Sick House

by Jeff Strand

  No. Lucid dreaming. Roller coaster. Sick joke.

  They were on a ship.

  Heck looked confused. Surely he was used to the way things worked here, but this change in location appeared to have taken him completely off-guard.

  "Don't like water?" Boyd asked.

  "You shouldn't have come here."

  "The ship?"

  "Here. Hell."

  "I'm told it's not quite Hell."

  "You've made the stupidest mistake anybody has ever made. I mean ever. In the history of humanity. You're going to be stuck here forever, suffering every second of every day until the end of the universe, and I'm going to return to your basement to kill your wife, kill your daughters, and then be set free. Maybe I'll hunt down your parents. Your friends."

  "I don't think you know how to get back."

  "I'll figure it out. We figured it out the first time."

  "The first time you weren't distracted by me killing you again and again."

  Heck smiled. "Maybe Hell won't be so bad if I get to kill you on an infinite loop. That's more like Heaven, huh?"

  "Who do you think can kill each other the most times?"

  "Should we keep score?"

  "No," said Boyd. "Trying to kill you was a blunder on my part. You can't die here. I was wasting my time with that. I just need you to not cross over again."

  Lucid dreaming.

  Thrill ride.

  Sick joke.

  What could be a crueler punchline than sending Heck to the permanent state of drowning Fletcher had endured?

  Suddenly Heck's body, everything but his head, turned to iron. His smile faltered.

  The wood beneath him began to crack.

  "It's not..." he began, but was unable to finish his sentence before he broke through the bottom of the ship and plunged into the sea.

  Boyd peered through the hole. The water was too dark to see Heck sinking, so he just had to imagine it. How long would it take him to reach the bottom? Did a sea in Hell even have a bottom?

  Boyd wasn't the type of person to gloat, and quite honestly, condemning somebody to an eternity of suffocation was not something he should celebrate even if the person was a piece of crap who'd tried to hurt his family. He needed to get back and seal Maddox's fate.

  He was back in the movie theater. This was easy.

  His body was still on the screen.

  Some drops of blood pattered onto the basement floor next to it.

  That was weird. What was happening?

  Boyd opened his eyes. The agony of being in Hell was replaced by his former pain of all of the injuries he'd inflicted in the real world.

  More blood drops fell to the floor.

  Maddox held Gina tightly. His broken ribs were deep in her chest.

  He shoved her away and she collapsed, the front of her body a ghastly mess.

  "Oh, I'm sorry," said Maddox to Boyd. "Did I cut your little field trip short?"

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  "Not a lot you can do without your guide, is there?" asked Maddox. His ribcage retracted back into his chest. "Well, you can watch that bitch die. I think she's got a few more seconds left in her."

  Boyd tried to get up but didn't have the strength. Ironically, he'd been better off in Hell.

  "Lucky for you, you're hurt too bad for me to drag you around to watch your wife and kids die. I'd bring them down here and kill them in front of you, but I'm not sure you'll last that long, and I'm ready to wrap this shit up."

  * * *

  The kitchen door burst open. Adeline spun toward the cops (or were they FBI?) who held the battering ram.

  The black ooze poured down. The men, possibly having learned from the other cop's tragic fate, were not standing in the doorway. Within seconds, the doorway was sealed with the ooze, and Adeline's momentary hope that beating Fletcher to death had solved their problem was dashed.

  Nobody from the outside would be saving them. Fine. They didn't need the police, FBI, military, or whatever. They had a witch. Adeline was confident that she'd return to the basement to discover that Boyd had dealt with the other two ghosts, and they could finally get out of this house and go back to that amazing burger place for dinner.

  "Stay up here unless I call you," Adeline told the girls. Since Paige had saved her life, having them stay upstairs might not be the best decision from a tactical standpoint, but Adeline couldn't just turn off her desire to keep her children out of danger.

  She looked down the stairs and gasped.

