Prompt: Unusual Location

This was another prompt short story swap - the prompt was to write a story set in an unusual location.

Marla and Dave stood in the entryway of their new home. Well, ‘new’ being a completely relative term of course. It hadn’t been new in over a hundred years, and possibly hadn’t even been anyone’s home for nearly a decade.

“It would have been nice if they’d cleaned it a little.” Marla sighed.

“Well, they did remove that junk pile from out the front.”

“True.”

Marla looked around the vast foyer. The setting sun cast dull orange patterns on the floor and highlighted every dust mote swirling through the room. The tendrils of musty uninhabited cobwebs dangled eerily from the architraves. They wandered further into the house.

“Oh, I love this.” Marla whispered gleefully. She skipped to the doorway of a storage cupboard built under the wide staircase. “This is so cute; we could pretend we’re in Harry Potter.”

“What?” Dave furrowed his brow in confusion.

Marla rolled her eyes. “You know, Harry Potter lived under the stairs.”

“I thought Harry Potter lived in Hogsbreath.”

“No, silly, that’s Hogwart’s but before that, he lived under the stairs.”

“Oh, how silly of me.”

Marla smiled cheekily.

“Let’s go in.”

“I really don’t think that’s a very good idea. I’m going to need an antihistamine just from standing here.”

Marla yanked open the door with all her strength. It made a loud groan of defiance, then swung out suddenly. The air in the dark space was cold and stale, and considerably less dusty than the rest of the house. The jagged edges of the staircase’s underbelly formed the steep ceiling and three empty shelves adorned the opposite wall, which was unpainted, unpapered and about four feet in front of the door. She took Dave’s resisting hand and pulled him in.

She reached out and pulled the door closed; it clicked back into position without a struggle.

“Oh, wow, it’s so dark in here. I can’t even see my hand.” She could feel the movement of the air as she waved her hand in front of her face. “If I ever become a vampire, I could totally sleep in here during the day.”

Dave sighed. “Remind me to make you a list of books you should read.”

“Why? I’ve got plenty of books.”

“I’m talking about ones that aren’t stupid.”

“This room is so cool. I want to make it into something really fun – but if you don’t watch out – it might just become your bedroom.”

Dave leaned over and kissed Marla in apology. He missed his mark slightly in the dark, and in landed on her eyeball, but the intention was clear.

“Alright, let’s get out of here before we suffocate.” Dave reached for the door handle; Marla could hear his hand sliding around on the wood as he searched for its location. She heard the metallic rattling as he grasped the knob. Then she heard a thump and clamour as the knob came loose and clattered to the floor.

They both crouched wordlessly to the floor hands sliding around in pursuit of the door knob. Twice they banged their heads together and at one point, Marla tried to pick up Dave’s foot , but eventually, Dave found the old hardware and spent what seemed like another stretch of eternity trying to find the hole it came loose from.

“It’s not working.” He finally said after about ten minutes of swearing, grunting and thumping on the door.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I can get it back in the hole, but it won’t catch – I can’t make it turn properly.”

“Can’t we just break the door down?” So that tried that for a few minutes, to no avail.

“Maybe this was where they kept the naughty children.” Marla joked.

“Maybe it’s where they stored the dead bodies.” Dave replied grimly.

“Wow, and you think I’m the one who needs to read some new books.”

Marla felt her way around the room, getting a few painful splinters in her fingertips in the process.

“Hey.” She said suddenly, “there’s something loose here.” She felt around the rectangular panel in the tallest wall of the room.  “I think it’s got hinges.”

Marla and Dave poked, pulled and wiggled the loose panel until it silently swung away from them revealing a space that was much narrower than a hallway, but wider than the space between two walls has ever needed to be.

It was dustier than the cupboard under the stairs, but less so than the rest of the house. There was a small amount of visibility, on account of the cracks in the upstairs floorboards. Marla slid into the gap sideways and shuffled along until there was room enough for Dave to join her. Although Dave was twice as heavy as his wife, the space was wide enough to accommodate him – not comfortably, but enough that he could shuffle alongside her without fear of becoming stuck.

“What are we doing?” Something about the area made a whisper seem more appropriate than his regular speaking voice.

“Well, we’ll follow this along until we find a way out.”

“And if we don’t?”

“Well, I’m sure when we find the killer’s lair, there’ll be a shovel or a pitchfork or something and we’ll hack our way back into the house, Mr Eternal Pessimist.”

“How on Earth can you expect me to be an optimist in the circumstances?”

They shuffled awkwardly further towards the rear of the house and came upon an intersection; the only option, however, was the path to the left. The path to the right, (aside from being almost entirely occupied with cobwebs) was only about six inches wide; so they manoeuvred themselves clumsily around the right-angle. As they followed this path along, and the light outside faded, so too did the light in the passage.

