to know about the house? You’re going to learn all about the house.”
Jay lifted two heavy cans of gasoline and carried them to his car.
Jen Returns to the House
Jen’s heart stuck in her throat as her head raced. Where the hell was he? Was this a joke? Hardly. Tanner would never do anything like that, at least not at a time like this. She felt her eyes brimming with tears, and a small animal like whimper came from her throat. Think! Think, damnit! Where could he be? She started looking around her, double checking the space, then thought of looking outside, around the building. Dark was approaching, but that didn’t even occur to her. Dark always seemed to be approaching in this part of the woods.
It was still as death outside as she looked out one of the grimy front windows. She could just make out the shoreline through the trees as her eyes raced to take in as much information as they could as quickly as possible. She heard her pulse beating in her ears, and wished it would shut up so she could hear better. Every fiber of her being was intent on hearing and seeing. But there was nothing to be heard or seen.
And then, a noise.
A small noise at first, no more than a mouse would make scurrying along a baseboard. Then, it built slowly, growing stronger, clearer. Still, she could not pinpoint it, or identify it. Her head whipped around the building’s interior, seeing nothing, but then turning towards the fireplace, a brief movement caught the edge of her vision. The painting above the fireplace was different somehow. A faint glow seemed to emanate from it, but that may have been a trick of the light. That is not what caught her eye. It moved. Or something in it moved. And it was where the noise was coming from.
The high sun of that long ago Wisconsin summer day once again stirred the pine boughs in the background. Waves, frozen in place for decades, rippled slowly in the light breeze. The boy, if boy he was, moved, ever so slightly, shifting his weight from one leg to the other, causing the stringer of fish to move, swaying, very slightly. She could even hear, although faint, the sound of the wind in the pines, and the waves lapping the shore.
And the face, the grinning face, grinned at her, and it moved.
Jen was caught dead frozen in place, rooted like a tree, eyes fixed on the picture, her brain trying in vain to make sense of something that would not make sense. The boy in the picture moved. He took a step. In the horrible dead black and white two dimensions of the frame, he walked, one step then another, towards her. She involuntarily moved a step backwards, the low whimper in her throat gaining strength. Closer, inexorably, slowly, menacingly, the boy in the picture neared the foreground as if the frame were some kind of impossible window in space and time. He did not appear two dimensional now in the quickly failing light. His hair blew tussled lightly in the wind of another time, locked in the picture. He stopped. Then, to her horror, he reached forward, leaning and leering at her, as his head jutted out of the frame, then one hand, the arm, and the shoulder. He became three dimensional as he emerged. He was climbing up some unseen step in his netherworld, and was about to enter hers. She heard the mantle creak under his weight has his upper body passed impossibly out of the frame and onto the hearth. As he did so, his appearance changed from that of a black and white boy from the days of Polaroid Land cameras, and into that of the living corpse that he had become. In the light of the real world, he became a boy-man-child, but in the shadows, here in the gloom of his prison, his form showed itself as it was - a long dead thing animated by pure hatred.
And revenge.
Tanner in the Trunk
Jay manhandled Tanner to get him in the trunk of his car. Tanner was strong, but Jay was stronger. In the back of his head, Tanner had already begun to plan. With his legs bound this way, he couldn’t run or do anything with his arms, but lying in the trunk with his back against the floor, he could kick with both legs with a great deal of force. When Jay came to get him out of the trunk, he would strike. One kick. That’s all he’d get the chance for. It’s all he would need if he caught his uncle right. It made him sick thinking of this, imagining the cracking sound as Jay’s ribs broke under the force, but he had snapped out of his denial, his disbelief, and the part of his brain that was responsible for keeping him alive was kicking in. He could feel the adrenaline pumping his muscles taught as he lay there, jostled by the bumps in the road. By the amount of time elapsed, the movement of the car, and the resulting sound and vibration from the road, he knew only too clearly where Jay was taking him and what the purpose of the gasoline was. It made his blood run cold but kicked his survival instinct into gear. Jay would never get the chance to set a fire, unless he could do so with a caved in chest.
