There was a crack in the floor of Ava Sergeant’s room. Coming out from beneath the bed, the sliver was no wider than one’s wrist; after a point, it forked into two wisps even thinner than its original breadth. No light seemed to escape from this fissure, either- when Ava had shone a light down into its depths, nothing was reflected. Due to this, she had come to think of it in nature something akin to a miniature black hole.

Among other things, this very crack was one of the reasons Ava despised their home. Her parents treated it as though it were a palace, since the dilapidated manor at 33 Enfer Road had belonged to the Sergeants for the past hundred-and-fifty years. When visitors would enter the home, Mrs. Sergeant would eagerly gush about the original columns and darling emerald shutters. Mr. Sergeant had nothing against the house, either; after all, one tends to be nostalgic for the place where they’d grown up. Even Virginia Sergeant, Ava’s aloof grandmother, could say no ill word towards her home.

However, her family’s complacency was precisely what bothered Ava. Where her mother saw charming window-seats, she only saw the thick South-Carolinian kudzu threatening to break through the fragile panes again. Each time her father took his coffee mug out of the cabinet, she was disgusted by the thick rim of residue left by their hopeless washing-machine. Regardless, what disturbed her most about the house was that everyone refused to acknowledge any memory of Will.

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The main detail she lucidly recalled of that night was the colored pencil she’d been using. The deep-green tip kept snapping; frustratedly, Ava kept sharpening it. It was as sweltering as usual for July; though Mr. Sergeant opened all the windows and doors in desperation, his efforts only let all the mosquitoes in through the broken screens. Mrs. Sergeant fanned herself with a magazine and downed peach tea after peach tea.

Summer vacation had just begun, but Ava saw no reason to embrace it. If she went outside, her thick hair would puff up in the smothering humidity. And if she went downstairs, well, she’d be smothered by her mom’s boundless enthusiasm. Instead, she had situated herself in her room, looking up exchange programs for the next semester’s term. If Mrs. and Mr. Sergeant refused to leave their condemned premises, she figured she’d have to do it on her own. She sighed in frustration– a promising family in Sweden had put stellar grades in the requirement for the teen they’d host. She was not a perfect student– not even close. She hadn’t been for four years.

Turning to her phone, she smiled at her backdrop. Taken at Epcot, a chubbier, blonder, nine-year-old Ava was eagerly sporting the sparkly Minnie Mouse ears she’d begged and pleaded for, pre-braces smile wide. Next to her, a lanky teenage boy leaned against a lamppost, cupping one hand in the illusion that he was holding up Spaceship Earth. Will’s face was frozen in an amused smile, an arm around his giddy little sister. He had been a genius– not only was he the top of his class at Port Damien High, but he had received the highest SAT score in the history of the town. His team won every county and state debate tournament, and he ran the school paper; so, it came as no surprise when he got into a fancy college in New York City.

What did come as a surprise was the fact that he never lived to attend that school.

Clearing the thought from her head, Ava continued on her host family search. A couple in Sydney had requested a college-age student; another in Shanghai had turned down her application from a week before. One in Canada seemed ideal- that is, until she researched the town and found average temperature highs in the below-zero range.

With a sigh, Ava flopped back dramatically against the bed. She felt something bounce off the sheets; it was only when she heard a tiny plink! that she realized her phone had dropped. She searched under the bed; when that proved fruitless, she checked behind the antique headboard. Finally, it dawned on her that there was only one other place it could have fallen.

“Crap,” she muttered through her teeth. She rushed to get a flashlight, yanking on her dresser drawer five times before the stupid thing would open. She clicked it on; a sea of dust specks floated in its soft rays. She twisted the base of the flashlight, increasing the concentration of its shine. Finally, she tilted it into the depths of the crack beside the bed, searching for any sign of her phone.

As per usual, even the brightest beam didn’t reveal any semblance of a bottom to the hole. Ava marched to the other side of the room, flicking off the rest of the lights, and closed her computer. That way, she figured, maybe there would be a more concise view. Again, her search yielded nothing below the crack.

And yet…

When she tilted the light to an odd angle, a strange spectacle occurred. Thin strips of light appeared from between the floorboards, forming a small square. She switched off the flashlight, but the glow disappeared. Had her phone’s flashlight turned on? Ava wondered. Or… maybe… Is there some strange type of paint on the floor?

