Basement
You slide the handle of the lantern over your arm and descend the steep stairs with your arms on the guard rails. The wood creaks, sounding as if they are going to snap at any moment and the way they bend when you put your foot on it does not make it any less stressful. Upon reaching the bottom, you feel a sense of safety wash over you now that your feet are on the solid stone floor. You briefly look up to see how deep you are and see that the entrance is smaller than your hand now. By your estimates, you must have descended several tens of meters or roughly the height of a small house. Climbing back up is going to be a workout in itself and you pray that the stairs can hold for one more trip.
But now is not the time to worry about that. You are down here for a reason and it is better to focus on the task at hand instead of worrying about a potential problem. You hold the lantern out in front of you and the light reveals a long tunnel with many iron bars on either side. The tunnel is a little more than twice your arm span so walking through it is no problem, unlike the squeeze it took to get down the stairs. You approach the nearest batch of iron bars to discover that it is a prison cell. You shine the light inside and find the withered body of a person sitting in the far corner, their rotten arms clenched around their skeletal legs. You feel dizzy for a split second as you quickly turn away.
You look around and see that there are many more cells lined down the tunnel. Directly across the cell you are at is another one. A pair of bony hands reach out from the cell as if they are trying to grab your ankles. You hop to the side to move away from the cells. You swing the lantern around to check the cell and see the lifeless skeleton of the neighboring prisoner lying on the floor against their chest. The hollow sockets stare at you vengefully. In front of the hands is a red-blackish stain and scratch marks. You squint your eyes and notice that the tips of the skeleton’s fingers are worn.
Another wave of lightheadedness hits you and you turn to face the wall to avoid seeing those skeletons. They had been left here to rot, to die agonizing deaths. You do not want to imagine what their final moments were like, trapped helplessly behind the rusted iron bars. If they did not die of starvation, then disease would have claimed them, and if not that, then insanity would have consumed them. What crimes did these people commit for them to suffer like this?
No matter how hard you try, the grueling images of their remains flash clear in your head and you feel something come tingling up your throat. You gag a little but you manage to push it back down and regain your composure. Your body is screaming at you to forget exploring the dungeons and get out of here but your mind reasons that since you are down here, you might as well see it through to the end. There has to be something important down here.
You do your best to dismiss the alarms going off in your body and push forward, keeping your eyes focused straight in front of you so that you do not see what is in the cells. Despite your efforts, you do spot skeletons at the corners of your eyes in terrifying poses. After some more walking, you begin to get used to the corpses, as much as you hate to admit it. They start to feel no different than the burnt-out torches on the walls. On the plus side, it means that you can quicken your pace and get to the end so that you can get out faster.
As you pursue further down the tunnel, the cobblestone walls turn to plain rough stone. The pathway starts to become bumpy with uneven surfaces. The cells here are thankfully all empty. Even the trail of iron bars eventually ends and in their place is a single door. The wood on them is damp and rotting. Just a gentle touch has the wood cave in similar to a sponge. It releases a foul smell and you feel an icky liquid at the tip of your fingers whenever you touch it. Uncomfortable with opening the door with your hand, you nudge it open with the sole of your shoe. The sound of something metallic breaking can be heard as the door squeaks back. The locking mechanism slims out of the door and drops to the ground with a loud clang and around it is a puzzle of brown goo.
You step over it and walk into the room, careful to not touch the door at all since you do not want anything sticking onto you. The inside of the room is small, so small that you cannot even stretch out one of your arms without hitting the wall. On the walls are rows of shelves, lining from the floor up to the ceiling. On the shelves are various tools and items. The floor is wet and you hear a dripping sound from somewhere. With a little bit of searching, you pinpoint the source to be a detached iron pipe over your head that is leaking water.
The items on the floor are all damaged by the water and can no longer be used. The items on the shelves are still in working condition though quite old and rusted too, but you have no idea what most of them are. Aside from a few hammers and nails, you do not recognize any of the other things. You pick up one of them tools- a nail with a strange spinning mechanism over the top of it. You spin the creaky handle and the nail extends. What is weird is that the nail does not detach from the handle so you do not know what the use of this would be. It is only after you identify the other tools in the room do you realize just what the purpose of this room is.
