Examine the Wrecked Floor

Tame dropped down to his knees, frowning at the fresh noseful of the stagnant silt. Something was bothering him about the way the carpet sat and the dirt was spread in the area right at the corner. He bit his lip, thinking on it. What is it? Something’s not right here.

Tame grabbed the carpet where it folded over on itself and pulled it up. The coating of foul smelling grit fell away, with the wooden plank flooring below it still damp and starting to wrap and split. He tugged the carpet aside and the thick cloth backing gave way, the whole side coming away with a loud ripping sound. Underneath he could see more of the water-stained wood floorboards and even more evidence of something heavy with large clawed feet passing through at some point. In fact, the wood here, under the carpet where it was most ruined, was similarly scarred and pitted with claw marks and gouges. As if whatever had made them had suddenly lost traction and had dug in and dragged itself over the floor.

“But why would it do that?” He pulled the carpet away some more and paused when he noticed a perfectly straight groove in the floor that cut across the boards from one wall to the other. The gouges, which traveled more or less in the same direction as the floorboards, were particularly deep there. “What the hell happened here?”

Tame traced one of the longer claw marks with his hand, reaching forward to the other end of the gouge, when the floor under him gave way. He hit the floor with a painful thud that knocked the wind out of him, his arms and head hanging out over the hole that wasn’t there a moment ago. “Uhhgg...fuck. The hell?” Around him, silt and sandy mud dropped into the pit, taking ruined pieces of carpeting with it.

Tame pushed himself back from the edge, getting onto his hands and knees. The odd seam he’d noticed turned out to be a hinged section of flooring. Below it, there was a deep pit that looked like it was carved into the bedrock under the castle. At the bottom of the pit, Tame could see murky water with a tiny sliver of a ledge just above the water line. On the ledge he could make out dozens of bones, including a pony skull, resting in a loose pile. The falling debris from the edge of the open slashed into the water, sending small waves to lap at the single bit of shore.

“At least now I know where all this smelly mud came from. But how the fuck did it get up here? This pit has got to be twenty feet deep!” Tame sat back on his hooves, scratching his head when the water heaved and washed across the ledge below. Out of the brackish murk, a huge alligator many times his size emerged and turned dinner-plate sized purple eyes up towards him.

Tame inched a little further from the edge and climbed to his hooves. “Not sure how I’d bring you back without some other equipment, big guy. Don’t go anywhere, okay?”

Author's Note

Go Back Upstairs (links back to the original story)

Check out the Paintings

Check out the Near Doorway

Check out the Far Doorway

Leap Across the Pit to the Open Door