[NOTE: This piece is formatted as a children's picture book, which has 16 pages of text and 16 pages of illustrations, for 32 total pages. Ideally, the text is supposed to be evocative enough that the writer doesn't need to give instructions to the illustrator, so I've avoided doing that here.]
THE DARK, DREARY, DREADFUL BASEMENT
1. Sometimes it happens that young families get to move out of their small homes and in to bigger ones, where there's more room for them to grow.
2. It happened to Blake, and to Blake's older brother, Dante. The house was amazing—Blake and Dante each had their own bedrooms, and there was a big yard to play "make pretend" in, and…
3. …there was a basement.
4. It seemed bigger than the entire house, with a kind of damp dirt floor and a musty smell. And cobwebs---lots of those. And centipedes, and beetles. And maybe other things—who knows? It was very dark, and only Blake and Dante's parents could reach the chain that turned on the one lone dangling light bulb.
5. The day it happened was like any other, except that it was raining, so Blake and Dante had to play inside. They were bored—Mom and Dad didn't want them running in the new house, and the siblings were out of books to read and places to play hide 'n' seek.
6. …But there was the basement. Dante had an idea: "Let's go down there! We can make pretend that we are brave adventurers in search of…" Dante couldn't think of what.
"An adventure!" Blake crowed. An adventure sounded pretty good to Dante.
7. "I'm the boy and also older, so I'll go first," Dante stated as they started down the dark stairs. Blake didn't see what either of those things had to do with who went first, but it seemed important to Dante so she didn't argue.
Down they went…
8. …to the bottom of the stairs, where the darkness was so thick that the children could touch it. Or was the darkness touching them…?
It seemed to smell even more dank than before, and Blake and Dante swore they could hear a scuttling, scurrying, slithering sound...
As their eyes adjusted to the dark, they thought they could see shapes, moving. Red eyes, watching. And sharp teeth, glistening…
9. "Run!" Dante shouted, and pounded back up those long stairs with Blake right behind him.
10. Or so he thought. When he caught his breath, Dante saw that he stood alone at the top of the stairs. He couldn't hear anything down there, but he swore he could still see those things moving in the dark.
"Blake…?" he called. There was no answer.
11. Dante felt terrible. He was Blake's older brother—he was supposed to look after her. Instead, he had abandoned her to be eaten by dragons or enslaved by ogres or who knows what. He was terrified of going back down there, but he knew he had to save her.
12. One terrifying step at a time, Dante went back down those stairs, calling to Blake the whole way. Nothing.
Slowly, eyes squinched tightly shut, Dante felt his way deeper into the basement. "Blake!" he whispered. "Blake…?"
13. "Dante…" He thought he heard her calling his name from far away. Or was this just a trick to lure him into the gaping maw of some terrible Thing?
"Blake!" he whispered, hard. "Where are you?!"
"Something got my leg—I can't move! Help me!"
Just then, something LARGE moved behind Dante, brushing right past him! Blake and Dante both screamed…!
14. The chain went ka-klick! and the lone swinging bulb blazed to light. "Geez! You two scared the heck out of me!" their father said.
As the children looked around, they saw that there were boxes piled everywhere from the move, not monsters. And Blake's leg was stuck between two of them. The siblings smiled sheepishly, but with great relief.
15. "I didn't know what on earth was going on down here," their father continued. "All I could hear was frantic whispering and something small shuffling and bumping around."
"Sorry, Dad," Blake said, pulling her leg free from the dreaded clutches of those moving boxes. "We were just playing hide 'n' seek."
"Were you scared, Dad?" Dante asked.
"I was a little," their father smiled. "You know what it's like to have an active imagination. Sometimes it can be fun, but sometimes you see things that aren't there."
16. Blake and Dante knew exactly what their father meant, but once they got over their fear of the new basement, they learned that, sometimes, it can also be fun to see things that aren't really there.