The Undercroft

It was a well-known fact that small, quiet towns were treasures to settle in. The lawns are well-groomed, the trees are tall, strong, and green, and the main streets are simple. Many people believed this when they moved to Dover, New Hampshire. When they looked at the beautiful stone church in the large village green, they only noticed the quiet, civil old church as a part of the scenery. They didn’t consider it anything else.
But the children of the town knew much more of this church and why it should be dreaded. Late at night only in autumn, when the adults slept deeply, children would cower in their beds and listen to the eerie, ghostly howl arising from the graveyard. No one knew what the sound was, although there were certainly many rumors, but everyone seemed to know where it came from.
Under the beautiful, grand church there was an undercroft. The crypt was the church’s foundation. The church that was built in the village green came after the graveyard. They built the foundation starting about ten feet underground. During the construction to widen the church’s foundation, a group of workers were caved in when they came too close to an unmarked grave and the coffin fell through the ceiling.
This may only be a rumor since no one really knew if the crypt went as deep as the graveyard. No one wise ever went into the crypt either. However, many teenagers around autumn time (usually the week of Halloween) would fancy getting a scare from the crypt. The ones who entered though, never made it further than the antechamber without getting caught. This was the story that was told all over town to discourage students from entering the undercroft, but it didn’t stop people like Paul from daring to do it anyways.
When I had first moved to Dover in the seventh grade, my first week was tough. I got pushed around by the eighth grade jocks who thought they could intimidate me. It took a guy like Paul to come over and break up what would have been a potential fight. A fight that I would have lost, according to Paul. He took me under his wing in a matter of speaking. Just because he decided to allow me to be part of his group did not mean that he was nice to every newcomer.
He had all the qualities of a leader though. His group was so cool, that if you wanted to be a part of it, you’d have to follow him wherever he went and agree with him. Three years have passed since I first met Paul, and I’ve learned very much about him. He relies on his bravery, his jests, his father’s money, and when it comes to girls, his looks. Currently, he only had one girl on his mind. Her name was Jamie.
Jamie was, for lack of a better word, cool. She was on the short side: about five foot. She had shoulder length mahogany hair which she always wore with a headband. Her face was covered in freckles, her cheeks rosy, and her eyes were a bright, energetic blue. And she had more than just her looks. She was a dedicated cross country runner. She was as energetic as her blue eyes. When she felt that something was wrong, she fought it out until it was right again. She added intelligent humor in her classes, and she stood up to the upperclassmen who bullied the freshman. And probably the best thing about her was her gentle kindness to everyone around her.
We met Jamie in our freshman year at high school when she was campaigning for Class President. Paul ran against her for President just to find something to do and a way to relate to her. He really knew how to reach Jamie because she found that she actually liked Paul while they were debating in front of the whole Freshman Class. Paul won (obviously only because he had the popular vote), but he didn’t care about winning. Now he had Jamie, who was totally hooked on him.
She refused to date Paul, but she hung out with him often. They had gone on group dates together, but they had never spent time alone together. Usually, Paul had me come along. According to him, I was the only guy that he trusted who would not hit on his girl. So that’s how it was. I’d walk around town with Paul and Jamie (usually a step behind) while the two of them fought and joked.
That’s what we were doing the night of Halloween. We walked up the street, trying to avoid the costume-clad children. Paul was making some jest about stealing the candy from a little boy dressed as Spiderman. Jamie felt ashamed for his behavior as the little boy started to cry.
She turned on Paul, “How dare you try to steal candy from children? That’s so vile.”
“I was just kidding, Babe,” he shrugged.
Jamie reddened still with anger, “It’s not a funny joke. You scared that little boy. You can be such a jerk. Can’t he, Eric?”
She turned her bright eyes at me. The sunset was low behind her casting her hair ever a darker red. I wanted to agree with her or to make some wise-guy comment that would make her laugh, but instead I lamely answered, “Well, I don’t know. He was just joking after all.”
Jamie turned away. As soon as she started to ignore me again, I invented a couple of intelligent phrases to say to her, a little too late. Paul smirked at me and then casually draped his arm around Jamie’s shoulder. It was clear that she was still a little aggravated with him, but she did not shove him away. Paul pulled us towards the village green and the old stone church. Jamie turned back to look at me for only a second. She didn’t say anything but her eyes showed that she was questioning Paul’s objective.
“It’s almost dark now,” Paul murmured for only us to hear, “Anyone in the mood for a little adventure?”
He motioned to the storm cellar doors behind the church. Jamie’s eyes widened. She stared at Paul in disbelief. And then her gaze shifted into complete disproval. “You are not planning on going down there,” she stated simply.
