Free Phobic by Cortney Pearson

down through a haze of dust and the gaping hole in my floor. It’s dark; I can hardly see his outline on the ground at least fifteen feet in the basement below. Arms quivering, I gape around the once-again calm room.
    The floor
opened up.
Bared its jaws and swallowed him. Beads of sweat slick beneath my clothes.
    “Ugh,” he grunts in response. I jerk to my feet. A grunt—that means he’s alive. Oh my gosh, I just had that thought. At least he’s
alive
?
    I dart past the hole, nearly tripping on the pile of capsized books, and make my way through the landing. I pause at Joel’s door, half expecting him to open it. He had to have heard
something
. I should go to him, get his help. But the last thing I want is to admit Todd snuck in—or that he’s now in one of the places we’ve been forbidden to go.
    I’ll just get Todd and boot him out. Joel will never need to know.
    I round past the entryway and Dad’s library just down from it, through the archway into the kitchen, until I make it to the door across from the china hutch. To the stairs leading to the basement.
    Designs etch and swirl on the door’s surface, mocking my thoughts, taunting me. I take in waves of ragged breaths while Dad’s rules spin in my brain, along with that confusing apology he’d given me just after shoving me against the wall.
    “I’m sorry about earlier,” Dad had said, pushing his glasses up. “I’d like to show you what’s down here, just once. That way you’ll never have the desire to come down and see for yourself.” He knelt again. “I meant what I said, Piper. After today, don’t ever go down here. Ever.”
    I nodded and took his hand. Together we climbed down the steps. We stayed along the walls, never venturing into the rooms, though he took me to each mostly empty space, flipping on lights. His palm slicked mine with sweat, and though his grip pinched my fingers, I sensed his unease and held tight, as if the second I let go I’d be swallowed up in whatever he feared down there.
    Wiping my palms on my jeans now, I stare at the narrow, carved door, at the low brass knob that reaches the level of my hip instead of the easy level of modern doorknobs. The idea of Dad’s rules dumps cold all over me, especially because I’m about to break the first one.
    No going into the basement.
    But I have to help Todd.

    The door gives off a lazy whine. I stand at the brink, staring down the wooden flight of steps. While the rest of my house looks as perfectly preserved as the day it was built, the basement is dusted with cobwebs and has a musty smell. The air chills instantly, and I place my foot on that first stair. It gives a little under my weight.
    I can’t do this. I
have
to do this.
    “Todd?” I call. Each step I take only hitches my lungs higher in my throat. We never dug for a basement when we moved the house. One day it was just there.
    The large room is exactly how I remember it. Bare, except for the old iron stove. Dark and dank, the concrete floor riddled with cracks like lines on a map. My fingers make a slow journey down the banister. I wait for the house to do something else, to ward me away. But my heart flapping in my chest is the only thing moving right now.
    I reach for the metal chain and click the naked light bulb on. It swings, shifting a dull, yellow glow around the low-ceilinged, damp space. A single set of wooden shelves resides at the far end, supporting nothing but an old pair of metal roller skates, the kind people used to tie to their shoes. The kettle-black, wrought iron stove looms in the corner, and my chest seizes. Like I’m afraid it will come to life.
    Aside from mold covering the walls, a black shaft peeks in the opposite corner. The space surrounding it is stained black as well, and I realize what it is. An old coal chute.
    The simple room branches off and leads to more darkness in the right-hand section of my house, completely shadowed like a cave. It’s the segment that would be beneath my