  Gina lay on the floor, covered in blood. Boyd was also on the floor, almost where she'd left him, now awake. The bruised ghost stood between them. It noticed Adeline at the top of the stairs and gave her a playful wave.

  "C'mon down and join us."

  "Your friend is dead. I killed him."

  "Can you prove it?"

  "Yes."

  "I trust you. No need for you to cut off his head or anything. Fletcher was an okay guy, but he had no problem running out on us, so if you killed him, kudos. I hope it was gross."

  "It was."

  "Good. You can't escape the house until my ritual is complete, and my ritual isn't complete until you're dead, so by that logic, you can never escape the house. So you can come down here and just offer your throat to me to get it over with, or I can chase you around until you pass out. Your call."

  Gina wasn't dead.

  Adeline wasn't sure how she knew this. The woman looked dead. She was unquestionably dying. But though the illumination from the kitchen was enough to show off her grisly wounds, it wasn't sufficient to tell if she was breathing or not.

  Gina definitely wasn't dead yet. She wasn't quite talking to Adeline—it wasn't as if she could hear Gina's voice in her mind—but she understood the message she was conveying as if it were her own thoughts. If Gina hadn't told them about how she "puppeteered" the home invaders, Adeline might have believed that these were her own thoughts.

  Maddox didn't realize that he'd already won.

  Murdering Adeline, Boyd, Paige, and Naomi would indeed complete the ritual. They lived in the home, and it was their energy the ghosts had used to cross back over. When the last of them lay dead, Maddox would return to his human form and be able to escape this prison.

  But so would killing Gina.

  Was that good? If Maddox didn't have to kill them to get what he wanted, did that mean their nightmare was almost over?

  Adeline was amused by the question. Well, no, it wasn't her amusement, even though it felt that way. She was feeling Gina's sense of amusement like it was her own.

  No. Their nightmare was only beginning.

  Maddox could get out of the house. They couldn't.

  They'd be trapped inside with no way to ever escape.

  They'd starve to death.

  They'd have to decide whether to eat the dead to prolong their lives for a few extra days.

  Couldn't she just kill Maddox? Bash him to death with the same crockpot that had destroyed Fletcher?

  Sorry, no, that would be lovely, but that's not the way it would work. Maddox didn't have to walk out the door. He could go anywhere he wanted. Moments after Gina died, he'd be relaxing on a Caribbean beach, sipping a refreshing cocktail out of a pineapple and chuckling about the slow, miserable deaths of the Gardner family.

  Maddox didn't know he'd won.

  That was it. That was the way to beat him.

  Adeline walked down the stairs, moving slowly but not too slowly. She needed to time this perfectly, and yet she didn't know exactly when Gina would perish.

  "I can't die like that," Adeline told Maddox. "If there's no happy ending, just kill me now. If you promise to make it quick I won't struggle."

  "I like the struggle."

  "Paige! Naomi! Come down here!" If Adeline was going to play the role of somebody who'd completely given up, she had to believably sell it. She wouldn't let Maddox kill her and just leave her daughters upstairs to be hunted.

  Adeline reached the bottom of the
stairs.

  Gina was holding on. She was purposely clinging to life. Did she know what Adeline was thinking?

  "Swear to me you'll make it quick," said Adeline.

  "All right," said Maddox. "I'll make it relatively painless for the youngsters. You and your hubby...well, I'd like you to suffer a little."

  "That's not good enough."

  "Take it or leave it."

  Adeline lifted her arms, showing that she meant him no harm. "I'm not going to resist. Give me one of your special hugs."

  She walked toward him.

  "I love you, Boyd," she said.

  "Don't do this," Boyd told her. He sounded heartsick and quite clearly was not playing along. "There has to be another way."

  "There isn't. It's over for us. Why drag it out?"

  She stopped. The timing was off.

  "Getting scared?" asked Maddox.

  Gina was ready to let go. She wasn't afraid to die.

  Adeline walked over to Maddox. She held her arms out for the embrace.

