The Perdition Tales

The Prophesied Demise, Part Two

“I really think we need to call the police,” Keith told the others as they sat in the library. “Steve could be in serious trouble out there. I’ve done my research, and there are alligators in this swamp!”

“At this point, he’s only a missing person,” Lew said.

“Which means he should be reported,” Keith answered, as if to finish for him.

“I would agree with you that he should be reported,” Dave said. “The problem is that a person has to be missing for forty-eight hours before they can be reported. And with the police in this town, I’d be willing to bet they’ll use any excuse they have not to help us out.”

“So you’re saying we shouldn’t report him until the day after tomorrow?” Keith asked. “That is way too long to leave him alone out there!”

“Listen,” Dave commanded. “We can’t report him today because the sheriff saw him coming in the day before yesterday, which was only a day-and-a-half ago. But if we file the report tomorrow morning, we can say he’s been missing since yesterday. That’ll be two days and it’ll get us help. Does that sound like it’ll work?”

Keith and Lew grumbled for a moment before agreeing. No one was happy about leaving Steve wherever he was, but they didn’t have much of a choice short of traipsing through the woods themselves, and Keith knew how dangerous that could be in an unknown, mostly unmapped forest. They could get lost, or wander accidentally into the swamp. Alligators were the last thing they’d want to face beneath the moonlight…

Dave and Keith decided to head in not long after. They were too worried about Steve to actually concentrate on anything, so they decided the only thing they could do was try to sleep their anxiety away. Lew chose to bury his nose inside the books as a means of pushing aside his fears. But before Keith left, Lew asked if he could borrow his light, saying that he may want to go and take another look at the crypt. Under normal circumstances, Keith would have replied with a quip like “your funeral,” but not at a time like this. He silently handed Lew his light and vanished up the stairs into the darkness of the second floor.

Lew slid the light into his pocket as his eye caught sight of an old, worn-out tome. It had no name printed on its cover, but when Lew opened it to its title page, he discovered the same Latin inscription that had adorned the crypt: solvo non verum. Below that was an odd, quite morbid dedication:

to Eldon Futhark

born to suffer and destined to die

The very words, confusing as they were, made Lew shiver in the cold, drafty air, the air which somehow wandered its way along the endless, meandering halls of this eternally shadow-infested mansion, the building which seemed to have completely swallowed one of his closest friends. Lew hated this house.

He flipped the pages throughout the book. The beginning seemed to be a sort of complex mythology, with all sorts of unpronounceable names like Yaltabaoth and Quetzalcoatl. There was a paragraph about a gnome named Pak Tai, who was “firste to feede the Garden, brother to the Croatoan.” Lew flipped past what to him seemed pure gibberish until he found a section describing, of all things, King’s End itself. The chapter outlined some of the broader history of the town, from its foundation under the leadership of Edward Mane to his own lynching by the town. He had begun construction of the mansion himself, construction which was continued afterward by his son, Mortimer Mane. Mortimer was what the book referred to as a “moonshiner,” a bootlegger with a very specific brand specialty.

Lew turned the page to find a full-page portrait of Mortimer Mane. He was a thin man, with a bowler hat atop his blond hair. He had what appeared to be a small metal pipe in his mouth, held like a cigar. Lew marveled at the detail in the portrait, which even showed the small bit of rust on the pipe. Mortimer’s left hand was shoved in his pocket and his right was hidden behind his back, as if he was almost ashamed to have it shown at all. But even more interesting than the portrait was the paragraph after it, which detailed Mortimer’s own death. He had been captured by the townsfolk and accused of being “a serial murderer like his demon-father.” The people had hanged him inside the mansion itself and buried him out in the cemetery.

There was a scratch at the window, causing Lew to jump and drop the book to the floor. The silhouette of a thin, gangly branch was scratching against the window, blown into it by the wind, which seemed to be picking up. If Lew wanted to get another look at the crypt, he’d have to move quickly before the impending storm arrived.

Lew wandered out into the cemetery and used Keith’s keylight to guide him to the crypt. During the daytime, it was mildly eerie, but at night, the black, shadowy shack with its cold stone walls and scratched insides was downright terrifying. Lew held the light up to the inscription, which did, indeed, read “two will die.”

