"Yeah, he was as funny as David Letterman on his late night show. The human petting zoo was his funniest bit. Funnier than Leno's "Headlines.""

"Yeah, funnier than "Headlines,"" Angel said sadly.

"So big brother lets me get addicted to c.o.ke, watches me f.u.c.k any stranger I could get my hands on, and lord knows, I could've been raped and he wouldn't know it and wouldn't give a s.h.i.t either."

"Angel, it's complicated," Brock insisted. "You're right. I'm a terrible brother. But I'm trying to change. I have changed."

James asked them to help him try and break through the door again. The attempts were futile. They smashed the mini-fridge into the door, and the grain wasn't dented or broken. Using that disappointment, they dismantled the bed, twisting the legs off and using them as clubs, and as they beat against the door, doing more harm to their bludgeons than the door, Angel searched for change underneath the square of carpet that was revealed. Cursing after coming up empty, she rubbed the dust bunnies off her arms and sat down in the corner chair, shaking her head at them disapprovingly.

Brock snarled, "Instead of giving up, why don't you help?"

"Because you're not getting out of here without money."

James was out-of-breath and plopped onto the floor in a defeated pile. "Fine, you're right. I can't do anymore." He joked to himself, "I'm too old for this s.h.i.t."

Brock sat down next to him. "It's not good for the back, these life and death situations."

The room was still for a moment, all of them turning over their own thoughts, struggling with the situation their own way, until Angel spoke up. "There is one good thing about our predicament."

Brock couldn't wait to hear it. "And what would that be?"

"I haven't had the craving. It's as if I've never had cocaine before. The memory of it is there, but the physical part of it is gone. It's very strange, but I like it."

"I got through my morning without coffee," James joked. "I can drink an entire pot in a day, easy. I'm retired. That's what I do. I drink coffee. I've taken up whittling. Owls, turkeys, chickadees, any Virginia fauna I could dream up with my knife, I'd create. My wife would keep feeding me coffee out on my back deck facing the woods, and she'd say, "It's coming along, isn't it" no matter how good or s.h.i.tty my projects turned out. I'd sell the good ones at the annual state fair. How silly is that? Don't I sound retired? I'd make three to four hundred dollars in a good year. That's a good year."

"That's not silly," Angel said, though she was still s.p.a.ced out on her own thoughts to care too deeply about James and his whittling. "Not silly at all."

"Maybe not, but I could be doing other things. My wife wanted to travel more. I thought we didn't have the money. It's stupid now, considering all of this. She's gone forever. We could've traveled to every spot in Europe, seen Egypt, and I worried about money. It's such a waste of life."

Brock rested his hands against his knees and faced the floor. That's when he closed his eyes for a moment. Relaxing enough to steady his thoughts, the easy going moment was ended when James suddenly shrieked in agony.

WELCOME, w.i.l.l.y.

When w.i.l.l.y closed the front door, it locked itself. A steel panel formed between the door k.n.o.b and the wall that kept him from opening it back up. w.i.l.l.y wanted to find a way to open it again, but the room itself stopped him. It was exactly like his late uncle's when he was a little kid. The living room was quaint with the couch covered by a floral print spread. A brown and white rug took up most of the floor s.p.a.ce. An old RCA record player stood among a vast collection of vintage records. The fire place was dead in the brick wall. Uncle Tim let him light the match and put it to rolled up newspapers that started the fire during the winter.

A stabbing feeling of nostalgia hit him. w.i.l.l.y enjoyed standing in this house, but it was something that shouldn't be. The past couldn't happen again, and here he was, living it as a young adult, standing in a house that didn't exist, a house that wasn't where it was supposed to be. He lived in this house the last two years of his uncle's life. His parents divorced when w.i.l.l.y was only six years old. Their scathing and violent fights between a truck driver with an alcohol problem and a lonely housewife with an even bigger alcohol dependency created irreconcilable differences. w.i.l.l.y had seen both his parents. .h.i.t each other. He had seen his mother's nose broken on two different occasions. The last fight, his father had thrown w.i.l.l.y's mother down the stairs and broke her neck. She survived, but she never walked the same. Ever since then, his mother wanted nothing to do with her ex-husband or the child they brought into the world. The custody battle wasn't a battle. They gave w.i.l.l.y up to Uncle Tim and his Aunt Shirley. The two scooped him up with open arms and loved him. The two years in this house were the best of w.i.l.l.y's childhood.

The feeling of nostalgia pa.s.sed. w.i.l.l.y had to call the police. He hurried through the kitchen and located the phone on the wall. A steel plate blocked the number keys. He noticed the thin slot in the middle. It was like an opening.

