#sorry robin

And she knows that it’s a ghost because she’s staring at an eight year old Alice Creel. 

“I wish Billy could see this,” Robin mutters, wondering whether she needs to run. Little girl ghosts are supposed to be the worst. She really doesn’t want to test that theory.

Alice just blinks at her. Her curls are still perfect, dropping gently under her chin and falling down the neat, white Peter-Pan collar of her dress. She looks exactly the same as the portrait downstairs, from the flush to her cheeks to the button nose to the bright blue eyes.

“Hi?” Robin tries. She really hadn’t expected to walk down the attic stairs and come face to face with a ghost. She doesn’t have her camera, she’s not even sure her recorder is still running and she’s at a loss for what to say. “Alice?” 

Alice disappears.

“Oh shit,” Robin squeaks, fumbling with her torch. Her fingers are like ice and no matter how brave she tries to be, she can’t stop the faint tremble in them. 

“Alice?” she tries again, and ignores the little waver in her voice.

Next to her the door swings open with a long drawn out creak and she nearly wets herself as she jumps back. But nothing comes through it, no spirit, no wave of blood, and the door just swings slightly on its hinges. 

“Alice?” Robin repeats, her mouth dry. There’s something horrible about calling for her - the disappearance of the Creel kids has been a mystery in Hawkins for decades. People have talked in hushed whispers about what might have happened and greater ghosthunters than they have tried to solve it. The police pulled Victor and Virginia Creel into custody three times after the children went missing from their beds but nothing ever came from it. Whatever had happened, the parents hadn’t been involved…at least, in no way that anyone could ever prove.

And now Robin knows for certain that Alice must have never left this house. She died here. 

So that’s why Robin has to steel herself and take a few steps over to the open bedroom door. 

It’s the little boy’s old bedroom, to her surprise. It’s empty of ghosts so Robin slides further in, wondering if the door had been opened by Alice or if it was just a weird draught. Maybe whatever freaky attic dust Steve breathed in, she got a lungful of too. If so, she’ll slink downstairs and apologize because this is a trip that she doesn’t like. 

“I really don’t like this, I really don’t like this,” Robin whimpers. If she had any sense after finding out that the house is genuinely haunted, she’d go grab the boys and run. But she can’t forget the fact that while she knows for sure that Alice is dead, she also doesn’t know why.

And if Alice is here, then where is Henry?

Alice reappears suddenly and Robin has to stifle her scream.

“Okay,” she says, once her heart has settled to a more normal rate. “Never going to get used to that.”

Alice is by the large bay windows, the faint gleam of the streetlights showing her for what she really is. The dust floats through her and Robin can see the white wood of the windows through her dress. 

“What?” Robin whispers. She doesn't have time to wish for her camera, or to even think if Alice would show up on it anyway. “What is it?”

Alice points one delicate little fingernail at the wall to her left. Swallowing her fear, Robin creeps along and presses her hand against the wall. To her disappointment, it doesn’t give way.

“What?” she asks, turning back to look at Alice. But then she follows the line of the little girl’s finger and she stoops down to prod at the baseboard. A section of it sounds hollow when she taps it with her fingers and she drops her torch to pry at it with her fingernails. A section comes away, about the width of her hand, and Robin drops it to the floor. She looks back, just to be sure, but Alice just nods. So Robin drops down and peers into the dark hole.

She has to turn the torch on and stretch in her arm until her hand touches cold, hard metal. It feels like a lunch box, something really old, and there’s orange rust on her fingers when she pulls it out. Whatever image was painted onto it has long since faded away. 

Robin dusts off her hands, folds her legs, and steels herself to open it.

“I’m not sure why you wanted me to see this,” she says quietly to Alice. It must mean something for the ghost to show herself, only to have Robin dig around in an opening in the wall. But Robin is a little afraid of what she might find here. “But I’m going to look anyway.”

She opens it.

At first, it just looks like any child’s collection. A few stray marbles, a toy car, scattered pictures and drawings. But then Robin begins to pull them out and dread begins to creep down her spine, as each one is worse than the last.

“These were Henry’s, weren’t they?” she asks finally, and looks up to find Alice’s solemn little face right next to her’s. She flinches but continues, waving one of the drawings for emphasis. “He did all of these, didn’t he?”

