Read Terror Town for Free Online Page B

said. “She’s a cutie.”
    Cameron smiled. “Oh yeah?”
    Dan almost blushed. “You wanna hear this story or not?”
    “Of course,” Roger said.
    “Just buggin’ ya,” Cameron said. “We’ll behave, promise.”
    “Yeah, Dan. We’re listening.”
    “Okay. Well, I got in to town last night, like I said. I opened my place for the summer… you know, got the water running and stuff. This week I plan on renovating the basement.”
    “Oh wow.”
    “That’s a big job,” Cameron said, tilting her bottle outwards.
    “I know it is,” Dan replied. “I took two weeks off work and I might need to take a third. I want to put a bar down there, hardwood floors. I want to make it nice, you know? I want to be able to bring friends down there.”
    Roger said, “Sounds great.”
    “Hopefully it will be. So, today I got up early and cleaned out the garbage, took down a couple of walls, tore out the carpet…”
    “Damn,” Roger said. “I’m impressed.”
    “Me too,” Cameron agreed.
    “Thanks. Anyways… after I removed the carpet I pulled out the sub-floor, and I found a door in the floor , in the concrete!”
    Roger wrinkled his nose and squinted his eyes. “What kind of door?”
    “A trap door; a secret cellar or something.”
    Cameron leaned in. “What was inside?”
    Dan smiled. “Well, this is where things get weird. There was a hole in the floor. It was like a manmade mineshaft or something, a tunnel going straight into the earth.”
    “Oh wow,” Roger said, his eyes widening. “We should go down there somehow.”
    “Going down isn’t a problem.”
    “No?”
    “There’s a metal ladder attached to a wall. It reminded me of a sewer ladder, know what I mean?”
    Roger said, “I’ve haven’t been inside many sewers, but I can imagine. Did you go down?”
    “Yes.”
    “Really!” Cameron almost jumped off her stood. The excitement she felt was obvious, an open book, she was easy to read. Suddenly she seemed very young. “What was down there? Did you see anything good?”
    “Yeah, Dan. Tell us. What did you find?”
    Dan lifted his bottle, swallowing the last of his beer. “I went down with a flashlight and a lantern. The ladder was longer than I expected it to be. I never reached the bottom.”
    Cameron said, “How far did you travel?”
    “You know what? It seemed really far when I was climbing. I was alone and I didn’t expect to go down so far. It was dark and cold. I thought the floor was right there, like it was a normal cellar. After a while I got worried. Nobody knew where I was or what I was doing; nobody knew I was down there. I started thinking I might get hurt or something, and nobody would find me. Then I heard a rat squeak, or maybe it was a bat. I don’t know. I just…” Feeling embarrassed, Dan stopped talking.
    “Don’t worry, man,” Roger said. “Nobody should go into a place like that alone, especially if nobody knows you’re down there. You were right to get out.”
    “I guess.”
    Cameron said, “But tell me, how far down did you travel?”
    Dan tallied the rungs in his mind. “Maybe sixty, sixty-five feet. But it felt like more. Sixty feet might not sound like much inside an open space with the lights on. But inside that shaft, I don’t know. It felt…”
    “That’s pretty far,” Roger said. “I would’ve gotten out of there too.”
    “Yeah,” Cameron said. “I can’t believe you found a secret tunnel in your basement. That’s so cool! Can I see it?”
    “You want to?” Dan asked.
    “Yes! Of course! This is amazing! It’s like something from a movie! Journey to the Center of the Earth , something like that.”
    Dan looked at Roger, hunting his opinion.
    Roger said, “I’d love to check it out.”
    “Really?”
    “Absolutely. One condition though, if we find anything valuable, we split it.”
    “Three ways!” Cameron added. Now she did jump off of her stool. She looked almost ecstatic. “Can we split it three ways?”
    Dan said, “If we