"What the h.e.l.l is this?"

w.i.l.l.y then peered out the living room window. The pools of tar were gone, but the holes in the yard remained. Steam exuded from them as if the black tar was on standby. If he tried to escape, he would be melted by the sick stuff.

There was no trace of Jenna's body.

What she said to him before her body went to pieces made it seem like he had something to do with what had been happening. w.i.l.l.y wasn't clear what part he played in this bizarre situation, if any, but these events were taking a strange turn. The black stuff had guided him into the house. This was all meant for him somehow.

He wasn't sure what to do with himself now that he was in the house, so he gave himself the tour. w.i.l.l.y walked to the top level, to his aunt and uncle's room. It was the same as it had been when he was a kid, so he moved on. In his old room, w.i.l.l.y had the same s.p.a.ce themed wall paper. It looked like he was looking back at earth from another planet. He used to dig the idea of being an astronaut, even though he later became a financial advisor for Bank U.S.A. instead of an astronaut. He had been unemployed for the last six months. His wife, Summer, was at home on paternity leave from being a second grade school teacher. He decided to take the trip for the reading of the will (very unexpected fifteen years later, but the mail they received was official; even the office he called confirmed the will was real) to be alone to clear his mind and get out of the house. Summer was driving him crazy with talk about taking a lower paying job to pay the bills. w.i.l.l.y couldn't picture himself working for less money. Summer said it was a man thing, and w.i.l.l.y agreed. His pride couldn't take the hit.

A long drive alone after gaining some kind of money from the will would've hit the spot, but what was happening in Blue Hills, he was beginning to worry if he'd ever make it out of this town alive.

w.i.l.l.y returned to the first floor and pondered his next move. The bas.e.m.e.nt was the last place he hadn't been in the house. Uncle Tim kept it locked up when he was a kid. Under no circ.u.mstances are you to go down alone, w.i.l.l.y, his uncle advised. The things down there are precious to me. My things are fun to play with, but they are delicate. I've worked hard on them for many years. They're the most precious things I own.

In the bas.e.m.e.nt, those were the best times he had in the house. He was curious about the room, and he wasn't sure why he didn't go straight down into the cellar to begin with.

When he tried the door to the cellar, the lock crunched.

The door was locked.

HANNAH.

One of Hannah's eyes were glued shut and the other could barely open. Afraid to move, and weakened to the point that she couldn't move, Hannah remained still. She felt something cold and wet absorb into the clothing on her back. Every muscle in her body tightened, and to avoid those cramping muscles, she turned to one side. New things came into view. Folds of a tarp spread out on the floor and the mysterious lump underneath the blue canvas. Working up the strength to check the other side of her body, she moaned in more pain, then gave up moving for a moment.

Hannah smacked her lips. Her mouth was bone-dry. She kept trying to open the other eye, but it was fused shut. Closing her good eye to calm her head, she started listening. She recognized the roll of tires. The vehicle was driving down a winding back road. She detected the rustle of tree limbs and the gusts of wind. She had been in the woods with Brock before she woke, but Brock wasn't here, or she thought he wasn't here. She shouted for him and only a mouse's whisper exited her throat. The sounds were clotted by phlegm, and the taste of blood in the back of her throat caused her to gag.

Hannah questioned if she was paralyzed, because she suddenly couldn't move anymore. She finally did turn her neck, and this time, she screamed, unleashing her emotions at the face next to hers slicked over in blood. A gnarly wound split open the victim's sinus cavity. The lips were split in half as was the chin. She could see inside the bones of the victim's sinus cavity. The wound was the shape of an upside down door wedge, or the blade of an axe. Yes, it was the blade of an axe, she decided. She replayed the attack in the woods from earlier, how Brock was shoved into the raging river by the hulking attacker and swept downriver, probably drowned, and here she was in the back of the axe man's truck being driven to G.o.d knows where. Helpless with this information, she was unable to do anything but scream, and that's when she folded to the anxiety and pa.s.sed out in shock.

Hannah's head was the only thing swinging back and forth, and the motion woke her. Opening her good eye, Hannah face's was pressed up against the fabric of a t-shirt. The article was placed over her head like a hood. She could smell him, her captor, the man with the golden axe, in whiffs of armpit and the musk of hard work. She kept silent, not letting the man know she was awake. She still couldn't move.

