J.M.J.

Author's note: Hey there! Remember me? This is just a one-shot, in honor of Nancy's birthday. I don't know why it got so incredibly creepy, but it did. I hope you enjoy! God bless!

When Darkness Reaches

The beam from the flashlight was beginning to waver. Already it was so dim that Nancy Drew couldn't make out the color of the wall in front of her. If it was the same as the beginning of the tunnel, it was sandstone, but in the feeble light, it looked gray.

The eighteen-year-old girl slapped the flashlight in a desperate attempt to get the light to be steadier. It became brighter for a second or two, but then it began to fade again. She turned to her companion with an apologetic smile that he could barely see.

"I'm starting to think Dad had a point in telling us not to come here."

"He usually does," Ned Nickerson replied, trying to look confident. "Have a point, that is. Do you want to go back?"

Nancy bit her lip. That was a harder question to answer than it should have been. Ordinarily, she would have never agreed. They were in the basement of an old, abandoned mental asylum that was rumored to be haunted. Nancy herself had seen the eerie lights in the windows in the dead of night. The police had investigated, but they had found no trace of any trespassers.

So Nancy had decided to investigate. Her boyfriend, Ned, had agreed to go with her, but she hadn't had much luck persuading anyone else. Her father had been dead-set against it. Nancy thought that was strange, since Carson Drew didn't believe in ghosts. He had never refused to let Nancy to investigate a supposed haunting before, especially since time after time, she had proven that there was no paranormal explanation whatsoever. Yet Carson had tried his hardest to persuade her not to come.

Now that she was here, Nancy had to admit there was something wrong about the place. There was a smell in every room they had gone into so far. It was very faint but always present. It smelled like something sick and dying. Then there was the impenetrable gloom. It was daylight outside and many of the windows were uncovered, but the electricity had long-since been turned off and even the daylight streaming from the windows couldn't cut through the darkness. It was almost like it was a thing in its own right, not just the absence of light. Here in the basement, it was even worse. It felt like being inside a tunnel, rather than a hallway. Finally, there was the flashlight. Nancy didn't understand it. She had just put new batteries in it. It shouldn't be dying already. She might have chalked that up to defective batteries, if it wasn't for the fact that both her and Ned's phones had died, despite them both being certain that they had charged them up before coming.

Yes, there was definitely something wrong with this place. If Nancy had been disposed to believe in ghosts, no force on earth could have gotten her to stay here. But she didn't believe in ghosts and she wanted to know what was going on here.

"I'm game to go on if you are," she said.

Her companion nodded. "Okay. It'll make a good story, at least."

They took a few more steps, and then the flashlight died completely. Instinctively, they huddled closer together and grasped one another's hands tighter. Their impulse was to turn around and run, but they both willed themselves to stand their ground.

"Ned?" Nancy whispered.

"What?"

"Do you know any way to make fresh batteries drain out in minutes without actually touching them?"

"If there is a way, I didn't major in engineering long enough to learn about it."

Nancy paused. It was very tempting to say they should just turn around and go back. "We need to find out what's going on around here, but we can't without a light," she said finally. "Let's go back upstairs at least. We'd better keeping holding hands so we don't get separated."

"Right."

They turned around and started feeling their way along the corridor. The one comfort Nancy had right now was feeling Ned's hand wrapped around her own. She was glad he was the one who had agreed to come with her after all. He often complimented Nancy on her fearlessness, but Nancy knew it was really the other way around. She had never seen him afraid of anything. Cautious and prudent, yes, but never afraid.

They hadn't encountered anything on the floor on their way in, but they stepped cautiously anyway, just in case. It took longer to walk back to the stairs than it had taken walking from them. Much longer. Nancy wondered how long they had been walking. It felt like forever. She gripped Ned's hand even tighter.

"Nancy," he said, "we should have reached the stairs by now."

Nancy knew it was true. They should have reached the stairs a long time ago. "We couldn't be going the wrong way," she whispered. "There wasn't anywhere to turn, besides going into a room."

"I guess there's nothing to do but keep going," Ned said.