She was struck with another idea. Flicking on the flashlight once more, she rooted through the box beneath her bed. It was full of things from Will’s science days; stuff her mother never would have kept. Ava found used batteries, broken magnets, and the package from a crystal-growing kit. Beneath it all, however, was exactly what she’d been searching for. It was a little smaller than the flashlight she now held; at some point, Will had drawn little creatures on it with a silver Sharpie. The real difference was in the bluish-purple light that it emitted.

Holding her breath, she clicked off the regular flashlight. The room was dark; as it was the only one in the house without windows, one might call it claustrophobic. Even in early morning, the pure darkness of the suite was akin to that of the crack emerging from its floor.

With a snap, the blacklight came alive. Ava shone it on the ceiling, the wall, and then at the seams on the floor.

Bingo.

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“Storm’s comin’.” Ava turned and found Nana Virginia, glaring as ever, observing the sky. She wasn’t sure to whom her grandmother was talking, or whether she was in her own world as usual.

“Oh, Nana. The weather predicted clear skies until next Thursday!” Mrs. Sergeant accepted a glass of ice from her husband, wincing at the thin rim of gunk left by their ineffective dishwasher.

“Mark my words. Tonight. Storm’s a-comin’.”

The bedroom hadn’t always been Ava’s. Four years before, it had belonged to Will. It was impossible to deduce that there had been a previous inhabitant; gone were the Honor Roll certificates and the newspaper clippings. The college and high-school pennants, once sitting next to each other as though the best of friends, were long gone. Mrs. Sergeant had made sure of it. However, Ava clung to Will’s memory as tight as she would a lifejacket. If misery had driven him to do it, she could only pity him. Regardless, there was no point in blaming him now.

As Ava shone the blacklight over the crack in the floor, a distinct square had become brilliantly visible. She ran her hands over the beams, searching for a seam; somewhere where she could pry up the boards. She found none. However, she was obstinate in her search for her phone; after all, it contained the last photos of Will in the entire house. Suddenly inspired, she reached her hand into the crack.

Hooking her hand under its lip, she pulled up. Creaking in protest, it gave way.

Exhilarated with the rush of a new discovery, Ava tried once more to shine her flashlight into the depths of the hole. Despite the Y-shaped crack having given way to a much-larger square, Ava still had no view of her phone. She reached around the razor-straight edges of the void, peering into the darkness. It yielded nothing, yet…

Ava’s hands hit something scratchy. Pulling it away from the hole, it proved itself to be a thick rope. She tugged; whatever had fastened it to the underside of the floorboards had fastened it there well.

Squinting into the expanse underneath her room, Ava felt a rush of excitement. She wouldn’t be able to get her precious photos of Will back the normal way. In fact, the exciting method seemed to be the only method.

She would have to climb down.

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And so it continued for a half hour. Nana commented on the sky, Mrs. Sergeant desperately tried to get Ava to go to sleep, and Mr. Sergeant popped in and out of the house every few minutes, asking, “when are we fixin’ to get a new screen for the front door?” or, “do we really need five chairs on the porch?”

“What do you ‘spose Will’s doing upstairs?” Mrs. Sergeant asked, absentmindedly braiding the ends of her daughter’s hair.

“He’s in trouble,” Nana responded darkly.

Heart pounding, Ava lowered herself down into the hole. It had proven to be just large enough for someone her size to travel through. She found herself in some kind of tunnel; though relatively confined, Ava was too invigorated by the potentials of her discovery to reflect on any claustrophobia.

After about twenty feet, Ava felt the walls disappear.  Turning on her flashlight with one hand, she was finally able to get a sense of the world beneath her bed. And, it was quite the revelation. She had assumed that the tunnel was some bizarre variation of a dumbwaiter; after all, there was one in the kitchen and another in her parents’ bedroom.

Instead, she found a space the size of a ballroom.

Gone was the typical Southern heat; instead, a cool breeze whooshed lightly throughout the subterranean expanse. Stalactites hung from the ceiling; each sparkled under the light, revealing hues of cream and malachite. Despite this, the floor appeared devoid of dirt and grime. From the height she was at, Ava couldn’t make out what was on the ground.

