321 Wiccam Street

Bolting up into a sitting position in his pitch black room, Michael stifles a cry from deep in his throat. Wanting to throw up, he forces the acidic contents of his stomach to stay. He gasps for air, not wanting to breathe lest his knotted stomach release upwards.

         The room is dark unable to see anything except the red LCD readout from the alarm clock. Two twenty-five in the morning. He remembers a package of cigarettes, a lighter and an ashtray on the bedside table, having put the items there before bed.

He had a feeling this would happen.

         The feeling was nothing more than experience from the last three weeks, specifically the last week—since Maria left on her business trip leaving him home alone. At first the dreams came every few days, instead of being utterly terrifying and almost real they were choppy and dream-like, taking on the qualities of a third-person video game, a video game like Resident Evil or Silent Hill (sans zombies and monsters save three). Two weeks ago the dreams started to become more and more realistic and first person, leaving behind the third-person dream style and adding to the terrifying atmosphere of trepidation, fear and deep-seeded disgust.

         The day Maria left was when the dream morphed into a single scene that expanded on a daily basis. The dream always started at the front of a house, an old and run-down single-story house on some old and abandoned road with houses only on one side bordered by a large field. Day by day the dream took him deeper into the yard, finally on the third week—when the dream took on a horrific quality—he entered the back yard. The dream continued through the back yard until tonight when he entered the kitchen. The dark, dirty kitchen holding a pantry, a stove with a large stewing pot, and a horrible...

         He threw the covers over his legs, exposing his nudity to the darkened room, and rushed as fast as he could through the short hallway leading from the left wall into an in-suite bathroom where he collapsed onto his knees in front of the toilet, threw the seat up and gagged. Feeling the knots in his stomach tighten, he dry-heaved feeling every muscle tense from his abdomen up to his esophagus. Closing his eyes, seeing the dark kitchen in his mind, he gagged and dry-heaved a second time.

There was nothing in his stomach to expunge.

         Trying his best to control himself, Mike was able to control his stomach enough to stop the heaves. He sat in front of the thrown for a few minutes more before trying to stand. He almost collapsed. His legs felt as if someone surgically removed his bones, partially liquefied and set them back. He grasped at the edge of the black marble surface of the counter and held himself up, glancing into the mirror. Beads of sweat dotted his forehead and a thin line traveled down both sides of his face. Dark bags hang low under his tired, slightly bloodshot blue eyes. His lips are slightly chapped and held the shape of his eye teeth where he had been biting down in the hellish nightmare.

         Dropping his head, Mike lets out a desperate cry and looks at himself in the mirror again. “Just let me fucking sleep! Please, just one fucking night!”

         The sudden desire to cry in frustration and terror almost overwhelmed him like the urge to throw up, but he kept his tears inside. He could smell himself, the acrid scent of nervous sweat wafting from the pits under his arms. His sheets were probably soaked with night-terror sweat. He knows from the previous nights that tonight’s rest is finished, knowing it would be a waste of time to even try to nap. He might have been able to return to his sleep if Maria was home, but that was a luxury that would not be available for another week.

         Work in the morning was out of the question as well, after the debacle yesterday morning he decided that it would be wise to take today off whether he had the bad dream or not, if only to catch up on his sleep. Sleep, at this point, seemed to be a luxury instead of a necessity. Now, alone in his dark and empty house, after the horrific discovery in the dream, the last place he wanted to be was here. In a quick decision, Mike decided to have a shower and head out to Endsville Cafe for a coffee, tea or a cup of hot milk; anything that could calm him down enough to sleep.



         ****

         The tea Benny poured was fresh and tasted wonderful in his parched mouth, but it did not calm him down. After a while he decided to take a drive, listen to the news radio station and see if that helped, even if that meant boring himself into unconsciousness.



         ****

         He wandered the streets of Cyan aimlessly listening to Morgan Brock sputter some drivel about  the Prime Minister's plan to protect the environment and help eliminate global warming caused by industries such as coal and oil. He felt so tired that each second seemed like two, and by the time three-thirty hit he was almost ready to give up and go home and try to go to sleep, until he found himself turning onto Wiccam Street.

         In all cities there are sections and streets that have a reputation for crime, low employment and income, drugs and prostitution, but hardly any cities have a whole street that is said to be haunted. Like the Chamberlyn house and the adjoining Valley of Death east of the city, Wiccam Street is known by everyone from those like were born and would die in Cyan, like Mike, to those who recently moved to the technologically rich city. The stories about Wiccam Street are endless, some brand new and some as old as the street itself. The new stories were questionable with content that seemed a little too far-fetched to be anything, yet the older stories (the ones from the fifties) have not changed from one generation to another.

         Many young teenagers go into Wiccam Street on dares, a terrifying ordeal even if nothing is seen or heard. Mike remembered the time he had to come here on a dare. It had only been only a few weeks before his grade nine graduation. He had to go into one of the houses, explore for a bit and go into the basement for four hours, after that he was promised to be promoted from nerd to cool. He did spend the four hours in the basement and he was upgraded to cool, though the ordeal scarred him for years to come. He was fortunate not to see anything, or have anything truly horrible happen, but he did hear things and certainly felt things. The feeling of utter darkness, even in the light, enveloped him; making him chilled down to the core of his very soul.



         In 2004, after nearly forty years of being vacant, the city decided to sell the street to a well-established housing contractor at a bargain price to revitalize the area. The contractor demolished all of the dilapidated houses to start fresh. Many of the residences of Rosedale, the adjacent community to the west, loved the idea that the street was going to be remade (and hoped even more that the stories would finally die out), but there were some that doubted destroying the houses was going to cleanse the street of the dark evil. To put their minds at ease, the city and the contractor did something utterly unheard of: they asked a few clergymen to come bless and sanctify the land. That, for the most part, worked for the neighboring community, especially the die-hard right-wing Christians.

