The Spindlers Read Online Free

thing—was no doubt buried somewhere deep underground by now.
    Liza knew she had no choice. She, too, must go Below.

Chapter 3

T HE B ASEMENT
    D uring the day, Liza liked the basement. She and Patrick often played hide-and-seek among the large boxes, which were full of old sweaters and yellowing books and broken toys and other interesting things. When it rained, there was a leak in the corner, just above the old, yellowing map, which was warped and bubbled from moisture, and which depicted cities and countries that had long ago ceased to exist; then Mr. Elston would have to come, stomping and cursing, to set up a bucket between the boxes.
    But in the night it was very different.
    Liza had waited until both of her parents had gone to bed; then she had slipped on a long-sleeved shirt and her favorite puffy vest over her pajamas, and made her way as quietly as possible to the door next to the kitchen, and then down the rough wooden stairs that led into the basement. Everything looked strange and sharp and unfamiliar. The piles and boxes were people wearing cloaks of darkness; any of them might jump out and grab her at any second. Liza was desperately tempted to turn on the light. But then, of course, the spindlers would know she was coming. Liza thought she heard something rustle behind her, and she spun around, clutching the broom with both hands like a baseball bat.
    But no. There was nothing. Liza lowered the broom.
    There it was again. Liza paused, listening. Faintly, she could detect the sounds of scratching and scrabbling, coming from her right. She took one shuffling step in that direction, and then another. Despite the hours and hours she had spent playing in the basement, she felt very turned around: She had the sense that the room was growing bigger all around her, extending outward in strange and twisty ways, like a tightly closed flower suddenly opening its petals.
    She bumped her knee against a hard corner and said, “Crill,” quietly into the dark. Crill was her word for when things were going badly.
    She reached out and moved her hand along the object blocking her path; she recognized the carvings along its surface as belonging to a large wooden trunk in which her mother kept woolen sweaters. This helped orient her, and Liza took several more steps forward, more confidently this time. She kept the broom in front of her and swept from side to side so she could be sure that the path was clear and she would not trip and fall over anything.
    She thought if she were to break her neck and die, and then Patrick—the fake one—were to crumble to dust when the spindlers overtook him, their parents would be extremely sorry and regret that they had accused Liza of making up stories. The idea was somewhat pleasing, and helped her focus on something other than the fear, and the scratching sounds of so many tiny nails, which were growing louder by the second.
    At last she stood in front of the narrow bookcase that concealed the hole in the wall that was a crawl space: the best place for hiding during games of hide-and-seek. Behind the bookcase, the sounds of scratching and clicking were louder than ever.
    Liza thought of her warm bed upstairs, and the orderliness of her room, with her pink-and-white-striped chair and the dollhouse she never played with anymore but still enjoyed looking at, pretty and peak-roofed and painted white. Inside the dollhouse were figures of a father and a mother and a brother and a sister with smiles painted on their faces, sitting happily around a miniature dining room table topped with a bowl of miniature fake fruit.
    There was no basement in the dollhouse. There were no spindlers there, either.
    But the dollhouse was not real life, and Liza knew that. As we have already established, she was a very practical girl.
    She turned and gave a final glance behind her. The basement appeared vast and black, as though it had been consumed by a fog: She could make out nothing but the very