Young Writers Society

word count: 1232

Chapter 2

Van

Theo and I tumbled into the darkness below.

There was nothing to grab onto as we fell; nothing could slow us down. Even if there had been something to grab, our hands were so wet from the downpour that we probably wouldn’t been able to get a grip. 

I wasn’t sure how long we were falling. I knew it couldn’t have been all that long, but it felt like it lasted an eternity. There was something about not knowing what was waiting for us at the very bottom that made me wish the fall would never end.

But then we landed on cold, hard stone in a tangled mess of limbs, mud, and rain pouring down from the opening up above us.

I let out a low groan as I tried to get myself free. Theo, still stunned by the fall, took a little bit longer to realize how much of a mess we were in. After some scrambling, pushing on my part, and fumbling for a phone to use as a source of light, the two of us finally managed to get to our feet again.

I looked at where we had fallen.

A stone corridor, its ceiling supported by spiraling stone pillars, stretched out before us. When Theo held his phone’s flashlight up, I could just barely make out a door at the end of the darkness. But it barely held my gaze. Instead, I found myself staring, transfixed, at the spirals holding up the ceiling. They felt familiar, but I couldn’t figure out how. My gaze shifted. I couldn’t help but catch a glimpse of hieroglyphic-esque designs carved onto the walls.

My hand hovered over a carving of two men standing face-to-face: the first bowing his head, and the second extending an almost cartoonish drawing of a heart.

I was suddenly blinded by a flash of light.

I spun around, fire in my eyes as I gave Theo and his flashlight an accusing look. “What was that for?” I demanded.

“I was trying to call your name for the past minute,” he said, lowering the phone. “You wouldn’t look away from the wall. You didn’t even react when I tried shaking your shoulder.”

I glanced back at the design. “I barely looked at it.”

“You looked at it for almost five minutes,” he argued.

I rolled my eyes. Before he could interrupt me further, I stretched my hand out and pressed my palm against the carving. I didn’t know why I did it then; it just felt like the right thing to do. Warmth - and light - immediately flooded the corridor as the carvings began to glow an eerie light blue.

Theo took a step back.

Hand gliding across the surface of the carvings, I started walking down the corridor. My boots clicked against the worn stone floor. I was halfway towards the door at the very end of the corridor when I realized I could only hear one set of footsteps. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw Theo was still lingering near the hole we had fallen through.

“I’m not sure we should be going towards that door,” Theo pointed out. “We don’t know what any of these carvings mean.”

I raised an eyebrow. “You think it’s cursed or something?”

“Or has some kind of trap,” Theo clarified. I didn’t see much of a difference, but he must have thought the distinction was important to make.

I glanced back at the door.

“What’s the worst that could happen?” I asked. I pulled my hand away from the wall and started walking towards the end of the corridor again. “We’re already dead.”

Theo, naturally, didn’t have a good reply for that. Giving a smirk he could no longer see, I finally reached the door. I rested my hand on the metal doorknob and gave it a squeeze. Just as the door’s spirals started to glow, I heard Theo rush over to my side.

The door was old; it gave a loud, resounding creak as the two of us pressed our hands against it. It was so noisy that whatever was in the room scurried off deeper into the inky darkness. I squinted to make out the scurrying’s source (and tried to ignore the disgusted, fearful expression that flickered across Theo’s face) but it was too dark to make out anything more than a few feet in front of me.

I reached a hand out for the wall again. If I was lucky, the same thing that had turned the lights back on in the corridor would turn on the lights here.

“You shouldn’t do that,” Theo said from beside me.

I stared back at him, hand still trying to find the wall. “I’m trying to help us see.”

“You don’t know what you might touch. Let’s use my phone’s flashlight instead,” he insisted. He held up the phone for emphasis, but it decided to eerily start flickering instead. At first, I thought it was just his battery going. But Theo looked so terrified when the light suddenly shut off that I couldn’t help but stop my searching.

“What?” I demanded.

He slowly looked over at me.

“...I charged my phone this morning,” Theo whispered.

“So?” I said. “Maybe its battery got killed with us.”

He shook his head. Crossing my arms, I waited for an explanation. Theo didn’t say anything. He just held up his phone in front of my face and showed me the screen. It took me a second to see what he was trying to show, but then I caught a glimpse of the battery icon in the corner.

It was an almost full battery.

...On a completely new phone.

“So you’re having technical issues,” I said. “Big deal. The phone shouldn’t even be with us in the first place, so we should be thankful it lasted as long as it did.”

Theo peered into the darkness. “What if it’s a…”

He faltered, teeth chattering.

“A ghost?” I finished, scoffing. My fingertips were starting to hurt a little, but I didn’t think much of it. “Don’t be stupid. We’re ghosts. Or almost ghosts, anyways. It’s not like we have to worry about other dead people-”

My breath was forming in the air.

I had thought Theo was just getting scared for no reason, but if his teeth were chattering and I could see my breath, then…

This was a ghost.

But I couldn’t see a ghost with the room like this, and it certainly wasn’t talking. I moved a little closer to Theo, hoping to shield the ghost from him and him from the ghost. As I scanned the darkness once more for some kind of hint, I felt a hand grab onto my arm.

I spun around to see Theo tightly gripping my forearm. His grasp was so tight that I could feel his shaking fingers digging into my skin. The other hand was pointing just right behind me. I hadn’t told Theo about the creepier of the ghosts - the ones that were pale imitations of who they had been when they were alive. If he was this terrified and the ghost was this silent, it had to be one of those guys.

I slowly turned.

There was a person made of shadows right behind me.

And when I wildly looked back at Theo, there was one behind him, too.