         The neighborhood opened in 2006 with brand new houses, expanded on both sides of the road instead of just the west side. They even included a small playground for the children they hoped would populate the street. The houses were snatched up in the blink of an eye, families moved in and nothing out of the ordinary happened. Nothing. Not a single whispered peep from anyone. Not a single queer or dark feeling.

         The developers obviously had uniformity in mind for the street. Every house looked like the next. The houses are two stories tall, an off-white in color (bordering on a very light gray) with  medium gray front doors and paneling around the two windows on each floor; simple black mailboxes and simple black house numbers over top of the gray dual-car garage doors. The houses looked quite pleasant in their simplicity and uniformity, even in the dead of night when almost every light (except for a few of the porch lights) are off and the residences are sleeping peacefully in their beds, like he should be.

         The lawns are fairly small with simple cement pathways leading up to the front doors, splitting off to the right around to their backyards. Young birch trees sit on either side of the paths. Each house is surrounded on their sides by white picket fences spiked up around six feet from the ground with adjoining sections separating the front and back yards. The gates are all rounded at the top with black handles.

         The pavement on the street is a deep black lacking the yellow or white painted dividers. On each side of the street are black metal lanterns for street lights. The lanterns stretch up ten feet from the ground and are pure metal fashioned to look like London's old wrought iron lamps, each lamp is fueled by natural gas instead of a normal light bulb powered by the cities electric grid. There are no power lines in sight. In 2000 the city deemed that all new power lines would be placed underground along with the telephone and cable lines. The street ends in a cul-de-sec, two houses on each end.

         The fourth house on the left caught Mike's attention, the only house with a light on. The porch light was off but the living room window was lit along with a dim blue light of a television. The difference in the uniformity was what caught his attention. It seemed as if he was not the only one who could not sleep that night.

         The new Wiccam Street intrigued him. He had not been here since the day he spent in the house, never having the urge or the need. He would have rather stayed away from this street until the moment of his death, never figuring he would end up here after the nightmares, but here he is: driving at three in the morning trying to calm down enough to sleep. The street caused the old festering fear to resurface, though as faded as the memory of that day of the dare and amalgamated with the terrorizing dreams.

         Driving slowly north, towards the cul-de-sac, his eyes went over to the only lit house on the street. For an instant he saw a shadow moving in the living room, covered in the blue light, but it was not that which attracted his full attention enough to make him step on the breaks. The car nearly screeched to a halt, even at his low speed. His heart leaped in his chest and relaxed a little, like a spike in an EKG machine. He gasped for an unknown reason, staring at the house.

         There was a difference between this house and the houses surrounding it: a small flower garden on the side walls bordering the front entrance spanning about four feet with small bushes stretching to the far edges. He could not tell what kind of flowers the garden held, only that they grew straight up towards the dark, cloudless sky.

         “Oh, my god.” He whispered, staring at the simple black numbers in a simple and straight line over the simple gray garage door.

         He read somewhere that the city changed the postal code of the street and made sure that the houses did not have the same numbers used by the last street, another precaution to accompany the priests and clergymen. The simple black numbers spelled the same address as the house he had been in all those years ago:

         321 Wiccam Street.

         So much for the city wiping out that fucking street. A cold shiver ran down his spine, almost as if someone walked over his grave. He closed his eyes for a moment and shuddered a second time, remembering the house that his dare took place in. A cold feeling crept over him, from his sensitive stomach outwards until his whole body seemed shrouded in the black coolness, exactly like the feeling after he stepped from the basement stairs onto the dirt floor below all those decades ago.

         Oh no, not now... He pleaded in a silent whisper, feeling the very start of the dream trying to surface. He pushed it back with thoughts of his wonderful wife—his wonderful pregnant wife. He glanced up and down the street, each house sitting quietly in the dark waiting for dawns rise and renewed life, even the (old) new house with the address of 321.

         A new feeling starts to invade, one stronger than the feeling of terror from tonight’s horrific dream: curiosity. The house, 321 Wiccam Street, held some sort of morbid fascination with him. The memories of that day started to come in short bursts, except for the house and the yard. He remembered how the house seemed to draw him in while he walked up the front walkway, and how the door was slightly ajar when he walked up to it. He remembered how the house suddenly changed once he entered through the front door and shut it behind him, how the feeling changed from inviting to disturbing in the blink of an eye. The darkness he felt started as soon as the door closed, yet it did not fully grip him until he stepped onto the dirt floor of the empty basement. The basement, as he remembered it, had three rooms, and yet he could not remember what they looked like.

         The street light on the border of 321 and it's southern neighbor suddenly turned off, startling him. The darkness flooded the front lawn, casting shadows on top of the trees shadows causing utter blackness. His heart leaped into his chest and he gasped again. His eyes flicked to the sudden darkened fence and felt another wave of fear and nausea start to creep up alongside the feeling of curiosity, as the dream started to creep back up.

         “Fuck this.” He whispered and pulled his foot off the break and onto the gas pedal.

         The car died. The engine turned off without a sputter. The radio, the dash and instruments all went dark and silent. The street light flicked on and off rapidly almost like a strobe light, and finally blackened a second time. Moments later the street lamp a few meters to the north of the far fence flickered and died, shrouding the house in a cloud of darkness.

         “No, no...” He whispered, frightened. He grabbed the keys and twisted around, trying to start the ignition unsuccessfully. The alternator did not turn over. Nothing uttered so much as a sickly whimper. He tried again, pushing on the gas peddle with the same effect. “This can't be happening!”

         He tried to turn the engine over again and again until he finally gave up and slammed himself back into the driver's seat, staring out through the windshield at the rounded edge of the street and feeling a few beads of cold sweat starting to form on his forehead. Looking left, over his shoulder back to the house he felt the dream instantly attack at his consciousness. He tried fending it off with thoughts of his wife and the baby growing inside of her, only managing to keep the horrific images at bay for the moment.