Alice nods. Robin swallows hard around the lump in her throat. Shit.

“Did he kill you?” she forces herself to ask. There’s a beat where the words hang in the air, stretched as thin as wire. Alice’s lovely little face is full of turmoil, perhaps an unwillingness to reveal the truth about the brother she’d loved. 

It doesn’t matter. Because Robin now knows that Henry was a creepy little fuck anyway. There’s articles about Creel House; every murder, accident and ghastly misfortune that happened before the Creels’ arrival. The drawings are the worst part - scribbled dark pictures of spiders, dead bodies bent at strange angles and scribbled over with red pencil, and a piece of paper containing something dark and horrific that Robin can’t quite bring herself to look at. 

It’s this last drawing that Alice touches with one ghostly finger and Robin forces her eyes back down to the smears of ink, the strange jagged smile, the dark holes for irises. Alice’s face is mournful but resolute.

“There’s something much worse in here with us,” Alice says and Robin drops the picture back into the box.

XXX

“Steve!”

Steve hasn’t moved, but he looks up when he hears Billy’s shout. 

It wasn’t Billy. It wasn’t Billy. But fear still curdles in his gut when Billy appears in the doorway, face twisted with worry.

“Steve!” Billy shouts and races past the old dining table to drop to the floor next to Steve.

“Are you okay?” he asks frantically and Steve looks into Billy’s beautiful blue eyes and wishes he could know if this was real. “Steve, are you hurt?”

“No,” Steve says and is surprised when it comes out as a croak. “No, I’m okay.” But Billy runs his hands over Steve anyway, up his arms, along his collarbones, cradling Steve’s cheek with his hands. Steve rests his face into the curve of Billy’s palm and wonders if this creature is trying to kill him with everything he’s ever dreamed of.

“Shit,” Billy mutters, his fingers a gentle balm against Steve’s skin. “I thought for sure…fuck. I’m glad you’re okay. Come on. We have to get Ro. We’re getting out of here.” He stands up and offers Steve a hand. Steve hesitates, and then takes it, letting Billy help him to his feet.

“What the fuck happened?” Billy asks, looking perplexed. But there’s a pallor under his tanned skin, a wary glitter to his eyes. And he hasn’t let go of Steve’s hand, something that they haven’t done since they were twelve and got Robin’s cousin to let them watch the Blair Witch Project.

“Billy…” Steve says slowly, Billy’s warm fingers still wrapped tightly in his. “What did you see down there?” He already knows by the way that Billy averts his gaze. Steve wasn’t the only one being manipulated like a chess piece. 

“Nothing,” Billy mutters and pulls his hand free of Steve’s. 

“Billy, what did you see?” Steve insists, even though he can still feel Billy’s warmth on his palm. “Because I thought I was up here talking to you when your voice came through on the walkie!” Billy looks up, his mouth slack in surprise at this admission. There’s strange gray marks on the back of his shirt, like thick coatings of dust, and there’s more on his boots. 

“I…” Billy starts. “Steve, you saw what?”

“You,” Steve repeats. He grabs his torch from the table and flicks it on again, just for some more light. “Billy, it was you. Or it looked like you. I came back down from the attic and I thought you’d just finished in the basement early. We had a full conversation, until I heard you on the walkie.”

“Then what?” Billy asks curiously and Steve shrugs. 

“Then it got weird. Mean. Said it was a shame because it had been having so much fun. That’s why I didn’t answer right away. So you’re not the only one losing his fucking mind,” Steve says bluntly, folding his arms. “What the hell did you see?”

Billy looks down again, jaw working furiously. For a brief second, in the light of the torch, Billy looks stripped bare and vulnerable. It’s something Billy works hard against being and even though Steve doesn’t care for it, he understands why Billy needs to feel…stronger, bigger, louder than everyone else.

“Saw my dad,” Billy mutters unwillingly, and Steve breathes in. Fuck. Not Neil.

“Shit,” Steve says and Billy gives a sharp bark of laughter. No wonder he hadn’t wanted to talk about it. They never talk about Neil, not even when Billy came to school with strange bruises. Billy always refused. So they stopped asking.

