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strawberriestyles · 5 years

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Part 4: The Gap

(BANNER BY THE GODDESS HERSELF @adashofniallandasprinkleoflunacy)

Harry X Reader (AU)

In which you try to resolve the case of a fraternity’s haunting in a single night.

Read previous parts here.

Word count: 2.1k

Author’s note: Only one part left!! Hope this has gotten y’all into a creepy Halloween mood. Please let me know your thoughts!! XX

The stairs are no longer empty. You nearly trip over the bodies strewn across the steps and there’s an abundance of cussing when you stomp on fingers. But you still reach the first floor without falling. Harry’s fingers remain intertwined with yours as he leads you through the pitch black dining room and into the kitchen, somehow weaving you through the crowds of invisible people.

“’S through here,” Harry says when he stops you. “Are yeh ready?”

You open your mouth, but before you can speak the power clicks back on. Music blares and lights glow. There is a loud pounding from the basement. You wrap your free hand around Harry’s arm before the door beside you bursts open so violently that you jump.

“Sorry, ref,” says a man coated in paint and makeup—a rotting zombie clad only in a thin pair of boxers. He flashes white teeth at you. “Didn’t mean to scare you. Happy Halloween.”

He slams the door behind him and rushes into the dining room, announcing that he fixed the power. Harry chuckles, blinking furiously against the returned light that glares at the two of you. “Now are yeh ready?” he asks.

“Yes.”

“Wonderful.”

He twists the knob and pulls open the door to the basement. Past the first few steps, you can see nothing, and already you can feel the chill of the air. Harry flicks a light switch just within the stairwell, but nothing happens. He tries twice more before he turns to look at you and his exasperated smile shifts into a frown, a crease forming between his brows.

“That the sweatshirt yeh picked?”

You glance down at the paint smeared across the pouch pocket and shrug. “Yeah, why?”

“’S not mine.”

“What do you mean?” You return his frown. “It was in your closet. And it smells like you.” You press your nose into the fabric at your shoulder for emphasis.

“I dunno how it got there. Never seen it before.”

“Must be one of your brothers’,” you suggest, raising a brow. “Do you want me to take it off?”

“No, ’s fine.” He throws you an easy smile, but you can still see that it bothers him. That knowledge is satisfying, somehow. “D'yeh wanna go first or would yeh rather me?"

You narrow your eyes at the amused look that passes over his face. Your hands pull away from him as you step down the first few wooden stairs. They creak beneath your weight. You can feel Harry following you, and though he’s left the door open, the music from upstairs seems to fade as though each step places another wall between the two of you and the party.

At the bottom of the stairs in the nearly nonexistent light is a short card table, and to your relief a flashlight rests atop the surface. The sight reminds you of your phone, which you now realize you’ve left in the attic. You kick yourself as you reach for the flashlight, but you’ve barely curled your fingers around the handle when the door at the top of the stairs slams shut. You stumble backward and Harry catches you against his chest.

“This is getting ridiculous," you mutter into the darkness.

“I agree.” He thumbs at the the crooks of your elbows through your hoodie.

“Look what I found, though.” You click the flashlight on and shine the beam around the closest corner of the room. The floor and walls are nothing but cold concrete, and somehow that awareness makes you even colder. Your bare legs prickle with goosebumps.

Harry drops his hands from your arms. “I’d say we should split up again, but that’d be a little hard with only one light, yeah?”

“Yeah.” You curl one arm around your body as you spin to survey another area of the room. “I don’t think I’d wanna split up, anyway. It feels weird down here.”

“Weird how?”

“Like—” you begin, but your teeth begin to chatter before you can finish. “Like something’s off. I don’t know how to explain it. It’s just uncomfortable.”

“Well, yeh’re the expert here. I’ll take your word for it.” His hand slips into your free one, and you squeeze his palm appreciatively.

“I’m a student, Harry. I’m not anywhere close to being an expert.”

“’S close enough for me.”

You smile as you take a step around the stairwell, shining a pool of light upon the floor as you move, but when a shadow moves out of the corner of your eye you stop again. “For fuck’s sake,” you whisper. “Harry, maybe you should go first.”

He lets out another chuckle, more apprehensive than any of his previous laughter, and holds out the hand that’s not intertwined with yours. You pass the flashlight over to him as he moves in front of you, stepping gingerly across the concrete. You follow closely behind him, tightening your grip on his hand and burying your other fingers in his sleeve.

“Does it always smell like this?” you ask.

“Like what?”

“Damp.” You press your nose to his back in an effort to block out the other scents. “Rotting.”

“I don’ smell anythin’ like that. But I also don’ make it a point to hang out in the basement."

“I can see why.”

Harry’s light falls over odds and ends, cylinders of string and bottles and cans of paint, a springboard and rusted metal bed frame leaned up against the wall. It could be simply mundane, if not for the faulty lights and the chill feeling and the smell of something old. And the fact that it’s Halloween night. That reminder doesn’t escape you. You find yourself wondering when the house was first built and if every Halloween is as creepy as this one.

“Oh, what’s that?” you ask.

“Wha’s what?”

“There.” You point into the distant corner. Harry swings the flashlight beam back around to follow your finger.

“What are yeh lookin’ at?”

“You don’t see that gap in the concrete?”

Harry moves closer, pulling you behind him, the light bobbing with each of his steps. When he stops, you peer around his shoulder. Directly in the corner, where two concrete walls should meet, there is a space. It’s certainly wider than any type of crack would be, but not nearly the width of your shoulders.