         “This is not fucking happening!” He cried and grabbed the keys and twisted again. Nothing. Not a god damned fucking thing. No noise, no clicks and no clatters. “Your six months old! Don't fucking do this to me!” He started yelling at the car, spitting profanities and curses. Before entering the cursed street the car had not so much as burped, now it seemed dead.

         “Not here! Not now!” He screamed. Anywhere but here. Please God, anywhere but here!

         A third attempt. A third failure.

         Slowly, turning towards the house, Mike thought he would see the old house, maybe even the old street as a whole, instead he saw the pitch black shape of the house surrounded by brighter houses, lit by lamps that had not mysteriously failed. A light suddenly blinked into existence on the second floor somewhere further back than the room containing the window, stayed on for a few minutes and went dark again. He stared through the window for a moment and—

         He could see a light on in the house from the living room of the decrepit bungalow built some time in the forties just after the end of the Second World War The light is dim and a pale yellow, possibly white and filtered into a parchment-yellow from the dirty window. The light dimly lit a shadowy couch, continually casting it in a dark gray shadow with a tinge of yellow. Under the window grows a feral leafy bush running from the left edge of the house to a wild flower garden beside the front door, allowed to grow wild from a state that could have once been neat and groomed every few weeks. The bush, grown beyond the base of the window sill, has tendrils leading up towards the middle, the finger-like branches caressing the glass gently, almost lovingly.

         The front door, lit only by the bright full moon high in the cloudless night sky, is a deep brown behind a screen door filled with rips and holes. Beside the door, on the left above the wild flowers, is a simple black iron mailbox with bloated spots of rust spread like sores on a leper. The back hinge has broken on the right side, the lid hanging half way off. Above the rusted mailbox is the house number, 321, in bold black numerals. A cement block with two stairs leads down to a plain cement path, spotted with stains and littered with tiny pot-marks and cracks spreading outwards in every direction from left to right.

         Weeds and grass grow between the cracks of the cement pathway cutting a two foot wide path straight down to the sidewalk, nature’s way of retaking what man has built. The square block of the sidewalk in front of the path holds the house number as well. The sidewalk leads north and south over the edge of the street and holds a few cracks and missing patches on the surface. A number of rusted lamp posts line the street, illuminating the street through their dirty transparent coverings. The lamps sit under the green telephone poles, each pole running wires to each other and over to the houses, including this one.



         —drew himself out of the dream as quickly as he could before his memory could draw him towards the house. That was how the dream started every night, never varying. He always looked at the house, first through the window towards the dim yellow light, then the door and finally down the path to the sidewalk. That was nothing, just seeing the old house, but that was when the simplicity ended and the creepiness began.

         He realized that it was the flower patch and the bushes that reminded him of the house in his dreams. Thankfully the house was not a bungalow and the bushes were neatly trimmed. He breathed deeply a few times feeling his heart pounding lightly against the inside of his ribcage and tried to center himself. After a few short moments he no longer could feel his heart beating and his breathing slowed. The fear started to leave, however under that he felt a strange sense of deja vous mixed in with that morbid curiosity.

         He tried to tell himself that the dream and the house had nothing to do with each other, except for the number on the house. That, taken from his memory, was probably nothing more than a bizarre coincidence. So, why did that explanation not make him feel better?

         “Screw this.” He muttered and reached for the console.

         Lifting up the armrest, Mike pulled out his cell phone, flipped it opened and turned it on. He waited and watched for the signal bars to appear, after a few moments—longer than it should have taken—he realized that he was not going to get a signal here. Within that realization, Mike also figured that something was wrong.

         Very wrong.

         He turned back to the house and looked up and down the street. Every light on the street was on except for the two on the south and north side of 321; his car, which had not shown a single problem before, was dead, and now his cell phone was not receiving reception. Drifting back to the house, Mike's blue eyes surveyed the dark, uniform house again and again over the duration of a single minute before trying the ignition one more time knowing it would fail; it did.

         He also knew what he had to do.

         Closing his eyes, taking a deep breath, he prayed to God that nothing would happen to him, and threw open the door after unbuckling his seat belt. He stepped out and closed the door, turned to the house and merely shook his head. The dream was bad enough, now he had to contend with something from his distant passed, an event that happened years before his eighteenth year. This was the last place he wanted to be, still feeling the trepidation from that single night, especially after his horrific awakening at two in the morning.

         He did not bother locking his door, neighborhoods like this one seemed to have a way of not letting the wrong people in—that and he wanted to make sure he could easily access his car if something went horribly wrong, even if it was only to take shelter. When it comes to Wiccam Street a person could not be too careful, new Wiccam Street or old. He took one last deep breath, trying to calm his frantic mind, and walked towards the house.

         He looked towards the southern fence as he touched the brand new sidewalk and cast his eyes to the freshly mowed, dark green grass. Almost touching the white picket fence, discarded carelessly and resting on it's side, he can see a bright red tricycle with black wheels and a white seat. He closed his eyes and waited for feeling of revulsion to pass, ending in a tremor of eerie deja vous.



         Once white and straight, the fence thrusts from the ground at crooked angles, broken and cracked like decayed and fractured teeth like the transients who make their home in the abandoned houses on the dying street. Most of the paint has fallen off, some flakes still miraculously cling to the old, untreated and bloated wood. Fallen boards lay on the ground, obfuscated and hidden by the thick unkempt lawn.

         Less than three feet away from the tired weather-beaten fence, lying on it's side lays a pale red tricycle that was once a dark, lustrous red bleached from an unknown time in the sun. Small rusty welts cover quarter of the trike, some have long-since connected to make large sores looking almost like battle wounds. The largest blisters and sores seem concentrated and around dents and dings from childish wear and tare. The wheels, once black, have turned a light gray from the sun and dirt, forever stained from nature and a child's love.

         The grass grows wild and long, nearly half way up to an average person's knee, dotted with thick patches of weeds with some reaching up beyond the knee. Near the broken fence, further towards the house, is a small cluster of Sunflowers. Their faces, usually a bright yellow, are dull with wilting leaves starting to border on brown at the tips. Their height is slightly stunted and stand between four and five feet tall with thin and browning stalks. The plants are dying, slowly.

