groaned for a second, then gave way. A moment later, two more boards lay on the ground at the boy’s feet.
The boy reached out and grasped the padlock. He paused, knowing that if it gave way, he would then be committed to go inside.
He took a deep breath, tightened his grip, and twisted.
The rusted hasp held for a moment, then broke loose. The lock, free from the door it had guarded so long, lay in the boy’s hand. He stared at it for several long seconds, almost wishing he had left it in place.
Then, struggling against a strange fear he could feel growing within him, the boy pushed the door open and squirmed through the gap left by the three planks he had torn away.
For a moment the deep shadows blinded him, but then his eyes adjusted to the dim light of the interior, and he looked around.
Inside, the building seemed even larger than it looked from the outside, and emptier.
Except, the boy realized, it didn’t feel empty at all.
Somewhere, he was certain, there was someone—or something—lurking within these walls, waiting for him.
Almost against his will, his eyes began exploring the old building. Emptiness stretched away in all directions, and far above him, just visible in the shadowed light that barely penetrated the immense space, the tangled iron struts supporting the roof seemed to reach down to him, as if trying to grasp him in their skeletal arms.
In the silence, the boy could hear the pounding of his own heart.
Suddenly a cacophony of sound filled the enormous building, and the boy felt a scream rising in his throat. He choked it back at the last second, then forced himself to look up.
A flock of pigeons, frightened by the boy’s intrusion, had burst from their nests and now wheeled beneath the roof. As the boy watched, they began settling once more into their nests.
Seconds later, silence once more cast an eerie spell over the vast emptiness.
The boy gazed into the gloom, and saw, far away at the back of the building, the top of a flight of stairs.
Beneath him, then, was not simply a solid floor. Below this floor, there was a basement.
The stairs seemed to beckon to him, to demand that he come and explore that which lay beneath.
The boy’s heart began pounding once more, and a cold sweat broke out on his back.
Suddenly he could stand the silence no longer.
“No! I won’t!”
His voice, far louder than he had intended, echoed back to him, and once again the pigeons milled madly among the rafters, fluttering in confusion. Gasping, the boy shrank back against the reassuring solidity of the brick wall.
But when the silence came once more, the compelling fascination of those downward-leading stairs gripped him once again. He forced his fear down. Slowly, he began moving toward the back of the building.
He had moved only a few yards when suddenly the boy felt his skin crawl.
Something, he was certain, was watching him.
He tried to ignore it, keeping his eyes on the far wall, but the strange sensation wouldn’t go away.
The hair on the back of his neck was standing up now, and he could feel goose bumps covering his arms. He could stand it no longer, and whirled around to face whatever was behind him.
Nothing.
His eyes searched the semidarkness, looking for something—anything!
The vast expanse seemed empty.
And then, once again, the hair on the back of his neck stood up, and his spine began to tingle.
He whirled once more. Once more there was nothing.
Yet something seemed to fill the emptiness, seemed to surround him, taunt him.
He should never have come inside. He knew that now, knew it with a certainty that made his blood run cold.
But now it was too late. Now there was no turning back.
Far away, and seeming to recede into the distance, he could barely make out the small rectangle of brightness that marked the door he had come through only a few minutes before.
The door was too far away.
It seemed as if he had been in the mysterious gloom forever, and already, dimly, he began to understand that he was never going to leave.
There was something here—something that wanted him.
Charged with the inexorable force of his own imagination, he moved once more toward the vortex that was the stairwell.
He paused at the top of the stairs, peering fearfully into the blackness below. He wanted to turn now, and run away, run back toward that distant speck of light, and the daylight beyond.