The Basement of DoomCh. 12--Many Locked Doors

                                                   The Basement of Doom                                          

                                           Ch. 12--Many Locked Doors

It was all really creepy.  All those damn wall drawings seemed to evoke a deep sense of foreboding menace and dread.  I really didn’t want to go into that ruddy gap, but my curiosity soon got the better of me.  As I proceeded down that hallway, the graffiti grew more elaborate with flower patterns and abstract spirals within spirals.

Then I came to a door blocked by heavy iron bars and thick chains secured with an immense padlock.

I studied them in perplexity--it didn’t seemed like something a bunch of bored teenagers would do on a Saturday night.  No, it was far too sophisticated, more complex and enigmatic, like something you would see in a modern art museum or on the wall of some wizard’s or alchemist’s workshop.  On a closer look, I noted that some of the patterns looked awfully similar to the protective hex signs often used by the Nye-Am people of the region.

Stepping back, a confused frown creased my brow.  Was all this bizarre work the result of a Nye-Am artisan maybe even an educated idiot?  What I found most disquieting was that some of the paint work appeared fresh--done days or weeks ago, perhaps.

Great, I thought, walking on. Not only do I have what was possibly the most haunted basement this side of Waldachia; I also have some wannabe occultist bunking there for free.

When I eventually came across a solid oak door, secured by heavy iron bars, thick chains and a huge padlock, my first thought was: now all it needed now was a No Trespassing sign and a watch dragon.

By now I wasn’t too surprised at finding another door.  Like other places in Faerie and sometimes the Mortal Territories, places like Harnam were built over previous cities.  So it wasn’t unusual for someone to stumble across a Roman temple while digging around in their vegetable patch...or like me, discovering that the cellar originally belonged to a much bigger house.  Judging from the stone and brickwork, I guessed it once supported either a large manor house or quite possibly a fortress.

After walking a hundred yards I again paused in bewilderment.  A set of double doors chained shut just like the first.  There were some stained-glass windows,  but I couldn’t see through them on account of the layer of dried paint.  Wondering, I cautiously approached the next set of doors--all chained and padlocked like a previous two.

So far I counted about a hundred rooms in this long, dark hall.  Each door was different, some of them even had windows, but what was the whole point of taking a peek when there was a layer of dried paint and a length of chain in the way?

Suddenly, the hall widened, giving up its cramped, claustrophobic quarters as it opened into a much larger cavern.  The ceiling stretched as high as a cathedral’s and was inky black with soot.

There were holes carved into the granite walls, obviously meant for windows and doors.  Once again my curiosity was thwarted by the huge barriers erected right in front of these portals--massive, rusty anchors and bundled-up chains and stacked piles of rubble.

It seemed that this section was of a much older time period than the hallway of doors.

Questions soon flooded through my mind as to the motives of these mysterious builders and their sanity.

Why would they build this humongous  place, only to go through all the trouble of burying it and what was with all these locks, chains and barriers?  Were they afraid of people breaking in and stealing all the family possessions and heirlooms?

As I stared at the barricades of stone and eroded iron, I felt tingles of cold crawling up my neck.

What if instead of treasure, there were actual bodies behind all those blocked-off doors, all that remained of plague victims that got walled up alive centuries ago.

I knew for a fact that this extreme form of quarantine was a common occurrence during the Plague Years.  Sometimes they walled off a whole sections of the city, leaving the infected to fend for themselves.

What if what I stumbled upon was a town that got buried by the people in the surrounding  communities.  Maybe it was in a small valley, and in desperate effort to keep the disease at bay, the neighbors first set fire to the place and then filled up the valley with tons of rock and earth till not a trace of  the town remained.  The story was known only to the locals, that was why I hadn’t heard anything about it.  Maybe it was a taboo subject, if you shared this story with a foreigner, you might bring about angry and dangerous spirits.

 Well, there was only one way of finding out for sure if this was mass grave.  Walking over to a nearby doorway, I peered in hesitantly between the anchor chain--no tangled heaps of bone.  Just walls covered with more of that elaborate graffiti.

Somewhat relieved, I began to head down a long passage towards a round metal door with a spiral at its center.