         Split by the cracked sidewalk, the thick overgrown lawn looks almost like a waving sea with the slight drifting of the wind heading west to east, split by an island of a single tree on each side. The trees are easily distinguished as Poplar trees spanning fifteen feet into the sky and sickly like the Sunflowers. The trunks are starting to turn from a brown towards a gray, their leaves are browning on the edges inwards, and leaning towards the street as if trying to get away from the house.

         Another tree stands behind the fence on the right hand side of the house behind the rickety fence separating the front and back yards. Both the fence and the tree are covered in the shadow of the house. The fences on both the right and left hand sides of the house are both in far better shape than the fence bordering the property line, both look to be in tact. The tree behind the picket fence is almost as tall as the house and thicker than the two in the front.

         Mike looks over the old worn down house as if waiting for something to happen. He wears a plain pair of black jeans and a nondescript t-shirt, something he might wear during his day off. He remembers feeling as scared and curious now as he had on the day he entered a house with the same address numerous years back. The curiosity seems to drive his desire to move forward towards the house. He almost feels as if he needs to enter that house without knowing why.

         Moving slowly over the walk way towards the house, Mike looks around the overgrowth of grass, over the sickly trees and down to the cracked walkway leading towards the front door. The weeds sprouting from the cracks are common dandelions and knapweed with thick stalks and bright flowers.

         Step on a crack break your mother's back. He randomly thinks and glances up from the ground to the large window looking into the living room. The unadorned window is a portal into the house, cast into darkness from the night, barely lit by the silver moon. Inside is a simple smattering of furniture: a couch against the far wall with a coffee table at its front, and a recliner. If there is anything else in the room it remains unseen by his eyes.

         Arriving at the nexus of two walkways, one leading up to the front door on the cement riser and the other leading around the left hand side of the house, he stops and briefly wonders where he should go. Should he go inside through the front door (he really wants to enter the house) or should he go around back and see what's there? The choice, if he had one, is obvious: he must go through the back. At the same moment, Mike wonders if the door is locked, and shakes his head.

         Places like these are never locked, He thinks.

         He walks down the path until it takes a ninety degree turn. The path leads directly to a gate in the fence that looks just as warn down (but as sturdy) as the rest of the bordering fence. The section of fence bordering the back and front yards looks younger than the broken down and decrepit version bordering this property with the next; still the paint is flaking off and bubbling in more than one spot.

         He stops and looks over to his left into the grass, something glints under the silver moonlight attracting his attention. He—



         —does not want to think about that. He does not want to see what is in the grass having seen it a dozen times in his sleep. His stomach knots as he starts to walk up the new, perfect walkway towards the front door of the brand new house. He knew he had to go to this house, not because of something preordained but because the person—or people—who lived in the house were recently awake and would probably not be as angry at his unexpected house call. He doubted the occupants would be happy to see him at this time of night.

         He stops at the nexus of the two paths, one leading towards the left edge of the house and turning towards the back yard, and looks at the door perfectly level with the ground. For a moment—a very short moment—he looks over to the fence and shivers, suddenly curious. He chuckles nervously and starts to turn back towards the front door.

         A shiny object catches his attention. He thrusts his head to the right, away from the object and the front door, and closes his eyes. He bites down on his bottom lip, feeling his canines almost pushing through the tender red flesh, and forces down a cry of fear. He can feel the sweat starting to form above his brow.

         It can't be...It can't be, it's just a fucking dream! He tells himself trying to use a commanding voice, one strong enough to make himself believe that thought, succeeding only superficially. He reached into his pocket after opening his eyes, and grabbed the cell phone, flipped it open and looked at the screen, hoping against hope that there would be at least one signal bar. None. Flipping the cover back, stuffing the phone back into his pocket, Mike turns back to the door.

         He steps up to the door and reaches out for the simple white dot surrounded by a gold plate, acting as the doorbell. His finger freezes less than an inch away and turned his head back to the path. He growls and draws his finger back. He knew he needed to go to that object and make sure...to make sure it was not what he thought it was.

         Just press that god damned doorbell! He screams at himself in his head, but that voice seemed as small and unimportant as the commanding voice he tried to use only moments before. Even that voice knew what he had to do. Press the damned doorbell, call a cab and a tow truck and go the fuck home!

         Sounded like a solid plan to him, instead he walked towards the left hand edge of the path away from the front door. Sickened trepidation quivered through his heart as he dropped down to his knees, echoing a single prayer: Don't let it be. Please God, don't let it be, and looked towards the object repelling the moonlight.

         A button. A simple small button was left in the grass, the kind that a child would wear on his or her shirt. He reached out and plucked it from the lawn and looked at the shiny yellow and black surface forming a smiley. Drawing in another breath, expecting the worst, he turned the button around. The back is silver and shiny, brand new.

         He sighed and closed his eyes and drew in a breath.



         —reaches out and swipes at the grass, pushing away the thick overgrown vegetation. He sees the outline of the object, circular and silver in color, wrapped around something else, something dark. He reaches in and grabs the circular object, feeling it's coolness against his skin, a little cooler than the temperature outside, and runs his finger over the other object. It is a little warmer, the same temperature as the warm night. It feels strange, almost familiar as if he knew what it should be.

         Bringing it up to his face, Mike stares at the ring wrapped around the severed finger, not quite processing what he holds. The finger is no longer pink and without a single bug patrolling over the thin appendage. The base, a few centimeters below the plain silver band, has been cut clean off, showing the skin over a thin layer of fat and muscle, and then the cleanly severed bone, stained red with blood. The finger is smooth, belonging to a woman, with a carefully groomed fingernail free of colored nail polish, and white. The appendage had time to cool off, but not time for the insects to crawl upon it and start their feast.

