Even as he felt his nerve failing, Kelan knew it was but a matter of time before he found himself at the basement door. Mom had been wrong hiding his snowboard down there—he didn’t deserve this—and she had been wrong thinking he wouldn’t go after it.
She had been wrong about another thing. The doll. He had seen it all on the Daydream TV, but what could he have done? Even in slow motion everything happened so quickly, hair flying, clothes ripping, eyes popping. But he didn’t do it.
Mom had left him no choice. His grounding had become intolerable. The Run was out there, he was in here, and if she thought Eric could stop him, she was wrong about that, too.
Kelan listened. He heard the scrape of a shovel outside.
He took a long breath … and opened the door.
~
It had been nearly three years since Kelan had taken these steps. They seemed endlessly long and perilous, like a journey into fear. He had passed them countless times, of course, but they had always been crossed with haste, with his closest eye shut tight depending on his direction. On his insistence the door had been closed at all times, an agreement shared between himself, his brother, and his mother, each burdened with their own reason. When the door opened unexpectedly, he might turn about and pretend to be going the other way, or, should he be too close, might stand taut and close both eyes before opening one to see if the coast was clear. Only then would he proceed, and quickly. Should it be Mom coming up or going down, she would comfort him, but more often than not it would be Eric, taunting and teasing with scary stuff, about how they were down there, how they’d eat him alive, how they’d come for him like a big hungry pike.
The light didn’t work, but to his surprise he found the courage to take that first step. The stairs dimmed quickly, swallowed by an ocean of blackness. As he descended the mustiness struck him, and his recollection of his last and only time here swept over him.
He and Eric had been playing catch inside the house, and just as Dad emerged from the basement, Kelan tossed the ball. Eric missed the catch and the ball bounced down the steps. Dad was startled. He slipped on the stop step, twisting his ankle. While Mom took care of him in the kitchen, he shouted angrily at Kelan, insisting he fetch the ball and take it outside. Halfway down the stairs, Eric rattled him, assuring him that the spiders were going to scurry out of the corners and eat him alive.
That’s when it started.
The light had worked back then, but when Eric switched it off and slammed the door behind him, Kelan was blind. It was the first time he heard them. They seemed to come from every direction, click-click-clicking all over the place, eights of legs scampering out of the shadows and up the stairs after him. When one of them touched him, actually scurried up his leg and headed for his crotch, he froze. Dizzy, he slipped and fell to the bottom of the stairs. By then the creepy-crawly was up past his knee, and it felt as if a hundred more of them were crawling all over him, clicking and clicking and clicking.
It was Mom who told him about the screaming and the blacking out.
It was their family doctor, an elderly man named Lafayette, who told him about arachnophobia.
It was his father who told him to be a brave soldier.
And now, three years later, here he was.