“Of course, I am,” he replied haughtily, “I’ve decided that it’s time that we have a look to see what’s really so special about this crypt-thingy.”
“But we’ll get in trouble,” she warned, “we’ll be trespassing on private property.”
Without thinking, I muttered, “But we kind of already are.”
I realized as Jamie turned towards me, that she had heard me. “That’s not helping,” she complained, “We aren’t supposed to be here so we should leave. Besides, there’s no knowing what’s down there. It could be really dangerous.”
Paul interrupted her, “Look, Babe, I brought a flashlight with me. We’ll be perfectly safe. And I’ll protect you from any zombies.”
“No.”
“Whatever,” Paul rolled his eyes at her, “Eric’s going to come down with me. Right, Eric?”
By this point, I neither wanted to be part of their argument or go under the church. In three years of this town, you can learn to fear the most haunted places. But when I looked at Paul, I could read it on his face that if I didn’t go down to the crypt with him, that he’d consider me as a wimp. So for the second time tonight, I agreed with Paul instead of Jamie. “Yeah, I’ll go,” I replied with more courage in my voice than I actually felt.
I didn’t dare look at Jamie. “But Eric…,” she started.
Paul interrupted her again, “Look, if you don’t want go come down with us, then you can stay up here and wait. Do what you want.” With that, he pulled open the rusty cellar door and looked down into it. There was another door at the bottom of the steps. Already from the door, I could smell mold and must. There was also this sense of a death and silence. With a cheerful whistle which was ironic in this situation, Paul took out his flashlight, waved goodbye to his girl, and started to walk down the stairs to the door.
I followed behind him. About half way down the steps, I heard a small cough from behind me. Jamie was standing by the nearest tomb stone. She was hovering like she was in-between decisions. And then she muttered, “Wait for me?”
I paused and motioned for her to follow. She ran towards the cellar and followed me down the stairs. Paul, being impatient with the two of us, already had the door open and was shining the light around the antechamber. “Watch your head,” he called back to us, “the ceiling is awfully low down here, but Jamie shouldn’t have a problem with it.”
Jamie ignored the snide comment. And I ignored the warning of the ceiling and ended up hitting my head anyway. The three of us stood in the antechamber for some time. Paul shined the flashlight in every direction. My fear of the crypt melted away slowly. The flashlight lit up this section of the crypt and I couldn’t imagine any other part could be any worse. Jamie must have agreed because she seemed quite calm now too. But Paul was already irritable. Since he was the tallest of the three of us, he had to stoop down in what I would assume was an uncomfortable position.
“So shall we continue?” Jamie asked impatiently, “Or are we going to stand here and wait for the police to find us?”
Paul growled, “I already told you, if you don’t want to come down here, then you can wait outside.”
Jamie’s eyes widened, “I didn’t mean…”
“She has a point,” I said to Paul, “We should keep moving.”
Paul blinked several times. For a minute at least, he didn’t seem to remember what he was doing. But finally, he caught on and led us to through a small hallway to another chamber. “Follow me,” he ordered.
We did as he said. As we entered the next chamber though, the roof sloped upward making it easier for us to stand properly. Paul jerked to a stop right in front of me so that I almost fell into him. We stared into the darkness. Paul moved the flashlight around the new chamber only to find that the light was almost engulfed in the darkness. Besides the little circle of light that the three of us stood in, there whole chamber was pitch black. As the light moved, Jamie let out a sigh of disbelief.
“Look at that,” I pointed out as the light moved towards a wall, “the bricks are crumbling into dirt. This church is still in use and yet the foundation is crumbling.”
Paul kicked the wall and watched as rubble fell down to the floor. “That’s not very safe.”
“We must be in the heart of the undercroft,” Jamie added, “There are lots of paths that enter into this chamber.”
Paul smirked, “I wonder where they lead.”
“To the graveyard?” I suggested.
Paul started towards the path to the right which should, according to rumor, lead them into the graveyard. But Jamie did not move, and I did not feel like moving either. Paul turned back to us and beckoned. He looked at me especially, “Come on, Eric. How bad can it be? Nothing’s going to happen down here. Everything four feet above us is dead, anyway.”
“I don’t want to go any further,” Jamie cried out at him, “I keep getting this feeling like something is going to pop out at us. I’m ready to go back. We can’t see anything down here anyway. There’s no point in staying.”
“You guys can’t be telling me you’re scared already. We haven’t been down here more than ten minutes,” Paul teased us, “Seriously, Eric, prove that you’re a man.”
I felt like I had no choice. So I followed Paul towards the chamber to the right. However, instead he moved to the path that was straight across from the path that led to the exit. Jamie stood around muttering to herself until like before she quickly followed them into the new chamber. She followed closely behind Paul, and I followed behind her.
