He placed the black-handled knife atop the hot water heater amidst the thick dust and spider webs. Inching across the blackened room, he turned the bone-handled knife over and over in his hands as he pondered the best location. This spot had to be just perfect, as he knew deep within that this knife was destined for something special. It had to be in the right place at the right time for its use, and if it wasn’t, the whole thing could fall apart.
There was something calling to him from the pitch black of the back of the room. The darkness moved and writhed as though with a life of its own, drawing him toward its rhythmic enchantment. It called to him without words, urging him forward like the call of a siren, tugging him heedlessly into the blackened abyss, beckoning to him.
The back right corner of the room was completely shrouded by darkness. Not even a single ray of light penetrated the perfect black. He walked straight into it, closing his eyes as they wouldn’t serve him in the slightest. Holding the blade in his open palms, he pressed into the darkness, waiting for inspiration to strike.
The overwhelming smell of dampness, like the stagnant, moss-covered surface of a warm water slough in the middle of winter, accosted his nostrils. Further and further he pressed, the air around him growing colder with each subsequent footstep. Surely, he should have run face first into the wall by now…
Suddenly, he could hear it. The sound was very faint, but his gut told him that it had been there the whole time. A thin, wispy rasping sound crept out of the shadows right in front of him.
Opening his eyes, he stared as hard as he could into the darkness, but there was nothing to be seen. His legs moved with a will of their own, inching into the corner, before finally stopping.
The sound was louder now, right in front of him, the warm, heavy breath of the breather right on his face, the heat dampening his forehead. It was a metallic-sulfur smell, like the scent of the insides of an animal as they spill past the bowels from where it had been gutted; the first, pungent burst of aroma that blasts from the formerly sealed innards. It was that smell that was falling heavily on his face from the damp breath right in front of him.
Slowly, he held the knife in his hands even higher, and felt another hand, the skin scratchy like parchment and dried out like leather, grab the handle of the blade. The hand rested there momentarily, the sharp, thick hairs on the back of the knuckles poking into the flesh of Matt’s palms.
His breath caught in his chest. The hand quickly ripped the blade from him and tossed it through the air, right past his ear, whistling through the darkness. It landed with a loud thunk, the tip of the blade stabbing into the wall somewhere behind him in the darkened basement. He began to whirl to see where it had struck, but the hand pressed gently against the side of his face, keeping his jaw from turning. Allowing the hand to steady him, Matt just stared directly into the darkness.
“It will be there when it is needed,” a deep, guttural voice said from right in front of him. That disemboweled animal scent was overwhelming now. He tasted it on his lips as much as smelled it within his nose.
Then, the hand fell from his face, swallowed up by the darkness surrounding him. The rasping was still audible, but only barely, having merged back into the very walls of the cellar, scraping like a rake across cement. He could feel the presence with him, there in the room, but could no longer tell where it was; he just had to trust that it was all going to work out like he had planned.
Nodding to himself, he backed out of the shadows and into the center of the room, where he turned and headed up the stairs. There was only one more thing to do, and then it was down to the waiting game. Bounding up the stairs from the cellar, he breezed through the kitchen and into the main living room, stopping right at the front door.
He twisted the deadbolt, but it just spun limply, unable to either engage of disengage as it rested uselessly in the hardwood door. Turning, he surveyed the room, looking for anything he could use to pry at the seal, to wrench the door out of the frame. But there was nothing. The room was completely empty except for the broken bottles and crushed cans, and the ever-increasing piles of dust and cobwebs that stretched across the hollow room like fingers, grabbing at whatever came their way.
Kneeling, he reached into the corner and grabbed a bottle cap from its home amidst the dust. Shoving the edge beneath the rounded top of the pin that held the door within the hinges, he pried it up, a quarter of an inch at a time until the pin popped right out, falling to the ground and bouncing off of the wooden floor. He repeated that process, pulling the pins from the other two hinges and allowing them to bounce onto the ground as well.