There was a sound outside, like a soft giggle passing by. Lew quickly switched off the light and slid into the shadows, wary of whoever was outside. There was the sound of footsteps moving among tall grass, of a piece of cloth pressing through, as if the person was wearing a skirt or a long coat. Slowly, Lew stepped out of the crypt and moved over to the corner of it, peering around to see a girl in all-black bouncing into the woods. Curious, Lew began to follow her.

He made sure to stay behind her as she walked along a small trail that let out into another part of the cemetery. He hid behind some taller tombstones while he watched as she arrived at what appeared to be a campfire, where two more girls waited, all dressed completely in black. They were pale, with wiry hair that sprung out in all directions, one girl with red hair and the other two with black. The fire blazed between them, shooting flames nearly four feet high while the redhead tossed more sticks and logs onto it, speaking in some unknown language as she did; Lew was close enough to hear the mysterious, otherworldly words as they echoed from her lips and seemed almost to dance among the flames.

The women began to dance, twirling and bouncing around the flames, giggling and laughing as they did, all the while speaking in that same, unknown language. But every now and then, something familiar danced among the words, names like Edward Mane, which always seemed to accompany the name Nathaniel Moore. The girls leapt over the fire during some parts of the dance, and their words became louder and faster, the movements more fluid, as if the air had become a strange liquid through which they could swim and float. Their feet left the ground as they flew above the flames, the flames which danced in their eyes, leaving the rest of their eyes in a pitch darkness, the warmth of the fire spreading along their cheeks like their veins were filled with fire, their hair becoming swirling masses of red and black, the clothes floating and spinning around them.

Their cheeks grew cold and dim, and Lew realized that some sort of darkness was forming over the fire, as if the smoke was concentrating in one place and growing darker, rather than dissipating. It grew larger and larger, taking on the rough shape of a man’s arms, head and torso, the bottom half trailing away like some sort of shadowy genie. Dark coals lit up like glowing red eyes and a swirling shadow opened for a mouth, revealing burning sticks for teeth, glowing as they were engulfed in flames. Lew stumbled back as the shadowy beast floated away from the fire, its coal-eyes focused on his exact location. The three girls smiled as they stared in his direction, their feet lightly coming to rest back on the ground. One of the girls - the one with black hair, but not the one he’d followed - uttered a single, foreign phrase that seemed to become captured within the shadow-beast. Its open maw became a grin and it suddenly shot toward him, flying over the ground, burning anything below it.

Lew leapt to his feet and ran through the forest, not bothering to grab the light from his pocket as he stumbled his way along the trail, feeling his heart to make sure it was always beating, and beating it was, almost too fast for him to tell. Trees whipped him in the face and he burst from the woods, running amongst the tombstones of the cemetery. He looked around, realizing he’d deviated in the darkness and was now in a part he didn’t recognize. He scanned the house for an entrance, all the while the shadow-beast crying out in a thunderous roar, as if the thunder in a storm was the sound of its voice. He ran toward a door, sprinting as fast as his legs could carry him to get inside, to put something between himself and this beast. Suddenly the world fell away and he was falling through darkness…

Lew turned over in the dirt and stared up at the square of light above him, then at the dirt walls around him. He’d fallen into an open grave, a fresh one, from the looks of it. He didn’t move, didn’t even breathe as he saw the shadow-beast glide casually over the grave, not seeing him as it roamed the graveyard in his pursuit. He felt the searing heat and choking smoke even from down in this hole, but he held his breath to keep from giving away his position. After a few minutes, the echoing rumble died away, drifting to another part of the cemetery - or perhaps, Lew feared, even vanishing into the house.

Lew coughed very slightly, trying to muffle it as best he could. He climbed to his feet and looked around. The grave was completely empty, as if it had been prepared for a body that never arrived. Perhaps Steve…Lew closed his eyes and banished the thought.

It was deeper than the normal grave, nearly seven or eight feet, in fact. Lew couldn’t reach the top, and he wasn’t a short man like Keith or Dave. He felt the dirt that formed the walls, finding it to be hard but not too hard. Maybe if he dug out some hand and footholds, he could climb his way out…

Some dirt fell to the ground on the other side of the grave. Lew spun around and looked up, trying to see if anyone or anything was standing above it. There was nothing, only the dark grey clouds of a midnight storm. Lew lowered his gaze and saw a thin trail of dirt continuously falling to the ground. He moved over to examine it. The dirt was falling away, and suddenly something pale and white broke through the wall. Lew stumbled back against the opposite wall, but something also boney and white was waiting there, grabbing him as he collapsed to the ground and crawled away from it.

