From Anonymous:
I think you should persue Dan and Bob, going into the basement. Lots of engineering stuff like coal fired boilers, and Carbide gas generators in old mansions: I visualize the Winchester Mansion in San Jose….
Bob sets off into the house, Dan following a bit behind, trying to be cautious. It isn’t that he’s scared, exactly–ok, well, he’s totally scared, he won’t try to lie to himself. While he tells himself that he doesn’t believe in any of the occult rumors around the place, something still just…isn’t right. He’s busy thinking when he realizes he’s lost sight of Bob, and he hurries ahead, sees a door swinging open, and ducks into it without really thinking, and tumbles down a flight of steps into the pitch black basement, the door slamming shut behind him.
He lay groaning on the stone floor for a minute or two, making sure nothing was broken, before he hefted himself up and looked around, or at least, tried to look around. The room was pitch black, and in the fall, he’d lost track of where he was, so he stumbled off in the direction of what he thought was the stairs, but after a few feet, he realized he was wrong, and he stopped, trying to orient himself. If only he had a light…
A flicker. He’d seen it, somewhere in the dark–there it was again. He stumbled towards the pinprick of deep red light, praying he wouldn’t trip and hurt himself, and after a few yards he saw that the light was coming from the inside of a large, complicated furnace. How in the hell could there even be a flame, after all these years? He didn’t know, but it was a light–but not nearly enough to see anything helpful–he’d have to feed it…yeah, feed it, he needed to feed the flame, but with what? Sensing his need, the flame grew brighter, almost as though it were flexing a muscle, and he saw that, piled all around the walls of the room was coal–tons of it–just what he needed to feed the light, and make it bright again. He grabbed a nearby shovel that the light had illuminated and started heaping the coal into the furnace, the light churning through the fuel almost as fast as Dan could shovel it in, like a man possessed, but he had limits. His slender build wasn’t made to keep up with manual labor, and he grew tired after only a few minutes, the light ebbing bit by bit.
“No!” Dan said, “No, don’t go out, don’t die, I’m sorry–I’m just tired, so tired, please, don’t go out, I need you…”
The light seemed to pause for a moment, and there was a sudden explosion of light which threw Dan back against the heaps of coal, and the light dimmed back even more than when he’d started shoveling.
“No! No, don’t go!” Dan said, his voice gruff and raspy, and he hauled up the shovel, and felt an enormous amount of energy pumping through him, and he shoveled even faster than before, quickly nurturing the flame back up to a healthy, raging inferno as bright as the sun, and only then did he wipe his coal dusted brow, and bother looking down at himself. He was huge–probably a foot taller than when he’d fallen down the stairs, and no longer slim. The explosion had changed him, packing him full of muscle that strained against the filthy set of coveralls his clothes had become. He now looked like he was in his mid-thirties, and the light of the furnace flickered madly in his eyes. The light was so beautiful–he couldn’t believe that someone had almost allowed it to go out. Certainly he couldn’t leave–no, he would stay here, and serve the flame–feed it, and it would care for him, and he resumed his shovelling, hearing the hungry furnace slowly bring the house’s mechanical guts back to creaking life.
***
In the dining room, Bob raised his hand to block the sudden, piercing light of the chandeliers which burst forth. “Dang, who turned on the lights?” he joked, but realized that his words had fallen on no one’s ears–Dan was gone. “Dan?” he asked, “Dan? Now where did he run off to? He didn’t leave did he…” Bob walked back through the way he’d come to the first room, but saw that the window they’d climbed through was completely repaired. Unnerved, he headed back into the house to find the other pledges–he had a sneaking suspicion that they all needed to get out of here, and fast.
Where does Bob go to look for Dan, and what does newly empowered house have in store for him?
1) The kitchen–gosh he’s hungry.
2) The garden–maybe there’s a way out?
3) The library–he thought he might have seen someone’s shadow in there…
Or whatever other ideas you have–lay them on me.
Bracken's Corner 