The Thing in the Basement (Tags: Shawn, Intro)

This new millennium had not been kind to Sol. It was still January, and already his dad had been killed in a mysterious work accident in Dubai, before receiving a hurried funeral which Sol wasn't even able to attend. In addition, despite owning a large estate in the U.S., Sol's father had left Sol only a small house in the suburbs of London, full of documentation from his job as an archaeologist. Since the reading of the will, Sol had moved a few necessities into the house, in order to begin the mammoth task of cataloging its contents. Despite being a modest-sized house, only 2 bedroom 2 bath on a single floor, the house contained 27 bookcases, all of which were full of various dissertations and encyclopaedias describing the ruins and history of this or that ancient civilization. The senior Soloman's research was spread about the house in haphazard piles, following an organizational system wholly incomprehensible to those other than its designer, assuming he even had them organized.

As Sol sat down to sorting, his subconscious began picking up patterns that he didn't at first. The files, and even the books, weren't sorted by subject matter, but there seemed to be an order. Deciding that he needed to know why they were placed where they were, Sol picked up a stack containing "Poisons and Potions of the Ancient Greeks", "Ancient Rome and the Fall of Egypt", "North American Gold Rushes", "Transylvanian Myths, and their Roots in Reality", and "Returning to Central America, Professor N----'s Journey to El Dorado", accidentally leaving the bottom book in place.

Page after page book after book he leaped around almost in a daze. He picked up a old looking white staff with a round circle at the top with weird lines, wraped around staff was a silver chain with a rusty chunk of colourful metal at the end. This was his fathers life, all those missed birthdays and Chrismas dinners for this? What was it all for, his dad never once got published in any magazine for some great find hell Sol didn't even know what his dad was looking for. Only that it was more important than being at his mom bedside when she died. "Arg!" Sol pushed at a table of books that toppled over into a large shelf. There was something about the way the shelf shifted that cought Sols eye like the there was no wall behind it...

Sol moved and shoved the shelf aside, dislodging books from it (what few books were on the shelf, anyway). As it moved, it became increasingly obvious that there was some form of a doorway behind it. When Sol managed to move the bookshelf completely out of the way, it revealed a five foot wide passage, leading to some stairs heading down into a lower floor that wasn't on the plans. The lights from the living room only revealed the top few feet of steps, carefully leaning into the doorway, he couldn't see more than those first few rickety wooden steps leading down into the abyss.