Danny moved from window to window, using his free hand to try to open them, and Becca did the same on the other side of the room—all were locked. Frankie made their way around the back edge, around the giant red stains on the floor, stopping in their tracks when their eyes fell upon something.

“What is it, Frankie?” Becca said from where she stood near the front window, which was just as stuck as all the others. “Do you see a door?”

“I do,” Frankie said. “It’s . . . already open. There’s a staircase going down into pitch darkness. I’m pretty sure it’s a basement.”

“A basement?” Danny cried out. “You know there’ll def be creepy crawlies in there!”

“Maybe that’s where we’re supposed to go next,” Becca said, her skin crawling at the idea of going into a dark, spider-infested basement.

“Probably,” Frankie agreed. “Maybe there will be a light we can turn on down there.”

With bated breath, the friends made their way to the basement door and slowly went down the cold cement steps one by one. With every step the air got chillier and smelled wetter, an awful combination of mildew and dirt, and Becca was reminded of the time the basement at the gymnastics center flooded with slimy creek water that ruined everything it touched.

“It reeks down here,” Frankie complained. “And I can’t see anything.”

“Hold up a minute,” Danny said. “I turned on the night vision switch on my camera. I think I can see a light switch up ahead.”

A few moments later, there came a clicking sound, and the basement lit up with a dull yellow glow, not bright enough to see well, but it was at least enough to make most of the enormous room visible. Danny stood beneath a single dingy light bulb that hung down from a thin silver chain on the ceiling. As the light swung back and forth, the shadows of the basement moved and slithered, causing Becca to shiver.

“I can almost hear Miguel in my ear right now,” Frankie said, stepping away from a moss-covered wall near the steps. “A dark, wet environment like this would be the perfect home for a wide range of bugs. Including spiders.”

“Ewww.” Danny wiped against his pants the hand he’d used to turn on the light bulb. “Everything in here is damp.”

“So why did the Game Master have us come down here?” Becca wondered out loud, looking around to see if she could spy anything out of the ordinary. There, lined up on a table against one of the back walls, was a set of big jars, each with different labels that Becca couldn’t quite make out from where she stood. “What are those?”