There was only a sliver of space between the floorboards and the door under the stairs. It wasn't even really a door. To the naked eye, it appeared to only be another wall, another wasted space in the sprawling mansion. They crushed their faces to the hardwood floor, straining to see beyond the door, but they couldn't. It was just to thin.
"Let's pry it open," Jason said, pointing to one of the banister arms. It hung onto the rest of its siblings by a sliver of fragmented wood, conveniently shaped similar to a crowbar. "I'll even do it myself. Here, move." He pushed Aliice aside and ripped the beam from its socket.
Aliice ground her teeth in frustration, pushing Jason hard in the back. "Don't do it, Jay. You don't know what's back there. No one's lived here since the Holocaust." She kicked him in the calf to emphasize her displeasure, but he shrugged her off.
"I'm doing it." Jason shoved the beam's outcropped lip under the door and pried at it with all his strength. The aged wood shattered with the stress, revealing a hallway. Dank and dark, faintly illuminated at the far end by an unknown light, it peered back at them with alien hatred. "Maybe that wasn't such a good idea after all..." Jason mumbled.
Aliice blanched. "No fucking kidding, genius."
They crouched to peer beneath the stairs.