AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Remi
Ollie was not in this fucking house. I’d searched the entire downstairs, including that basement that smelled of mold and rotting flesh. The body still hung on its hook. No more flesh had been stripped. No blood dripped. The poor carcass was dry.
A heavy bar rested across the wooden doors that led outside.
I searched around the shadows, kicking the pointless crap that lived down here out of my way.
My boot touched the floor, narrowly missing the tail of what could have only been a rat, judging by the size of the fucking thing. It made soundless noises as it yelled at me for almost becoming, potentially, my third kill of the day.
God, my list was getting fucking long.
The creature’s dark fur blended into the shadows lurking in the lightless room as it rushed back into a hole, more scared of me than I was of it.
A floorboard dipped under my weight as I appeared back in the foyer. I no longer cared about noise. My first scout around this fucking giant house had proved that Rothbart wasn’t home. Which was a shame because I wanted to meet the fucker.
The office was still empty. The only people inside the living room no longer breathed.
Heavy steps, jumping three at a time, took me back upstairs. Disappointment shrouded around me, feeling the vibrations of the hag’s agony. I guess she was still alive for now.
I didn’t bother searching the room she was in, but I searched all the others.
The bathroom was first. The center tub still had pink-tinted water, which had been left there for days. The watered-down blood added to the horrible smell.
The closet kept no skeletons or anything living, waiting to jump out at me with a weapon. But I opened the door cautiously, only to be greeted by the dozens of ancient-looking towels, all covered in holes, as they fell out.
I moved to another room.
It was a playroom and not the fun kind.
There were many sex toys left on the floor, half of them filthy, just like the fucking carpet, which was so covered in grime, I couldn’t even venture a guess of its original color.
I stepped in literal shit as cheaply-made anal beads that had never been cleaned crunched beneath my boot. The vile stench attached itself to me, and the boot that invited it led the way to the fucking door before something else latched onto me.
I climbed the stairs to the next floor, but there was nothing at all up there, not even flooring, including the boards and beams in certain places.
It was starting to feel like I’d slipped into some shitty alternate reality where I was all that was left. Me and the hag—the villain that wouldn’t die.
If I were carrying a different drug—a hallucinogen, not a stimulant, my damaged mind would have been second guessing whether I’d fucking taken some of it.
My fingers tapped the bag that I’d wedged into my back pocket. A place where I couldn’t see it taunting me. Out of sight, out of mind, and all that jazz.
Seconds with that thought in my head was too long. I couldn’t have drugs in my system again. It wasn’t even safe to have them in my thoughts. It was far too easy for them to become all I’d think about. Except for Cat.
I found myself in the kitchen again, and I started thinking about how much I hated the fucking room, with its dark-painted walls and the boring as fuck units that blended in with them.
I pulled a knife from the table, a big one with a pink embellished handle that I’d keep forever, and I used its long blade to scrape at the window.
The black shed’s door was closed. Were all the dogs back inside? Would the hag have called them home? Or were they all still wandering around the yard?
The key was in the back door, turned to the left and unlocked. I stepped outside, the winter sun causing me to squint as it forced itself down on me through parted clouds.
Weary feet carried me forward, and I prayed I wouldn’t have to fucking enter that building. I tucked the knife into my jeans, and like yesterday, the blade tickled my thigh, scraping over the scratch of its predecessor.
I stepped up to the edifice, not hearing a fucking thing from out here. The door was locked by a heavy wooden plank, similar to that in the basement, keeping the doors closed.
A quick circle around the perimeter revealed no windows.
I was ready to call it a day and start wandering through the trees in search of Ollie’s hanging body because, at this point, I was beginning to think he’d been sucked into this shitty reality, too, and he couldn’t fucking take another minute here.
