“Please! Don’t take me there!” the girl cries, heart breaking at the sight of the door before her.
“Shut the fuck up or you will end up buried alive. Do you get that, sweet Naya?”
The door opens with a sound that pierces through her body like a gunshot, and the scream tearing from her is worse than when she saw her mother all bloodied after she’d killed her.
I shudder through the memory, staring at the basement before me. I remember it as clearly as if I’d seen it yesterday. The memory of it is etched on my mind like a permanent scar—the walls, the smell of something rotten, mold, and the oppressive air. The need to hide from it pushes into my mind with a nauseating urgency. Shivers wrack my body, dancing like the devil’s death down my spine from moments I never want to experience again.
This basement was a bunker, safe and secure from outside forces above the earth, but it was also a torture chamber where the doll master punished the disobedient dolls.
Not surprisingly, the basement has been spared, its stone walls as intact as they were the last time I was here. The air is thick with the faint smell of soot, a lingering reminder of the flames that ravaged the manor.
By some miracle, the walls are only blackened in some places from where the fire must have heated the surface, turning it a darker color. Yet it still stands firm—a stark contrast to the remaining manor.
The floor is damp and cold, a mix of packed earth and concrete, with ash and debris from above having settled in patches. The terror claws at my throat in a suffocating grip, feeling as though skeletal fingers are encircling my neck, tightening with every breath, wanting to devour me.
As always, a pervasive sense of dread fills this place, as ifsomething evil and horrific lurks deep within the walls, waiting to come forth.
“Do you feel that?” I ask Grey breathlessly.
Grey looks at me, a burdened expression on his face, as if he, too, can feel whatever horrors stains these walls.
He stays silent for a while until he nods solemnly. “We need to start looking. We shouldn’t be here by nightfall.”
Agreed—Grimhill Manor always was eerie in the middle of the night. I imagine it to be even more so when the house is a fallen building, not existing, yet its horror still lingering.
The basement is rather big, with metal shelves hanging on the walls on the other side, and a large desk pushed up against the far corner. It’s partially covered in soot, and the chair before it looks as if it’s seen better days.
I gulp harshly as I see the mattress leaning against the wall, more dirtied and full of dust than the last time I saw it. Closing my eyes, I brace myself for the memories.
“If someone disobeyed, they were sometimes forced to stay down here for days without food or water, sleeping on that mattress until they were welcomed back to civilization again.”
That hardened look crosses Grey’s expression again, and I know it’s hard for him to hear what horrors occurred here. Even the strongest souls would find it difficult.
I move toward one of the shelves, seeing a collection of old, leather-bound books with spines nearly falling off. What’s even worse is the collection of jars filled with a mysterious substance stacked beside them. They weren’t there the last time I was forced into this basement.
Slimy and green, it looks like something taken right out of a Frankenstein scene. I bite back my disgust, wondering why the fuck Frederick had anything like that.
“Do you see this?”
Grey comes closer, approaching the substances. “What thehell is that?” His tone drops an octave, tinged with revulsion.
He picks up one of the jars, inspecting the liquid closer in the dim sunlight filtering through the crack in the metal door. It sloshes around as he lifts it up, clinging to the sides of the glass as if it’s aware of us.
“It looks like some kind of chemical,” he observes.
“Why would Frederick keep something like that?”
The answer settles deep within me like a serrated blade; that perhaps Fredrick didn’t just orchestrate the monthly, deadly games for the children, but he also experimented on them.
Suddenly, the lukewarm weather outside and the unsettling woods seem to grow even more sinister, as if a chilling arctic wind has sailed in from the ocean to break into the basement, seeping through the walls with an icy dread.
I leave Grey to observe the jars and approach the desk, noticing the stacks of papers on it. Frederick never had any important documents visible when the children were around—he must have been here on the same day he met his ultimate fate at the hands of an unknown man.
Leather-bound journals stacked haphazardly catch my eye, and while some texts are unreadable, most aren’t. The handwriting is scrawly and erratic, revealing a truth more disturbing than I could ever imagine. Dread slithers through me like a snake as I pick up one of the journals, its pages nearly falling down from their weary age. I inspect them, feeling their light weight in my hand, yet something settles deep in me as I open the first journal, scanning my eyes over the first passage.
Observation 101.
“Augustus—a child of seven years old—reacted nonsensically after observing him in isolation for forty-eight hours. Observation remains to be funded.”
