She wondered what else was in here with her in the darkness.
Out in the hallway, she heard a floorboard creak. Heather froze, holding her breath.
The sound was not repeated.
Heather’s fingernails dug into her palms, drawing blood. She barely felt it. She imagined the killer waiting outside the door, standing in the hallway, foot poised over the creaky floorboard, waiting for her to come out. She waited, expecting at any moment to hear his terrible cry, or for the big hammer to smash down the door.
Instead, she heard somebody start laughing—a high-pitched, frantic sound, almost veering into crying.
Kerri?
It sure sounded like her.
The laughter came again, followed by a harsh, male voice that, despite the whispered tones, was familiar.
Kerri and Javier! It had to be. Heather was sure of it.
She jumped to her feet and stumbled toward the door, flinging it open. Even though the hallway was dark, it was still lighter than the room she’d been hiding in, and at first, Heather couldn’t see anything. Before her eyes could adjust, she was greeted by screams.
***
Brett held his breath and crept across the old sagging floorboards, trying to tread as lightly as possible. He’d lost count of the number of rooms he’d fled through, running headlong, not stopping to examine his surroundings, just trying to lose his pursuer. He was left with the vague impression that the derelict house wasn’t laid out like a normal dwelling. There were too many doors—some of them leading to nowhere, as he’d soon learned, much to his chagrin. There were hallways that seemed to double back and rooms that served no logical purpose. A bathroom with a loveseat propped against one deteriorating wall. A bedroom with shattered porcelain shards from a toilet strewn across the floor. Perhaps most bizarre was the absence of windows. From the outside of the house, he’d noticed many boarded-over windows on both the first and second floors. But here, inside the abandoned dwelling, all of those windows were missing. Someone had constructed walls over the panes. He’d also noticed that some of the rooms and hallways had makeshift lighting installed—a rough series of lightbulbs connected by a frayed power cord. So far, he’d found no way of turning them on.
As baffling as the layout was, he hoped his pell-mell dash through the labyrinthine construct would confuse the killer as well.
He peeked his head through the open door in front of him and found a kitchen. Quickly verifying that the room was clear, Brett ducked inside the kitchen and shut the door behind him. The hinges groaned, and flecks of rust fell onto his hand. The door had no lock, and the doorknob itself jiggled in his hand. Brett felt for the light switch. It was sticky. He pulled his fingers away in disgust, reprimanding himself for forgetting that there was no power in the house anyway. He’d tried the light switches in the other rooms and none had worked. He fumbled for his cell phone, flipped it open, and used the meager light of the display screen. At least it was good for illumination; he’d had no signal since entering the house.
He scanned the shadowy corners, looking for something to blockade the door with. He spotted two other doors. One looked like it led into a pantry. He assumed that the other door led out of the kitchen, unless it was another false door, opening up into a brick wall. The kitchen counters were cracked and warped, and covered with inch-thick layers of dust and grime. Cobwebs hung from the ceiling like party streamers, and the corners and sink were full of rat droppings and dead flies. The air was thick with the smell of mildew. Brett stepped closer to the sink. The stainless-steel basin was encrusted with brownish-red stains and there was some sort of shriveled organic matter in the strainer over the drain. Wrinkling his nose, Brett turned his attention to the oven. The door had a brown handprint on it. Brett assumed it was blood, but long since dried. His eyes settled on an old, dented refrigerator. If he could move it over to the door without making much noise, it would serve as a decent blockade.
The memory of Steph’s head suddenly appeared in his mind. Moaning softly, Brett gritted his teeth and forced the image away.
Flipping his cell phone shut, Brett tiptoed across the kitchen and pushed on one side of the refrigerator. It scuffed along the floor with a loud groan, moving only a fraction of an inch. Something rolled around inside of the appliance, jostled by the sudden movement. Brett opened the door and peered inside. With the darkness and his state of shock, he didn’t comprehend what he was seeing at first. A jumble of whitish-yellow forms filled the refrigerator’s shelves. Slowly, he reached out and touched one. It was dry and textured, and felt fragile. He picked it up and pulled it out for a closer look.
It was a rat. The refrigerator was full of rat skeletons.
Gasping in disgust, Brett flung the bones to the floor and wiped his hands on his cargo pants. As he closed the refrigerator door, he heard footsteps approaching. Rather than the powerful, plodding steps of the guy who had been chasing him, these were lighter. More hurried. Brett scampered across the kitchen and hid inside the pantry. He’d barely closed the door behind him when the other door on the far side of the kitchen opened and another figure entered the room.
The new arrival was carrying a lantern, and its soft glow filled the room. Brett peered through the slatted cracks in the pantry door, watching. This one was female. She was shorter than Tyler and Stephanie’s killer, and more misshapen. She was naked and hairless. Both her head and her vagina were shaved. Her breasts hung low and flat, stretching almost to her belly, and barely moved as she walked. Something was wrong with her skin. It seemed too smooth, too shiny. And there were strange black lines crisscrossing her flesh—around her waist, up each leg, down her abdomen and encircling her neck. He stared harder, realizing what they were. Stitches.
The woman’s skin wasn’t her own. She was wearing someone else’s.
As if sensing his presence, the freak turned toward the pantry, giving him a full frontal view. The tip of a pale, flaccid penis dangled from between the tanned, dead vagina.
The new arrival wasn’t a hermaphrodite. It was a man wearing a dead woman’s skin.
Maybe.
It was too dark for Brett to be sure.
Brett gaped, trying to keep as still as possible. The pantry was musty, and dust filled the air, getting into his nose and throat. His shoe brushed against something soft. He looked down and saw that it was a dead mouse—the carcass alive with wriggling, bulbous gray-white maggots.
The intruder shuffled closer. She/he raised its nose and sniffed the air. Then it was suddenly seized by a violent bout of harsh, ragged coughing. The figure doubled over, hacked up a wad of phlegm, and spat the fluid into its hand. It rolled the pinkish mucous between its fingertips and then wiped it on its human vest. Then it raised its fingers to its nose and inhaled.
Grunting, it stepped toward the pantry door. It was close enough now for Brett to smell it. The stench was cloying—an overpowering mix of sweat, feces, urine, and blood. It reached for the door and Brett tensed, ready to leap out and clobber it as soon as the door was opened. His only advantage was the element of surprise.
Before the creature could open the door, however, it was distracted by the sound of approaching footsteps. Brett recognized them immediately. They were the same footsteps that had been chasing him through the house.
The kitchen door opened and the hulk that had killed Tyler and Stephanie appeared. He walked backward, dragging their corpses into the kitchen. Each of his hands clutched one of their legs. Its hammer was slung over its misshapen back and tied with a length of frayed extension cord.
The other creature giggled.
“What you got there, Noigel?” Its voice sounded like someone gargling with broken glass. The tone answered for certain the question of its gender. Brett was pretty sure that no woman could ever sound like that. Besides, its shoulders were too broad to be a female’s. It coughed again, and hocked up another wad of phlegm.
The big one—Noigel—grunted in response. Then it let go of Stephanie’s leg. Brett winced as her foot thudded on the floorboards. He wanted to scream. Wanted to charge out of the pantry and kill the fucker who’d done this to her. Instead, he stood there, quaking. His terror filled him with shame and guilt. Javier would have fought back. He