The car came to a sharp stop. He guessed from the amount of time they’d been on the pine needle hushed fire road that they were there. He heard the door open and not close. Then, crunching gravel as his uncle walked towards the rear of the car. Tanner coiled his legs and a strange calm came over him, allowing him to focus entirely on the moment; on the action to come. Thoughts of right and wrong, necessary and unnecessary did not enter his mind. It was only the doing that remained. He waited. He heard the key enter the lock, then the dull metallic click of the trunk latch releasing, followed by a nearly blinding crack of light. His eyes, accustomed to the pitch dark of the trunk, fought to adjust to the rush of remaining daylight that entered as the lid silently rose. His legs, although bound together, were coiled, and he was ready.
The trunk now fully open, his uncle’s hands raised holding it up, there came a loud noise from the cabin, startling his uncle, who shot erect, and took a step away from the car, a split second before Tanner was about to crush his ribs. He was so startled he didn’t even seem to notice Tanner’s coiled up prone posture. His eyes like saucers, he stared at the darkening building, straining to hear another sound.
Jen’s Horror
Jen felt sheer terror as the thing approached her. She felt faint and fought blacking out. She instinctively backed towards the corner, realizing as she did so that she was cutting off her own escape, and whipped her head around looking for options. None presented themselves, save the rickety stairs. The animal instinct in her – the primitive tree dwelling hominid ancestor part of her brain - told her to climb, and she did, backing up one creaking, mushy, rotten step at a time, slowly upwards, not daring to take her eyes off the abomination that followed her, no more than ten feet away. Her hand groped along the wall to her left to steady herself just in time to catch her weight as her left foot, seeking a stair tread that no longer existed, landed on nothing, forcing her to lurch down and to the left. Partly falling, and jumping up and back, trying in vain to reach the next step, her left leg sunk into the stairwell up to her thigh, bringing her ascent to a sudden, terrifying halt. She fought terribly to climb out, but her struggles caused her only to sink further into the rotting staircase. She was trapped and in pain, half her body wedged at an impossible angle, as she struggled to free herself.
The thing ascended almost soundlessly, as Jen saw to her horror that it needed neither staircase nor railing to rise up the stairs. It glided, like a horrid party balloon, the only noise the dull rustle of rusted chains sliding one stair at a time beneath it. Its rotting face leered victoriously.
A shape blocked the light of the doorway. It was Tanner’s uncle.
“Oh, God! Jay! Please help me! God, help me!” she screamed. The thing turned its head slowly, jerkily to face the door. The leering grin disappeared, then re-appeared. It smiled with sick recognition.
Tanner’s uncle lurched forward then backwards, his mouth open in mute horror, filled with a silent scream. His eyes flashed in terror and his arms flew up in front of him. A dull, pained roar sprung from his throat as he backed into the door jam. The thing at the stairs turned and faced him.
“I knew you’d come back…” its voice rattled, muffled and hollow, like that of something speaking from a sarcophagus. Tattered remnants of vocal chords fought to make sound as dry corpse breath rushed past them.
&nb
sp; Jay backed into the doorframe, eyes wide with horror. The shambling abomination on the stairs had stopped ascending, turning, gliding downwards with hideous stealth, towards the shaking man.
“It can’t be! You’re dead, God Damn it!” Jay screamed, throwing a can of gas at the thing, missing widely as gas burst from the can, saturating the bone-dry floor wood. Jay looked around frantically, and seeing the gas seep into the floor, plunged his hands in his pockets quickly producing a pack of matches. His hands shook violently as he fumbled for matches. As he backed away, Jen’s glance jumped frantically from him to the deepening shadows encroaching on the porch. Figures moved there. At first she hoped that it would be Tanner, then that it would not be him. She had to act.
Jay screamed, swinging widely, dropping the matches.
The dog-like creatures circled the porch, in the deep shade of the trees, slavering.
Janet’s Father
Janet Littlehorse strained to see with tired eyes in the dim light of the desk lamp. Darkness was setting in and the lighting in the police station was not good at night. The yellowed police report before her was hard to read, ink faded with decades of aging.
“Officers reported blunt force trauma to