Day 500

There hadn't always been a door in the basement - he was sure of that.
It was usually just a concrete cube filled with old junk, the heater and his grandad's tools.
No exits except from a smallish window that was on ground level to the back garden.
Now as he'd finished searching the rest of the house for his family, he'd found this new door.

It looked old, very old.
Covered in a thick layer of dust it lay there on the floor, a faint breeze coming from the keyhole.
As he stood wondering how long it had been there in the basement corner, his mobile rang.
His mother's number appeared on the main screen but before he could answer it hung up.

Redialling he heard the familiar tinkling of her ringtone coming from just behind the door.
Settling his nerves he grabbed the handle and pulled upwards, its' hinges protesting all the way.
It was heavier than it looked but after a few attempts he managed to prop it up with a nearby chair.
The door revealed a set of steeply descending stairs beneath, lit by old-fashioned gas lamps.

It gave the staircase a greenish glow, tinted by the thick glass of the dim lights.
He braced himself against the walls as he trod carefully and quietly as he could towards the ringtone
which grew louder and louder the deeper he went and as his ears popped from the pressure he
realised that these stairs must have descended far below the house's foundations.

The walls looked to be regular dirt, their dull brown colour occasionally interrupted by strands of
iron and copper which were common in the local area.
He wondered if he'd stumbled into an old prohibition era tunnel or former bomb shelter.
As the steps ended wooden planks hastily piled together he saw what seemed to be an old mine.

He'd read about the town's mining history but doubted the site spread as far as the stories alleged.
So he'd been wrong and his mother's ringtone continued to echo down the tunnel though he'd hung
up the call halfway down the steps.
The old glass gas lights continued down here at uneven intervals, lighting up large holes in the walls.

He followed the shrill noise down, peering cautiously into every hole he came across.
Something at the back of his mind said to expect his family to pop out of one of the holes laughing.
As he reached a fork in the tunnel with five potential exits, he wondered if they'd just left his mother's
phone down here to trick him into wandering around these tunnels forever.

The echoing ringtone seemed to be coming from every angle around him.
He poked his head into each tunnel, trying to get a glimpse of someone, something, anything.
All he saw was near identical offshoots of his current dirt-packed location.
He sat down next to an old wooden beam to plan his next move - back or forward?

He must have dozed off at some point as he awoke in pitch black silence.
The wooden beam was no longer beside him and the air around stank of feces and blood.
Something came shuffling towards him, growling as it prowled closer to where he sat.
As something wet licked his ear he leapt up and grabbed his phone from his pocket.

Shining its' light out in front of him he saw the mangled body of an enormous pig.
It stood less than a foot from him, face partially caved in, lower jaw hacked off, tongue lolling almost
as limply as its head and blood gushing freely from its' shredded sides.
Shining his light around the rest of the room he saw it was the last one alive.

The others were in far better state, their heads roughly cut off and something cut into their sides.
He moved closed to one, the last living pig following him closely.
Faces... somebody had carved faces into them, very familiar faces and words beside them.
His blood chilled as he looked upon the grotesque smiles of his family and read their hatred of him.