Some were mangy and stinky, untouched by Jeremy. But not a single one was alive. And even when Aimee said she thought one was alive, it was just bugs wriggling in and out of one. Toast tried to keep his eyes shut, but it was overall impossible. Sally was indeed disturbed, but she had obviously seen this before. In fact, suddenly, a dim light flickered on. Aimee looked over at Sally holding a rope in the corner of the room. "I made this light when I came in here last time. It doesn't make it so creepy," she said. But she was very wrong.
Now every sight, every feeling, and every smell was as worse as ever because Toast and Aimee could see it all. After fighting it back, finally Toast threw up in the corner. Without explaining details, the left side of the room had a table with broken glasses and cobwebs, next to it had three washing machines and a sink, which were all four not working. The right side had nothing on it but the mutilated mess of Jeremy's meals as well as a few rags which Toast figured to be Jeremy's bed. And in the front of the room was a large, iron gate with a torn section at the center. Toast looked at Sally. "Ready?" Sally nodded. She slowly opened the tall gate, looking inside. Her eyes widened. She looked at Aimee. "He's doing the thing he always does when he's not eating; sitting in the corner crying," Toast and Aimee started to hear it. It sounded like a warped version of a teen woman's cry, but it was very unearthly and unsettling. Finally, Aimee's curiosity piqued and she looked into the door. She looked solemn, but not disturbed. She looked at Toast. "Come and see," she said. "It's actually kind of...sad." Toast walked over and looked into the square room.
It was an almost empty room, filled with dark blood stains and some empty cans. But there, in the left corner of the room, was a dark figure. And Toast knew that he couldn't be human;
He was a dark, flickering black ghost-like man hunched over and fiddling with his hands, which looked like claws. He heard the crying again, and sometimes he would disappear and appear again in the corner, as if 'he' was a black lightbulb about to die. Aimee whispered, "This isn't a ghost, is it? You've said before he's more of an 'entity', as if somebody was supposed to go on but didn't, but wasn't in reality either. In between, in limba." she said. "Limbo," Toast said. "Between our reality and Hell."
"Ghost- er, Sir, he believes that ghosts like this one were filled with too much fury and torment that they couldn't deserve Hell or Heaven, and instead had to stay until their misery was corrected into peace." He looked at Aimee with both pity and disgust. "This man, this thing, has known nothing but shame, abuse, sadness, and solitude since he was born. Acachalla told me. When his parents got divorced, a new man got into the picture. He had a son, a deformed son, who was excruciatingly mental. Acachalla didn't say much, but he got this dark fear over his face that just told me that it was serious. That man's wife left him with the son, and big surprise, Acachalla's mother didn't want to live with that man anymore. Now that man didn't like that, so he...he killed Acachalla's mother, and 'adopted' him as his son. The man said he needed his son to have a friend, and Jeremy followed Acachalla ever since. The insanity got worse and worse, and when Acachalla had his own house, he finally locked him down here. This was his house, and this is the insane son. Jeremy Lincoln, brother of Scott Acachalla Lincoln. He was called Papa Acachalla by everyone because he wanted nothing to do with Jeremy. And now look," he said, pointing at Jeremy. Sally was now sitting by Jeremy, whispering to him. His voice was inaudible, warped mumbling. Sally looked over at Aimee and Toast. "He says you make him scared. Please step outside, he says. It's the only way we can get him out of here," she instructed. Jeremy looked at the two with glowing crimson eyes. Fierce as they looked, they felt like pain and suffering as well. Toast and Aimee gladly left the basement and waited outside for Sally to finish.
Almost an hour later, Sally had Jeremy by the hand outside in the night, walking out from the torn house. "As long as Jeremy is out in the world, it will be nightfall. It's a curse he's had for a long time. It is safe to move now, let's get him into that place," Sally said. Toast took Sally's other hand and Aimee's hand and walked along the dark street, to Casket's hideout. After all the ghost hunting Toast has done, this couldn't have shocked him more.
