The lock into the granary took Fii only seconds to pick. The insides of the granary fared no better than the outside. There were cobwebs clinging to the walls and dust on the ground and in the corners, and dried straw littered everywhere. The first floor had nothing but rickety, broken, chair, a fleet of stairs leading up, and another leading down.
“Footprints,” Rat hissed, pointing down. “Lots of them.”
Fii looked, and indeed, there were. Large footprints. Men’s boots. A smaller pair. A woman’s? The prints were clear as day in the layer of dust that coated the ground, and they went everywhere. Someone had been here recently. Would they still be here? Was his mother one of them?
Rat followed Fii, and they moved carefully, quietly, as though afraid to disturb the eerie atmosphere that permeated the place. The stairs up creaked as they climbed. The second floor, however, offered fewer clues than the first. There was nothing more than a few broken barrels. Disappointed, they made their way down. The basement, then, thought Fii.
The stairs downwards to the cellars were narrow and barely fit one, so Fii took the lead. He edged down slowly. The thin hall that housed the stairs was dark and damp, a sharp contrast to the upper floors of the granary. A cold draft upwards brought the sickly sweet smell of rot. There was another smell here, too, but it was foreign to Fii and he knew not what it was.
“Wicked,” Rat murmured, eyes bright, as soon as they were down.
The underground cellar was vast; far bigger than it had a right to be, and judging by the span of the ceiling, far larger than the size of the granary from the outside. Around the stairway, wooden crates and metal cages were stacked up to the roof, hindering their line of sight to the rest of the cellar, but also hindering echoes from Rat’s voice. A beacon of torchlight shone faintly in the distance. It cast whispery shadows upon and around the boys.
“Quiet,” Fii muttered back. He sidled forward, keeping his back close to the crates. The solid wood behind his back offered some semblance of safety, assuaging some of Fii’s nerves. He peeked out between the tight opening between two heaps of crates, to the rest of the cellar.
Shadowy figures were moving in front of the torchlight. There were three, mayhaps four of them. Two were seated at a small table near the center of the cellar. One learned against the wall. The last was squatting on the ground, shoveling something in a corner. There were cages, with things -- animals?-- in them along the far wall, and there were hooks, hanging from the ceiling.
And then, there were the things hanging from the hooks.
A chill ran up Fii’s back. Suddenly, the solid wood at his back did nothing to assuage his nerves. There was no comfort here, and every instinct he had were beckoning Fii to flee.