  Maddox's jagged ribs burst out of his chest.

  "Actually, I'll make it even quicker," he told her. Sharp bones ripped through each of his arms. "Give Daddy a great big hug."

  Gina died.

  Maddox's body changed. The bruises faded. His skin lost its ghostly transparency and became flesh again. He looked surprised, and then elated, almost orgasmic as he realized what was happening.

  He'd completed the ritual.

  He'd crossed back over.

  He was human again.

  And his ribcage was on the outside of his chest.

  He clutched at the bones as his blood spilled, as if trying to shove them back in. His eyes went wide with panic. He looked at Adeline and opened his mouth, trying to say something that was surely a variation on "You fucking bitch," but he wasn't able to articulate it before he fell over.

  Adeline could finish him off pretty easily, deliver the final blow, but no, it was perfectly fine to let him bleed to death.

  "Did you really kill Fletcher?" Boyd asked.

  "Yes."

  "I trapped Heck at the bottom of a sea in Hell."

  "Excellent."

  "When Maddox bleeds out, I think that's it."

  "I think you're right."

  They watched Maddox for a few moments. His eyes glazed over and he stopped breathing.

  "Let's get out of this place," said Adeline, helping Boyd to his feet. "Please don't die when we're this close to freedom."

  "I think I've got a couple of hours left in me."

  Adeline gave him a kiss.

  Paige and Naomi were at the top of the stairs. "Paige, I may need you to help me," said Adeline.

  "Are they all dead?"

  "Yes, honey."

  "Well, no, one of them is trapped under the sea," said Boyd. "He got a raw deal. But they won't be hurting us anymore."

  Adeline stepped onto the first stair. Her foot broke through. The wood had rotted.

  Paige tentatively pressed her foot against the top step. "I don't think this will hold us."

  "That's fine. Stay up there. We'll figure it out."

  The stairs were all changing color. A stair in the middle began bowing in the center, as if it was turning to clay. Adeline looked up and saw the ceiling beginning to bow as well.

  "Get someplace safe!" she shouted. "Hurry!"

  Paige and Naomi ran off.

  A board dropped from the ceiling, landing corner-first on Maddox's dead face. More boards followed.

  Adeline hated leaving Gina. It felt disrespectful to let a house collapse upon somebody who'd sacrificed herself for them, but they had to find a secure place to hide.

  Brownish black liquid began to leak between the boards.

  Where could they hide if the whole house came down? It wasn't like there was a refrigerator down here where they could just shut themselves inside and hope for the best.

  A long, thick board landed right in front of them. But it splattered a bit upon impact.

  A dribble of liquid hit Adeline's head and she screamed.

  There was no burning sensation. Just wetness. This wasn't like the ooze that had killed the police officer.

  Boards slapped against the basement floor like wet cardboard. The smell was so unspeakably vile that it overwhelmed any sense of victory Adeline might be feeling.

  A huge piece of the ceiling collapsed, and the dining room table fell from above with it. A second later, the sofa came crashing down to the floor, with both Paige and Naomi on it.

  A chunk of mostly liquid wood struck Boyd's head.

  The ping-pong table was turning to goo.

  The metal shelves were turning to rust.

  The sofa was rotting beneath Paige and Naomi. They hurriedly got off of it, as shaken as one might naturally expect young girls to be when they'd ridden a sofa that dropped through the floor into the basement.

  The oven fell into the basement, shattering into rust-colored particles, followed by the refrigerator and the kitchen sink.

  Everything was liquefying so quickly now that there wasn't anything they could do to escape it. Adeline, Boyd, Paige, and Naomi held each other as reeking slop poured down upon them.

  Within a minute, it was up to their waists and rising.

  Holy shit—they were going to drown in it!

  Boyd was in no condition to have a child on his shoulders, so Adeline boosted Naomi onto her back. The slime was rising to their chests and it was hard to move around in it, with swimming being impossible for sure. The top of the house was almost gone.

