the descending hallway

It was a hot day and Seth was late, as always late for class although he left home usually on time …..usually but sleep was hard to come by at home especially now that mom and dad fought all the time so it was hard to climb out of bed in the mornings. Times were bad at home since dad had lost his job at the mill and mom was calling grandpa and grandma begging for money to keep up with the bills. Mom usually got off the phone in tears, and dad would just go to the fridge and grab ANOTHER beer and stare madly at the television as if he wanted to shoot it. The bell at school had already rang and Seth was running for his life up the stairs and into class, luckily most of the kids hadn’t quite sat down yet and there was still much chatter and hustle with bustle around the class so it was easy to sneak in and take a seat before Mrs. Cruder could notice that Seth was late. Mrs. Cruder a beast of a woman who looked like an old crane with breath of a dragon stood in front of the class waiting for the kids to settle down.” Alright class simmer down and get ready for the assignment! “Old crane” Seth thought, how he hated her and her stupid class! “hey Seth” sneered Lance Biggum a fat ugly stupid boy who had been torturing Seth since kindergardgen “whats your dad been up to since he got fired for coming to work drunk”? two other boys who were friends of lances and just as fat,ugly and stupid as he were began to chuckle, Seth gave Lance and the others a hard stare and turned around quickly just to be met face to face with Cruder “Mr. Morris she squeaked through her human beak “ please be advised that class has started and there should be no chatter! “But I” started Seth “QUIET!” the old hag screamed. Boiling hatred simmered in Seth’s brain and stayed there for the duration of the class. Seth was so happy that summer was coming and that the nightmare of third grade would soon be over……………. “RING,RING RING” finally the bell, Seth ran out of the class as fast as he could hoping to get a big advanced head start on Lance and his idiotic friends……………but to late Lance and the other boys had caught up to him and were slinging insults quicker than Seth could imagine, “ hey Seth were you going, got a date?” barked Lance “ yeah a date with his mom or maybe his boyfriend bellowed one of lance’s henchman “leave me alone screamed Seth LEAVE ME ALONE! “ Were gonna get you morris your so dead!” Seth knew he had to find a place to hide and fast because Lance and his buddy’s were gonna give him a real bruising and Seth didn’t feel like explaining another beating to his dad who would beat him for getting beaten up even though it was always 3 to 1. Seth noticed that it was getting dark and that rain was coming quickly so he knew he needed to find a place to hide fast, as his legs started to turn to spaghetti noodles Seth saw an old rusted fence corroded with vines and grass up ahead of him and underneath a hole maybe big enough to crawl under, Seth darted with the last ounce of energy he had and scuttled underneath the the old nasty fence. Lance and his buddies stopped dead in their tracks when they realized what was behind that fence…………..the old Nearson house. Mrs Nearson had gone missing about 10 years ago and no one had a clue what had happened to her and quite frankly no one cared. She was a mean nasty old witch and no one liked her. Seth knew about the house and how it was haunted and how stories were all over town about Mrs. Nearson and how she was a witch and that she would have weird and scary meetings with other witches at her house, with wild laughter and flickering violent light striking from behind the curtains. Seth had found himself in the back yard of the house, lance and his cronies long gone and a faint drizzle of rain began to fall. The yard was brown almost black in color no life at all everything was dead the grass, the trees and plants even the weeds were all brown with death. An oozing goo was coming out of a long dead oak tree with a scent that almost made Seth give up his lunch. Walking slowly up the back steps of the house the rain began to fall harder and lightning cracked high and bright in the sky. Seth ran up the steps and on to the back porch of the house and in front of double doors that had not been opened since Seth was born. Pushing on the doors with what strength he had left he thought to himself “what am I doing what will my mom and dad say after I tell them I was at the Nearson place?” finally getting the doors to open seth was met with the worst smell he had ever encountered, it was a mixture of garbage, spit and god knew what else knowing that he would regret it but he went inside anyway. It was dark and damp inside the back of the kitchen of the house Seth walked slowly through the kitchen which was strewn with overturned bowls and dishes as if someone was stirred abruptly or left the dishes unattended and in a hurry. After walking through the nasty old kitchen Seth walked down a hallway which led him into a parlor with large couches and a big wooden table in the middle laced with cobwebs and that awful smell that hung in the house like a large bird. The parlor was terrifying because all he could imagine was old lady Nearson and her weird creepy friends conjuring up the dead and doing other unnatural things there, he faintly thought he heard their chants and waling of evil spells and gibberish of language as he quickly walked through the parlor and into another hallway. The next hallway Seth found was darker than the entire house and the further he walked down it the stronger and more potent the smell got. It was harder to see and Seth became more frightened than he had ever been in his entire life. The hallway suddenly dropped down and begun to take the form of stairs that sank deeper and deeper. Seth noticed on the walls of the descending hallway thick cobwebs. Deeper and deeper Seth went until finally the descending hall way of ancient looking dirt stairs emptied into a vast room a room the size or maybe larger of the school gymnasium, Seth looked at the walls of the room which was affixed with metal devices primitive and creepy. Seth thought that they were there to hold torches for light in the now visible circular room that he was in, he stopped after taking a few steps out of the hallway he could feel air rising from the ground cold nasty damp and smelly air he looked and noticed a large hole in the ground of the room directly in front of him. Seth didn’t know why but he felt that he was being drawn closer to the hole being pulled to it by some ancient wicked power a power older than he his mom dad and the town they had all grown up in. Getting closer to the edge of the hole Seth began to smell a stench that he had not first encountered in the house, it was a smell that reminded him of what his dog missy smelled like after coming in from the rain mixed with what she smelled like after a long day of play and sweat. Seth wondered if the rain had stopped since he could not hear anything from the outside, the underground room was noiseless and dark with no connection to anything from the outside. Just as Seth began to back away he noticed a long hairy leg creep out and plant itself on the ground near the edge of the hole, than another hairy leg followed by another than another. Finally he noticed eight nasty hairy legs planted around the edge of the circle and with a dusty huff of sound the legs catapulted a bulbous hairy body leaking with filth and slime attached to a large head with over a thousand eyes and a gaping dark abysmal hole of a mouth racked with saliva and gruel dripping fangs. Seth froze in terror for he had never seen anything so horrific and nasty in all his life nor did he think such thing existed. A huge gray haired spider that looked as old as the world had been alive, the hellish beast stood above the hole and stared at Seth, the terrified boy slowly began to move back and as he did the spider moved forward Seth could see his reflection in all the eyes of the beast hear it breathing as slime gruel and spit flowed out of its mouth when it exhaled its rank breath. No child thinks of death and the ones who may certainly do not see themselves dying in the way Seth thought he was about to, screaming at the top of his lungs and sobbing at the same time which seemed to confuse the beast. Seth ran up the dirt steps of the now ascending hallway, he thought only of running running for his life and not looking back. Finally he made it up into the house and out the front door through the gate into the street and down the road in the pouring rain.