Securing her flashlight between her teeth, Ava lowered herself as quickly as possible. She leaned over her right shoulder, trying to catch a glimpse of whatever lay at the bottom of the cavern. Whatever it was, piles and piles had accumulated. Descending faster, she was soon ten, then five feet from the bottom…

As Ava’s feet hit the floor, her flashlight snapped off. Frustratedly, she tried clicking it on and off several times, but to no avail. She clung to the rope, for fear that she’d lose her way in the infinite dark. After a moment, however, light returned to the cave. Looking up, Ava let out a laugh; the stalactites encrusting the ceiling glowed with the same fluorescence as the crack in the floor had. She could make out the hole, too; the square, seemingly tiny from so far below the Earth, reflected the pitch-black of her room.

Sights restored, Ava quickly found her phone. She checked the screen; despite the eighty-foot fall, it was somehow completely devoid of cracks. The home button worked, too; Disney-World Ava and Will were replaced by her plethora of applications, as well as a picture of Will and Ava on the beach at Hilton-Head Island.

She quickly figured out why the phone had survived the drop: it had landed on some type of shaggy, misshapen cushion. Upon closer inspection, however, Ava felt as though there was something familiar about the furry lump. She flipped it over, and felt the breath leave her lungs.

“Mr. Snuggles?” she wondered aloud. When she was much younger, Ava had slept with this exact teddy bear every night. Sometime around the age of seven, however, Mr. Snuggles had mysteriously disappeared from her room. She had always suspected that Mrs. Sergeant had disposed of him; the last thing she would have expected would be to find him twenty-five yards under her home.

She hugged the doll tight, ignoring the years of toddler-grime caked into its fur. After a moment, she looked up. “If I found Mr. Snuggles, and my phone…” she mused, “... what else is in this room?”

For the next two hours or so, Ava explored the space. It had quickly become apparent that everything in the room had, at some point, been lost in the house. These things ranged in size and value; for while Ava smiled at the nostalgia brought on by scattering of Silly Bandz bracelets from second grade, she was far happier to find the vintage silver locket she’d loved and lost in the span of a month. The items weren’t just her own, either; the nice blue blouse that Mrs. Sergeant could never seem to find had made its way down to the cavern. Ava even found a straw bonnet, dated circa 1870, in mint condition.

However, her favorite discovery by far was a simple photograph. Though the frame had fallen off, the entire family was at the park. Spread out on a blanket, four-year-old Ava and nine-year-old Will snacked on some crackers. He was whispering something in her ear; whatever he said, it made toddler Ava giggle. Mrs. and Mr. Sergeant were looking on lovingly at their two children; even Nana Virginia was seemingly content to be out in the cool sun.

Finally, finally, Ava held the proof that they’d once been a perfect family.

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“Come now, Nana Virginia, you know our Will would never get himself into trouble. He’s probably playing with that video game he and his friend Jeremy bought.”

“Will’s in trouble,” Nana insisted. Her tone was flat, but her pale, grey-green eyes betrayed some sort of exasperation towards her daughter-in-law.

Mrs. Sergeant stood up. “Very well, then. I’ll go check on the trouble Will’s causing. You’ll see– everything’s fine.” Exasperated, she stalked out of the room to prove her point. As she moved through the house, Ava could hear her mother’s footsteps as her sandals slapped against the uneven staircase. All was calm at 33 Enfer Road.

And then she screamed.

Ava visited the cavern three more times that week, and every day the next. Though her parents rarely saw her, they thought nothing of it. Ava had always been locked up in her room, anyways; but, they didn’t have any notion of the fact that she’d abandoned hours on the computer for hours below the house.

In the ballroom-sized cave, she’d found dozens of fascinating items; Will’s college acceptance packet, a model rocket from her father’s childhood, a first-edition copy of The Wizard of Oz. She’d grown so accustomed to the space that she forewent the flashlight; pulling the trapdoor back over the cave, she was comforted by the fork-tongued crack detailing the absence of light from her room. After a month, Ava considered the cavern more of a home than the rest of the house had ever been.

Ava embarked on her fiftieth spelunk as usual. She tried on an emerald petticoat of her great-great grandmother’s, and twirled in an antique mirror. She counted a total of 128 hair-ties. Shrieking with laughter, she found Mr. Sergeant’s hopelessly geeky freshman school photograph.