“Yeah, shit,” he agrees, rubbing his eyes with his hand. “Thought I was dreaming but…fuck, Steve, there’s something in this house, isn’t there?”

“Yeah,” Steve says, wishing he was wearing a thicker layer. He feels tired and cold and he wants to go home to climb into bed with Robin and Billy, to eat popcorn, and argue about what film to watch. Billy wants action. Robin usually prefers something old and arty. They usually end up watching some horror thing or chick-flicks, the only genres that they can agree on.

He doesn’t want to be in this house and wondering if the face of the boy he loves is going to turn on him again.

“I don’t want to stick around to find out what,” Steve says, because this was not in the job description. Time to go home, delete all of the footage they have and post a closing notification on their channel. After this, Steve is done. He could have done without knowing for sure what was out there.

“I already know what’s here,” Robin says, appearing suddenly in the doorway. Steve flinches, wondering if she’s real too, but she strides in, clutching an old metal box to her chest. She’s missing her beret, smears of dust across her chest, and Steve wonders what she’s been doing to get marks like that across her front.

“It’s fucking Henry Creel,” she says, and dumps the box open onto the dining room table.

“Henry’s dead,” Billy says in disbelief, but he drifts over to the table to look anyway. 

“Henry’s here,” Robin corrects him. She’s got the same shell-shocked pallor to her face that Billy has and Steve wonders if it’s mirrored in his own face. Some ghost hunters they are. “He’s a sick little fucker and always was. We thought as much from that,” she says, gesturing at the sour face of Henry behind them. “He was obsessed with death and murder and this house. Look.”

Steve and Billy pick over the contents, taking in the strange paraphernalia, the disturbing drawings. There’s newspaper articles, carefully copied and cut out. Steve knows enough about the history of the house to know that Henry was pretty thorough in his research. Billy finds the dark drawing and runs his fingers over the black smears and yellow eyes with a fearful expression.

Steve digs down to the bottom and his fingers grasp something a little thicker than paper, something smooth to the touch. He pulls it out and they all stare at the photograph in disbelief.

“He’s definitely a sick fuck,” Billy says in a low voice, his eyes wide. Steve and Robin exchange concerned glances.

It’s a family photo, one not unlike the larger version made of oils and canvas behind them. Victor, Virginia, Henry and Alice. Save for Henry, every face has been slashed.

“He hated them,” Robin says, voice cracking. She flexes her fingers, looking for something to hold so Steve pulls her trembling hands into his. “I don’t know why…what caused it but he thought they were beneath him. He wanted to harm them.”

“And he did,” Steve says, looking at Robin for confirmation. She nods, looking queasy. “He killed Alice. But if he killed her then where the fuck is he?” Billy starts sweeping Henry’s collection of horrors back into the box and slamming the lid.

“We’re not sticking around to find out,” he says firmly. “We’re getting what we can grab and we’re going. I’m not sticking around to have my neck broken at the bottom of the stairs or find Steve dangling from the chandelier or Ro floating in the pool out back. I think it’s pretty certain to say that we’re not safe here.”

“How did you find this?” Steve asks curiously and Robin sniffs. He rubs her cold fingers, trying to pull some warmth back into them.

“It was Alice,” she says quietly. “She’s here. She showed me in Henry’s old room, behind the backboard. He must have left it there. She wanted me to know.”

“Someone should,” Steve says, thinking of the forty-odd years that Alice has been left alone in this house. “Jesus, Ro, can you believe it?” She laughs weakly, taking back one of her hands long enough to rub at the tears pooling at her eyelids.

“I know. We found ghosts, Steve! Ghosts!” she whispers. There’s an excited glitter behind her eyes, the excitement that they’ve actually done it. Fuck knows if they’ll ever be able to show anyone any of their footage - Steve doesn’t know if they even got anything on screen. They were only supposed to be doing a walkthrough. Robin had her camera on for some of it, and Billy put his camera on before he went into the basement. Which, by the looks of it, is still down there. Billy didn't have it in his hands when he came up.

“Right,” Billy announces and Steve turns in time to catch his backpack as it’s thrown at him. “Steve, Ro, here’s your’s. Leave everything else behind, we are gone.” He crams the metal tin in the opening in his bag and does it up. 