“Marla, stop.” Dave suddenly reached out his right arm and grabbed Marla left shoulder. “I can’t even see you anymore. I think we should go back. Who knows where we are.”

“I think we’re behind the kitchen.”

Just as Marla turned to face Dave, there came a thump that rattled the walls around them.

“What was that?” Whispered Dave.

“The back door?”

Now she could hear what sounded like heavy boots walking across the floor alongside them. It sounded as though about three of four men had walked into the kitchen through the back door.

The men must have been barely six feet in front of where Marla and Dave stood. The voices sounded muffled and distant, but were loud enough to be understood clearly.

“So where is this stuff?”

“Dunno, Ray said it was inside the house somewhere – start looking.”

“You sure no one’s here?”

“ ’Course I’m sure – I told you the new owners are supposed to turn up in the morning.”

Marla and Dave were supposed to arrive the following morning, they’d planned on spending the night in a motel in town and arriving at first light to assess what work needed to be done. Since they’d checked into the motel earlier than expected, they decided to go for a walk through the tiny township and have a quick glimpse at the house, before finding somewhere affordable to eat dinner.

At the thought of food, Marla’s stomach growled at her but all she could think was thank goodness we didn’t leave the car out front. That was followed by a more horrible thought.

“Did we shut the front door?” Her whisper was barely a breath, but Dave had obviously heard her, since he shrugged his shoulders uncertainly.

They could hear doors slamming around the kitchen and some of the footsteps moved to other areas of the house. They could hear at least one set tramp its way upstairs.

Marla and Dave both jumped, startled when a voice shouted from directly in front of them.

“I found the guns.” The sound of heavy fabric being pulled along wood sounded as though it was right under their feet.

A distant muffled voice from upstairs yelled back something that sounded like “Keep your voice down you idiot.”

The men stomped around the house opening and slamming doors of all sizes, some opened easily, some sounded as though they were resisting the assault of the intruders. The few large pieces of furniture that remained were dragged out of their positions and rummaged through. A deafening bang directly above their head told them that the enormous wardrobe in the master bedroom had been tipped over.

The men molested the house for over an hour. At no point did they indicate the discovery of the room beneath the stairs. As the time passed, Marla and Dave both began to shift uncomfortably, their ankles, knees and backs burnt with the agony of standing still for so long. They didn’t dare move an inch, though. The conversation between the men was scant, but when they did speak, the tones became increasingly more tense and aggressive.

Eventually, they could hear mumbling on the first floor. The men must have been in the entryway, or the living area off the foyer. Marla and Dave could not hear the words, but they could hear the tension in the voices increase until all four shouting voices drowned each other out.

The voices stopped abruptly at the deafening sound of gunshots. Marla felt the blood run from her body and she became icy cold. After a few minutes she inhaled deeply and wondered whether she’d been holding her breath the entire time.

Just when the silence was becoming unbearable, the thumps around the house resumed, someone was walking laboriously back and forward between the back door and the front room.

The sound of a car engine starting brought the couple back into reality and Marla realised her face was saturated with the clammy moisture of sweat and the salty wetness of tears.

“What do we do?” She whispered.

“We have to go back.” Dave replied.

“We can’t, they didn’t open the door; we have to keep looking for a way out.”

They kept on the way they were going, the floor suddenly began to descend and wind steeply until they realised they were well below the floorboards of the house.

“I can’t see a bloody thing” Dave whispered hoarsely.

“The walls are gone now; we must be in a room of some kind.”

“Maybe there’s a light.” They both felt around the walls near where the hallway ended until Dave kicked his toe on an old dolphin torch.

It still worked, barely; but the dirty, dim orange light was enough to see around the tiny room. The walls seemed to be bare packed earth, the ceiling was not the floorboards above as they’d expected, but rather, more compacted dirt; and the dimensions were about half that of the average bathroom. Sitting boldly in the middle of the room was a dusty old suitcase, probably navy blue, but it was hard to tell in this weak light. Beside the suitcase was a dirty step ladder and in the middle of the ceiling, a wooden square that could only be a trapdoor.

Dave pulled the ladder directly below the hatch and banged on the door with the outside of his fist, covering his eyes to avoid having them fill with dust and debris. The door gave way and opened upward, banging on the ground above. Dave pulled himself through the gap, then laying on his stomach, reached down into the room. Marla passed the old suitcase up before climbing out of the hole herself.

They found themselves in an old shed behind the house; they took a brief look inside the suitcase and walked out of the building into the night. The stars were bright and the moon was full, and although there were no street lights in this part of town, compared to where they’d been for the last few hours, they squinted against the brightness.

They walked back to their motel, hand in hand agreeing to go straight to the real estate the following morning to put the house back on the market.

And while they waited for it to sell, they would be able to live quite comfortably on the suitcase of cash in Dave’s left hand.