They went on. For a long time now, they had been walking in pure darkness. They couldn't see anything—not a speck of light or the dim outline of each other as they moved along. If they hadn't been holding onto each other, they didn't think they could have found each other in that darkness. It was suffocating, like the darkness was pressing in on them.

Nancy felt a pricking at the back of her neck, as if something was behind her. She knew it was only nerves, but it was eerie. For a moment, she even almost thought she could hear the padding of footsteps behind her. She felt an overwhelming urge to look. She knew she wouldn't see anything. It was pitch dark. Yet the urge to turn her head was there. She struggled against it. It felt important to resist it, but she didn't know why. She wanted to say something to Ned, but she felt foolish about it. There was nothing there. It wouldn't do any harm to look.

She turned her head. There, a long distance behind them, was a break in the darkness. It was a pale, red illumination, so dim that it gave no light to anything around it. It was about the height of Nancy's head and it remained still and steady. She froze when she saw it. She wasn't really afraid of it—at least, no more afraid than of anything else in that house—but it transfixed her nevertheless.

Ned hadn't realized she was stopping and so he took another step or two, a little too hastily, and their hands pulled apart.

"Nancy?" he said, reaching back for her. He couldn't find her in the darkness and she didn't respond to him. "Nancy?" Ned repeated, fear mounting in him. "Nancy, where are you?"

He took several steps back, but he couldn't find her anywhere. Keeping his left hand on the wall, he kept walking, reaching about with his right hand. He couldn't find Nancy anywhere. He tried to call for her, but he couldn't seem to raise his voice above a loud whisper. He heard nothing in response.

Then Ned tripped over something. It was soft and large and he knew at once through some sixth sense or other that it was a body. He had fallen over it, landing on his hands and knees beyond it. Sick with fear, he reached around and felt it. It was a human body for sure. He could feel an arm. But a small wave of relief washed over him just by feeling that arm. It was thick and muscular and hairy. It was a man's arm. It wasn't Nancy.

Ned felt along it until he came to the wrist. He tried to find a pulse, but there wasn't one. The skin felt cold, too. Whoever it was, Ned couldn't help him now.

Trying to fight down panic, he reasoned out that he needed to keep looking for Nancy and get her out of here. They could send the police back for the body. They needed to get out of here. They needed to get out now.

Ned started to stand. Then something wrapped itself around his ankle. With a startled cry, he tried to kick it off, but the grip only grew stronger.

"You cannot get out," a voice whispered to him. It was dark and heavy, as if it was the voice of the darkness itself. It felt like it was coming at him from all sides, tearing at him, trying to get in. "You cannot get out. Embrace it."

Ned kicked even harder. "No!" He couldn't shake the hand off. "Let go of me! Let go!" The hand grew tighter and tighter until Ned thought it was going to cut his circulation off. "In the name of God, let go of me!" he shouted.

NDNDNDNDND

Nancy stood staring at the red light. It almost seemed as if it was beckoning to her, promising her a little light to see her way out. She wanted to go to it, but she thought there was something she was forgetting, something important. The next moment, she had forgotten that she was forgetting anything. She began walking toward the illumination.

As she came nearer to it, it became brighter. Now she could see it wasn't as steady as she had thought. It was flickering slightly. Flickering and dancing. It was a flame behind a red glass. Nancy could begin to see shapes in its light.

There was a door next to it. It was a heavy, wooden door with a rounded top. There was an iron knocker on it but no doorknob. If there was ever a door that concealed secrets, this was it.

Nancy had a powerful urge to lift the knocker. Something in the back of her mind told her she shouldn't, but it was much weaker than the urge to knock. She lifted the knocker and rapped it once.

The sound was nearly deafening. It was as if that simple knock had torn down the foundations of the world and causing everything to crash down. Nancy covered her head, expecting the ceiling to fall and bury her, but it didn't. Instead the door opened. Inside was more inky darkness, but Nancy had the sense that someone was there.

"Hello?" she called softly.

"Nancy, is that you?" It was a strange, strange but familiar. Nancy couldn't say whether it belonged to a man or a woman, an adult or a child. It sounded as if it was in pain. "You have to help me, Nancy!"