She felt the sensation of being moved, traveling from outdoors to the inside of a shelter where the air was stifling and thick. The man had kicked open a door and worked his way inside with grunts of effort. The way got darker, the cover of night turning into solid pitch black. She was spun right side up, then upside down, and then dropped on her side onto a cold concrete floor. The half of her face pressed onto the ground was covered in syrupy blood, and she could feel its thick and cold composition.

Mimicking a scream without the vocal payoff, Hannah stayed motionless and strewn like an article of wet clothing. The man kicked open a door again and another body was placed up against her back. He kept repeating the work, bringing in a new body, then unloading it, until he was finished and went about another task. This wasn't a man, she believed, but a lunatic.

Her head wriggled out of the t-shirt. She viewed the room, throwing her good eye up to the walls, the floors, the corners of the room, anywhere the moonlight managed to sneak through the windows in the room. Every surface glistened wet with red.

She counted seven times the man had kicked open the door and re-entered with a new body. Whatever he was going to do here, it wasn't going to end well. Hannah tried working her fingers. No nerve connection, it seemed, or synapse communication. She was a lump of immovable flesh.

Tears spooled out of her eyes; she drew comfort from the act. Thoughts entered her mind, mostly of Brock. She had seen his body swept up in the white current, floating along like a stray buoy. Was he alive?

He was unconscious. .h.i.tting the water. How could he have swam to safety?

Failing to lie to herself in order to patch her broken hope, she understood Brock wouldn't be here to save her. She had to survive this on her own.

Once again faced with the prospect of death, Hannah waited, listened, and prayed in her head that all would somehow be well in the end, even when the lights in the room flickered on and everything in the room could clearly be seen.

Life re-entered Hannah's body. A paralysis continued to keep her shiftless. She was really frozen in place by something else she wouldn't understand for another few moments. She had been lifted down from up high as if she'd been hanging from the ceiling by the grungy killer who shed his hot stench in her direction as he worked. She had been stripped naked, because she could see her own clothing strewn on the floor. The man placed her onto a wooden table and turned her over. A hot bullet finger traveled up her spine, and then she smelled a magic marker and the wet tip tracing both her shoulder blades.

The fear in her only acc.u.mulated. Forced still by her atrophied muscles, she was unable to crawl from the wooden surface or the tabletop. Then she smelled something horrible, far worse than the man's body odor. It was the malodorous stench of death. The stench obscured the room in a strange yellowish haze. Then came the words. Hundreds of speakers were rambling, talking with elegance, crafting profanity, singing, shrieking, laughing amiably or cursing wholeheartedly. Hannah was instantly consumed by death in both auditory and olfactory forms. As the words kept churning from everywhere and nowhere, she overheard the harsh spinning of an electric drill.

Awake once again, Hannah found herself clothed, though her old clothes were dirty, the used feeling of absorbed sweat and dried blood discomforting to feel against the skin. She was on the floor of the man's workshop. She looked up to find the man toiling on a tabletop, bent over, clutching a drill in one hand and placing his other hand in the center of a body's back with the other. The mechanical whine droned on as he delved the steel bit through bone, boring deep, and then pulling back, somehow satisfied with the work he'd done. Then he toked hard on the cigarette dangling from his mouth. This was her world now, Hannah thought, filled with blood, ache, and cigarette smoke.

Spitting out his cigarette, it landed next to her body, chunks of hot ash striking her leg. Hannah remained calm, holding in the need to scream. If she breathed too loud or jerked in spasm, she would alert the man. What would he do to her then? What hadn't he done to her up to this point?

Ever since she opened her eyes, a craving took hold. It wasn't hunger or thirst. It was implacable, yet she needed to quench it. The sense of need was immediate; if she didn't possess what her body begged of her, she'd be dead, she sensed.

Hannah's eyes roamed about the room, locking onto walls of tools and the bare walls spattered in old blood over layers and layers of even older blood.

What she craved wasn't here.

Unable to move, Hannah watched the hulking man at work, the man taking aim with the drill bit, breathing out hard, taking focus, his eyes shrinking in their dark sockets like magnifying lenses. At that's when it happened. An eruption of blood from five sources spat out across the room accompanied by the dislocation of bones, the sound of bed springs untwisting, and the ripping of muscle tissue, like sheets being shredded. Hannah couldn't shut her eyes to it, it was amazing, impossible, grizzly, and insane.

The last sound had her eyes gaping wide. Her bodily processes were kick-started, and her limbs were ready to batter forward and scour the ground for her craving with each clang of metal against the floor.

Cursing in a boiling string of nonsense from his throat, the man bent down around his work table to collect the human limbs that had shot out across the floor and slapped them back onto the table. "I'll have to put this one back together too. G.o.dd.a.m.n it."