Skeletal arms were pressing their way through the walls, shining pearly white in the cold night, as if they were reflecting the moon despite its being hidden behind the clouds. The arms pulled free of the walls and fell in a boney pile on the ground. As Lew watched, more bones pressed through the holes or rose up from the ground, joining the pile of thin bones before him. He crawled into the corner of the grave and pulled his legs close. The bones shook and danced, almost as lively as the girls he’d seen, and then they began to come together, the sockets meeting the joints, every bone finding its proper place. Legs formed, then a torso with arms and finally, a gleaming, nearly-toothless skull attached itself to the clean spine. The skeleton stared at Lew as it flexed its boney hands, then seemed to freeze. The cold air echoed above them.

Suddenly, more bones began pressing their way out of the grave walls, forming new piles which danced and came together like magic. One of them had a jaw still full of teeth, another with some teeth but a large hole on the left half of the skull. A fourth skeleton seemed to be missing half its rib cage. Lew quickly began jamming his hands into the dirt, furiously digging out handholds to climb out of the pit. The skeletons hobbled toward him, their jaws clacking up and down, the bones cracking like bodies totally engulfed in an arthritic condition. One hand clawed at Lew’s shoulder, gripping hard and holding him still. Soon his body was held all over by boney hands which spun him around to see the skeletons that held him. And as Lew stared into the dark, empty sockets of the first skeleton, he could feel his heart stop, and then the last he heard was the clacking of dead men’s bones and the far-off cackling of three fire-eyed witches.

*

*

*

While Lew was investigating the mysterious visitors outside, Keith was having his own share of difficulties inside: he had begun to run a fever. As he lay in his bed, the door wide open, his clothes quickly drenched in sweat, he found himself barely able to move, barely able even to think. He looked out at the lit hallway to see Dave walk past on his way to his own room, the dog, Kami, following closely behind. Keith thought of calling for help, but his voice seemed hoarse and raw. All he could do was stare at the patch of light beyond his reach, the patch of light which began to swirl and remold itself, swimming like streaks all around Keith’s head, making him dizzy.

Keith was losing his mind.

The fever, whatever it was, was causing him to hallucinate and see things that weren’t really there. He tried closing his eyes, trying blocking his ears, but even beneath his own eyelids, the images swam around, taunting him. At last, he gave up the fight and opened his eyes wide, open to whatever his plagued brain could conjure up.

There were people, old people, not in age but in dress, screaming for justice against a monstrous man. A blade dropped and a man’s head fell into a basket. Legs dangled from corpses hanged from nooses, their blood dripping from crystal chandeliers and stone and iron masonry. An endless sea of graves being dug into by living corpses, the flesh still rotting from their bones. And then, at last, a single image: a man with a bowler hat and a small pipe in his mouth. The man was standing in a small dungeon-like room, a young man chained before him. Another man stepped behind the one with the bowler hat, a taller, more heavily built man with pale, white skin. Names appeared in Keith’s thoughts as if spoken a moment ago, but never were they spoken: Mortimer, Nathaniel…

The man in the bowler hat held up a revolver, dark blue with the word backlash carved into it. “Fixed it,” he said as he held up the revolver.

“Backlash…” the larger man said aloud as he read the word.

“I thought it proper to offer an opportunity,” the man in the bowler hat replied. “A warning, of sorts.” He seemed to marvel at his handiwork as he tossed the revolver down before the chained young man. “I offer you a chance at redemption, friend, redemption which will never come to me nor to my blood. We are a damned line, and you are our damnation.” The frightened young man scooped up the revolver. The man in the bowler hat didn’t try to stop him. “Use it wisely, and heed its warning.”

The man in chains opened the chamber to confirm the weapon was loaded. He snapped it back into place, aimed the barrel at the man in the bowler hat, aiming carefully with his right eye. “Go to hell!” he cried out just before pulling the trigger. There was a spark and a crack, then a cloud of smoke. When it had dissipated, the chained man was slumped on the ground, half his face burned off and his skull cracked and bleeding onto the stones.

The man in the bowler hat smiled as he pulled a cloth from his pocket and scooped up the still-smoking gun. “It’s as if he announced his destination before his own arrival.” He laughed to himself. The larger man only stared.

