By LAINEY NOGA
(excerpt)
Samantha bounded down the stairs. In the nighttime hush of her unfinished basement she joined her two young companions, who had been huddled around a worn game board and a box of Domino’s pizza. It was a dreary weekend in late October, and the girls were sheltering from a thrashing storm that had knocked the power clean out; and what was there to amuse them in such primitive conditions? If the rain hadn’t turned the streets into rivers, she would have suggested that they all pile into her mom’s SUV and drive on over to somebody else’s house who had a cooler basement, or perhaps even a sparsely furnished garage; but all those National Weather Service alerts insisted on antagonizing her.
She wandered away from her friends, scanning every little thing around her in the corners and the closets, and stumbling upon an undersized door that was, as she confirmed, locked in a very decisive manner. It struck her at once that she must open this door, but she scarcely knew how to go about this mission. There was no axe or chainsaw or anything around, and she would never be able to deliver a strong enough kick while wearing her fluffy Birkenstocks—but it was much in Samantha’s nature to overcome impossible situations.
She found a broken clothing rack of shaky rusted metal, yanked the pole straight off the peeling wallpaper; she propped one end toward the stubborn doorknob and jammed the other toward a tiny vent. Was it possible that luck would be a gentleman tonight? The lightning, it soon did come; the blessing of this electric flash of divine timing made her feel how very untouchable she was.
The others had made their way over, alarmed by the more-or-less explosion with which the undersized door was thrown open; but Samantha ignored their frantic queries in favor of the simple suggestion: “Let’s go in.”
Having finally batted away most of the smoke that shrouded the mysterious doorway from view, the three girls peered inside only to find complete darkness, with Samantha then reasoning that they must venture through having come this far, and after they had been twiddling their thumbs for hours in perpetual boredom, without even the pleasure of one electronic screen, their foolish teenage brains having forgotten to charge their devices in anticipation of the storm that morning.
It was a bit of a gamble—but how refuse it? What choice did they have? To take a leap of faith, or stay lame. As they passed through the doorframe, with its faintly pulsating light, they entered a tunnel, its moist, gnarled walls dripping onto the decaying ground, little knick-knacks and lone shoes half-embedded in the muck, patches of luminous moss casting shadows with their glow, and the wee spiders and creatures skittering wildly into the crevices above their heads; Samantha had the feeling the tunnel was closing in, with its erratic twists and bewildering turns. Yes; now she was quite positive she was experiencing physically shifting surroundings, for she could no longer stay standing. Her whole body whirled in tumbles, somersaults; it was the excitement she had sought, the reckless thrill she had wished for. But the stomachache was not what she wanted.
A few moments later the tunnel spewed her out: she had landed at the shore of a lake, gasping for air. Next her friends were hurled to the ground with thuds on either side of her; Samantha tuned out their whimperings to admire the splendor all around her. There was never a moment when she was conscious of having to return home.
A lake in which you could see all the way down to stone pebbles; mist floating upwards; rolling hills dotted with bunches of wildflowers, with one hill leading up to a looming grand old house; an imposing front door that looked like a the smile of a clown if you stared at it for too long; the door, sandwiched by perfectly symmetrical columns and planters; the columns and planters, sandwiched by fields of garden vegetables and flowers; a winding path downwards, its pattern conforming to the gentle slopes of the grassy hills; the far side of the shore of this impossibly clear lake, the near side now harboring a small wooden boat—in the boat sat a grimy, large, humanoid mouse.
The mouse introduced himself as Michael and welcomed the girls with a chuckle. His invitation to join him included a promise that he wasn’t going to hurt them—muttered through jagged teeth in a low mechanized murmur—and Samantha knew she’d have to board first in order to convince the others. Miranda, the cynic, had climbed on a while after, as Samantha had reasoned that they had no other option, tugged at her heart-strings a bit, and employed other various methods of peer pressure. It was understood that Charlotte would follow suit in such two-to-one situations, and she usually accepted the concession with only nervous commentary.
The once-distant house was now a vast manor, whose front door slammed behind the girls as they stepped inside. Its white marble foyer was lined with red carpet that snaked up a curved staircase but, if you looked even further up, the main attraction was the chandelier.
It is difficult to describe the chaos that ensued when the chandelier went out, not so much from any childish fear of the dark as because gleaming eyes opened and began to watch them. The horror wreaked on them by the collective gaze of these eyes compounded when each pair grew a wide clown’s smile, and Samantha had never felt such staggering betrayal as that she felt now by the mouse she had so kind-heartedly set aside her biases for and accepted as a friend. To make matters worse, with a deafening crash of crystal and glass, the great chandelier detached from the ceiling and plummeted to the floor, its enormous weight crashing down upon Charlotte’s wailing head and silencing her cries forever…
to be continued
Writer | Lainey Noga ’26 | enoga26@amherst.edu
Editor | Odessa Ikels ’28 | sikels28@amherst.edu