“Well, shit,” Harry says after a contemplative minute. It’s more literate than anything you can come up with right now. “D’yeh think ’s like a portal, like in Ghostbusters?”

“Again with the Ghostbusters?”

“Well, ‘m just sayin—”

“No, Harry, I don’t think it’s ‘like a portal,’” you retort in a terrible mock of his accent.

“Okay, be nice.” Harry glances at you and then returns his gaze to the ominous space in the wall. It’s a moment before he speaks again. “I don’ know about this.”

“What?”

“I don’ think we should go in there.”

“Why not?"

"I have a bad feelin’. A really bad feelin’, love.”

“Harry.” You let out a frustrated sigh and step forward so that you can see his face, cast in shadow. “Do you know how weird tonight has been? But exciting, too. Probably the most exciting night I’ve ever had. And I don’t want to just quit when we get to the good stuff.”

“The good stuff? I thought the good stuff happened in my room. Maybe we should just go back to that.”

You roll you eyes at the grin that stretches across his face. You can still see his discomfort in the strain of his limbs and the wide set of his pupils.

“Harry, come on. Don’t back out on me, now. Look, I’ll go first.”

You let go of him and skirt around his stony form, slipping sideways into the narrow crevice. Your breasts barely squeeze through the opening, and the tight fit makes your pulse spike. About two feet in, you pause, second-guessing. Your hand reaches back in the direction you’ve come and Harry’s fingers brush your knuckles.

“Y/N, I don’ wanna go in there,” he whispers. “I don’ want you to go in there. I don’ feel good about this.” He tugs on your arm until you reach the opening of the gap and he can see your face more clearly.

“Harry, please,” you whisper back. “This is what I’ve been studying for. Let’s just look. Maybe it doesn’t even lead anywhere. But what if it does?”

“Tha’s what ‘m afraid of,” he mumbles.

You examine the planes of his face, the worry that’s set into the creases and divots. Reaching out your hand, you grip his collar and pull him toward you, dragging his lips to meet yours. This kiss is nothing like the ones that you shared up in his room, all heat and hurry. This one is slow, gentle, sweet. At this speed, you can appreciate the pressure of his mouth and the smooth skin of his lips, you can appreciate the tickle of stubble along his chin as it meets yours. He licks the taste of you away when you break the kiss and smooths a strand of hair back from your forehead.

“I’ll keep you safe,” you tell him. He smiles warily at you. You bite your lip. “Look, you don’t have to come if you don’t want to. But I’d rather not go by myself.”

“No, no, I’ll come. ‘M not gonna let you go in there alone.”

You give him a swift nod and then turn your head again, squeezing through the passage slowly, steadily. There’s a moment of darkness and bated breath before you can hear Harry following you, the flashlight scraping against concrete, its beam wobbling, casting your shadow forward and into the area ahead of you.

“How much farther?” Harry asks after a quiet minute.

“I don’t know.” You squint into the space. “I can’t see anything but—Fuck!”

Harry shouts as you scramble back into him, chest constricting and breath speeding as you remember how closed in you are.

“Wha’s wrong?”

“I ran into a spiderweb,” you mutter, almost whimpering as you try to wipe sticky strands of web from your cheek. You can only hope that there’s nothing crawling over you. When you peel as much off as you can, you take a moment to steady yourself, huffing deep breaths.

“Yeh wanna go back?” Harry asks when you still don’t move.

“No, I… No.” His fingers brush the back of your hand where it rests against the cold wall. “Okay,” you say more to yourself than to him, and then you continue shimmying through the corridor. You don’t even notice the opening of the passage before you trip out into a wide, concrete room. Harry bumps into your back where you’ve stopped.

There’s a musty, putrid scent in this room, this hole in the wall. Damp air presses in around you. Harry flashes his light up at the ceiling, illuminating countless sparkling webs, some abandoned, many inhabited. You shiver.

“What is this?” you ask.

“Was definitely a portal. D’yeh think we’re in Hell?”

“Harry, please shut up.”

You take a few steps forward, Harry close on your heels, and when your foot slips over the edge of the floor, he’s close enough to catch you by the arm. But it’s the shoulder you’ve already hurt, and the sudden pull on the muscle makes you shriek. “Fuck!”

“Sorry, ‘m sorry!”

Your leg dangles into open air, body tilted forward. Harry’s fingers are curled tightly around your elbow. The beam of the flashlight dances over the sudden end of concrete where you balance on one foot. There is an open pit before you and Harry is all that keeps you from tumbling downward. But then the light finds something within the pit. At first it appears to be nothing but a shapeless lump caked in dirt and dust. But almost immediately you realize your mistake.

Beneath the dirt is the clear pattern of red plaid. There is a glint of white bone. And there, settled to the side, is a skeletal hand, bare knuckles extending from the holes of fingerless brown leather gloves.

The pressure on your elbow does not slowly diminish; it disappears all at once. Your balance shifts and before you have the chance to react you’re scrabbling at air and falling, falling. The milliseconds feel like hours. You land with a crunch in the deep pit and a hysterical, pained scream slips from your throat. There’s a loud smack as the flashlight lands beside you. Then there is only pain and your hammering heart and your cries. Your vision swims with the agony in your right leg. And when you can control yourself enough to think about something other than that pain, all you can process is the heavy weight of being utterly and completely alone.

Part 5: Ghost Grave

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