Mal moved quickly but carefully, heading for the great room. His original plan was to sprint up to the second floor and grab the drugs and gun. But when he saw the front doors, he realized he should check them to make sure they were open. His experience at the Rushmore Inn informed him that once the bad things started happening, it became increasingly difficult to leave. Though Mal readily admitted he suffered from paranoia—a paranoia he felt he’d earned—Butler House was beginning to feel more and more like the Rushmore. So it was with a sick, sinking feeling that he approached the exit, willing to bet everything he had that it would be locked.
Wellington’s body had been moved, but the doors and floor were still splashed with his blood. Mal did a quick look around, making sure he was alone. Then—
—he stuck the key light in his teeth—
—put his hand on the door knob—
—turned and pulled—
—and it opened easily—
—revealing a shirtless man wearing a gas mask, holding a meat cleaver.
“Hee hee hee,” the man giggled.
Mal backed away so quickly he slipped and fell. He tried to get up, but his feet couldn’t get any traction on the bloody floor. At the same time, he couldn’t look away from the Giggler, as Forenzi had called him during dinner.
A masked demon who would mutilate himself…
Which was when the Giggler raised his cleaver, and sliced a line down his scarred chest.
Mal stared, the fear so absolute he ceased to be a human being. Exactly like when he was strapped to the table at the Rushmore Inn. Mal lost his personality, his identity, and was reduced to an animal state. The evolutionary fear response, a chemical cocktail millions of years in the making, took over his body until every cell screamed fight or flight.
Acting on pure instinct, Mal chose flight, flopping onto his belly, getting his one hand underneath him, and then bicycling his feet until his toes found purchase on the hardwood floor.
And then he was off and running, beelining for the group of chairs and sofas in the middle of the great room.
Which was where he found Wellington’s body.
The dead author had been stripped naked and was sitting in a chair, his severed head placed between his legs so he was giving himself oral sex. Stuck in his neck stump were a cluster of cattails, jutting out as if in a vase.
Mal kept running, trying to remember where the stairs were. He headed for the hall to the dining room and saw it had been blocked with a sofa. So he detoured and took another corridor.
He heard a high-pitched whining sound and realized he was the one making it. So ensnared in the throes of terror, he didn’t even know where he was until the hallway he’d sprinted down abruptly ended at a closed door.
Confused, out of breath, panicked and sickened, Mal turned in a circle, trying to get his bearings. He began to backtrack, to get out of this dead-end, when he heard a CRACK! from the darkness ahead. Like someone slapping their hands together. Or…
Or a whip.
The ghost of the one-eyed slave master, Blackjack Reedy.
Mal spun back around, reaching for the doorknob, opening it and easing himself inside, then closing it behind him.
The room smelled of stale mildew. Mal used his tiny flashlight to look around, and even though the beam didn’t penetrate very far, he realized he was in the laundry room.
He saw a large sink. Some rusty, metal wash basins. Clotheslines hanging on the walls. An old fashioned washing machine with rollers. A large pile of dirty clothes. Several washboards. A shelf full of antique detergent boxes.
But something about the room was… off. Though it didn’t look like anyone had been in there in decades, Mal had the uneasy feeling he was being watched.
He got his breathing under control and listened.
The room was silent.
Mal took a few steps into the room, noticing a door on the other side. Maybe it was a closet. Or maybe it was an exit. Old houses often had a laundry room next to an outside door, to make it easier to haul wet clothing outside to dry in the sun.
Halfway into the room, Mal heard something.
A moan.
He stopped, mid-step.
Had it been a voice? The wind? Some other, harmless sound? His imagination?
Once again he played the flashlight beam around the room.
The sink, old and filthy.
Rusty basins.
The washing machine, its pulleys misaligned.
A pile of clothing with an old coat on top, its buttons glinting in the light.
The stack of washboards.
Shelves.
“Hello?” he whispered.
Immediately after speaking, Mal regretted it. Who was he talking to? And did he really want someone to answer?
Thankfully, no one replied.
Mal wasted no more time getting to the door at the end of the room. He grasped the ancient, metal door knob and turned.
Locked. He gave the door a sharp tug. It peppered him with dust, but held firm.
Squinting at the bronze doorplate, Mal saw an old-time keyhole.
Could there be a key around here?
He looked behind him, back at the shelves. If there was a key, that seemed like the place for it. Mal crept over, scanning row by row with the flashlight. On the third shelf, next to a disintegrating box of Borax soap chips, was a tarnished skeleton key.
Mal reached for it—
—and heard another moan.
He spun, again taking in the room.
But no one was there.
Basins, washboards, sink, washing machine, clothes. There wasn’t anything else.
Then the pile of clothing blinked.
Mal was so shocked he jumped backward, into the shelves, old detergent snowing on him as the pile of clothing stood up—not a pile at all, but a figure in a dirty lab coat, what Mal assumed were glinting buttons had actually been its staring eyes.
Colton Butler.
Colton moaned again. He was clutching a leather medical bag in one hand, a curved surgical saw in the other, and he advanced toward Mal.
The fear was so absolute, it paralyzed Mal, pinning him to the spot. Colton raised the saw up.
“Time… to… operate…”
His voice was all messed up, like Jebediah’s in the library, and so shocking it snapped Mal out of his catatonia and he lurched toward the locked door. Key and flashlight in the same hand, he was trembling too madly to fit it into the keyhole.
“Maaaaaaal…”
The voice was so close Mal didn’t want to turn around, fearing that Colton was right behind him. He focused on opening the door, trying to block out everything else, putting 100% of his concentration into fitting the damn key into—
Colton hit Mal in the side of the neck with something, so hard Mal saw motes of light. Then there was a ripping sound, and a spike of pain like lemon juice on a paper cut, right across Mal’s right shoulder blade.
The saw.
Mal pushed himself backward, knocking Colton away, reaching up and feeling the jagged cut in his neck.
He tried to saw my head off.
His hand now slick with blood, Mal jammed the keychain light in his teeth and went back to playing bullseye with the key.
“Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaal…”
By some miracle, Mal got it in the keyhole. He twisted it, first one way, then the other, and when the bolt snicked free Mal yanked open the door and saw…
Stairs. Leading up.
He took them two at a time, breathing through his teeth as they clamped down on the flashlight, going up sixteen steps and then reaching…