Then the man disappeared down the hallway, stomping away in frustration.

Something else had fallen from the body, and when she saw what it was, she wanted it badly. Able to move, she did so quickly, getting up on all fours to grab the coins, the b.l.o.o.d.y wads of dollar bills, the random bits of jewelry, the rings with diamonds crusted in blood and hunks of muscle tissue. Everything was wet and glistening, but oh so valuable, she thought, gathering the riches in her grip until she was startled.

It wasn't painful, yet it was very bizarre. It had her gaping eyed and open mouthed watching the coins sink into her skin. The wads of cash, the rings, the jewelry, all of the valuables worked their way through the skin that opened in slits, puckered wide, and sucked in the rewards.

A door was thrown open. The man had returned. "I can't keep doing this s.h.i.t. I'm losing my focus. I'm losing my mind." He threw his head up to the ceiling. "Can't you see I can only do so much? Why can't you see what I'm going through? I've put in too much work already. Will this ever end? Will this ever end?"

Hannah crawled back to her spot on the floor and played dead. The man stared at the table and the blood trickling down from the edges onto the floor. He rested his head against the wall and groaned under his breath after closing his eyes. The man hadn't slept for a time, it seemed. Who is this guy, she thought, a crazy murderer or a tormented victim?

The air suddenly turned extra putrid. Hannah could only imagine how many body parts he had dismembered and how many remains of failed projects were in piles about the house. The bas.e.m.e.nt was festooned in wilting, rotting, jellying corpses. The air was getting hotter. The air was becoming visible too. It was a yellow fog. When that fog was at its heaviest, the dead began to speak. The ceiling plaster crumbled, rendering new cracks along the walls, the foundation protesting against the pressure.

The dead beckoned.

"Don't fight what you can't understand/this is your duty/or we can find someone else to do your work/many others would find bliss in safety/bliss in escaping death/or shall we torment your wife and kids in h.e.l.l/if you wish them to ever leave h.e.l.l you will do as you're told/obey us, obey us forever."

Digging his hands into his scalp, wadding up his soiled b.l.o.o.d.y hair, he growled and kicked aside an empty paint bucket. "Fine, I'll get back to work, but you remember your promise. You will release my family from h.e.l.l!"

The dead were pleased. The fog suddenly dissipated. The man left the room, locking the door behind him. This was her chance. Hannah shot up to her knees, waiting for his steps to go out the front door before turning the k.n.o.b of the nearest door. The door was locked. Kicking, pulling, clawing, shouting at the barrier, she realized it was useless until she turned around.

Power tools were everywhere.

You can lock the door all you want, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d.

I'm still getting out.

Scanning the rows of tools covered in cherries of serrated flesh and spatters of blood, she picked up an electric saw, the steel teeth an inch deep. Confident she could use this against the man if he returned, she plugged it in, and when she went about turning it on, she noticed the trigger was underneath a steel sh.e.l.l with a thin slit in the middle. It was just like the phones at that house.

The tool was useless to her, so she threw it across the room. Her eyes moved about the room, and she gasped in shock, catching the limbless and headless torso on the table.

"Jesus Christ." Hannah's body, her face, everything her body owned cringed.

Hannah raced to the other side of the room, hurrying down a short hallway of b.l.o.o.d.y footprints, and tried the last door in the bas.e.m.e.nt. Hannah clasped the cold doork.n.o.b that was wet with blood, wet from where that man had recently touched it. Against her better judgment, and failing to wonder why this door was not locked, she opened the door anyway. Pulling it back slowly, she edged into the room. When she flipped on the wall light, she faced the piled up remains of over fifty corpses.

ONLY CHANCE.

"Grab it, Brock! For Christ's sake, grab it!"

Reaching and lunging forward awkwardly with extended arms, Brock dove onto his belly. He didn't know what he was reaching for, but he was catching quick movements of an object along the carpet. Brock pounded his hand flat onto the ground and cradled it in his closed palm like a frog he wanted to catch. Angel kneeled beside him with desperation playing on her face. She shouted, "Don't let it go! Don't you let it go!"

Both his fists were closed, and Brock didn't know which hand harbored the cherished item. He started to feel something warm and wet in his right palm.

"Did you get it, Brock? Tell me you got it. Did you get it? Tell me, tell me!" James garbled his questions. He was on his knees, his left arm flexed, his face wrung tight, his right hand pressed over the middle of his forearm. Blood funneled from between his fingers. "Tell me it wasn't for nothing. Say something, Brock!"

