Halloween I.F. – “Going Dark” – Day 3

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Fern’s thoughts strayed briefly to that locked storage door—and dismissed it. Breaking a lock to check out someone’s private storage might come with fees involved. They weren’t sure if it had been specifically mentioned in the listing or not, either. It’d be hard to justify their curiosity if asked.

No, the most practical thing would be to check on that theoretical fuse box, spiders—they shuddered—or not. Then they could go for a walk around, get a sense of what the land was like to keep from getting lost if they had to go out there.

Not that it sounded so bad, getting lost out there. They kept almost wondering if that was part of why their parents had suggested this outing, to give Fern a chance to just disappear if they wanted to. To run off and live like a wild thing in the woods. Fern pushed that thought away as soon as it bubbled up again—that was cruel, and even if it was clear that their family didn’t know how to handle them for the last few years, nobody wanted them gone.

Losing someone was hard. Living forward after it, wondering how much of it had been your fault, that was harder. Fern wouldn’t wish it on anyone, especially their own family. The immediate aftermath had been bad enough.

The longer term psychological repercussions, those were somehow worse. The long nights. The nightmares. The constant background imagined whispering that they’d never heard before but that they couldn’t seem to tune out anymore. Manifestations of guilt, someone had called it, and Fern had liked that term, manifestations. It had felt like that, like something that Fern had previously been unaware of had suddenly started to manifest whenever they were around people. 

It was quieter out here in the woods, though. They’d thought it would be; the fewer people were around, the less noisy it tended to be, their sandpaper-skin awareness of every person nearby now faded with nobody around at all.

Maybe two weeks out here would actually reset them to the person they were before all this. A laughable thought. That person didn’t exist any more. Fern had been trying to recreate themselves as someone they liked again. Some steps forward, maybe.

Ugh. They were getting philosophical. They stood, jamming their phone into a pocket and clapping their hands a few times sharply until the sting grounded them back in their own body and out of the morbid spiralling thoughts. Fuse box, right. Better to check for it in case of problems, since getting anyone out here over a fuse blowing would be a real nuisance.

The door at the foot of the stairs had no lock; Fern opened it and discovered, instead of a small room with an embedded fuse box as they expected, stairs going downward into darkness.

This place just seemed to keep getting bigger and bigger than the listing had implied, but the theoretical fuse box was down in the basement instead. Thinking wistfully of doing anything but this, Fern found the basement stair lights, then headed down.

The stairs let out into a single big room. The walls were finished in wood; an odd tapestry hung next to the furnace on the wall to the right, depicting a maiden tangling with a unicorn that had impaled her through her chest. The wall facing the stairs had a bunch of sitting room furniture against it—two old armchairs facing a round table. A matching round carpet was laid out on the cement floor under the table. Not exactly where Fern would hang out with guests to chat, but they supposed someone was into it. Next to that was what looked to probably be a freestanding mirror, though it was covered with a dust cloth.

The wall to the left had a bunch of shelving with paint, cleaning supplies, extra toilet paper and paper towels, and so on, and next to that was the fuse box. There was a stack of spare fuses on the shelving next to the box. The fuse box itself, when opened, did indeed reveal a few spiders in its corners—damn—but all the fuses were clearly labelled.

Including one, they noted, for “2nd Bedroom.” Interesting implications for the locked room, especially since there was so much room down here for storage. But they couldn’t fault the owner for keeping a bedroom for themselves to stay in that guests wouldn’t have access to, and keeping their personal belongings in there.

There were plenty of small boxes on the shelving as well, clearly containing various useful things—they caught sight of a flashlight sticking out of one. Good to know where to find one if they needed it. They wandered the length of the room instead, feeling weirdly uncomfortable about the draped mirror. It was the dust cloth making them feel that way, they decided. Something about it being covered felt like a shrouded corpse, even if it was just to keep the glass clean.

The furnace had been serviced recently enough, and beyond that, Fern didn’t know enough about furnaces to form any opinion. No laundry down here; that might be in the bathroom, or perhaps somewhere else Fern hadn’t looked yet. 

There didn’t seem like much else to do down here, they supposed. They could head out to the grounds as they’d originally been thinking, but tried to decide if there was anything from here they might want to take with them—or if that was even still a good idea to do in the afternoon. They should still have a few hours of sunlight, though.

[Comment below with a suggestion for Fern]

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