“Your camera,” Steve protests, because Billy worked at the pool all last summer for that camera but Billy shakes his head.

“Leave it,” he says and something about his tone suggests that he won’t be argued with. But if Billy saw his dad down there, then Steve can understand that. There are parts of yourself that you don’t want to be dragged to the surface.

“What am I missing?” Robin asks, looking from Billy to Steve. Her bag dangles from her arm by its strap, the rainbow buttons oddly bright and cheerful in this space. “Seriously?”

“I…” Billy hesitates. He still doesn’t want to talk about it, preferring to act like it never happened. But Steve can imagine what the Neil creature said, if it’s anything like his illusion of Billy. He only vaguely remembers Neil, from the days when Billy still had both of his parents.

They were not good days.

He got used to Billy skipping showers at school. To his wearing long sleeves even when the weather was too warm for it. He remembers Billy turning up without a jacket, any food, or even a pencil, because he’d had to leave the house in a hurry. Several nights, he’d just turn up at Steve’s or at Robin’s, on the verge of tears, swallowing around a terrified lump in his throat. Steve’s mom always used to sigh heavily when this happened and she wouldn’t say anything even when Steve pressed her.

He overheard her once when they were ten. That it was a shame leaving a child in a situation like that. That Neil was a bully. A monster. That Abigail should leave.

But Steve’s dad would always shush her and tell her that it wasn’t their place to get involved.

Steve had always thought ‘fuck that.’ Billy and Robin are his place. His people. And while he couldn’t do much about Abigail and Neil, he started packing extra lunches and pens and extra clothes in his locker. Keeping his window unlocked for Billy to climb through. Punching Tommy Hagan when he made comments. 

And then one day when they were twelve, Neil was just gone. He packed up and left, leaving Abigail with a broken arm and Billy with such a bad black eye that he didn’t come to school for a week. 

Things got better. Abigail got better, got a good job. Billy got brighter, stronger, and came out. They were thriving until Neil made himself known again, an hour’s drive away and with a new wife and daughter. He wanted to see Billy.

Billy before a Neil weekend is never good. He goes back to the Billy of before, the shadow of the bold, brilliant boy that Steve loves. He stops wearing jewelry, stops wearing eyeliner and the smear of raspberry lip gloss. It takes a few days after for Billy to feel safe enough again to flirt with the boy at the diner, to steal Robin’s bright blue eye-shadow. For him to stop jumping at every sound, to look like he isn’t permanently holding his breath. 

“I saw my dad down there,” Billy says, eventually. He’s turned his head away, like he can’t bear to look at either of them while he talks. “Or what looked like my dad. Got the usual shit about being a fag and worthless and…I don’t know why it bothered. If I wanted that sort of talk I could just go to Monroe and see Pops in the flesh.” 

“Billy..” Robin says, her face painfully gentle. She reaches out but Billy just shrugs on his backpack and turns away.

“We’re going,” he mutters, his walls snapped back into place. “I’ve had enough with this house of horrors.”

He stalks out without even looking back. Robin and Steve look at each other and rush to follow. 

They catch up to Billy in the hallway, and they silently walk as a trio through the house.

“They should tear this place down,” Steve muses, wondering why the house has been left to rot for so long. It’s of no use to anyone, a crumbling corpse of a once glorious house on the edge of town. 

“We should burn it,” Billy says mutinously, his boots a harsh sound on the hardwood floors. 

“Maybe someone still owns it,” Robin suggests. They enter the foyer and they’ve been in here too long. The sun has set, leaving them in near darkness, the only light coming from the moon and the streetlights. Shit. Somehow time got away from them while they were talking with ghosts. “Maybe they don’t want to take it down.”

“God knows what they’ll think they’re going to do with it,” Billy scoffs. “No one wants to fucking live here. People fucking die here.”

“They should take it down,” Steve agrees quietly. He’s grateful that his encounter wasn’t real, that Billy doesn’t know about his feelings. But it makes him all the more sure that he can never tell Billy. If Billy rejects him again, he won’t be able to take it. 

When the floorboards split and begin spewing spiders, Robin leaps back and screams. Steve grabs her arm and pulls her away while Billy curses, staring at the hundred and hundreds of them skittering over the floor between them and the door. 

