Lenore chased after Victor as he descended from the porch. The boots he'd borrowed squelched as he stepped onto the grass, the ground softened and muddy from the melting snow.

"Wait!" she called, scrambling down the porch steps. A big drip from the eaves pelted the back of her head. "Do you even know how to work an old fuse box? They're not like the new ones at all—"

"The last place I lived in before we came to Eden was probably older than this place," Victor replied, stopping to look this way and that, searching for the cellar entrance. He spotted it in the alcove of the porch's edge and headed straight for it. "And its wiring was always acting up, too, so I had to learn how to fix it."

"Oh," was all Lenore had to say to that. She still thought it was a bad idea to head down into the cellar—though the weather was better, who knows how long it'd hold. In fact, a new layer of fog had started to creep forward from the forest, thick and wet.

Victor didn't sense her trepidation. He went to the doors and wrenched them open, throwing them back to the ground. A dank breeze drifted up from below, and the stone steps beyond the door descended into perfect darkness.

"Got that flashlight?" Victor asked, holding his hand out.

On her way out, Lenore had grabbed the flashlight her mother kept back at the backdoor for this very purpose. She hesitated as though it was her last defence against sending him down into the abyss. But he stretched his arm out further, insistent, and she had no good reason to refuse him. She handed it over.

He took it and clicked it on. The beam was strong, blinding even in the sunlight, and he aimed it down the stairs. The stone was glistening, sweating off the ice. Even with the flashlight's strong beam, it barely penetrated the darkness. Lenore swallowed hard, dreading having to go down into the dark. Victor did not have the same hesitation. He scraped off the mud from his boots and headed down.

Lenore took a deep breath and followed after.

As she reached the bottom of the stairs, she wound her arms around herself. She wished she had thought to don a coat before coming out. Regardless of the melting warmth outside, it was still cold as ice down here. The ceiling was low, and Victor had to hunch slightly to navigate the cellar, dip down even further now and then to dodge the old wooden beams that crossed the ceiling.

Despite the lack of height, the room was quite wide. The flashlight's beam glanced off the haphazard wooden shelves that lined the walls, once used to hold the jars and crates of preserved food.

Victor swore as his hip ricocheted off an old table lurking in the dark. The strange items on top—old jars, rusted tools, grimy sheaths of paper—jostled and clattered, knocking a swell of dust into the air. He coughed and pulled his shirt over his nose to keep the dust out.

"Damn, this place looks like the set of an old horror movie," Victor joked, swiping at the dust in the air. "I almost expect to turn a corner and find a creaky old coffin or something. Where do you think the fuse box is?"

"I'm n-not sure," Lenore admitted. It had been years since Lenore had been down here. Even as a child, she had always hated the cellar, and her grandmother had encouraged her to keep out. There was no point, she had said, as they no longer needed it to store food to survive the long winters. Instead, they had left the space to the spiders.

Lenore looked around, trying to make sense of the clutter. By the looks of it, even the spiders had abandoned the place. The cobwebs that remained, stretched between the abandoned jars and empty boxes, were dust-covered and tattered...

Then she noticed another table nearby, pushed into a corner, that was perfectly clear. Lenore frowned as she stepped forward to inspect it. She dragged her finger across its surface, and it came away clean, as though it had been recently used—

"Is this it?"

Lenore looked back.

Victor had the flashlight aimed at a rusty metal box bolted to the wall between two shelves, a faded lightning bolt painted on the front of the door. There were no other metal boxes around, so...

"It must be," Lenore replied, leaving the table and heading to his side.

"Then let's take a look," Victor said, popping the latch.

The door gave a squealing creak as it opened.

Inside, it wasn't very complicated. Just two large metal hinges and a row of glass knobs.

"Whoa," Victor said, almost in awe. "This is old."

He brought the flashlight closer, inspecting each of the knobs. Lenore leaned closer, though she had no idea what she was looking for.

"There," Victor said, tapping at two of the knobs. Both of their glass faces were smoky. "A couple of the fuses blew."

"Right," Lenore said, remembering. "But we don't have any fresh ones. That's why my mom went out, to get some more—"

"But there are some right here," Victor said. He'd stood up and plucked a box off one of the shelves.

The box was clearly newer than the rest of the clutter, its coloured label not as dusty or faded. And as Victor said, it was half full of fresh fuses.

Lenore's brow knotted together in confusion.

"But if there were fuses here, then why did my mom leave to get more?" she wondered aloud.

"Dunno," Victor said with a shrug as he pulled one of the fresh fuses out of the box and unscrewed the dead ones. "Maybe she missed them. It is pretty dark down here."

"Y-Yeah, maybe," Lenore said, but she couldn't help but feel something about that explanation was... off.

She went quiet as Victor screwed in the new fuses. Almost immediately, the house above them began to hum.

"I think the power's back on," Victor said with a smile. He held the flashlight beneath his chin like he was about to tell a scary story. "And we didn't even have to dodge any vampires."

"Great," Lenore said, her voice flat as she was still distracted. "Then let's get out of here."

She didn't wait for Victor as she turned and headed for the cellar stairs. She couldn't wait to get out of here. She could find her way by the light that filtered down the steps, a clear beacon in the dark. Behind her, she heard the fuse box door shut with a clang, and Victor's scampering steps followed as he ran to catch up with her.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

"I'm fine," Lenore replied, but it came a little too quickly for it to be believable. But she didn't know what else to say. That sick feeling was brewing in her stomach again, not something she could put into words. Victor, the weather, everything... It all felt off, as though something was very, very wrong, though she couldn't put her finger on it.

And she couldn't fight the strange feeling that, somehow, it had something to do with her mother.

She shook her head as she ascended the stone steps as if that might help clear her mind. Fog met her as she stepped out into the light. It had reached the house by then.

And in the fog was another figure... waiting for them.

It took Lenore a second to recognize them, but when she did, she let out a cry and, without thinking, took a step back. Her foot slipped on the slick steps, and she fell back into the cellar.