Jadie's Quest

By K Macy

On a world where weird things grow in every corner of existence, the last place you want to visit is the basement…
The children of the world exist in an unsteady truce with the macabre corners of the universe - corners that occasionally eat the awkward or unwary. It’s okay, though: no loss is eternal. The missing still wave at us through the windows.
Except in Jadie’s basement. In the basement, people disappear forever. No one can survive the basement, and no one can explain it.
Until Jadie falls in. And quickly realizes that someone can survive the basement. Someone as wild as the flesh-eating plants that swarm the carpet, and possibly just as dangerous. Someone who is definitely her only hope of getting home.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Feb 16, 2015
• ISBN: 9781312809420

Book preview

Jadie's Quest

Jadie’s Quest

Copyright

Copyright © 2014 by K. Macy

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof

may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever

without the express written permission of the publisher

except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Printed in the United States of America

First Printing, 2014

ISBN 978-1-312-80942-0

Jadie’s Quest

It wasn’t a big deal when they lost Billy. Not to the children, anyway. The adults, of course, made a fuss and insisted that everyone dress up in itchy, formal black clothes for an event where there wasn’t any cake. And worse, they absolutely forbade any children from playing in the reservoir anymore.

Jadie didn’t understand. She, and all of the other children, knew that if you just ducked under the concrete arch and into the room where the water reflected off the walls, you could still talk to Billy through the broken glass on the floor. Death, while unfortunate, was really no more of a problem than hurting one’s knee on the sidewalk and being kept inside for the day – you could still wave at your friends through the window.

It was just that spring that they’d lost David to Jadie’s basement. The basement – and the whole lower floor of the house, now – was occupied by very dangerous carnivorous plants and who knew what else. The children called it the Jungle, and it was their habit to crowd each other on the edge of the stairs, trying to see something move in the gloom.

That was how David had gone – lost his balance and fell right off the edge. They saw his glasses glint from somewhere on the tenth stair, and that was it. A few of the children waved morosely goodbye. An agreement was made not to tell the adults, but somehow they found out.

For a while, everyone was forbidden to play at Jadie’s house, but Jadie waited patiently until they discovered the giant rats in Chip Davis’ attic. Then the ban was suddenly transferred to Chip’s house, and everyone came flooding back.

Today, Jadie was nine, and had been for two days. Already, she’d worn the shine off most of her birthday presents. She had long since tired of trying to teach the talking heads on the windowsill to say, Happy Birthday. All they wanted to do was burble happily and spit marbles. Jadie had hundreds of marbles.

She sat at the table with her new beads, sliding them onto a wire to make a necklace, and moping. Elizabeth hadn’t come to her birthday party. Nobody had come to her birthday party – they’d lost another kid to the basement a few days before, and they were all forbidden from her house again. At least Elizabeth would come anyway. She would sneak in through the window and stay up late with Jadie under a tent of blankets, giggling and sharing animal crackers.

But not this time. Elizabeth was the one who had fallen into the basement. Jadie had been there, at the back of the crowd leaning over the stairs. It seemed like slow motion – someone stepped on the hem of Elizabeth’s dress, someone else bumped into her, and she tipped over. Jadie reached out, but she was too far away…all you could see was Elizabeth’s nightgown fluttering down into the dark. There was a terrible scream that made Jadie cover her ears; something moved in the darkness down below, and then there was nothing more.

Jadie was missing her best friend. She couldn’t get the scream out of her head – the last sound she’d heard in Elizabeth’s voice. She was beginning to understand what made the adults so upset. You could talk to Billy under the arch, and Loren from two years ago was still stuck in the McDaniels’ mirror trap. Little Ana still left flowers on the Shaw family’s windowsill, even in wintertime. But so far, noone had found a way to talk to David or Elizabeth.

Jadie was beginning to have an awful suspicion that ‘lost in the Jungle downstairs’ might very well be the same as ‘lost forever’.

She sighed and stood up from the table, leaving her beads scattered across the tablecloth. A few rolled off and disappeared into the carpet. Jadie padded barefoot over to the living room window, pushed aside a self-satisfied talking head, and looked out. There was nothing but a sheet of blackness out there – the window might as well be painted black. You couldn’t tell the difference.

No way could she go out now and find a pack of children running around. Everyone was inside by now, or they’d better be. All of the rules of Outside changed when it got dark. It wasn’t safe. Only teenagers dared to roam around in the blackness, and despite the pocketknives and chair-leg clubs they took with them, some still stumbled back pale and shaken, with scratch marks on their faces. If they came back at all.

Jadie wasn’t crazy enough to go outside. She went to the kitchen and began to fix herself a snack. She got out the peanut butter, and pulled over a stool to reach the crackers in the top cupboard. But she stopped halfway through and wandered over to the basement stairs.

On the first step were little pitcher plants and venus flytraps. They only ate bugs. You could pull them up and put them in a pot, if you wanted to. On the second step, the flytraps grew spikier, and they’d snap at a finger if you stuck one down there. A huge root sprawled across the third step, covered in furry plant-things that might take your whole hand off. It began to get dark, but on the fourth step you could see thick, black vines with sharp thorns. If you waited long enough, the vines would squirm and move a few inches. Down on the fifth step were nasty red moss and a lens of David’s glasses, and beyond that was dark.

Clear across the second floor, there were steps leading up to the Office. Before the plants moved in, someone had left a light on in there. Light spilled out through the open door,