Free Evil Behind That Door by Barbara Fradkin

CHAPTER ONE
    â€œD on’t touch that!” Barry Mitchell hissed.
    His breath was hot on my neck.
    I jerked my hand back from the door and turned to him. He looked like a ghost, all bug-eyed and white. But maybe that was the light. There were no windows in the basement and the light from the bare bulb hanging at the foot of the stairs didn’t reach the corner. You watch enough horror movies, it doesn’t take much imagination.
    â€œWhat’s in there?” I asked.
    He shook his head wildly. “I don’t know.”
    â€œWhat do you mean, you don’t know? You grew up here!”
    Barry Mitchell and I were a long way from being friends. But I’d known him for thirty years, ever since he laughed at my name on the first day of kindergarten. My mother hadn’t done me any favors with Cedric Elvis O’Toole.
    I’d never seen Barry afraid before though. Usually he didn’t have the sense to be afraid.
    Still, I suppose he had a right to be freaked. He’d just spent two years inside Kingston Pen for assault. He’d been home just a few weeks when all of a sudden his parents disappeared in the middle of a snowstorm. The police hounded him with questions every day for a month. Then came the estate lawyers, and they’re not the most cuddly guys in town either. Even now, two months later, folks are still whispering.
    â€œI never went in there,” Barry said. His eyes were fixed on the door.
    â€œWhy not?” I ran the beam of my flashlight over the door, an ugly old pine slab that had never seen a coat of paint. It was wedged into the rough stone blocks of the basement wall and welded shut with cobwebs. It looked like it hadn’t been touched in a hundred years. The Mitchell farmhouse was even older than mine, probably built in the 1850s. Who knew how long this door had been here and what was on the other side?
    A secret tunnel? A time capsule?
    I thought of my own basement, dark, spooky and smelling of rotten earth. A magnet for a kid with a big imagination and too much time on his hands. As a kid I would have been through this door in a flash.
    But Barry just shook his head. He was already backing up, heading for the stairs. That’s when I saw the crowbar in his hands. He looked too, and seemed surprised to find it there. He laid it down on the workbench.
    â€œForget it, Rick. We done enough for today. Let’s go grab a beer.” Then he was up the stairs two at a time and out of sight.
    I shoved the door, but it didn’t budge. I threw my weight against it. Nothing. Now, I’m only five ten and one fifty after two beers and a plate of wings. But most of that is muscle. Besides paying the bills, handyman work keeps you in shape.
    This door was going to be a challenge.
    Barry was done half his beer by the time I reached the kitchen. I took the one he held out. I’m not a big drinker, especially at one o’clock in the afternoon. But when Barry Mitchell offers, you go along.
    He grinned, trying to shrug off his nerves. “I don’t know why I gotta fix the leaks down there anyway. The place has been leaking since before any of them real estate lawyers were born. It’s not like it’s going to float away.”
    I sipped my beer and decided not to take him on. Growing up, you learned not to take Barry Mitchell on. Not when he was winding up for a fight.
    â€œI can’t see wasting money on this dump. When I sell it, they’ll probably tear it down anyway. The land is what they want.”
    I saw my next month’s paycheck slipping through my fingers. I lived a simple life out on the scrub farm my mother left me. But a guy can’t get by on a goat, a couple of hens, a vegetable patch and a few sheds of junk. For starters, I really wanted my pickup truck back. That wouldn’t happen until I could pay the thousand-dollar repair bill. Aunt Penny said the old death trap wasn’t worth a thousand, but she didn’t