Pilers, bone saws, needles, axes, and other scary objects are scattered throughout the shelves, some of which have black-red stains on them. These are torture devices. This room is a storage room for them. The revelation makes you feel uneasy. You put the nail with a spinning handle back where you found it and get ready to leave this room when your foot bumps into something. You look down and see a bucket floating a little over the centimeter-high layer of water in the room.
You push the bucket away with your foot and it sails peacefully to a corner of the room. You then step out of the room and make your way back. Eager to leave this place, you walk speedily through the tunnels. Your footsteps echo loudly in these tight spaces and the clack of your shoes overlaps with every step, making it sound like there is a crowd of people walking alongside you. Amused, you play around with the echos and change your pace a few times to see how different the echos would sound, but for some reason, the echos are inconsistent and out of sync with your footsteps. You stop for a second but the echo of the footsteps continues to ring the walls. The footsteps get louder by the second and you hear a clattering along with the sound of chains being dragged against the floor behind you.
You shoot a glance back and see a pair of hollow eyes staring right at you. No, wait, not a single pair. There are more eyes behind the first pair. You raise your eyebrows in disbelief at the situation. A mob of skeletons are running at you with their arms out in front of them, stretched in your direction. Before you can react, clanging noises erupt from all around you. You feel something scrape your arm and you immediately reel back. You look next to you and find a skeleton standing up in their cell with their arms outstretched, just an inch away from reaching you.
Run. That is the only thing in your mind right now. You hold onto the lantern tight and run as fast as your legs allow. In front of you, bony arms and hands are reaching out from their cells to grab you. You weave left and right, barely dodging their fingers, even grazing by some. Behind you, the sound of footsteps does not appear to be getting more distant. If anything, it sounds like there is an army of skeletons now chasing after you now. As you pass by each cell, more skeletons join their ranks.
Your lungs feel like they are on fire and your legs feel like they are going to give out, but getting caught by the skeletons spells certain doom and that is more than enough encouragement to keep you from slowing down. Fortunately, you are reaching the start of the tunnel and the stairs come to light. Motivated by the sight of escape, you run eleven faster, so fast that it feels as if you are falling. Safety is only a few seconds away.
As you pass by the last pair of cells, you feel something pull on your ankle and you crumple, slamming your whole body against the hard stone. You wince as pain flares all over your body, especially your arms that took the brunt of the fall. You have no time to groan in pain and immediately try to pick yourself up but you feel something tug at your ankle. You turn around and see a familiar face grinning devilishly at you. It has both of its hands wrapped around your leg and is refusing to let go. You turn more and spot a horde of skeletons on your tail, marching towards you in unison. They are still a good distance away but it is only a matter of time before they catch up to you.
With your free leg, you kick wildly at the skeleton's wrists, hurting your own leg in the process, but it is latched on like a leech. You sit up and pull yourself closer to the skeleton. You slam your elbow in the arms of the skeleton to get it off but it only causes you to retract your arms in pain as it hurts you more than it hurts the skeleton. You look at the other cell across briefly to see if the other skeleton is also coming after you but you see that it is still hunched up in the corner with its arms around its legs, looking at you curiously like it is watching an entertaining show.
You take another glance down the tunnel where the other skeletons are and spot them closing in on you fast. Another few seconds and they will be right on top of you. A chill goes down your spine and you quickly return to the skeleton who has you pinned down. You grab the lantern and smash it down onto the hands. You hear a crack. Whether that is your bone or the skeleton’s, you have no time to wonder about that right now. You keep smashing the bony arms until something snaps. You tug your leg in and find that there is no more resistance. One of the hands breaks onto the ground while the other is still hooked onto your leg. You push yourself back onto your feet and grab the lantern.
You close the final few meters between the cells and the stairs and stomp up them. You hear a loud crack with every step and the wood shifts a little under your feet. You hear something break but ignore it and keep climbing. You make it to the top, completely out of breath, and slide onto the dirty wood floor. You slam the trapdoor shut and lay your body over it in case the skeletons try to open it.
You hear a symphony of bones clattering beneath you but the noise dies off after a minute. Looks like the skeletons have given up. You lay there, exhausted, but relieved that you survived. After resting and getting your energy back, you sit back up and feel something still squeezing at your foot. You look down and see a skeletal hand still grabbing onto your leg. You sit up and pry the fingers off. You see that the ends of the fingers are chipped, and examining the hand some more, you see some words carved out in the center of the hand.