"Do I know you?" Nancy asked, still standing in front of the doorway.

"Yes. Come to me. You must help me get out."

Nancy was about to step through the doorway when her name was called again, this time from behind her.

"Nancy!" It was sharp, but also strong and masculine. Nancy remembered at once.

"Ned?" She half-turned, but the voice inside the room seemed to hold her captive.

"No!" it said. "It's a trick. They don't want you to let me out. They don't want anyone to see me."

"Nancy." Ned's voice wasn't any closer, as if something was preventing him from reaching her. "You've got to come back. We can still get out. Don't go in there."

Nancy hesitated on the threshold. The voice inside was still calling to her softly, begging her to help it. She felt as if something was reaching out to her, drawing her in.

"Nancy, please," Ned pleaded.

With a great effort, Nancy turned to look at him. His phone had come back on and he had the flashlight turned on. The light hardly penetrated the darkness. Instead, it just seemed to make a glow around Ned. His face was pale and smudged with dirt and his hair was disheveled. He looked so ordinary and uninteresting, as if Nancy was on the edge of a great adventure and he was holding her back. A touch of resentment rose up in her.

"Nancy, please," he begged again. "Don't go through that door."

"What will happen if I do?" Nancy countered.

"I don't know," Ned admitted.

Nancy scoffed. "You don't know? You're always so afraid of what you don't know."

Ned was obviously taken aback by her tone. "There are some things it's better not to know," he said uncertainly.

A smile crept over the corners of Nancy's mouth. Even to herself, it felt strange. She was frightening herself. She had never felt like this before. Yet she still responded, "I'm not afraid to know anything."

She turned back to the door and started to step in. With a grunt as if he had to break through something, Ned sprang after her and pulled her back just before she was through the door. With a cry of fury, she turned on him, kicking and punching and scratching him. He didn't try to defend himself. He just tried to hold onto her. Yet she couldn't break free of his grasp.

She pushed Ned backwards and together, they staggered against the wall, crashing in the red lamp. The glass broke and oil splashed out, on them and on the wall and the floor. Instantly, there were flames everywhere. The sleeve of Nancy's jacket was on fire. Panicked, she tore the jacket off. Then she saw that the back of Ned's jacket was burning. He had dropped to the floor and was trying to smother it underneath him. Once the flames were mostly extinguished, Nancy helped him pull it off.

The wall and the floor was still burning, and the fire was quickly spreading. Nancy and Ned were both coughing on the smoke.

"We've got to get out of here!" Ned shouted, coughing into his elbow.

Nancy hesitated and glanced at the door. "The voice…"

Ned grabbed her hand. "Come on!"

Nancy looked up at him and made her decision. They started to run down the corridor. It was full of heat and smoke. Nancy didn't think they would ever get out. They hadn't had much luck before.

But then, in less than two minutes, they had reached the stairs. They were running up them. They reached the top. The door to outside was just on the other side of the room. Ned pushed it open with his free hand and they ran through. They were out in the daylight, but they didn't stop running until they were nearly a block down the street.

Ned leaned against a power pole, breathing heavily, but still grasping Nancy's hand. Nancy looked back at the building. The fire had spread amazingly quickly and already she could see flames in the first floor windows. People were beginning to gather to watch the spectacle. Then Nancy turned back to Ned.

His shirt had burned a bit, too, and Nancy was sure he must have burns on his back. Three long scratches ran down his left cheek. They were bleeding.

Nancy took a handkerchief out of her pocket and wiped the blood and soot away. "Did I do that?"

"I don't think you meant to." Ned tried to smile.

"I'm sorry. I don't know what came over me." Nancy looked back at the house again. "It was like something was trying to get hold of me, trying to get inside me."

"I know. It tried to do the same to me. I fought it and it finally stopped. Then my phone just came on again." Ned shook his head. "I don't know what was in there, but I'm glad we got out."

Nancy wrapped her arms around him, carefully in view of his burns on his back and hers on her arm. "I think you were right that it's better not to know some things."