         Finally he realizes what he holds, utters a choked cry and tosses the finger back into the grass and instinctively draws his hand over his mouth to silence an all-out scream. His stomach knots and twists, unfurls and knots again. The feeling of acid washing up towards his mouth along with the horrid taste in the back of his mouth force him to gag. He turns away from the grass towards the front wall and throws up, feeling his stomach empty as his last meal regurgitates onto the dirty wall. His eyes tear up and clenches them shut and throws up again. His whole body shudders and quakes. The fingers he used to touch the finger burned as if her skin was covered by acid. The image of the finger burned into his dream-memories.

         Emptied from his vomiting, his stomach calms down after a few gags and dry heaves and he collapses onto his backside. Reaching up and wiping the remains of the chunky vomit from his mouth, Mike turns to the grass where he chucked the severed finger breathing hard, feeling as if his heart was about to explode out from his chest. His head spins, the image of the severed finger running through his mind under new thoughts: What if the person belonging to that finger is dead? What if the person who took the finger is still around? What if the person belonging to that finger is right behind the gate? What if the person who took the finger is right behind the gate? What if the person belonging to that finger is still alive?

         It was the latter question that caught his attention. His need to see what the shiny object was had been fulfilled and replaced by another need: the need to find out if the lady is still alive, and whether he can help her. He tried to get up and collapsed back down, his legs feeling boneless. He forces himself to get back up onto his feet using the side of the wall as a crutch, carefully setting his hand above his chunky and watery vomit, until he feels able to continue. He—

         He opened his eyes and turned to the year-old fence leading into the backyard without an excuse for a desire (or need) to enter, but that desire is still there. Just like in the dream. Forcing himself to stop, Mike turned away from the gate against the house's wall towards the front yard and his dead car. Two thoughts went through his head: entering the private property without the permission of the owner could net him a trespassing charge, and that the dream and being here seemed less and less like a coincidence, especially when it came to the tricycle and the shiny object in the grass that turned out to be a simple button. At that point it had not occurred to Mike that he was following the exact trail set out in his dream, though that realization would come all too soon.

         He looked down at the button, flipped it around and around between his fingers and slipped it into his pocket. He took out his cell phone and flipped it open. Still no signal. No surprise. He replaced the cell phone into his pocket and turned fully around to the white gate, drew in a deep breath and shook his head. He was going to enter the backyard with unclear reasons, not knowing why besides being curious and the knowledge that the dream had striking similarities. His logical mind repeatedly stated that he was looking for a reason to enter the back; that all of this was illogical, an urge brought on by the lack of a proper sleep in weeks and terror brought on by the horrifically descriptive dreams. He ignored his logical side and walked up to the gate.

         He stops inches shy of the handle and pulls his hand away, almost as if the fence could reach out and bite him. It could, not physically, but in a different way. Glancing over his shoulder, looking towards the dark section of the roadway, he makes sure no one is around. The house, the shadows and the unlit street lamps all protected him from the empty street. He could, if quiet, hop the fence and not be noticed even if the street had a parade running down Wiccam Street.

         The fence in the dream had a small trigger that would have alerted the occupants of the house, and if this situation was somehow attached to that dream, Mike could bet that this fence had the same, or a similar, device. He slips from the path to the grass, reaches up and grabs the top of the fence and hauls himself up—



         —walks up to the gate, grabs the handle and depresses the button. He hears the lock slide up, giving him access to the back yard, and begins to push the door open. The silvery moonlight glints off of something between the wooden planks, something very thin like a wire. He stops and pulls the door back, closing the latch.

         Bending down, inspecting the space between the planks, Mike sees fishing twine running towards the house directly behind the gate. If pushed the gate an inch more that fishing twine would have broken. From watching television, he believes that the twine would somehow alert the owners of the house putting him in danger, possibly even giving the lady (if she is still alive) a death sentence.

         Pulling himself back to his full height, Mike looks over the fence wondering if it could support his weight. It looked fairly unstable, less so than the rest of the fence, and doubt filled his mind. He looked over the fence from the connecting joint to the house all the way over to the property bordering length. A small section in the middle looked strong enough to hold him for a very short time, long enough for him to pull himself up and leap over.

         He walks from the broken and cracked path into the feral grass, reaches up and grabs the triangular spiked points at the tip of the fence, pulls back a little as a test and leaps, pulling himself up. He throws his foot over the fence and sets it down on the top horizontal wooden plank, it cracks. He waits for a short moment, breathing hard, and finally pulls himself all the way and drops to the ground on the other side.

         He steps over to the path beside the house, finds the twine under the pale moon light and follows it to the house. The cement wall is compromised with a tiny hole in which the fishing line vanishes into. Undoubtedly, the owners did not want unexpected company.

         Satisfied that there was a mission here, either finding out what happened to the lady missing her finger or saving her, he turns around and beholds the back yard.

         

         He jumped the fence without a single worry and drops into the backyard and turned around, even through the darkness he could make out something small and black against the vertical beam on the gate, and another device against the beam on the fence, probably something like the magnetic sensors which make shop doors chime when they open.

         After he turned around, he noted that the back yard is marginally better lit than the front, also realizing that there is a dim light turn on, probably over the back door, or somewhere inside of the house. The light illuminates the front wall of a single car garage, also white with gray bordering and black shingles, the walk way leading around the side of the house, and neatly trimmed grass.

         He walks to the edge of the wall slowly, stops and presses himself against the house and takes a quick glance around into the major portion of the empty yard. He made out the entire garage, the backside of the house and a decent sized grassy portion between them. The backside of the house holds three windows, one a few feet away above his head, another beside the back door starting about chest high, and another one over his head near the far side. There is a light above the back door which has not been turned on. The light emanates from the window beside the door. He also saw another grassy space on the far side of the garage.

         He pulled himself from the wall and stepped into the back yard proper, seeing a small structure against the far fence beyond the garage, a shed. He shudders and feels his stomach knotting almost painfully from fear. He saw the contents of the shed starting three days ago, each passing night seemed far worse than the last though the scene is the same and unchanging from dream to dream.