Keith sat up in bed, the images still flashing before him as he stumbled to his feet. He trembled as he moved out to the hallway, still bombarded with more deaths, more people who pulled the trigger of a gun rigged to fire right back at them. The man in the bowler hat would sometimes give his captives the weapon, other times he would seem to accidentally drop it or it would slip from his waist and fall within their reach. But his movements to retrieve it were always too slow, too perfectly timed for them to be true mistakes. He wanted his victims to think they’d gained the upper hand.

Keith slid down the stairs, slipping from step to step, most of his weight on the handrail, sweat pouring from his forehead and hands and arms, leaving streaks along the railing. He reached the bottom as he saw the man in the bowler hat marching through the house, the blue revolver carefully wrapped in a cloth held in one hand. Keith saw the man glide into the den and tear a frame board from the bookshelf, watched the event as if it was happening before Keith’s very eyes. But one shake of his head and the visions faded. The fever, however, raged on, and something inside Keith told him that if he could only find the hidden object, if he could only recover the revolver, he would be able to hold the disease of this house at bay. He tore the frame board from the bookshelf and pulled out something heavy and wrapped in a rotting rag. He moved like a man possessed, tearing the rag to shreds to reveal…the weapon. It was a darker blue than in the visions, the wood cracked in a few places, brittle in others. A pile of oddly-shaped iron bullets rolled into his palm and he carefully loaded them into the chamber of the revolver one by one.

The fever subsided. The visions stopped. Able to think again, and feeling the horror of this archaic house, Keith tucked the revolver into the waistband of his pants and walked back up the stairs, where he hid the object beneath his pillow. The object which had taken so many lives now spared another from reliving its past.

*

*

*

There was the sound of stone grinding on stone and the door was pulled open. Dave and Keith stepped into the crypt, staring into the shadows and gloom. Keith didn’t have his light any longer; Lew had taken it the night before. “It said two will die when we checked last time,” Keith said, staring at the walls, feeling around for the old scratch marks with their message written within. But it was too dark, and the scratches were too faint to tell. “Give me your phone,” Keith commanded.

“I don’t have it with me,” Dave said. “I think I left it in my room.”

“Wait, wait…got mine,” Keith said, pulling it from his side pocket. He flipped it open and shined it around, wielding it like a flashlight. He found the words and backed slowly away, horrified.

“Is that…?” Dave began, but he didn’t know how to finish.

The carving now said something else:

one will live.

*

*

*

“We need to go!” Keith yelled as he began throwing clothes into the bag on his bed.

“No, we need to find Steve and Lew first-”

“We have no idea where they are!” Keith yelled. “Steve’s been missing for, what, two days now? And Lew… I mean, the last I saw him he was downstairs, and now nothing! No note, no message, he didn’t even take his things with him!”

“Listen, calm down,” Dave said. “Calm down, okay? What we need to do is call the police. Once we file the report on Steve, they’ll make the connection with Lew and get people out here. We’re going to find them.”

“Has your phone worked?” Keith asked. Dave pulled his out of his pocket. He’d grabbed it upon their return from the cemetery, but no matter where in the house he seemed to stand, the phone got no signal; this house was a dead zone.

“Don’t worry about packing,” Dave commanded. “Just get what you need and come outside. We’ll drive to the police station and report it in person. It’s what we should’ve done from the start.”

Keith dropped what he was doing and followed after Dave, but he made sure to slip the revolver through his belt and covered it with his shirt. He didn’t want to alarm Dave, but neither did he want to be plagued with hallucinations again. The two of them marched outside to the cars. However, when Dave turned the ignition, nothing happened. “What the hell?!” he yelled out, slamming his hands against the wheel as he did so. “Damn this stupid thing! The damn battery was working fine when I got here, and I didn’t leave anything on!”

“Your headlights,” Keith said, motioning for the headlight button, which was depressed.

“I got here when it was still light out,” Dave said as he slowly turned the button off. His anger was being quickly supplanted with worry and downright curiosity. “I never even had the lights on to begin with.”

Keith jogged over to his car and tried to start it. Unfortunately, the headlights - which were still in the “on” position - had completely drained his battery as well. A quick glance into Steve’s and Lew’s cars revealed the same eerie coincidence. All had their headlights engaged, and two days of headlights had pulled the last dregs of power from the batteries. The cars were all dead. And even worse, behind Steve’s car were the scattered and shattered remnants of the emergency jump-start kit he had always kept in his now-broken and dented trunk. “Something’s happening here,” Keith said slowly, moving his eyes all across the woods, staring like a watchdog for any sign of movement or life.

