Of Course

I’m not going to get another chance like this again any time soon, Aaralon thought to himself as he pushed open the back door and stepped into the pastor's house.

With the shutters closed the place was nearly pitch black and silent. Aaralon nearly jumped out of his skin at the sound of the floorboard creaking as he moved forward. The hall he found himself in led off to rooms that once housed a sizeable family. The beds, tables and knick-knacks of life filled the place in a busy mess.

From room to room he moved and found nothing of note, yet, as he moved into the corner of the house that the pastor used something in his mind stabbed at him. Some little detail that he had missed.

He doubled back into the hall and looked both ways, on his right was a door and on his left bare wall. He stared at them both for a moment before stepping back into the room beyond and realising what was amiss. The door to his right led to no room.

He pushed the door and it opened to reveal a flight of stairs vanishing down into darkness. The place having a cellar was not all that odd yet that same thing in the back of his mind was telling him to go down the stairs.

He glanced around and wondered just how much time he had spent looking around the house, with the shutters closed it was impossible to tell. The priest could return home at any moment and find him and if he was down in the cellar he would have no way to escape. If he had lived here he could maybe have passed it off as a misunderstanding but as an outsider, he would more than likely be driven out of down.

The risk was great and yet he felt the pull of the door and the growing need to find out what lay down those stares.