Reaching the next dark, looming chamber, Paul crossed forward into the middle of the room. “Hey! Check out this ditch!” He exclaimed.
Jamie and I stayed in the entrance of the chamber, examining the so-called ditch that Paul was talking about. When he lit it up with the flashlight, we saw that it was about two feet deep. The dirt floor around it looked like it was scratched. It looked kind of like my carpet before we got my cat declawed. “It looks like a nest to me,” Jamie concluded, “See how the floor around the ditch has dirt piles on the side. It’s almost like an animal is burrowing in it.”
“Well, why don’t you get over here and get a closer look? Stop standing in the doorway and explore a bit,” Paul smirked.
“Paul,” Jamie cried again irritably, “We need to get out of here, now. You’ve had your fun. Let’s go.”
“No,” Paul yelled back, “for the last time, nothing is going to happen. There’s nothing down here besides us. Do you hear me? There’s nothing down h…”
Before Paul could finish his sentence, we were all plunged into darkness. The flashlight went out.
If we thought that it was unbelievably dark before we entered the first chamber, it was nothing compared to the everlasting blackness all around us. I knew that Jamie was next to me and that Paul was in the middle of the chamber, but I could not see even a silhouette of them. My eyes just could not adjust to the dark.
“That’s not funny, Paul. Turn the light back on,” Jamie ordered, “Someone could get hurt if we can’t see.”
“I’m not joking around,” Paul bit back somewhere in front of us. His voice seemed to echo now that we were in the dark.
Jamie didn’t reply to Paul. We all stayed silent when we heard a distant sound. It scratched and stumbled like feet. Regardless of what Paul had been trying to convey to Jamie, I had to agree that it did sound like someone else was in the crypt with us. I didn’t want the other two to notice, but I was terrified now. The perpetual darkness left me with a sense of dread. I felt like I’d never be able to see daylight again.
Jamie and I waited for Paul to take charge, but he said nothing either. Finally Jamie cried out at Paul, “Turn the light back on. Please, Paul. I really don’t like this.”
“Turn the light on,” I said as I attempted to sound indifferent, “You’re scaring Jamie.”
“Look, dude,” Paul shouted angrily, “I’m trying my best here. The batteries are dead.”
No, I thought, they couldn’t be. If the batteries are dead then we have no other source of light. We’ll never get out of here!
Jamie seemed to be thinking along the same lines because she cried desperately, “You have to do something, Paul. I swear to God, if we don’t get…”
Her words were drowned out by a high-pitched, eerie squeal. The sound was inhuman. I never heard a sound that was a higher pitch than a tea-kettle, but there it was. Echoing through the undercroft, there was no way to tell from where it was coming. I could hear Paul shout toward us, but I could not hear his words. My perception led me to think that the eerie sound, whatever it may be, was actually behind Jamie and me. I could not tell how close though.
I had large goose bumps from just hearing such a sound. The supernatural shrill rang through my ears so fiercely that it made my eyes tear up. And for whatever reason, I felt my arm becoming increasingly numb. I realized suddenly aware that Jamie was so horrified that she had grabbed me and her nails were digging through my sweatshirt and into my arm. In vain, I grabbed her hand to retract her nails, but somehow I ended up holding her hand.
She was shaking violently against me. I had to get her out of here. I had to get all of us out of here.
“PAUL!” I shouted so loud that my throat hurt, “WE NEED TO GET OUT OF HERE NOW! FOLLOW THE SOUND OF MY VOICE!!!”
He dashed over to us, falling many times, I assumed. “FOLLOW ME!” I called to him. Instinct told me to run straight, so I did. I led Jamie by the hand through the chamber hall into the heart of the crypt. Paul fell over somewhere behind us, so I turned to Jamie and hollered, “Stay here! I’m going back to get Paul!”
I sensed him in one of the chambers. I followed my senses to him. I helped him up, but he was hallucinating. “I can’t do it,” he cried, “Go without me. I’ll never get out. Leave. Save yourself.”
“For the love of God, Paul!” I shouted, “Quit being a baby! We need to get the heck out of here!”
If we hadn’t been in critical danger with the supernatural, I would have rolled my eyes at him. He refused to move no matter how much I fought with him. “We have to keep moving! I left Jamie in the other chamber by herself. We can get out of here! Come on, Paul!”
That’s when a new scream joined the other one. The difference is that this one was human. It was Jamie.
Jamie’s in trouble! My mind kept flashing images where Jamie was being dragged off or she was being murdered on the spot. Either way, I could tell that scream was not because she was scared but because she was in danger.
I jerked Paul up and raced to the heart of the crypt. “JAMIE!” I screamed out to her.