“What the fuck?” Billy shouts, stamping at the ones under his feet. Robin is nearly incomprehensible and shaking in terror. Steve’s not fond of spiders but Robin hates them. He drags her back, staring in dismay at the swarming, writhing floor. There’s no way that they can get through.

“Back door!” Billy shouts and takes off at a run. Steve follows, dragging Robin behind him. They don’t look back to see if they’re being followed.

“What the fuck?” Billy hisses again as they dash down the hallway. They pass by the dining room, headed for the kitchen and the closed back door. It shouldn’t be a problem - Billy is good at breaking things down.

“It’s Henry,” Robin says, her hand a clammy grip in Steve’s. “He was obsessed with spiders, he kept them. There were drawings in that box too.” Something sparks in Steve’s brain, a memory of something as they’d flicked through the papers.

“And a picture of him with a cage,” Steve says as they barrel through the kitchen door and shut it behind them. Not that it will do much. Ghosts can walk through, spiders can go under. Steve digs in his backpack for his torch again and switches it on. “The big terrarium type that you might keep spiders in.”

“Great,” Robin rasps, resting her head against the door. “So we know it’s him.”

Billy growls in frustration, rattling futilely at the locked backdoor. “On that note, how exactly is it Henry? The guy is old! He went missing forty odd years ago! We should be dealing with an sixty-something year old fucker, and I’m going to be honest, that doesn’t sound that scary.”

“Yeah, well, if Alice is a spirit, maybe Henry is too?” Steve suggests, dragging out a kitchen chair for Robin to sit in. She collapses into it, her face deathly pale. It’s fine. If snakes start spilling out of the walls, Steve might look like that too. “He’s definitely something if he’s summoning fucking spiders out of the floorboards.”

“Oh no,” Robin says quietly, opening her eyes. “Oh dear.” Billy stops trying to force the door to turn to look at her.

“Now what?” he asks, and starts yanking open the kitchen drawers. He digs out a few knives, a meat tenderiser and drops them all on the counter. “Please, tell me what awful thing you’re about to say while I try to stab this door open.”

“So Alice said one thing,” Robin says, and Steve knows that whatever was said by a dead little girl is probably only going to make the situation worse. “Just one thing after I asked her if Henry was the one who killed her.”

“And that was?” Steve asks, and tries not to flinch as a spider squeezes its way under the door. He pretends not to see, for Robin’s sake.

“That there was something worse in here with us,” Robin says, darkly. Billy laughs, the metal of the knife making a scraping sound as he tries to pry open the door. 

“We have a ghost and a homicidal maniac trying to kill us and we can’t get out. What could be worse?” he demands, somewhat hysterically. Steve watches a few more spiders wriggle under and thinks that they’re running out of time. The spiders might not be real. But they also might be actual poisonous ones and they’ve just shut themselves in. 

“There must be something,” Steve says, realizing something. He feels like an idiot for not thinking of it earlier. “You were downstairs talking to the thing that looked like your dad. I was up here talking to the thing that looked like you. Robin was upstairs talking to Alice.”

“So?” Billy asks, furiously kicking at the door. It creaks but refuses to buckle. An unstoppable force meets an immovable object…and is losing. Steve briefly wonders if there’s more than an old steel lock keeping them trapped in here. 

“So, that means three supernatural beings,” Robin says, catching on. “Right, Steve?” 

It fits. Alice wasn’t involved - if anything she seems to be trying to help them, leading Robin to the true culprit and warning her. But Billy and Steve were having their conversations at the same time, more or less. Billy called through on the walkie, immediately after talking to Neil. The timing is too close.

“So it’s Henry and something else,” Steve agrees. He shakes his leg as something tries to skitter up it and then stamps down for good measure. “What if that’s what’s been haunting this house all these years? All those deaths? There must be something before Henry who was causing them or contributing to them.”

The long history of deaths and accidents only lends to Steve’s theory. They didn’t start after the Creels arrived, but long before, ever since the house was built. Henry is just the apprentice. Henry was human. The power must be coming from somewhere.

Billy’s mouth twists. “So what, they see people who aren’t really there and then blow their heads off? Beat their wives? Drown their children? That doesn’t make any sense!”