Placing the toe of his shoe beneath the base of the door, he grabbed the side, pressing his fingernails into the hard grain, and tugged at it, backing the door out of the hinges barely an eighth of an inch with each groaning effort. He yanked and yanked, his face turning bright red, his hair dampening with sweat, until he finally pulled the now useless slab of wood out of the doorway. There was a loud crack as the wooden doorway snapped by the latch, and the door fell suddenly and quickly inward, the hinges tearing at the flesh of his forearm as the heavy door rocketed toward the ground, slamming like the stomping foot of a giant. Clouds of dust billowed on gusting plumes, filling the air around him, drying out his lungs and forcing him to cough.
Dabbing at the three stripes of blood just above his right wrist, he stepped out of the main room and onto the front porch, inhaling in delight as the cold, clean air fought back the dust that rattled within his chest. Allowing his lungs to expand and contract with great exaggeration, he crossed the porch and sat down on the snow- blanketed top step. The flakes fell through the holes in the overhang above him, accumulating in small patches on the ice-coated wooden planks. Closing his eyes, he allowed the crisp air to cool his sweating body, chilling him in its freezing embrace.
He had lost track of time. The sun had long since set, not even the most vague residue of its orange glow above the rocky peaks to the west. Snow burst in sheets from the cloud cover, which choked out even the brightest of stars from the night sky. His breath clung in the air in front of him, steadying itself against his skin before being ripped from him by the gusting wind, carrying it to the east toward the dim glow of the city lights beyond the dense forest. The road was invisible in front of him; the whole area glimmering like water as the wind blew the powder in waves across the ground.
Matt smiled, allowing his head to loll back on his shoulders, the brim of his hat resting on his back. A cool sense of serenity surrounded him, the air chilling the heated blood within his veins. His heart slowed to an almost mechanical pace, his breath leveling within his chest. Closing his eyes momentarily, he allowed the snowflakes to land atop his closed lids, alighting pleasurably on the sensitive surface of the skin.
It was time.
He could feel it within his entire body, like some sort of vibrating alarm clock, triggering all of his nerves at once. Rising, he stood on the top step of the porch for barely a moment before the twin beams of light shot into the field in front of him from the line of trees. The racing of the car engine was audible over the sound of the swirling wind.
Backing slowly across the ice-slickened porch, Matt inched into the entranceway, bracing his right hand against the frame of the door, watching as the black, spray painted Maverick slid to a skidding halt on the front lawn of the house. Another car pulled in beside it: a relatively new blue Escort. The doors opened in unison.
Three figures, darkened by the night, climbed from the Maverick, their silhouetted forms shifting as the waves of blowing snow slammed them from the west. Two more climbed out of the Escort and joined in with their companions, who made their way across the lawn and onto the steps of the porch, creaking loudly, threatening to snap beneath their weight as they ascended two by two.
Matt’s fingers fidgeted against the doorway as they drew closer, his eyes narrowing. The corners of his lips curled upward in anticipatory delight. His left toe tapped on the wooden floor, faster and faster until, finally, they were only a foot from him in the open doorway.
“Hey, Matt,” Scott said from the middle of the cluster of flesh, his voice the only thing distinguishing him from the hydra of humanity in the doorway.
“Please,” Matt said, gesturing inward with his arm. “Come in. Let’s get this show underway.”
Jeremy and Shane brushed past him first, their faces heavily grained with concentration. Scott followed on their heels, Tim and Brian filing through last, their heads on swivels as they scanned every inch of the room.
“You guys been here before?” Matt asked, nodding to Tim and Brian.
“Naw,” Brian said, still scanning the walls. “This is quite intense though.”
“No shit,” Tim said, echoing the sentiment as he stared, wide-eyed, at every inch of the tattooed walls and rotting wood.
“So,” Matt said, walking around Shane and Jeremy, and positioning himself just in front of the opening to
