Chapter+3


 * Chapter 3**

"What is that?" asked George as he pointed towards the glowing trapdoor.

"I don't know, but let us find out!" lied Sam as he eagerly knelt down next to the entrance. In fact, Sam did know what was down this trapdoor. He was the one that had decided to create the rooms that this trapdoor led to.

"What do you mean us?" George interrupted sharply, "I don't want to go down there. How 'bout you go in by yourself?"

"Sure I will, I guess maybe it wasn't such a good idea to have asked you to come with me here. Didn't know you were gonna' duck out." said Sam as he silently chuckled to himself.

Suddenly George realized something was really wrong. Why was he following this kid who he had just met today at the park to the museum at night? And something else struck out of the ordinary: why did Sam say 'duck out'? when he should have said 'chicken out'? George knew something was askew when Sam had asked him for a spare vacuum tube at the park.

"You mean to say that I'm chickening out?" questioned George.

"Y...um... yeah! What you just said." said Sam nervously.

"Well just to let you know, I am NOT afraid of going down that damp, glowing, and creepy trapdoor," continued George, "It's just that I think we could get in big trouble if a policeman caught us."

"Reeeellllaaaxxx," whispered Sam childishly, "Don't you know that they never guard this museum? It's because the curator has very little money, and the fact that this museum was built in such a bad neighborhood does not help that fact."

George did feel a little better, but he was still worried about his suspicious new friend and the trapdoor. The trapdoor's red glow reminded him of his parents. George's mother and father both loved the color red. Almost every article of clothing or furniture they bought or made was red.

One day, a thief decided that the house at the end of Creek Road was somehow empty of its inhabitants, but that thief was not smart. It turned out that George's parents were taking their daily afternoon nap. The thief busted in the backyard door and made such a racket that Mom and Dad woke up. Dad walked downstairs with the porcelain mug George had made for him when he was six years old. The thief was hauling away the two laptops in the study room as Dad walked inside. The thief and Dad stared at each other eye to eye, but unfortunately, the thief was the one to make the first move.

Being rather nearsighted and thus incapable of distinguishing the outline of dad's red bathrobe against the red carpeting on the stairs, the thief saw only a floating head that was staring at him, two floating hands (one of which was holding a poorly made mug) and a pair of fuzzy bunny slippers that had just clomped their way down the stairs. Since it is not every day that you see a floating head, two floating hands, a poorly made mug, and a pair of walking bunny slippers, the thief was understandably quite startled. He threw down both laptops so they smashed open on the floor, spilling their resistor guts over the monotonously red floor.

As the thief turned and fled from the clomping bunny slippers and the floating head that was now shouting obscene epithets at him, he was permanently scarred by the memory of the color red and couldn't stand to go near the house again. A couple of neurologists later suggested that all the red clothing and furniture was unhealthy, but Dad said that red was the color of safety and that it kept evil people like burglars away.

Thus George was wondering whether the red glow was meant to keep little trespassing brats like Sam out of whatever was on the other side of the trapdoor.