Of reality, I know this: there's danger in its lies.

– Book of Nod

The door groaned like a sick elephant as the boys heaved its immobile bulk along dangerously decayed hinges. Kyle fixed his gaze on his dirty, abused hands, grinding his molars, yet seeing and hearing nothing. Nothing existed but strain, muscles depleting their reserves, vision fading around the edges. When Jason finally stopped and collapsed, he kept pushing with singular purpose; his mind essentially disabled.

"This... sucks," Jason observed, huddled on the ground, resting and rubbing a sore shoulder.

That sound, Jason's voice, snapped Kyle from his mental delirium. "Huh?" he mumbled, befuddled at the disruption. Didn't quite catch that, amigo.

"Sucks," Jason repeated. "This does. I thought the lock was the hard part, but those hinges are worse! I quit, kid."

Fair enough. "Yeah..." Kyle said as his resolve crumbled, along with his body, to the floor next to Jason. "I got an idea, though. Just gotta rest a minute."

"Oh rheally? Iz zat zo?" Jason asked, affecting a thick German accent, peering at Kyle, a skeptical inquisitor. "Tell uz vut ve vant to know!"

"Legs. I've helped my dad move furniture before; 'lift with your legs!' he always tells me." He paused for breath, as his lungs still busied themselves replenishing oxygen to his beleaguered blood. "No way I could lift any of that stuff."

Jason looked confused. "Wasn't that what we were doing?"

"Nope," Kyle said. "Not enough leverage." He sighed and stood up, eyes interrogating the nearby wall. "Aha!"

He sifted through his bag and emerged with a small chisel and a hammer. Jason gawked openly, unbelieving.

"What else ya got in there, a radio?"

Kyle laughed. "No. I did some scouting in my day. Figured we might need to dig under stuff or dislodge mud or rocks burying anything we found." He turned toward the wall while explaining this. "Watch and learn."

He began chipping away the rotten mortar loosely cementing a brick, a steady stream of detritus pelting his shoes. It was fast work, and immediately upon his final few taps, the wall vomited the brick onto the ground. Kyle narrowly avoided pancake-foot-itis, jumping away in surprise after his chisel passed effortlessly into the new portal. He quickly kicked the brick into the water and started again on its neighbor.

"Yer kiddin' me, kid. Yer gonna go through the wall?!" Jason exclaimed, stunned. "I thought ya were gonna use the brick ta knock away some rust on the hinges."

Kyle snorted in derision. "No way. I've had enough of that thing. This is way easier." As if to illustrate his point, he stepped to the side and gave two bricks a few experimental taps, sending them clattering into the next room. "This mortar is older than your grandma's panties. I'm more scared of the hole being too big and having the thing collapse on us."

A few minutes later, and Kyle stopped, satisfied he could crawl through the gap. He directed his flashlight into the murk and shimmied through the wall, grunting slightly with each movement. Swallowed into the unknown room, he vanished. Jason chewed his lip, unsure he should follow.

"Just a sec!" Kyle called, voice muffled and eerily distant. "Ok, stand away from the door. I'm gonna try something."

Jason backed from the door as if it were alive, grasping for his entrails with talons of razor and death. Ever since Kyle plunged into that room, Jason was terrified—ready to bolt down any corridor—of nothing at all. Easy, son. Nothing is the best thing to fear. "Uh... go ahead!" he yelled, hoping Kyle would just hurry.

A harried scuttling sounded from beyond the wall; Jason backed around the corner. An animal snarl, high and rancorous, pealed from within, a steady siren growing louder by the second. Finally it ended with a heavy whump and a terrifying wail of a thousand tortured souls begging futilely for redemption.

"Whoh!" a voice yelped, before something crunched heavily into the ground. "Oww..."

It was only Kyle. "You... uh... you alright, kid?" Jason, not truly the coward he seemed, turned the corner again and saw Kyle prone as a fetus, groaning. He saw too, the door was open, possibly even slightly embedded in the left wall. "Holy... how hard did ya hit that thing?!"

Though still suffering on the ground, Kyle turned his head to admire his handiwork; he felt proud of the damage. Really it wasn't so difficult. He jammed his flashlight into a convenient nook, and steamrolled into the door, slamming into it like a sledgehammer with his shoulder. The door protested and squealed frightfully, rust utterly failing to stop his momentum before the band of resistance snapped and sent Kyle and his target separate ways.

Kyle winced. His left shoulder, cruelly driven into a heavy iron door, now lie against the ground, throbbing a quiet warning of later revenge.

Jason found a sliver of mirth still unsquelched by the mysterious aura of doom steadily peeling away his mind. "Ya got balls, kid. Want me to help ya get up?"

"Actually if it's all the same, I'd rather lay here for a while. Come get me next year." No trace of sarcasm there, Kyle longed to sleep away his exhaustion and recuperate before he managed to break something.

"Hey, you earned it," Jason replied.

Then he looked up and saw where Kyle stowed his light, directly into the diffused beam as it bathed his face in welcome illumination. His irises screwed themselves closed, reducing his pupils to tiny dots; overwhelmed senses struggling to adjust. With his night-vision reduced, Jason thought he saw something flit through the light, temporarily casting a shadow as it skimmed the unwelcome intruder—he felt it shriek as the lazy beam tore through its insubstantial body.

He closed his eyes and silently counted to ten. Nothing there. Maybe a bat. "I think I just saw a bat, Scruff. Hope ya didn't leave yer bag in a pile of guano."

Kyle muttered a weak chuckle. "No way. Put it on some kind of ledge in there. I think I saw some candles before I ran for the door." He paused. "Help yourself to my matches if you think you can get 'em goin'. The room's pretty big, and we could use the light." He breathed out a long blast of air, coughing and shifting for some modicum of comfort. "Maybe take a few with us."

"Good idea," Jason noted. He didn't want to go anywhere near the room, or touch anything lurking inside, but Kyle had a point. If he had seen candles, shoveling a few into Kyle's bag was easy and essential; neither of them knew how long they'd stay underground, and batteries weakened just as wax melted.

Jason closed his eyes and took a deep breath, steadying his nerves. Here goes nothing! As he crossed the threshold, everything unraveled, ripped unfinished from the loom of fate—his optimism, most of all.