“If you had it, day in and day out, maybe it would,” Steve counters. Because he still feels shaken to the core by the Billy specter, hollowed out by the mocking and the cruelty. He can only imagine that Billy felt the same. “If you lived here and you saw Neil every day, telling you the worst things about yourself…could you cope with it?”

Billy closes his eyes. He doesn’t want to admit to it. Billy pretends that he’s made of stone, that what happened with his dad means nothing to him. But Steve knows Billy. Knows that he hates bullies, and is more sensitive than anyone would ever expect him to be. That he loves fiercely, and while he thought all of this ghost stuff was bullshit, he still goes into the darkest places so that Steve doesn’t have to. 

“No,” Billy says finally. His hand drops away from the handle. “No, I couldn’t.”

“But the Packards got out,” Robin says, gesturing to the discarded remains of the Packards' brief time in this house. “Somehow, they managed it.”

“Maybe Alice warned them,” Steve suggests, swinging his torch around. There’s too many spiders now, too many. Everywhere he turns his torch, they’re there, clinging to the walls, the door frames, scuttling over the kitchen cabinets. Even in the darkness he can see them, a black foaming mass closing in. 

“Maybe they actually had some common sense and ran when the walls started bleeding?” Billy gripes and then kicks out furiously. The door rattles but still doesn’t give even as Billy throws his full weight against it. “Fuck! This door won’t open!”

Robin screams suddenly, the sound startling Billy into dropping one of the knives to the floor. Steve jumps and swings his torch across to where she’s staring at, expecting to see another swarm of spiders. But it’s just a little girl, glowing faintly in the light. Steve sucks in a breath. Jesus. It really is Alice Creel.

“Alice?” Robin whispers, pulling herself up from the chair. “What is it? Can you help us?”

There’s a beat and Alice briefly flickers. It’s like she’s fighting to stay here, like she’s struggling against something much stronger than her. She’s not like the ghosts Steve has seen on TV, terrible howling creatures, with abilities and bloodied clothes. 

But then she points to a dark corner of the kitchen. Steve follows her finger with his torch and spots a cupboard door tucked away against the back wall. 

“Does she expect us to hide in it?” Billy asks dubiously, but he stalks across the room and rips the cupboard open away. It’s an old pantry, the tins and bottles all covered in a thick layer of dust. Steve desperately swings his torch around, looking for something, anything to help them. But then Robin grabs his arm with a cry of joy.

“Steve! The floor!” He moves the torch down and finally sees what Robin does in the old floorboards. Metal hinges and a pull. It’s a trapdoor. 

“A trapdoor to where?” Billy yelps, and Steve can see the color drain from his face. “Are we just going to get stuck in the basement again?”

“It’s better than staying here!” Robin protests, and Steve realizes that she has seen the increasing number of spiders after all. It appears to be her turn for her fear. Billy and Steve already had theirs. “There’s a cellar door, right? Round the side of the house? We can get out that way.”

“We can’t even break open the kitchen door, Ro, how are we going to manage that?” Billy hisses. He’s more terrified of going back downstairs than he’s admitting, fearing a repeat of Neil. 

Steve kneads at his temples with his free hand. He’s trapped between his two best friends and the things that they fear the most.

“We have to go down,” he says and tries to ignore the look of hurt on Billy’s face. “We have to keep moving. We’ll die in here. We have a chance if we keep going.”

“We could die down there,” Billy says coldly. Steve looks up into his face and tries to remind himself that this is the flesh and bone Billy. 

“I know,” Steve says and longs to reach out for Billy’s hand. “But we’ll be with you this time. Ro, get the knives. Billy, help me with this.”

Robin disappears out of the torch light to collect the abandoned knives and Steve can hear her whimper as she moves carefully past the spiders crawling across the floor. Billy scowls but bends down and grabs the metal ring to help Steve pull it open. It takes a moment and all their strength, the door stiff after years of unuse. But eventually it swings free and they stare down into the darkness. 

“There’s a ladder,” Billy says consideringly. “But I don’t know where it goes. Hold the torch over it.”

“What?” Steve says dumbly, and Billy grabs hold of his wrist and moves it so that the light shines down the open hole. Robin returns and he relieves her of the biggest knife, tucking it into his belt.

