Eldren: The Book of the Dark Read Online Free

Even the old oak door stayed resolutely shut, a testament to the fear that the house instilled in the youth of the town.
    Tony and Billy had been here before...twice before...on both occasions spurred on by a desire not to seem a coward to each other. But this time was different, this time they had a goal in mind.
    Tony felt the bulge of the key hanging heavy in his back pocket as they approached the great door which creaked noisily as they pushed it open, the sound echoing in their ears long after they stopped pushing.
    “Eh he he he,” Billy cackled, his back bent and hunched. “Come into my parlor.”
    Tony forced a giggle, but his heart wasn’t in it, and Billy lapsed back into silence as they looked across the huge entrance hall.
    Someone had been here since Tony and Billy’s last visit. Fast food cartons and beer cans were strewn across the floor and a particularly basic graffiti artist had been at work on the ornate wallpaper. Otherwise very little had been disturbed.
    “What now Oh Wise One?” Billy whispered. Somehow the atmosphere in the house didn’t lend itself to speech...even the whispers took on a life of their own as they reverberated around the walls.
    “Down to the cellar...where we went the last time,” Tony replied, trying to keep his voice as low as possible.
    Billy grimaced as he turned away towards the kitchen and the trapdoor they had discovered on their last visit.
    Whoever had been here had also discovered the trapdoor. Tony remembered that they had left it open...he had been too busy trying to get out as quickly as possible to worry about closing trapdoors. But now, as they entered the kitchen, they saw that the hatch had been closed.
    And not just closed. A shiny, new, padlock gleamed in the lock.
    “Somebody else comes here.” Tony whispered, and Billy nodded in reply.
    “Maybe we’d better just get out.” Tony said, but in his heart he knew Billy better than that, and was proved right when Billy bent down and pulled at the trapdoor.
    “The wood is rotten through. All we need to do is push something under this lip,” he said, running a finger along the edge of the door. “And we can have it up in no time. Stay here.”
    Before Tony could protest Billy had gone.
    The quiet fell on him. Through the kitchen window he could see that the sun was still beating down outside, but in here it was cold…cold and dry, and somehow musty, like old books gone damp.
    He was about to leave to look for Billy when the boy returned carrying an iron bar...part of an old railing.
    “I got this out in the garden,” Billy said. “I had to rip the shit out of a fence.”
    That brought another fit of giggles, and Tony began to believe that everything would be okay.
    Two minutes later they were standing above the hole, looking down into the blackness beneath, each waiting for the other to make the first move.
    “So what did your Granddad say about this?” Billy asked, delaying the moment when they would have to descend into the dark.
    “We have to go down...where we were before. There’s an old storeroom there...we must have missed it the last time...that’s where he locked them in. That’s where we find the door.” Tony replied, reading from the map.
    “Your Granddad was full of shit...you know that?” Billy said as he lowered himself into the hole, slowly, being careful to keep his feet on the rungs of the ladder. Tony clipped the flashlight to his belt and folded the map back into his pocket before following.
    As they descended the light got dimmer and Tony could only just see Billy’s blonde head when he looked down.
    He started to tremble about halfway down and his legs went weak for a moment, but he pulled himself together, determined never again to show any cowardice when Billy was around. So they went down and the air got colder and the silence descended with them.
    Billy was waiting at the bottom. Tony could just make out his pale face as he spoke.
    “So what now Batman? And put that