         Walking to the edge of the screen door, Mike sees that it is closed and walks beyond it, dropping to his hands and knees and shimmies under the window, peeking up into a kitchen. He freezes half way under the window with a thought: The dream, oh God, this is the dream.

         Yes, he does believe that this is somehow the same place that he went into in his dream, but obviously not the same house. The tricycle, the object he found in the grass, the fence and now the shed. He cannot fathom how this is possible, but this is the same damned place that his dream took him to. He also understood that he had something to do here, something that he had not finished in the dream. Now he had to wonder if there was someone in trouble inside, and what he was supposed to do about it if that was true.

         He shook his head to regain control of his thoughts, before that could happen a single and unforgettable thought reared it's ugly head: What (who) is doing this to me? That, in a nutshell, was the question he asked all along—about the dream, the car and cell phone troubles, and now the (dream) house. He wondered if God was behind this or if it was some other creature that had knowledge, whether omnipotent or not, of this (alter) house. Mike was not religious at all, if he had gone to church in the last fifteen years he could not remember it. The only time he could remember entering a church was for weddings or the occasional funeral. If god wanted a (bitch) helper he could easily have chosen someone who would follow Him blindly, unless of course God wanted Mike because he did not believe. If that was the case, was it to show that He existed or was it some sort of punishment? He told himself to review this later. He did not know if the owner of the house was awake or asleep, only that he or she (or them) were home. Time seemed to be of the essence.

         He decided to take a peek through the window, started raising his head and found himself looking into a kitchen over the sink and surrounding counter space. After a moment, looking around the right side of the room to a pantry—vividly remembering what was behind the door in his dream—he spied movement from inside the house to his left, a hallway. He ducked down and shimmied the rest of the way to the left.

         Rising to his feet, Mike watched the right hand side of the kitchen, pressed against the wall. For a long moment, watching through the kitchen window, he waited to see who ever moved in the short hallway, only to watch the light turn off. Light still spilled out into the back yard, dim and far away from the hallway. He waited more, watching and half expecting to feel a hand slip onto his shoulder, or the form of a person racing for the door.

         That did not happen, in silence he stood under the dark and clear,  starry sky draped under the silver light of the moon watching for an event that did not come to pass. Eventually he relaxed enough to pull away from the wall and breathe a little deeper and think about his next move.

         He turned to the shed. That had been where he went in his dream first and should be the first place he goes in here. He shivers, not wanting to go another meter towards it, and dares move away from the house. Constantly glancing back to the kitchen window, Mike walks to the shed and quickly turns to the door, instead of being metal with a rusted lock it is a simple doorknob with a gold colored deadbolt. He grabbed the knob and prayed that it was locked. Places like these are never locked. He thought, and pushed inwards feeling his heart crashing against his ribs, ready to explode in one final violent pop. The door did not budge. The deadbolt was locked.

         Oh, thank god. He thought, light suddenly rushed over him like the sudden deluge from a storm. Fuck!

         Without a single thought his legs rushed into action and ran around to the far side of the shed, out from the line of sight of the house. His heart skipped a beat. He felt himself nearing a heart attack. He felt as if he was about to be killed by fear. He felt if the person inside of the house did not get him first, he would be killed from fear. His whole body shook from the fear and partly from adrenalin. His hackles were up and his skin felt cold and clammy. He can feel the sweat on his forehead starting to coalesce into droplets and drool down the sides of his face; he could very well imagine that his armpits are black with moisture.



         The backyard is darker than the front yard giving him more protection against being seen, quickly he strides through the back, passed a back door with a single window beside it, and stops. He looks into the houses kitchen, dark and full of shapes. He turns away from the house and scans over the wide open overgrowth of grass from right to left, ending at a shed against the northern fence.

         A small hut looking ready to fall down with a stiff breeze sits against the fence only a few meters from the western corner. The structure looks metal, probably aluminum, and the color is a drab shadowy gray made darker from the pale gloom of night. It is about seven feet tall and the same in width and about four or five in length. The entrance is split pieces of metal with on each side, the kind that slides to the sides. The handles look to be small pieces of metal, a small dark shape hangs from the closest handle.

         He rushes towards the shed under the cover of night, curious to see what the owners have stored inside. Before arriving at the entrance he notes that the small object hanging from the handle is a padlock, open and unhinged. Even before arriving at the entrance a horrible odor envelops him, filling his nose with the smell of rotting meat. He gags and quickly starts to breath through his mouth, approaches the entrance and stops. The pale moon light illuminates a shape inside on the floor.

         Reaching out for the metal handle, breathing through his mouth to dampen the horrible rotting smell, he realizes his fear has all but consumed him. He does not want to be here anymore, the smell drove the last of his curiosity away, leaving only pure unadulterated revolution. He wishes he could leave, get out of here, or

         (wake up)

         make this situation better. Somehow.

         He grabs the far handle and pulls it open turning away upon the sight of the corpse, and collapses back to his knees, somehow drawing down the horrible scream that wanted to escape. The cry manages to escape weakly and erupt through his mouth as a whispered whine. His stomach does not knot, instead he dry heaves instantly, closes his mouth and breaths through his nose. The smell of the rotting corpse makes him gag again, and throws his mouth open to breath again.

         His eyes water, burning after seeing the corpse (he thinks it is female) and his mouth is parched like a desert unable to produce saliva. His whole body quakes, loosing any strength he has in his muscles beyond the strength it took to keep him upright on his legs. Cursing under his breath, not wanting to see the corpse, he turns his gaze directly into the shed.

         The corpse is female and sitting straight with her head tilted back against the wall. Her straw-like blond hair covers the sides. She is missing a fairly large patch on the left side behind her bangs. Her skin is ashen and pallid, the color of death, with her mouth open slack-jawed and surrounded by cracked, blue and bloodless lips. Her left eye is gone leaving a void where it had once been. The other, faintly blue under the shroud of death, is open and ever staring outwards at the back of the doors—him. Her facial features are delicate and fragile, almost taken from stone and made life-like. She could have been pretty, even beautiful, before death. A small part has been taken off her left ear at the top. The other seems to have a slight point, almost Elven in nature.

