It's only the most pressing need that drives Sam Gamgee into this place. In fact, he recoils when he opens the door and sees, in the weak sliver of light from the artificial sky, the many stacks of bones, and the damp, moldering stones coated in sticky dust, and the graves with their contents all spilling out on the floor. He thinks, with a sudden, sick plunge of his stomach, of the Barrow-downs back in the Old Forest - of the dreams he still sometimes has, of a sinking grey darkness that feels thick enough to drown in.
It's the distant scream from behind him that sends him darting forward into the dark, though - between the threat of ghosts who like as not aren't there and the threat of the armed Tributes somewhere behind him, he'll take the ghosts, and at least have his face to whatever's outside if they drive him fleeing from this place.
He's quiet as he creeps gingerly down deeper, his mouth twisting in distaste when he feels broken pieces of bones under his bare feet. It doesn't reek of decay, so much - these bones being all too old to rot - but it smells musty, the air thick and unmoving.
And then that screech rings out, echoing through the hallways, bouncing off every wall, growing distant and more distant, and Sam leaps clear out of his skin-- darts forward on instinct, stumbles, falls to his knees with a grunt, hears the hoarse, frightened sound that comes out of his own throat and echoes on the heels of the scream, and then the clatter of bones falling down, not ten feet away--
--But that's queer, ain't it--? Even in his panicked crawl to the nearest wall Sam knows ghosts don't rattle nothing loose, having no hands with which to do it - and he flattens himself against the wall he finds (suddenly hardly caring what skeleton he's pressed up against), his eyes wide and staring and seeing almost nothing in the blackness this far from the still-cracked door.
"Who's there?" he calls out, his voice sharp to disguise the tremble in it. "Who else is creepin' around in here? Whether dead or not-- speak, or you'll have me to tangle with!"
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It's the distant scream from behind him that sends him darting forward into the dark, though - between the threat of ghosts who like as not aren't there and the threat of the armed Tributes somewhere behind him, he'll take the ghosts, and at least have his face to whatever's outside if they drive him fleeing from this place.
He's quiet as he creeps gingerly down deeper, his mouth twisting in distaste when he feels broken pieces of bones under his bare feet. It doesn't reek of decay, so much - these bones being all too old to rot - but it smells musty, the air thick and unmoving.
And then that screech rings out, echoing through the hallways, bouncing off every wall, growing distant and more distant, and Sam leaps clear out of his skin-- darts forward on instinct, stumbles, falls to his knees with a grunt, hears the hoarse, frightened sound that comes out of his own throat and echoes on the heels of the scream, and then the clatter of bones falling down, not ten feet away--
--But that's queer, ain't it--? Even in his panicked crawl to the nearest wall Sam knows ghosts don't rattle nothing loose, having no hands with which to do it - and he flattens himself against the wall he finds (suddenly hardly caring what skeleton he's pressed up against), his eyes wide and staring and seeing almost nothing in the blackness this far from the still-cracked door.
"Who's there?" he calls out, his voice sharp to disguise the tremble in it. "Who else is creepin' around in here? Whether dead or not-- speak, or you'll have me to tangle with!"