Again, I felt shivers of cold run down my spine. Doors like this certainly didn’t exist during the medieval period.  I recalled the story of Blue Beard and what the new bride found inside that closet on the ground floor.  

I figured if there was a murder room on the other side then I was going to turn right around and get the heck out of here.  No way was I coming back unless accompanied by the police and shamans burning incense.  

I fumbled with the latch and bolt of the door, pulling it open.  It swung smoothly on its hinges, and the lack of a grating-squeal kind of bothered me; well-oiled hinges meant constant use and maintenance.  Even though I was still determined to get at the root of the ghostly disturbances, I made up my mind to avoid meeting any Morlock maintenance crew.  

After propping the door open with a piece of rock, I headed into the damp-smelling crack.  

We Gerdin could see in pitch darkness with the benefit of a torch or candle, also...unlike the humans, we hadn’t ruined our eyes with constant television and computer viewing.  

The walls were different here--all brickwork--and there were embedded coils of brightly painted anchor chains and rough-hewn flagstone filling up every visible window niche.  But what really caught my attention though was the strange cryptic verse and warning scrawled along the narrow, cramped walls.  Great place to have an Inner Sanctum show, I thought as I started down yet another long corridor.  

As I walked, my gaze ran across the various protective phrases.  Some of them were straightforward  to the point:


“Craft the iron in the fire;
Craft it well; forge it tighter.
Forge it from the shining flame;
None shall pass this iron wall;
None shall pass.  No, none at all.


While others sounded more like recipes in an alchemist’s cookbook:


“Grind the gold ore, grind it fine.
Wash it with water in a par.
Save the yellow gold in a jar.
Heat it a melting pot ‘til it glows
And flows like dragon’s blood.”


“Rather pointless if you ask me,” I muttered. “Why put up all these mysterious words when hardly anyone going to come down here to read them?”

Even though I’d been down in the subbasement just a couple hours, I was already feeling knackered.

This corridor alone was big enough to keep a team of explorers occupied for days.  There were many smaller rooms dotting around the corridor, often separated by rusty iron gates and great doors with huge, wheel-like handles--the sort you find on bank safes and compartment door of a ship.  Some of these lead to wine cellar, empty pantries, while others led on to further passageways.

I kept on the main route, the last thing I wanted was to become disoriented and lost in one of those branching chambers.

I frowned and bit my lower lip worriedly. Were all these doors to keep wandering people out of these areas...or to keep something else in?

I stopped dead still when I thought back to all those strange magical symbols back in the first corridor.

To keep something else in?

Every hair on my head bristled as a chill breath of fear ran through me.

What if all those inscriptions weren’t meant for wandering people like me, but were really meant for Something Else.

Something that was so steeped in evil, so shrouded in doom that it was never mentioned in any of the local legends, for to even to mention such a thing would give it power.

I stared hard at the walls, and a worried frown curled my lips.

Maybe this was the very same dark force from that witch’s curse laid upon Chantelle Lum decades before.

Maybe some local magician tried to break the curse, and banish this entity, but without much success.  So this exorcist confined it to this underground place,, and then placed the various magical protections.  Apparently, this thing was limited in power like a ghost or a vampire, it could not enter or barred entrance nor pass through a wall painted with protective signs.

However all these binding safeguards were far from perfect or permanent, and cracks could form.

Suddenly another rather disturbing thought occurred to me.  What if this crack was far too small for it to fit its entire corporeal form through, but what if its mind could.  Although it still would be unable to open a door, maybe it could still influence someone into doing the task.  Maybe once in the basement, this person could be induced into opening up the main room where its body was entombed.  

Wait, what was that sound?  I held my breath and listened carefully.  Was it a cat padding somewhere behind?  Miss Tabitha perhaps ready to lead me back to the land of the living.

Yet when I looked back, there wasn’t anything behind me.  Still I heard that sound again.  A slow shuffling of feet.  A rat?  No, it sounded much bigger, more like a person.  Whatever it was, it sounded much closer now.

No, time to turn back.  I quickly dodged into the nearest opened room.

To be continued in The Basement of Doom--Ch. 13--In Chambers