Suddenly, the ground under my feet disappeared and I was sent plummettiing into darkness! I screamed like a little girl (I'm only a little ashamed to admit that) as I slid down some kind of slide at high speed. The tunnel or whatever spat me out into a large, sparse room filled with cobwebs. I heard wood splintering as I crashed through some kind of lid and into a strangely-shaped box. When I finally recovered from the fall, I was getting up out of the box when suddenly, I felt something on my shoulder. Confused, I grabbed it, and when I put it in front of my face, I immediately shrieked and tossed it away from me, my heart thumping with terror. Holy crap, it was a skeleton hand! I scrambled out of what I now realized was a coffin and stumbled, falling forward on my chin. I moaned in pain and rubbed my now scraped chin, momentarily forgetting the awful thing I'd seen. Then I remembered, and I twisted myself around, feeling the irrational fear of having my back to that thing - as if it'd come back to life, crawl out of that coffin, and attack me without me knowing it. Now that I was focusing on it more clearly, I saw that the hand belonged to a small skeleton wearing a ragged white dress full of holes; I'd say it was from the early twentieth century. There were thousands of questions flashing through my mind. Who was this? Why was her skeleton down here in this basement rather than six feet under the ground? What had killed her at such a young age? And most terrifying of all: was her spirit still lingering? I wasn't a superstitious man. After all, Cade and I often laughed at those who were. However, considering I'd watched many horror movies in which a creepy old place like this existed despite the doubters claiming otherwise, I couldn't smother the feeling that I was now inside a haunted house in which poor souls like this girl still dwelled, left to haunt the living rather than move on to a better place. As if to prove my point, the single lightbulb dangling on a single string hanging from the ceiling flickered. I leapt to my feet, frightened. It's storming outside, you dolt, I scolded myself, feeling ashamed for feeling so scared. It's obviously affecting the power. Shaking my head to clear it of thoughts of ghosts and whatnot, I started looking around the room for a way out. To my dismay, there were none! I couldn't even spot the opening through which I'd entered the room! Either I was going crazy, or something very strange and dare I say sinister was going on here. “How the heck am I supposed to get out?” I asked aloud, frustrated and also a bit frightened. “I can help you,” I heard a little girl say, her voice sounding strangely distorted and even, in a sense, demonic. I then felt a hand clamp over my mouth. I screamed, the sound muffled of course, out of fear and surprise. With widened eyes, I watched as I was lifted up to the ceiling and then through it into a large dining room with the longest dinner table I'd ever seen with an old-fashioned and elegant chandelier hanging overhead! The hand disappeared, and I fell to the ground with a loud thud. My heart racing, I jumped to my feet and spun around in a full circle, but there was no one around. Oh, God, I was in a haunted house! And a ghost had just pulled me out of the room and into this one! Pulled me right through the solid ceiling! Oh, God, please tell me I was in some kind of a drunken stupor! Oh, tell me that's all this was! I tried to slow my breathing, struggling furiously to keep calm, but it didn't work. Rather, it seemed to have the opposite effect, as my breathing grew more and more rapid. And my heart was beating so fast I feared it would leap out of my chest. Stop panicking, you dolt! If you're scared, then how do you think Cade feels? A new determination to find my friend smothered my panic, and, taking a deep breath, I looked around the room for the exit. To my right was the door. My hand rested on the doorknob, and I hesitated only for a moment before opening it.