“Someone’s trying to keep us here,” Dave answered. “We need to get to town.”

“Looks like we’ll have to walk it,” Keith said, placing one hand absentmindedly on over the revolver.

“We can’t,” Dave said, pointing to the horizon as he stepped out of his car. The sun beginning to dip below the horizon, signaling the growth of all of the shadows around Mane Manor. “We’ve only been up for about an hour. How is that possible?”

“My watch says it’s nine o’clock,” Keith said.

“But we got up at ten-thirty,” Dave said slowly. Ignoring the childhood command not to stare at the sun, Dave watched the brilliant sphere as it moved closer and closer to the horizon, vanishing from sight in a matter of minutes, much, much faster than it should have taken. It was as if the house was rushing toward the darkness. “Something’s wrong here. We just passed a whole day in an hour.”

“Maybe it’ll mean a short night,” Keith said, his hand still on the revolver, though Dave didn’t seem to notice. “Though something tells me that’ll be far from true.” He backed into the house with Dave following close behind. They bolted the doors, lit the lights, and waited for the dawn.

Dave waited in an armchair, his leg shaking the way Susie’s always did when she was tired. She’d been diagnosed with Restless Leg Syndrome when she was younger. Dave would have given anything to be with her as he and Keith waited beneath the lights of crystal chandeliers. The dog, Kami, waited at his feet, staring at the front door, his ears straight up in the air. Over on the couch, Keith sat quietly, fumbling with something on his belt. Dave looked up at the window near the top of the stairs and, for just a fraction of a second, he could have sworn he saw someone up there, someone young, with blond hair and a golden pocket watch. The person looked down at him, gave a strange expression and then vanished. Dave hated this house, this terrible, haunted place.

“The crypt originally said that three will die,” Keith began. “And then Steve vanished.”

“And then the carving was changed to two will die,” Dave went on. “Following which Lew went missing. And now it says that one will live. What do you think it means?”

“As much as I want to think it’s something less than the obvious, I’d have to say it seems pretty straightforward. Steve brought it from three to two, Lew brought it from two to one, and now there’s only two of us left. One will live. One of us.” Keith reached over to a table on which he’d placed an old tome earlier. “I found this this morning. It’s open to a place which has that same thing in Latin, solvo non verum, only this time there’s a translation: free not the truth.”

“So you’re saying that when we broke into that crypt…what, did we let something out?”

“I’m thinking that when we broke the seal on that crypt, we went somewhere we shouldn’t have gone,” Keith said. “I think we opened a doorway to something we weren’t supposed to see, some kind of predetermined fate, made for the four of us the minute we stepped inside the crypt.”

“That would mean we have no freedom,” Dave answered.

Keith sighed as he sat down on the couch. “I don’t know,” he whispered. “Maybe.”

“Maybe we have some freedom,” Dave said. “The crypt said three will die, but it didn’t say which three. That’s freedom within predestination. Free means to an established end.”

There was a flicker and then darkness as the lights went out. Wind echoed past the windows, the trees shaking within its gust. For a moment, the lights came back on, but they began to dim, as if the house had come alive and begun to drain the energy away. Keith looked around and found an unopened matchbook lying half-beneath some papers on a nearby table. He grabbed the book, tore a match free and lit it against the back just as the lights went out for good. He carried the match slowly to an abandoned candle by the wall, lit it and carried it - bronze holder and all - over to the coffee table so that the men had at least some light by which to see each other.

They sat in the darkness penetrated by the single candle, the one light holding the shadows at bay. They were quietly contemplating, ever nervous about the house, the disappearances, the mysterious gaps of time in their daylight hours. Keith looked around nervously while strange thoughts danced around inside Dave’s head. For some unknown reason, he was remembering a part of the Bible, bits and pieces of the enigmatic book of Revelation. Dave remembered warnings of darkness, of a rider upon a pale horse, the last devastating equestrian, the bringer of death. Dave’s thoughts fell upon the opened crypt and furious imaginings of what they may have unleashed. Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, having the key to Tartarus and a great chain in his hand. The words flowed mystically through Dave’s mind, as if he were in church listening to someone read it to him, rather than sitting on a couch in a dark, cryptic manor. He laid hold of the dragon, that serpent of old and bound him for a thousans years; and he cast him into Tartarus, and shut him up, and set a seal on him, so that he should deceive the nations no more till the thousand years were finished. But after these things he must be released for a little while. Dave remembered a rider on a red horse, bringing with him war, turning man against his brother…