Angel joined in, her voice fierce. "Yeah, did you grab it? Show it to us. Just don't stand there looking like a jacka.s.s."

Brock had no clue what was in his hands, feeling its weight. If he did have the object, he feared opening his palm and the object flying out of his grasp. The way it shifted back and forth, it felt magnetized, pressing against the walls of his palm trying to pound through to the other side of his hand.

James insisted, "Tell me right now if you have it, Brock. I saw it heading straight for the crack of the door." An wince from his throat, he was fighting tears. "Please tell me you got it."

Brock undid his balled up hands and revealed the coin. "Where did this come from?"

James removed his hand over his forearm to reveal a thin sliver of an opening. From the outside, it didn't appear serious, but it was so deep he could see the pink inflamed tissue beneath. New blood kept pooling to the surface in dark red beads.

"You're trying to keep it for yourself, aren't you?" Angel closed in on him, grabbing him by the neck and squeezing so hard a g-aack escaped his constricted throat. "You selfish b.a.s.t.a.r.d! Give it to me. It's mine!"

Brock escaped her hold over his neck in one wild jerking back motion. "I don't care whose it is, just give me a second to figure out what the h.e.l.l to do with it!"

Angel slapped him across the face with an open hand, then socked him in the gut with a meaner hit. Driven to the ground as all the air in his lungs rushed out of him, she jumped on Brock's back, straddling him, and tried to peel his hands open. Nails sc.r.a.ped his skin. Brock lost his balance and fell forward onto his knees. When he landed, she yipped in victory, and before Brock could register anything else, the door was thrown open. Angel bolted out of it and threw it closed behind her shouting, "You guys can go to f.u.c.king h.e.l.l!"

Brock reached out and stopped the door with his hand before it closed.

James's face was cast in menace. "Your sister's a real b.i.t.c.h."

"She didn't used to be. Was that a quarter I caught in my hand?"

James checked the hallway for safety. "Yes, it just shot out of my arm for no reason. Why did it shoot of my arm? It, it really hurts. It sc.r.a.ped bone on the way out. The coin was in there deep."

Brock dictated what he knew, which wasn't much. "I didn't see it happen. I caught movement, then you both shouted at me to grab it, so I grabbed it."

"Thank G.o.d you did." James looked back at his bleeding arm. "I have to get this wrapped up, but I'm not going back into that room. I'm sure there's something at the bar I can use, a towel or something. It stings. I felt it work through me, from my shoulder blades, down my arm, and out it came, like the coin was drawn out."

James winced when a new gob of blood oozed from the thin wound. "I think our next move is obvious after I get this cleaned up. We track down Chuck Durnham. The axe man will give us the answers we need."

They both walked to the lobby and stopped at the bar. Brock stared out the openings of the boarded up windows, trying to find Angel. She was long gone.

So much for that.

James washed his arm off in the sink behind the bar, then tore up a towel into slivers and wrapped it tightly around his arm, grimacing through the whole ordeal. "I know where Chuck Durnham lives. It's not too far from here. A mile or two at the most. We can walk there if we're careful."

"I'm with you. I just hope I find Hannah before he's done anything serious to her. I swear to G.o.d if she's not alive, I'll lose it."

James cut him off. "We'll hope she's okay. I'm glad I found you, Brock. Somebody's got sense around here, finally. I can't believe I didn't go to that man's house, even if just to snoop around and put the pieces together."

Brock pointed at his arm. "Like why that quarter just shot out of your arm?"

"Be glad it wasn't you, man. The pain's unrelenting."

The cloth was tied around his arm. Spots of red were already bleeding through. James smiled at the shelf of booze, the majority of it smashed on the floor or stolen. He did locate a bottle of "Plankwood's Finest" scotch. He noted the twist-cap was steel. A slot for a coin was installed, what could accept a penny or a dime. He tried wedging it off, but it wouldn't budge. Turning his head from it, he smashed it against the counter, and then bashing it repeatedly, he gave up when the gla.s.s wouldn't give.

"Now that's bizarre." Brock frowned, posing his hands to catch the bottle. James tossed it to him. The gla.s.s wasn't dented or cracked. "It's just like that door back there, and my cell phone. Whatever's happening, it's picking out more and more things to lock up. We have to pay for the privilege."

James sighed. "They want us to pay for a drink. They want us to pay to use phones, pay to drive, and pay to use doors." He stared at his arms, and then holding up his hands in front of his face, he went pale. Winded by the blood loss, he sat down on the bar stool to calm his dizziness. "They want us to pay to live."