“I’m going first, then send Ro. Climb quick,” He advises and turns around, dropping one foot down for the first rung.

Fuck. Billy always has to go into the dark places first. 

“Really quick,” Robin says, her teeth chattering. She’s clutching the knives so closely to her, Steve worries that she might cut herself. He takes one of them away from her and slides it into his bag. He may have a use for it.

They watch Billy vanish into the black, until his voice drifts up. “I’ve hit the bottom! Come down!”

“He doesn’t want to be down there alone,” Robin quips but her fingers are shaking as she puts away her own knife so that she can follow Billy. After she too has vanished, Steve loops the strap of his torch around his wrist and sits himself at the edge, grabbing hold of the wood of the door. A spider or two brushes against his fingers and he winces. He’s not as arachnophobic as Robin but he’s not fond of them either. 

But then he climbs down and drops the trapdoor closed over his head, shutting them into a new nightmare. 

XXX 

Steve’s boots hit dirt as he lands. He brushes off his hands and grabs hold of his torch, still swinging from his wrist. Climbing down in the pitch black, with only the swaying beam from his torch and the faint glow of Robin and Billy’s below, was something he’d really rather not do again.

“Can they get through?” Robin asks, nervously staring up at the direction of the trapdoor. Steve shrugs.

“I think we should presume that these assholes can send or show us whatever they like anywhere in this damn house,” Billy mutters darkly. He shines his torch down the passageway but it all seems to be spook and spider free. “Let’s go.”

They fall into line, shoulder to shoulder and using their torches to keep an eye out. Robin frowns and reaches out to touch the walls with her fingers.

“Did you see this when you were down here before?” she asks and Billy shakes his head.

“Nope,” he says bluntly. He’s got the big knife clenched in his other hand, knuckles almost white around the handle. “I don’t know where the hell this is. There’s way too much space down here.”

“I don’t know if some of it is real,” Robin says thoughtfully. “Or at least, if it was here before Andrew Newton built everything else.”

“What, like some creepy satanic dimensional space?” Billy snorts and Steve stares at the strange structure of the walls. They’re not made of any material that a building inspector would allow - they look almost like mud and brick, something primitive that leaves dirt marks on the pads of your fingers.

“Something like that,” Steve chimes in. “I mean, the house is definitely affected by the creepy shit happening here, right? The attic, blood leaking from the walls, bugs coming out of faucets…why not down here?”

“The thing down here said my house,” Billy says carefully, still too wary of talking about when he encountered the thing wearing Neil’s face. “I think whatever it was has been here for ages.”

“Maybe it didn’t take kindly to the neighbors moving in,” Robin says quietly, shining her torch over the walls and it definitely looks like some demonic, millennia old hallway of nightmares. There’s the occasional root winding its way in between the gaps, just to serve as a reminder that this could so easily turn into a grave. It’s so bizarre how the ancient just adapted to the slabs of steel and concrete slapped over it, bending around it as easy as rubber. 

“It killed them,” Steve says, because that’s what really happened. No one who ever moved in here stood a chance. “Over and over and over….”

“What for though?” Robin asks curiously. “Because they intruded? For food? And if so, how the hell did the Packards get out?” And that is the recurring question - how did the Packards escape unscathed? By rights, they should have been murdered in their beds, and their dog left for dead on the front lawn. No one survives Creel House unscathed. But somehow they did.

“Fuck knows,” Billy grunts. “But we’re going to do like they did and get out while we can. The cellar is at the back of the basement, in one of the rooms on the other side of the house. I think it’s locked but we break it down if we have to…Steve?”

Steve’s suddenly blinded as the torchlight swings up straight at his face. He blinks, automatically bringing a hand up to shield his face.

“You okay?” Billy asks, brow creased in concern. Steve whips his head back down the dark corridor behind him, little flashes of light still scattered across his vision. He hadn’t even realized that he’d stopped until Billy called his name.

“Yeah,” Steve says warily. “Just thought I heard…nothing.” Billy frowns. 

“Don’t let shit get in your head,” he says frankly, and the angle of the torch casts half of his face in shadow. It works on him somehow, making his cheekbones look more angular, highlighting his jaw. 

