Do Not Enter, Part 2

Continuation of “Do Not Enter”, which you can find en totem here.

Thanks for following along!

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Rose came back into the building, the dusty haze still lingering in the sun streaming through the windows.  She held a tiny, silver flashlight from her car’s glove box in one hand, her purse slung over the other.  She pointed the flashlight at her face and clicked the button.  A strong white beam stabbed her eyes.  She snapped it off, blinked the blue-white spot out of her vision, and moved toward the staircase shaft to the grinding sound of grit on the rough floorboard planks.  The thump of her soles on the age-hardened wood seemed deafening.

She set her purse down next to her, and stared at the staircase shaft.

The narrow hole was rough-hewn, perhaps three feet wide and four long.  It gaped from the cement beneath the planks of the floor where the work crew pulled up the rotted subfloor.  It looked like someone hacked it from the surrounding concrete with a pickaxe.  The rough edges were jagged, and the few steps she saw were primitive.  They ran across the shaft, the corners where the risers met the crumbling aggregate walls dust-clotted and piled with bits of stone.

The strangest aspect of the shaft came in the way the light wouldn’t reach the bottom.  She trained the powerful beam down the shaft, just above the stairs, but it dissipated and vanished where the light from the main chamber stopped.  Rose furrowed her brow.  It looked like the sunlight and flashlight hit a wall of dark and couldn’t go any farther.

Rose took a halting step down onto the first stair.  Then another.  A third.  The shaft swallowed her to the shoulders, but the light would not illuminate more than she could already see.  Her shadow blotted out everything, leaving the dimmest shapes below.

She lowered herself to the next step.  She stood two steps from the light-consuming wall.  She pointed the beam at her palm and it lit strong enough to shine through the web of reddish skin between thumb and forefinger.  She screwed her face up, and pointed the light back down the shaft.

It died in a diffused fuzz a few steps down.

Rose aimed it at the steps, but the beam didn’t show anything.  The light didn’t reach them.

“All right, that’s just weird.”  The sound of her whisper scared her.

She edged another step down.

Her form blocked most of the light from above now.  Through the gloom of her shadow she made out the stairs between her and that black curtain a few inches beyond.

She swallowed, but her dry mouth resisted, until she forced the muscles in her throat to push down the knot lumped there.  She turned back.

The square of light above her seemed small, a notebook-sized cut out of brightness in a sea of dark.  She jumped at the distance.  She didn’t remember moving so far down the shaft.

Something thrummed under her feet, around her.  The air seemed to pulse with a vibration she felt but couldn’t pinpoint.  A throb, like distant heavy machinery.  She held the flashlight at arm’s length.

Again, the beam died; this time about two inches from the end of the light quivering in her shaking hand.

Rose swiveled her head back to the light at the top of the shaft.

It was the size of an index card, a white, glazed patch far above her.

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