“Dave,” Keith said, drawing him away from his virulent thoughts. “Something’s happening with this house. Something…something inside my head, like…like I’m having trouble thinking straight…”

The candle flickered in the darkness. Keith glanced at it, then felt around his belt. There was a gun there. It was the gun he’d found, the dark blue revolver. But there was something special about this gun, something Keith just couldn’t quite remember…something which made it extremely dangerous…something he’d seen somewhere, the feeling of a moment witnessed dozens of times at a dozen different times… Keith shook his head, unable to remember the importance of the gun, or even where he’d found it. Anytime he tried to remember, he merely heard sounds, like chanting voices whispering in his ears, telling him unintelligible things, revealing strange, indecipherable mysteries of other worlds, of the forgotten history of his own world, of this very town.

Dave’s look caught Keith’s gaze as he held the gun above his lap. Dave’s eyes fell on the revolver and he leapt to his feet and stumbled back. “Where did you get that gun?!” Dave cried out in alarm.

“I think…” Keith began. “I think…I think the house wanted me to use it.”

“Keith,” Dave said, holding his hands up and backing away slowly. “Keith, listen to me. Put down the gun. This house wants one of us dead, but we’re not the pawns of fate. If you fire that gun, it won’t be the house that kills me, it’ll be you.” Keith looked at Dave and, moving very slowly, placed the weapon down on the coffee table that held the candle.

The candle flickered again and this time, Dave caught sight of something else. He glanced out of the den and into the hallway, where, up above the stairs, an open door to the attic looked down over the mansion’s entrance. But for just a moment, he could see someone in the doorway, someone with blond hair and a light gray shirt. Dave caught sight of the person as the shadows seemed to swallow him away from the candlelight.

Dave was suddenly tackled from behind. “I won’t let this house have me!” Keith cried out as he dragged Dave to the floor. Dave hit the table between two of the armchairs and closed his eye, blood beginning to seep from a gash torn in his temple. Keith laid punches into his ribs while kneeling above him. Dave instinctively kicked out, sending Keith sprawling into the coffee table.

The candle fell from its holder and rolled off the table, dropping to the floor and then, seemingly against the Laws of Newton, continued rolling until it hit one of the drapes. The curtain caught the flame and enhanced it, lighting up the area where Keith stumbled to his feet, looking at Dave with a look of panic. He grabbed the revolver but Dave ran up and grabbed it from his hand. Rather than let Dave have the weapon, Keith flicked his wrist, sending it out into the hallway. “What are you doing?!” Dave yelled.

“I’m not letting the house have me!” Keith cried out. “It said only one will live!”

“We don’t even know that it took Steve and Lew!” Dave yelled back as he grabbed a nearby drape, tore it down and trying batting the flames out. Unfortunately, the drapes he tried to use also caught fire and he dropped them, the coffee table soon lighting beneath them.

“I’ve seen them!” Keith said, looking wildly from window to window. He had seen Steve and Lew staring at him through these windows. He didn’t know when or where, but the recent memories were surfacing, though he wasn’t entirely sure he trusted his memories any longer. He needed the gun. It was his only link to reality. Without it, he was sure the house was draining away his sanity. He ran toward the hallway, but by this time, the flames had moved toward the ceiling, the den filling with smoke. He fell to his knees, coughing and gagging for air.

Dave noticed Keith and began stumbling out toward the hallway as well. He didn’t know what Keith would do with the revolver, but he didn’t want to find out, not when Keith was in this hysterical state. He reached the hallway, covering his mouth from the smoke along the way, praying his asthma wouldn’t be stirred up by it, dodging beneath the raging flames that arced along the ceiling like tendrils from some fiery, tentacled hell-beast. He dropped to the ground and wrapped his hand around the blue weapon, then tucked it into his belt. He was about to turn and look for Keith when there was a crash and plaster and wood fell down from above, landing on top of him, some large beams pinning him to the ground as the flames moved down them, down toward the helpless man.