“Sure,” Steve mutters, even though Billy is probably the last person who should be saying that. He swings his torch back behind them, down the passage, but nothing’s there. “Really just thought I heard something.” But their faces only show confusion.

“Let’s just keep moving,” Robin suggests anxiously. “There was a case from here in the sixties where the owner ended up impaled on the fence spikes and I really don’t want that happening to me.”

“Robin shish-kabob,” Billy quips and Steve watches the earring in his ear swing back and forth as he turns his head. 

They can’t hear it. The chimes, the same one that Steve heard earlier in the attic. 

He doesn’t quite get it, the grandfather clock and the constant discord of chimes. Something supernatural in this house really likes their fucking clocks but Steve pushes the thought away and sets off to catch up.

“How long is this fucking tunnel?” Billy says, taking the thought right out of Steve’s head. Because they’ve been walking for a few minutes and there’s no way they shouldn’t have reached the end by now. The house isn’t that big.

“Do you think we’re just gonna end up in a loop back where we first started?” Robin asks nervously and it says a lot that neither of them scoff at the idea. All rules go out of the window in this fucking house. 

“Maybe we should make a mark?” Billy suggests. “Just in case?”

Steve searches in his pocket for the wrapper he’d shoved in there earlier. Littering isn’t the best idea but it would be something distinct that they can look out for. Dimension warping seems to be a thing here, spaces not acting as they normally would. Especially down here. The rest of the house isn’t exempt but there’s something about this basement that defies all logic. It’s fucking insane that they have to come this way to get out when it seems to be the source of whatever is living here but they had no other options, save for smashing in a window. And if it was anything like the backdoor, then it may have just been more wasted time. 

The thought must have occurred to all of them, even if no one is willing to say it. That something might not let them out of the house. They might reach the cellar door only to find it sealed shut or they might just walk this dark corridor endlessly until they’re too tired to fight back.

Steve’s fingers close around the wrapper just as hears it again, the faint sound of bells. He freezes, hand in his pocket, barely able to breathe. Robin and Billy walk on ahead of him, unaware of what Steve can hear.

Why is it me? Steve thinks. Why is it just me? 

He swings his bag around to dig around for the knife. He’s not sure how much good it’ll do but having his hand around the handle calms the churning in his stomach somewhat.

Then it happens, like a cold breath on the back of his neck.

“Steve,” and the whisper is so faint that for a moment Steve thinks that he’s losing his mind. But then it happens again, the same call and the curl of cold dank breath on the back of his neck makes his hand sweaty around the knife. 

“Steve?” another voice calls anxiously and Steve whips his head back around, towards the bobbing lights of his friends. He knows that this particular call didn’t come from either of them.

“Shit,” Steve whispers, trapped between two ghostly voices. The second voice is higher, sweeter, and he doesn’t have to think twice about the fact that it is Alice, trying her best to fight against whatever is waiting behind him in the dark.

So he steels himself and steps forward, ignoring the pull from behind him.

There’s something in his head and he thinks that there has been for a while. There’s tiny hooks in his brain, left behind from whatever grazed across his thoughts. It wasn’t there when he entered the house but then he remembers how the fake Billy had smiled, the interest in its eyes as it gripped Steve’s chin with strong, sharp fingers. Steve had been too shocked, too reeling from hurt to do anything other than leave his mind open. 

And now it's gotten in and Steve isn’t sure there’s anything he can do to get it out.

The voices echo in his head, two identical calls from opposite directions. Steve’s vision wavers, the tunnel suddenly splitting in two. He has to stumble to a stop, grasping hold of the wall for balance. His breath is getting short and sharp, like the oncoming wave of a panic attack.

Alice’s voice is getting quieter, but more desperate. She’s losing.

Steve is losing.

But when he looks up and finds that he no longer sees his friends in front of him, he realizes that he’s already lost. He lost focus, for just long enough for the house to work its strange little magic. The tunnel wasn’t never-ending in the first place. They just had to think it was long enough for whatever else is living here to have the time to work its way into Steve’s head, finding all of the little hooks and barbs that it left there before. Seeds just waiting to be nourished and grow.

The torch around his wrist flickers, and then dies.