The basement had always been some dark, damp place that no one in their right mind would ever want to be in. Always. Except... This basement seemed different from the ones generally depicted in other homes. It was nicely finished, there weren't any exposed pipes, the walls were plastered and painted a warm, light color. Shelves decorated one wall, stark and impressive. The wood was almost black and lacquered to a beautiful shine, built in square pockets with one or two smaller shelves inside in a geometric pattern that drew the eye. A matching table with a glass middle was there as well, a box of rolled papers and trinkets set on the corner, a smaller pile of rolled paper beside it. It was tall, hip height like a workbench, with a smaller box like table wheeled underneath. Essentially it made a lightbox- likely for tracing maps, blueprints, sketches.
However, the most impressive portion of the basement was the collection of three skeletons carefully pieced together in animated poses. They were contained in glass cases, meticulously adjusted until each joint lined up perfectly. These creatures each had their own unique features. One... was a bird? But it didn't look like any natural bird on earth. It had a tail, curled around the bottom of the box at least one and a half times, coiling inwardly around its taloned feet. Thin razor-like teeth framed the edges of it's opened beak, and long quill-like spines ran down its vertebrae.
The other looked like a hulking bear, fingers long with pointed claws and rounded teeth, rows upon rows, shrinking the further they went back into its mouth like pearls. The ribs were... almost fused together, arches of space between them as they came around to the spine, webbing of bone thin and angled in a way to allow the light to pass through.
The third was barely describable. There were many limbs, each set different from the one before, and the skull was a mash of all types, something about it screamed snake, and human, and the wide sockets with thin orbital bones brought forth the thought of an owl. This one left a sense of unease that grew the longer you examined it. Why these bones were kept in the basement of an old, refurbished Victorian townhouse, no one knew. Why that townhouse was in the center of a dense and otherwise impassable forest, was another unknown factor.