The Love Thieves come

The stairs were treacherous in his haste, the narrow treads demanding a caution that his urgency could not accommodate.

He descended half sliding, one hand gripping the rough railing, the other outstretched to catch himself if he fell. The darkness of the stairwell pressed about him, but he did not slow. He reached the bottom, stumbled into the entryway, and then stopped, his breath catching in his throat.

He was in a kitchen.

The room lay before him in deep twilight, the only illumination seeping through a single small window so coated with grime that it scarcely admitted more than a suggestion of the grey day outside. The air was thick with the smell of old ashes, of a hearth long cold, and beneath that, the pervasive odour of decay that seemed to underlie every scent in this place. He could make out the shape of a massive hearth against one wall, the dark bulk of a table, the gleam of some metal implement hanging from a hook.

But it was not these details that held his attention.

At the far end of the room, set into the wall, was an enormous wooden wheel—the sort of wheel one might expect to find on the bridge of an old sailing vessel, its spokes dark with age, its rim worn smooth by countless hands that had long since turned to dust. It was embedded in the wall, serving no nautical purpose now, if indeed it had ever served one here. And beside this wheel, even as he watched, a door was slowly, silently opening.

He did not think. He did not pause to consider the wisdom of his action.

He launched himself across the room, his feet pounding against the stone floor, his eyes fixed upon that widening gap. The door moved with a deliberation that seemed almost leisurely, swinging inward on hinges that had been well maintained despite the general decay. He saw that it was thick, heavy, built to seal whatever lay beyond from the world. He saw, too, that it was already beginning to slow, to reach the limit of its opening, and that soon—in seconds, perhaps—it would begin its return swing.

He reached it as it paused at its widest, and he threw himself through the gap.

The door caught him as he passed, striking his shoulder with a force that would leave a bruise, but he was through. He stumbled into darkness, caught himself against a wall, and then the door, with a soft but final creak, swung shut behind him, sealing him in.

For a long moment, he did not move.

He stood in absolute darkness, his palms pressed flat against the cold stone of the wall, his breath coming in great gasps that sounded obscenely loud in the confined space. Behind him, he could hear nothing—the door had closed completely, and whatever mechanism controlled it had fallen silent. Before him, there was only darkness and the beating of his own heart, which seemed to fill the whole space with its rhythmic thunder.

He forced himself to be still, to listen.

The silence was complete, but it was not the silence of emptiness. It was the silence of enclosure, of a space that had been sealed and waiting, perhaps for a very long time. He could feel the pressure of it against his ears, the weight of the darkness upon his eyes. He reached out with his hands, exploring the walls on either side, and found that he stood in a narrow passage, its walls of rough-hewn stone.

His foot, moving cautiously, encountered something—a step, a ledge. He reached down and touched it, confirming what his toe had found. A staircase, leading upward.

He began to climb.

The steps were narrow and steep, cut from stone rather than constructed of wood, and each one was worn in the centre by the passage of feet that had climbed here long before he was born. His own footsteps, falling upon this ancient stone, echoed strangely in the confined space, the sound bouncing from the walls and returning to him from above, as if someone were climbing just ahead of him, matching his pace step for step.

He counted.

One, two, three—the numbers formed in his mind, a small defence against the disorientation of the darkness. Four, five, six—the stairwell pressed close about him, the walls so near that his shoulders almost brushed them on either side. Seven, eight, nine—the darkness was absolute, unrelieved by any hint of light from above or below, and he climbed by touch alone, his hands skimming the rough stone walls.

Ten, eleven, twelve.

He climbed on, counting, listening to the echo of his own passage, feeling his way through the stone heart of whatever building he had entered. The air grew no fresher as he ascended, remained thick and still and tasting of age. But somewhere above him, he began to perceive a change—a lightening of the absolute darkness, so gradual that he could not at first be certain it was real.

He climbed towards it, counting still, his hand upon the wall, his heart beating steadily now, his mind fixed upon that faint promise of illumination that grew, step by step, a little brighter, a little closer.

He reached the top of the stone stairs, and the darkness yielded at last to a dim, uncertain light.

The room into which he emerged was small and rectangular, its ceiling so low that he found himself instinctively crouching, though with his moderate height he could just stand upright if he kept his neck bent. The light that illuminated this space came from no lamp or window, but seeped through countless cracks and fissures in the walls—thin blades of greyness that pierced the gloom from some source beyond, casting long, distorted shadows that shifted subtly as he moved.

He stood for a moment, allowing his eyes to adjust, and then slowly, with the careful deliberation that characterized all his movements, he approached the left wall.

The planks here were rough, unplaned, fixed in place with nails so old that their heads had rusted to the colour of the wood itself. He studied them without conscious thought, his gaze travelling along their uneven surfaces, noting where the grain had opened in long cracks, where the colour deepened into patches of almost black. And then, moved by an impulse he could not have named or explained, he reached out and barely, barely touched the aged, desiccated wood with the very tips of his fingers.