  And finally it was over.

  Adeline and Paige were up to their necks, but there was nothing left to rot and add to their makeshift swimming pool. The four of them were just standing in black muck in a great big hole in the ground.

  A helicopter flew overhead.

  As they slowly made their way to the edge, cops began to peer into the hole, along with firefighters and military personnel. Somebody with a megaphone told civilians to keep back.

  Two men in HAZMAT suits lowered a thick rope into the hole. They pulled Naomi out, then Paige. Boyd urged Adeline to go next, and though he needed medical attention more quickly than she did, she decided to let him have his pride.

  As she emerged from the hole, she saw police cars, fire trucks, news vans, and literally hundreds of onlookers, all of whom seemed to have their cell phones out and recording.

  This was not going to be easy to explain.

  EPILOGUE

  They spent several days in quarantine. Being neck-deep in pure rot was not ideal for people covered with wounds, but they were under the care of an excellent medical team that kept their cuts and gashes from getting infected.

  Since they had an eight-year-old who couldn't credibly lie about sneaking a Twinkie out of the cupboard, they decided to go with most of the truth. Considering that hundreds of people had watched their house basically melt into black ooze (not counting the millions who watched it online) they didn't feel ridiculous sharing the more outlandish parts of their adventure.

  Boyd decided not to talk about the place that wasn't quite Hell, instead saying that he'd blacked out and didn't remember it. Despite everything else that happened, that part felt like it might land him in a sanitarium.

  They tried to stay out of the public eye as much as possible. Somehow they'd managed to get through this without Paige and Naomi going completely catatonic, and now it was important to return them to as much of a normal life as was possible. Oh, that didn't mean Boyd and Adeline wouldn't consider book deals, a TV series, or any of the other assorted rewards of infamy, but they wanted to keep things low-key for a while. Take the time to heal mentally and physically. Figure out their future beyond a time when at least one of them woke up screaming every night.

  * * *

  Several months later, they lived in a modest home where Paige and Naomi still had their own rooms, though they usually slept in the same room at night.

  They'd had a delicious piz
za, with cinnamon sticks for dessert, and it was time to break out the board games (Naomi got to pick tonight) when the doorbell rang.

  Four men stood on the front porch when Boyd answered.

  "Hello, Mr. Gardner," said the one in the middle. He looked about sixty, with a neatly trimmed gray beard and thick eyebrows.

  "May I help you?"

  "We're here for a business opportunity."

  "Sorry," said Boyd. "All of that goes through my agent. I can give you his card."

  The man pointed a revolver at Boyd's face. "I think we can discuss this now. Please step into your home and remain quiet."

  Boyd stepped back into his living room. The four men followed, closing the door behind them. The man with the gun nodded, and the other three men walked past Boyd.

  "If you touch them, I'll—"

  "I asked you not to speak," said the man. "You made it through a lot. It would be a shame to get shot in the face after all that."

  The men were quick and efficient. After the sounds of a brief struggle, they returned to the living room with Adeline, Paige, and Naomi, each with black hoods over their heads. The men forced them to their knees.

  "I'm not going to stretch this out too long," said the man with the gun. "We're here to execute your wife and daughters, and then you. Please know that it isn't your fault. You simply rented the wrong house."

  "You're making a mistake," said Boyd.

  "We hired some men to commit a truly heinous act. You are very familiar with these three men. I don't need to name them, right?"

  "I know who you're talking about."

  "They did their job and I should have had a lot of power. You would not approve of how I wished to use this power. People like you can be very judgmental."

  "You don't know me."

  "I know enough about you. I've had plenty of time to do my research while we waited for this opportunity. You're a popular guy, Mr. Gardner."

  "Very popular. So maybe you shouldn't murder me and my family."

  "You're also extremely familiar with a woman named Gina, who took matters into her own hands and spoiled things for me. I can't blame her for being angry about her sister. I'd do the same thing in her position."