Nothing happened. The Giggler stood there, staring, swaying back and forth.
“Tom…”
Tom checked his other side, and saw a pink glow in the distance.
Moni. She had a pink light stick.
“Moni! Run!”
The pink light got closer.
“No, Moni! Get away! You need to get out of here!”
Moni slowly came into view. But it wasn’t Moni.
It was Aabir, holding Moni’s glow sick. Her eyes were completely black. She opened her mouth and roaches dropped out of it.
“Hee hee hee.”
The Giggler had halved the distance between them. Tom realized he wasn’t simply rubbing the meat cleaver against his bare skin. He was actually cutting himself, blood streaming out of the wounds he was making.
Tom blinked. His vision was getting blurry. His thoughts, fuzzy.
Drugged. Something in the spikes.
He stared back at Aabir. She was kneeling next to him. Tom held up his knife, pointed it at her, but he’d begun to see double.
He slashed at her, trying to keep her away, but everything started to fade.
Her hand shot out and she grabbed his wrist, easily prying the knife away.
Tom’s eyes closed, but he forced them open.
Can’t pass out. Not now…
Blackout.
And then he was in the throes of a full blown nightmare, unable to breath, drowning in some sort of slimy sea.
Tom’s eyes popped open, panic making him shake. Aabir was on top of him. She had her mouth around his nose, her wet tongue sticking up his nostril.
He pushed her away, eyelids fluttering.
Must. Stay. Awake. Must…
Blackout.
Then Tom was choking, thrashing around, coughing and spitting—
—because his mouth was filled with cockroaches.
Tom looked up, and the Giggler was pinning down his shoulders, staring down at him. Aabir had her hands down Tom’s pants, and she was jamming her fingers into his ass, feeling like she was tearing him apart.
“Hee hee hee.”
Tom screamed.
He screamed louder and harder than he ever had in his life.
Then the Giggler pulled off his gas mask, and maggots rained down on Tom, squirming in his eyes, his nose, his mouth, as he continued to scream and scream until unconsciousness finally took him.
Mal
The dust under the bed got in Mal’s eyes and the ragged gash on his neck, amplifying the pain.
He was so frightened he couldn’t breathe.
Under the dust ruffle, Mal saw Colton’s feet enter the bedroom. When he took a step, his old leather satchel clanged.
His bag of ghastly surgical instruments, still trying to conduct his insane experiments upon the living.
Mal let his breath out slow, then sucked dust into his nostrils—
Oh jesus I’m going to sneeze.
Mal clamped his hand over his mouth and nose, pinching his nostrils shut.
Please don’t please don’t please…
The urge to sneeze passed.
Colton continued to move toward the bed. His feet stopped less than half a meter from Mal’s face.
He doesn’t know I’m in here. If I keep absolutely still, he’ll go away.
Mal kept absolutely still.
Then something tugged on Mal’s foot.
Then he felt his pants cuff being raised up, baring his calf. He shook with effort as he fought not to scream.
What the hell is that?
It was small. Small and—
Hairy.
A rat? A rabid raccoon?
“Maaaaaaaaaaal,” Colton droned.
The ghost dropped the medical equipment bag, which clanged inches from Mal’s nose.
Then whatever was tugging on Mal’s leg bit him.
The pain was immediate and excruciating, and Mal yelled and kicked out, hearing something screech, and then he was trying to paw through the dust and get out from under the bed. When he did, he stared up at Colton, standing over him.
“I… want… your… hand…”
Fast as a striking rattlesnake, Colton reached down and grabbed Mal’s hand—
—pulling it off.
Mal clawed himself up to his feet and scampered past Colton, letting the ghost have his rubber prosthetic, rushing out of the room and down the hallway. He tugged out his light stick, flew down the staircase, found the route to the basement, and took more stairs down to the lower level where he’d left his wife and the others.
But they were no longer there.
Out of breath, scared shitless, and now in a state of full-on despair, Mal filled his lungs and cried out, “DEB!”
She didn’t answer.
Mal began to jog, deeper into the underground bowels of Butler House, until he came to a V with tunnels leading off to the right and left.
“Deb!”
No reply.
Left or right, Mal? Which way to go?
Is she even down here?
He went right. The bare bulbs hanging from the overhead braces were dim and far apart, and Mal’s light stick was getting weaker.
“Deb! Where are you?”
Mal heard his voice echo down the tunnel. But Deb’s voice didn’t echo back.
His neck hurt like crazy, but the bite on his leg was really starting to throb—bad enough that he’d begun to limp. He lifted his pants leg and took a quick look at it.
The bite was an oval, and some of the flesh was missing. Like he’d had a hunk gnawed out of him by a baby vampire.
He pulled his sock up over the wound, which was really all he could do with only one hand, and then the darkness was split by a sharp CRACK! and Mal felt his back scream at him.
Mal fell forward and turned over, because it hurt like he’d been set on fire. That’s when he saw the figure with the eyepatch and the whip standing just a meter away.
Blackjack Reedy.
Frank
When Frank Belgium was in grade school, he got picked on a lot for being nerdy. Frank wasn’t good at sports, was very good at science and math, and had a speech dysfluency where he’d often repeat a word three times. In sixth grade, he was challenged by a bully, and became a school legend for the fastest any kid had ever lost a fight. Eyewitness testimony was split on whether it took two or three seconds for Frank to go down, the result of a bloody nose.
It had been the most painful thing Frank had ever experienced, up until now.
His arm hurt a lot worse.
About ten to the eighth power worse.
They ran for their lives through the underground tunnels, away from Jebediah Butler, each step agonizing. Frank wasn’t sure if it was his imagination or not, but he thought he could feel his broken bones grind together every time his foot hit the ground.
As in sixth grade, he felt no shame in crying. He was, however, able to refrain from the embarrassment of calling for his mother. But that was only because his mother was dead.
The alcohol Sara had given him lasted no more than fifty meters, before he stooped and puked it all over his shoes. Vomiting offered only a brief respite from the pain of jogging, because Sara was tugging him along before he was even able to finish.
They came to a fork in the tunnel, went left, and then went right at the next T junction, and left again, and then Frank lost track of where he was and just concentrated on praying for death.
Finally Sara pulled him into an actual room, unlike the mineshafts they’d been navigating. This had a concrete floor, and concrete walls, which were covered with crosses.