Her response was an even louder, blood-curdling scream, “LET GO OF ME!”
I found her at last. My reaction was ready to save her from the undead, but when I found her she was shaking on the floor, alone. I reached for her hand, and she gratefully accepted mine. I helped her up gently, and the three of us raced to the hall that led straight to the antechamber. Jamie was limping, and Paul was stumbling. I tried to keep them both going as I led to the antechamber where suddenly, it was very silent again.
It didn’t matter that it was silent. We all simultaneously agreed by running straight to the door. We didn’t want to spend one more minute in the crypt. I urged Paul and Jamie to go before me. They left, and I slammed the wooden door shut, ran up the storm cellar stairs, and I shut that door too.
And everything seemed so much brighter. The stars and the moon were lighting up the world for us. My eyes ached from this lovely sight. My ears still rang. But I was glad to be finally out of there. I looked around for Jamie and Paul. Jamie was sitting in the grass in a state of hysterics. Paul was nowhere to be found.
“He ran home,” she made an effort to say after she calmed her breathing.
I sat down next to her. “What happened to you down there?”
“I could ask you the same,” Jamie replied, “How did you know where to go?”
I shrugged. I really didn’t know how I managed to get us all out of there. It must have been my instinct or some heavenly figure saving us. By this point, I’d believe either one. “I’ll ask again,” I said softly to Jamie who was still a bit shaken.
Jamie was crying, “I don’t know what happened. I may have been acting like a girly-girl by being as terrified as I was. But after you left, something grabbed my ankle. It was like five nails dug into my skin. I tried to shove whatever it was off thinking that maybe I walked into something. I tried to think reasonably, but then I lost my balance and hit the floor. Then I was being dragged by my ankle into another chamber. That’s when I screamed for you. I was beyond terrified by then. I did try to fight it off though, but whatever it was didn’t let go of me, until you came along. And now I can’t tell if I was imagining it all or not.”
“There’s one way to find out,” I responded reasonably. Carefully, I rolled up Jamie’s pants leg. As careful as I was, Jamie still cried out at the pain in her leg. I did notice that the leg of her jeans were damp. Sure enough, around her ankle were five very bloody gashes. I looked up at Jamie’s face and saw that she was suffering terribly.
Jamie’s eyes widened. “Oh, my gosh,” she muttered, “It’s even worse than I thought.”
“It may not be as bad as it looks,” I examined the injuries closer, “We should get them cleaned regardless. Do you think you can walk?”
“Not very well,” she smiled embarrassed.
“Then I will help you,” I said holding out my hand to her. I helped her up off the grass and draped her arm over my shoulder so that I could carry most of her weight. Then we started walking to her house. It was quiet for some time. Neither of us really knew what to say. Well at least on my part, I knew what to say, but I was too afraid to say anything at all.
Jamie led me down a series of roads until she pointed out her house. The porch lights were on, but the house lights were off. There was a bowl left out on the front step that had few pieces of rejected candy and a note that read, Take two pieces.
“My parents are at a party,” Jamie explained as she reached into her back pocket for the front door key, “You can come in, if you want.”
“Well, I should actually be getting home soon,” I said nervously, “But if you need help or anything…”
Jamie looked down at the porch and then smiled back at me, “No, I’m fine. See you on Monday.”
“Yeah, see you,” I replied awkwardly.
I turned to leave. I had barely started for the sidewalk when Jamie called me back. She smiled at me apologetically. “Before you leave, I just want to say that I think you were very brave when we were in the undercroft. I don’t know how we would have made it out if we kept Paul as the leader. So, umm, thank you.”
“Don’t mention it,” I said off-handedly. I hope she couldn’t notice my face reddening, “I did whatever anyone would do. We’re out now, so it’s all over.”
“Either way,” Jamie tried to fight back.
I interrupted her, “Do you want to hang out tomorrow?”
Maybe I was imagining it, but Jamie’s eyes lit up. She nodded slowly and replied, “I would love to.”
I could feel the wide grin erupt on my face. I tried to contain it, but it defeated me. “Cool,” I answered as calmly as I could, “I’ll see you tomorrow then.”
Again, I turned back to the sidewalk and continued to walk back to my house. Jamie called out after me, “Goodnight, Eric.” And I smiled. I smiled as I passed Paul’s house where every light seemed to be on. I smiled as I passed the village green with the stone church and its mysterious crypt. But as I passed the crypt, I couldn’t help sensing the dread pulsing from it.
Even though I may have passed through the sepulcher tonight, it did not stop the air of mystery that was cast about it; instead it only made the mystery more puzzling. But whether or not, the crypt puzzled me, I now knew that no amount of curiosity would make me go back into the crypt again.