         Her corpse is as delicate as her face looking almost like skin stretched taunt over bone almost sickly. Her chest is small, including her breasts which were still perky with erect nipples pressed against her blue shirt and her arms are toothpicks. He could bet they were rotting away under the skin. Splatters of something—blood—start just below her bust and quickly turn into a thick glaze as his eyes wander down to her stomach. There is only a hole where her stomach had once been, dark and crusted with blood. The edges of the cavernous wound are smooth on the left and bottom sides and turn into ragged rips and tears on the top and left. Bloody strips of skin and slashed muscle hang down casting a sick shadow into her body where once her internal organs had been. The shirt was reduced to ribbons an inch above and below the grievous wound and...

         His mouth drops open as his eyes quest further down the corpse beyond the sadistic wound. Her bloody hands are open and facing upwards in her crotch. A tiny baby sits gently placed in her hands, placed post-mortem with the utmost care. The baby is obviously premature and dead, killed with the mother long before it's time of birth. Its head is tilted towards the dead mother, forever joined where ever their spirits reside. He quickly scans the hands before turning away each hand had four fingers and a thumb.

         He hears a strange creaking noise from inside the shed, turns and sees the corpse staring at him with her head away from the wall. He gasps and lunges back, landing on his backside with his hands holding his body up from behind, eyes locked on the dead girls face. He sees the baby within her grasp twitch.

         The corpse of the baby started to cry.

         He could have screamed forever starting right then. The sound of the dead baby crying was the worst sound he could have imagined. It sounded too deep, too dead to be a living creature. The cries were indescribably horrific and spiritless, unfeeling and uncaring. It sounded as if it was crying because it could...because it was trying to mimic life.

         The girl—the corpse—blinked slowly with her good eye, blood oozed in a thin line from the empty left socket down her cheek almost like a tear. She—it--glanced down at the corpse in her hands, her neck creaking sickly. He could only describe that sound as something like hard leather being twisted, and still that was not the right description. The sound she made was far worse, horrible and soul chilling. The sound was as unnatural as her non-life.

         “They killed my baby!” The corpse exclaimed. Her voice was dry and cracked, barely female—barely human. “They killed my baby! Oh Lord! They killed my baby!”

         He should have screamed right then, but nothing came out of his mouth—not even a single breath. His lungs started to burn from the lack of oxygen, but that seemed unimportant and under his control. He forgot to breath. His heart missed a beat—stopped—and suddenly restarted itself as if it was a computer rebooting itself.

         “You must help my baby!” It cried, frantic an loud. He should have been afraid that the owners of the house would be roused, but that thought was about as far away as apple pie. “You must help them! You must help HER!”

         He could not handle it anymore. His legs suddenly picked him up and ran him towards the tree and the fence bordering the back and front lawns. He looked back only once, expecting to see the corpse running at him and yelling and screaming, with her dead baby crying that inhuman cry in her hands.

         He tripped over his own feet and crashed to the ground beyond the start of the house. His head struck painfully against the ground, stars exploded in his eyes and slowly fizzled away. He sat up when he could and looked back to the shed. The lawn was clear, the door was still open and only the deafening sound of silence came from the inside. He realized he was screaming, now hearing it raise and lower in pitch as he breathed as fast as his lungs would dare, never quite gathering enough oxygen.

         He did not care if someone heard him. He could not think about anything other than the screaming corpse and the crying dead baby. He sat up and pulled his hands over his mouth in horror and let out a wail of stark terror. Biting down on his bottom lip, pain flared as soon as he tasted copper on his tongue, and slammed his hand down on the ground...

         He felt something under the tips of his fingers on his right hand...



         Sliding against the wooden wall of the shed—is there a corpse in there? Is she holding a dead baby?—he peers around the corner, up to the second floor through the window. He can only see the wall and a shadow walking around, stretching, and then it vanished as the light turned off.

         Taking the moment, Mike bolted from the shed back towards the house. He runs to the tree and stops, breathing hard and shaking. He looks around the grass expecting to find something around him besides the window looking into the basement. The ground is too dark, hiding anything that might have been strewn in the grass on purpose or by accident.

         He hears a short and soft beep from his pocket, quiet enough for only him to hear. He reaches in, grabs his cell phone and pulls it out and flips open the cover. A single bar! The single bar multiplies into three and then to a full five bars! He lets out a soft sigh...and the lights on the dark street beyond the front yard flicker and finally turn on, shedding only a shreds of light through the space between the boards of the fence.

         He can see the ground in small slits. He sees a dark cylindrical shape near the fence, walks over and bends down. The shape turns out to be a broken broom handle, cracked and broken in two near the middle. Scooping up one of the pieces, Mike looks it over and turns around as soon as he sees light flooding from behind him.

         The window to the basement is on. He walks over and drops to his knees and peers in through the side, careful to keep as much of him hidden as he can. The basement is a perfect set up for a den: a bar, a pool table with dark red felt, a couch and a large fifty-some inch flat screen television with what appears to be one hell of a stereo system. He can see three doors: two on the far wall and one on the wall under the stairs.

         A man appears in his view from the stairs wearing a white t-shirt and a pair of black jeans. He is young, no older than thirty-three, with very short brown hair cut into a Caesar style and is clean shave (at least on the side that Mike can see). Around his right left wrist is a small gold chain, on the same hand is a silver band.

