Tired of city life, Clive Daniel and his dearly beloved wife decided to buy a small house in a quiet, picturesque place where they would spend their old age. After all, they were both retired, their children were grown and married. Nothing tied them to the city anymore. And Molly had long dreamed of having her own garden.

  Clive did not decide right away — only after weeks of persuasion from his wife and their eldest daughter.

  The house they eventually bought, after a long search, stood on a large plot of land. The garden was somewhat neglected, and repairs were needed here and there — both inside the house and outside — but that was even better. Clive, who had worked in a construction company his entire life, was only glad to return to his favorite kind of work. For that, he invited his old friend Dan. Now the two of them were walking at a leisurely pace along a well-trodden path, assessing the scope of what needed to be done.

  “Are you going to tear that shed down?” Dan asked, pointing his pencil toward a small structure in the farthest corner of the garden. The peeling walls, with crumbling plaster, were overgrown with moss, and the roof sagged. It looked as though the previous owners had completely forgotten about this place.

  Clive walked around a few trees, stepped over a thick root protruding from the ground, then approached the corner of the building and stopped, peering into the black gap between the walls.

  “Do you have a flashlight?” he asked.

  Dan spread his hands. A flashlight in broad daylight?

  “All right,” Clive said. “I’ll try using my phone.”

  They stepped inside and immediately started coughing after inhaling a century’s worth of dust.

  “No, Dan, this isn’t a shed. See those old tires over there.”

  “A garage?”

  “Or a workshop.”

  “Let’s get out of here. We’ll come back tomorrow with a flashlight. But if you want my opinion, Clive, it’d be better to tear this down and build a greenhouse in its place — or make a rose garden for Molly. You once said she dreamed of growing roses, remember?”

  “Yeees,” Clive drawled with a smile, examining the wooden floor at the same time. Several planks had long since rotted away and crumbled into dust, so he didn’t dare step forward. “My wife will turn this place into paradise. She loves working with soil. She even made a whole greenhouse on the balcony and forbade smoking there.”

  Dave chuckled hoarsely.

  “So that’s what it was! Now I get how you quit smoking.”

  “Molly cares more about plants than she does about me. And that’s a fact. She never asked me to quit. It just happened on its own.”

  Clive always spoke warmly of his wife, even when her actions led to a series of contradictions. His love for her was so great that he was ready to follow her the way roots follow water, or leaves follow the light.

  “You blind tomcat, what are you trying to see with such lousy lighting?” Dan grumbled, heading for the exit.

  And he was right. Without proper flashlights, there was nothing to do here.

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  As they were leaving, Clive paused for a moment, listening to an unusual rustling sound.

  “What now?” old Dan muttered, lifting his hat and revealing his silvery hair.

  “Don’t you hear it?”

  “Yes. Must be full of rats in here. Let’s go — we still have a ton of work to do.”

  Clive didn’t argue. They really did need to assess the condition of the house inside and out. Molly wanted to move in as soon as possible, which meant they had to start immediately.

  The next day, Clive and Dan returned to the crumbling structure with flashlights, bringing along a foreman named Stefan Brin, who would also be responsible for safety regulations. He volunteered to inspect the shed himself. Clive saw no reason to object.

  This time, they were able to properly examine the stuffy, dilapidated interior. A vast, dark, and filthy space cluttered with boxes, sacks, and old pieces of furniture. It seemed the owners had dumped here everything that had become unnecessary or unusable. Clive’s attention was drawn to a dresser abandoned almost in the middle of the room. Shining his light on it, he noticed that the space extended further back. There, in a pile, lay car tires, wheels, and broken bicycle parts. Dusty jars filled with long-dried paint stood in the corner.

  Rotten boards creaked underfoot. Clive moved forward cautiously, glancing around.

  “All this junk is worthless,” Dan’s voice came from behind him, though he was speaking to Stefan, not Clive. “And the walls are crumbling. Look at that.”

  Clive grimaced when he noticed thick, sticky strands of cobwebs in places, with insects cocooned inside. He wanted to walk around the dresser blocking the path to the tires but realized it was nearly impossible.

  “Dan, Stefan,” he called out, “help me move this cabinet. I want to see what’s back there — deeper in.”

  “Doubt you’ll find anything new,” Dan grumbled.

  The dresser turned out to be very heavy.

  “Ugh,” Stefan groaned. “These were made in the early twentieth century.”

  The three of them strained together to shift it at least a little. Then Clive felt his foot hit something hard. A metallic clang rang painfully in his ears.

  He asked them to aim all the flashlights at the floor and was stunned to see a hatch. Dan crouched to try to open it, but it was secured with a rusty padlock. Stefan went outside, then returned with a four-pound hammer and knocked it off in one blow.

  “So what do you think was kept down there?” Dan wondered. “Maybe we’ve found a treasure? There must be a reason they locked the hatch and shoved a dresser on top of it. Whoever did this definitely didn’t want this cellar to be found.”

  “What if there are bodies down there?” Stefan said lightly, smirking.

  He was younger than Clive and Dan, quick and sharp-witted. The men didn’t react to his remark.

  Clive stepped onto a creaking stair and, lighting the way with his flashlight, began to descend. Dan followed slowly behind him. Stefan stayed above, just in case.

  A sharp stench of dampness hit their noses — even stronger than upstairs in the shed — mixed with other, foul smells, so Clive covered his face with his hand.

  “Oh, Jesus Christ,” Dan rasped. “It reeks of shit in here.”

  Fortunately, the steps held under the heavy weight of the two men, though Clive feared they might collapse at any moment along with the staircase. The darkness spreading around them felt like a heavy cotton blanket, pressing down with its weight. Clive stopped. Thick beams of light searched the walls, the floor, and the ceiling. Despite having seen plenty of places like this in his lifetime, Clive shuddered — an unease crept over him all the same. When you’re surrounded by darkness, fear of the unknown comes uninvited.

  Somewhere deep inside, water dripped, but the ground beneath their feet was dry. Now they were walking on packed earth, stumbling over straw mats laid out neatly in a row.

  “Is it just me, or is it cleaner down here than upstairs?” Dan’s voice came from somewhere to the right.

  “Tomorrow we’ll tear the building down and open the roof,” Clive said. “That way we’ll be able to properly examine the place.”

  He swept the flashlight beam over something and held his breath. A mattress lay on the ground. On it rested a makeshift pillow and a very old blanket. In the light, Clive could even make out a large hole in it. Stefan’s earlier joke no longer seemed funny.

  “There are jars with some kind of substance here,” Dan reported from the opposite side of the space. “Hard to tell what’s inside.”

  “Take one upstairs with you,” Clive replied, moving the beam further. Right… Right… Ri— Back—

  “Devil!” Clive cried out, dropping the flashlight.

  He staggered back, tripped, and fell, then quickly scrambled away from the horrific sight.

  The flashlight rolled aside, illuminating a person’s toes.

  Swearing again, Clive got to his feet and stared into the darkness.

  It was not a vision.

  He had not imagined it.

  In the corner, he could clearly see… eyes glowing.