Keith appeared from out of the smoke, taking form like a solidifying specter. He looked at Dave with eyes that reflected the flames that danced around, and for a moment, Dave expected Keith to turn and run, or grab the revolver and aim it at him. Keith disappeared back into the smoke, and for terrifying moment, Dave felt the cold, icy grip of the Reaper nearby. Up above, in the hole leading to the ceiling, he again saw the blonde-haired man, staring intently, expressionlessly.

Keith reappeared from the smoke, orange light piercing through the black and gray, revealing the large piece of wood Keith held tightly. He held it above Dave’s head and brought it down with a sickeningly empty thud…jamming it beneath one of the beams that pinned Dave to the ground. Keith hesitated for a moment, as if trying to decide whether or not to free Dave from his confinement.

But as he wrapped his hands around the beam and began to move it, two more forms shambled out of the smoke, their faces cold and gray, their eyes dark, their hair matted and covered with fresh earth. Steve and Lew moved toward Keith like exhausted drones, grabbing him before he had a chance to flee. Keith began to scream as he vanished into the smoke, dragged against his will by what used to be his old quartet buddies. They had been warned of this house. And now the house had taken them, body, mind and all.

Dave struggled futilely against the flaming beams that pinned him down. Luckily, the flames were still dancing along the tops of the beams, the smoking bottoms still fairly cool, leaving Dave unharmed, trapped but unharmed. There was another crack from above as floorboards fell away, landing atop his confinement. There was a groan, and Dave realized that he was directly beneath one of the bedrooms, a bedroom that had contained a very large and robust armoire. There was a bang as he heard it topple sideways, and then a deafening roar as it tore its way through what remained of the floor. It landed beside Dave and continued its descent, tearing an enormous hole in the floor. The hole grew and grew, floorboards crumbling and falling away into the darkness below, trailing plumes of smoke following the distant orange that was swallowed up into the darkness.

The beams that pinned Dave slid away as the hole spread beneath him. The boards cracked and he fell, but he was able to grab onto a board that hadn’t yet broken. All that had pinned him fell down, tearing his clothes and leaving bloodied cuts along his torso as he dangled above a pitch abyss. Dave reached his other hand up and held the unbroken floorboard, following it like monkey bars at a playground to the edge of the chasm. Using all the strength he could muster, he yelled in pain as he dragged himself up and onto solid but crumbling ground. Dave looked down at the hole, seeing the bottomless pit, while the name Tartarus echoed imaginatively in his ears, making him wonder if he was hallucinating its verbalization.

The smoke still drifted over the air, but Dave was fortunate enough to be below the level of the smoke, allowing him to breathe. But he knew it wouldn’t last long. Crawling along the floor, he moved around the border of the hole in the floor toward the front door. Trying not to scream as he grabbed the scalding doorknob, Dave tore the door up and stumbled outside, falling roughly down the steps before landing in a heap on the cold dirt of the lawn. A dark shape darted speedily out beside him, gagging and shaking the ash and dust from its fur as it moved over to inspect Dave. Still shaking, Kami sniffed Dave, unsure of everything.

Dave stumbled to his feet and backed away from the house as a part of the ceiling caved in, sending smoke into the air and chunks of roof to rain down upon Dave’s car. The vinyl ceiling caved a bit and cracks spider-webbed across the windows from the weight. Dave ignored this as he turned his back to the burning wreckage of Mane Manor and ran out into the dark forest.

Dave stood beside the road, staring up at the sky, seeing smoke still drifting around from its distant source. He turned his gaze to the road. He’d found an electric torch near Steve’s battered trunk and used it to guide himself once the firelight had become obscured by the treeline. Dave walked over and sat down on the trunk of a fallen tree to rest. He reached for his belt and felt for the revolver, upon which his nervous hand had rested for the majority of his walk. He could barely believe it hadn’t fallen out when the floor gave away. He looked at it in the light of the electric torch, trying to determine if it was black or just dark blue, and then tracing the etchings which covered it, culminating in the word Backlash carved ornately in the handle.

Dave turned and looked at Kami, the dog which panted beside him, his ears twisting all sorts of ways to try and find sounds in this nearly-silent forest. “One will live,” the crypt had claimed. “One.” He turned to Kami, wondering whether or not the dog counted within the prophecy. Carefully, Dave shined the light on Kami’s dark, matted fur and aimed the revolver, looking at his only living companion over the archaic barrel of the weapon. Dave took a deep breath as he wondered if he was truly willing to carry through on the thought that echoed at the forefront of his mind…