“Fuck it.” He wasn’t going to give up. Not yet. Setting his jaw, he jammed the key in again, then suddenly stopped. This was all wrong.

He’d watched the old man do this a hundred times.

He remembered his grandfather babying the lock.

Bronco tried again, but didn’t force the key in hard, “gentled it” as Gramps used to say. “Like dealing with a hot-headed woman, son, you got to tread softly, touch her gentle-like.”

“Come on. Come on—”

Click!

The bolt gave way and the door creaked open.

He was in! Quickly, his heart hammering, his nerves strung tight, he stepped into a small vestibule with a narrow set of stairs running up and down and a door leading into the kitchen. He headed down the curved steps to find another door at another landing. Unlocked, it swung open easily to reveal yawning blackness and a horrid stench that seemed to waft upward in a cloud. Nearly gagging, he pulled a rag to cover his mouth from one pocket and a small flashlight from another. God, the smell of rot and decay was overpowering. He switched on the flashlight and descended the final flight to step into three or four inches of water, black and brackish and thick with sludge.

This better be worth it.

He skimmed the standing water with the beam of his flashlight and tried not to think of what creatures might nest down here–rats and gators and water moccasins or black widows hidden in dark places.

Don’t go there. Don’t think about what could be living down here. Concentrate, Cravens. Find the loot and get the hell out before you get caught.

Ducking beneath raw beams black with age, rusted hooks and nails protruding, he slogged through years of forgotten furniture, books, pictures, all ruined and decaying. The flashlight’s beam skated over the water and mud, across broken down chairs and crates stacked atop each other.

A spider web brushed his face and he felt a skittering of fear slide down his spine.

This place was getting to him. Too dark, too smelly, too … Scritttcch.

He froze at the sound.

What the hell?

His heart went into overdrive, thudding wildly.

He whirled, swinging the beam of the flashlight past a listing armoire to …oh, shit! A dark, disjointed figure stared back at him!

Bronco jumped backward, startled. Automatically he reached for his Roger. Someone was down here! A weird apparition that, too, was staring at him while scrabbling for a weapon and pointing a beam of a high-powered flashlight at his face. Reacting, Bronco fired just as he realized his mistake.

Blam!

The dirty mirror shattered.

His own distorted image splintered into a hundred shards of glass that flew outward, glittering crazily in his flashlight’s beam. “Shit!”

A rat squealed and scurried between several stacks of boxes.