Upon a velvet footstool, she found a small water bottle. Made of neon-pink plastic and covered in rainbow polka-dots, it had accompanied Ava to school during the third and fourth grades. Yet, this discovery didn’t bring back any semblance of nostalgia. Instead, it disturbed her.

Ava had never questioned the nature of the cavern; she had always felt as though some type of magic thrummed throughout the place. But, she had never wondered about how everything seemed in mint condition, nor, how something as large as a rocking chair had made it through a tiny crack in the floor. This water bottle was simply the cherry on top of an enigmatic, rotting sundae.

“Wait a minute,” Ava whispered to herself. She sat down on the ground, kneeling beside the bottle. “I lost this at camp… at camp in Pennsylvania. There’s no way it could be in the house.”

Eyes wide, Ava rushed towards the rope. Too late, the light from the stalactites disappeared. The world seemed a void.

“Quite right, Ava,” I responded.

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Though it clearly was Will, it wasn’t him. This was nothing like what Ava had seen at her great-uncle’s funeral; he’d appeared peaceful postmortem, as though asleep. Will looked anything but; his skin had turned nearly translucent in its lack of blood, and his eyes… the sight of his eyes, the blank blue gaze, would haunt Ava’s dreams for years to follow. Most notably, two deep gashes were embedded in his arm. Each was disturbingly neat; disturbingly deliberate. The paramedics came far too late. No matter– in a matter of minutes, Ava had lost a brother and best friend to demons she’d never even known he’d had.  

“I was wondering when you’d figure it out,” I said, clicking my tongue against the roof of my mouth. Ava looks so small, so terrified; it occurred to me that humans can’t see in the dark.

With a pop, I showed myself. Her fear didn’t disappear; in fact, it seemed to multiply. I suppose it was a lot to take in: the scales, the height, … the forked tail and tongue. Honestly, she should have figured it out a long time ago, what with my mark emblazoned in her floor boards.

“But… b-but… what?” she sputtered. She inched closer to the rope, as though I couldn’t smell her motives. That’s the thing– humans think they’re so clever. No matter- with a swipe of my claw, the rope flickered out of sight.

“Let’s skip the blubbering, shall we? I’ll speak, if I may.” I circle around Ava as she clutches that ridiculous water bottle to her chest. “This land has been mine for the past eon. Now, imagine you live in a beautiful cavern, perfectly adapted to your kind. Then, after nine million years, some little, bipedal things build a house on top of it.” I swiped my tail in Ava’s direction; panicking, she ducked. “Now, I told myself that I could profit from these small-minded creatures. After all, who better to act as my servant than those living above me? The Sergeants have always been of good use. Your grandmother’s getting old, though.” I chuckle. “Ornery woman, that one. She’s never liked being controlled. So, it’s time for a new minion.”

“You– you can’t stop me. I’ll get out of here.” I turned back around to find Ava wielding a shard of pottery. Interesting idea; however, it wouldn’t make a dent on my flawless hide.

“Interesting. Your brother said the same.” I saw Ava’s blood run cold. “He was stubborn, that boy. Hard to please. You, however, were easy enough. You may want to leave this town behind, but you are so sentimental that you allowed precious memories of your brother to overrule your judgement.” Ava was frozen in place, petrified by the mention of Will. Good. “At any rate,” I continue, “I try to skip a generation when picking my next servant, so as to avoid Port Damien’s pitchforked mobs coming after ‘the monster.’ Your brother was promising; however, he had set plans to move away. I couldn’t have had that; and, as he would have just warned the rest of you lot about me, I had to do away with him.” I can see Ava’s mind whirring. “Yes, little Sergeant. Those two slits on your brother’s arm? Fang marks. Not razor marks. Anyway, where was I? Ah, yes.”

I turned my eyes to her; she flinched in their emerald gaze. “Welcome, my servant.”

Before she could object, I fixed a steely gaze upon her. Within moments, her brain had molded to my will. When she opened her eyes again, their baby-blues contained streaks of pale green.

“Perfect.” I said, clicking my claws together in satisfaction. Ava stared back at me blankly, awaiting instruction. “That was quite easy. You and I are going to get along just fine.”