Black drapes hung from every part of the room, mixing with the crimson drapes that covered the ceiling. Symbols covered the hangings, just a touch darker so they were just discernable. The room was unnaturally cold and Perry’s and Amanda’s breath hung in the air. All that was in the room was a single chair in the dead center of the room…no bed…no TV…even the light had been taken out. -----“What the F-“ _”Shhhhhhh”_ It was a command, not a request. A faint tinkling sound was coming from the room; as though crystals were lightly tapping together. Amanda said in an almost inaudible whisper: _”There’s something in here”_ -----“What?” Perry also spoke in a whisper. _”I don’t know…but I’m not sure we should stay in here any longer till we figure that out.”_ They slowly started to back out of the room, all the time the chiming sound getting louder. The drapes began to rustle though no air passed in the room. They quickened their pace. The drapes on the ceiling started sagging as though they were coming undone from their fasteners. When they stepped back through the door, it slammed shut; and in a bright glow of the door frame, resealed itself. They both stared blankly at the door. -----“So,” Perry was still whispering, “what do you think is in there?” Amanda shook her head. _”Whatever it was…it was dead.”_ -----“Like a ghost?” Perry sounded oddly amused. _”No…it wouldn’t be that simple…that tame. You saw all that crap all over the room…it was put there to keep something in. I’m guessing you noticed how cold it was? Charlie put something in there to keep everyone out.”_ -----“But why? If he knew ahead of time that we would have to get in there…” _”Then he knew that if he left information easy to find…then that information would be useless. Based on the symbols that I saw…something undead is in there. A wraith or maybe a vampire.”_ -----“Where the hell did he get something like that?” _”Don’t know, but whatever it was…it was sitting in that chair.”_ -----“There wasn’t anything in that chair…it was empty.” _”No, we just couldn’t see it.”_ Perry sighed…”That’s unnerving.” She grinned, _”No, that’s Charlie. We’ll start on, uh, debugging his room after we get some rest though. No sense in fighting the unknown if we’re too tired to defeat it.”_ -----“Yeah, I buy that. You’re room is still in the same place….mine is to.” With that, he hugged his sister and went to the couch in the den. Though it was only mid day, they both slept like rocks…it was a very uneasy sleep for both of them. It seems that their brief encounter in Charlie’s room had affected them worse than they thought. Dreams of shapeless creatures, the living darkness, unnamed terrors, plagued them both. After what seemed like many hours…or what could have been days, they both awoke and arrived back in the kitchen…a common meeting place in their day. Both tired and just as unnerved as the day before. _”Bad dreams?”_ -----“Yeah, when I actually slept.” _”What were they about?”_ -----“Not sure…just….bad things. Dark shapes…shimmers of ghosts…almost like a distant memory.” _”Like a hope that died…”_ Perry shivered. -----“Exactly.” _”Are all those old books still in the basement?”_ -----“Yeah, I don’t know how they’ll help though.” _”Let me worry about that.”_ Amanda pulled out her wand and walked over to a door in the corner of the room…but it was the oddest thing…had one not seen her open the door, one would swear that there was no door there. It was as if it only was there if you were going to open it….otherwise it was a plain bare wall. To descend these stairs is to know why the doorway was hidden. The stairs were wooden, rotten, steep….and only half there. Where stairs were missing, tongues of flame lapped out from the wall; forming an unrealistic and very sinister looking step. Shadows darker than the blackest night moved from corner to corner, staying just out of the light. It was hot, humid, soot hung in the air. You would think that you were descending straight into hell. The walls weren’t natural brick, if you looked hard enough. It looked as though someone traced over brickwork lightly in pencil…what appeared to be spines of books…thousands of books. Once the floor of the basement was reached, logic and physics failed. Stairs led off in all directions. Walls faded from brickwork to book spines to a black mass that showed other rooms. Some rooms only had walls, some only floors, wile others contained nothing but a void…a black hole contained it time. The floor here breathed and flexed; giant lungs…something was alive here. A sentient magik…older than what the druids had once tapped into…something so very ancient, only God could have known its name. The basement was infinite in size; though no bigger than the house above it, it stretched for miles. The horizon bent with the curve of the planet…whichever planet this place existed on. Windows in the ceiling showed a giant blue star; it took up an eighth of the sky. Doorways moved, stairways hid, and the floor still breathed. Existence here…was questionable. Amanda reached the bottom of the stairs…and it all went crazy….