         He walks over to the stereo and turns it on, Mike watches as a bunch of buttons and knobs suddenly light up, back lit in greens, yellows and even a few reds. The man presses a few buttons and music pours out, dulled through the window. The song, Mike recognizes, is Rob Zombie's House of a Thousand Corpses. After turning the system on, the young man walks to the door under the staircase, opens it up and walks in, leaving Mike blind from the darkness. He walks out from the room holding a hacksaw, gleaming under the artificial basement lights, and walks over to the right hand side door inset to the far wall, digs into his pocket and pulls out a set of keys. Promptly picking out the correct key, the occupant slips it into the lock, twists and opens the door, step in and moves to the side giving Mike a quick glimpse before moving back into his line of sight.

         That look was more than enough to know that the occupant of 321 Wiccam Street is not up because he cannot sleep, and to solidify that the dream was merely a guide of some sort leading up to this night. He saw, for that brief moment, a table covered with a white sheet. He almost missed it, and maybe events would have turned out differently, but at the last minute he saw the large bloodstain near the hem. The blood stain went up only an inch or two up the cloth however it went further than his vision would allow horizontally.

         The young man walks out of the room empty handed—Mike pulls back a little more, flipping his cell phone end over end in his hand—and walks over to the door on the left, dives into his pocket for the key ring, and opens the door. Mike sees nothing except a small portion of the bare far wall, a shadow appears for a brief moment, far less than Mike's brief glimpse at the bloody cloth over the table, and vanishes.

         The cry of a woman, barely over the music, attracts his attention. The voice, as far as he can remember, was not apart of the creepy song. Pulling back, he looks at the spot where his hand was in the dream, empty, sits back and flips the top of his cell phone open. Looking at the bars, Mike still finds them full, and quickly dials 9-1-1.

         “Emergency Dispatch, what is the emergency?”

         “Uh, I don't know how to say this, but I was out for a drive and stopped on the street to get out and stretch and heard a woman screaming as if in pain.” He said, pulling back to sit in the corner between the fence and the house.

         “Did you go up to the house and—”

         “Yes, yes.” Mike said impatiently, fearfully. “I rang the doorbell twice and no one answered.”

         “Can I have your name, sir?” The operated asked.

         “Sure.” He said and picked the first name that came to his mind. “Peter Trust.”

         “Do you know the address of the house, Mr. Trust?” She asked, calmly.

         He did not know how she could be calm, but then realized that she was not here. She did not have the dreams. She was not participating in what seemed like a scripted event.

         “321 Wiccam Street. Please hurry!”

         “We will have someone go there. Where are you currently?”

         The young man walked out from the room, back over to the door below the stairs and vanished only to reappear with something in his hand, possibly pliers. He closed his eyes and shuddered, seeing the image of the finger in his hand. The young man walked back into the room, less than a moment lager he heard another scream from the lady and shuddered. He could almost feel a finger of his being severed. The cry abruptly stopped and the man raced out of the room, over to the stairs and up onto the main floor. 

         His cell phone beeped again. He pulled it away from his ear all of the bars had vanished. He cursed under his breath and stood up. He raced around the corner, under the window on the second floor, and stopped at the kitchen window, dropped to his hands and knees and scurried to the other side, between the window and the back door, pressed himself against the window and looked in.

         His eyes froze on a large soup pot on the stove, seeing that the pot was full and bubbling slowly. He bit down on his lip hard enough to taste blood and waited for a short moment. He opened the screen door quickly, trying to be as silent as possible, and grabbed the doorknob of the door between him and the kitchen. The door opened—

         —and felt his fingers push through something that gave little resistance. The object was cold and slimy. He looked over his shoulder and let out another cry. His hand rested on a severed arm with his fingers pushed through the bloated, blue-gray rotting skin. Small critters crawled over the rotting flesh, pushing through small black holes to gain entrance or to escape. He pulled his hand away and turned back towards the shed.

         Pushing himself from the ground, wiping his hand on his pants, he rounded the corner on a heading towards the back door. He knew he had to enter and find the girl, if she was still alive. The baby and the screeching corpse made the rotting arm seem like nothing, just another horror in some type of sick fun house. He doubted anything could put him on a higher terror level.

         He grabbed the doorknob and twisted. The door opened and he slipped into the dark kitchen, quickly engulfed by the smell of soup. The soup smelled wonderful and his stomach growled, reminding him that he was now empty and needed refueling after the expunge in the front yard. He ignored that for the moment and looked around.

         The kitchen is old with bulky and boxy shaped appliances—stove and fridge, both a horrid olive green, a toaster and a huge, ancient microwave—with shelves and cupboards that need replacing, or at least repairs and a fresh coat of paint. The doors barely hang on their rusted hinges, some have broken loose from the top-most hinge with only a few left unscathed and filthy. The cupboard are all dirty white, especially around the brass knobs, with paint that is cracked and peeling; large spaces have peeled right off, leaving jagged edges just like the wound in the woman's stomach.

         The stove holds a large black pot containing the fragrant soup, an old metal container with rust around the welds where the handles meet the body, at least able to hold ten liters. The liquid churns and bubbles with an orange flame gently licking the black bottom. The fridge, which might have held pictures made from children held on by magnets holds only a single piece of paper. The paper has writing scrawled over the top half in what looks like a shopping list. The counters are a lighter version of green and have been banged up pretty good, with most of the damage concentrated around the double-sink, both full of old, crusty and moldy white dishes with green patters around the edge.

         In front of him, on the left, is a hallway leading deeper into the dingy, dirty house. The light quickly fades into darkness unceremoniously and almost ominously. Also in front of him, to the right, is a small door leading into what is probably a pantry, or a utility closet. Looking down at the dust covered floor, seeing traces of footprints on the bubbled and water stained brown linoleum, he doubts that the door led into a utility closet. The floor has not been swept in years. The footprints lead from the hallway to the fridge, from the fridge to the oven, from the oven to the pantry and back.

         He walks over to the door and opens it. His breath dies in his throat, along with an aborted scream that tried to grow in his throat. The closet is unmistakably a pantry with four shelves from the group up to the ceiling, each covered with dirty white wallpaper speckled with tiny faded red and yellow flowers, each shelf holding dozens possibly as many as a hundred Mason jars. Each jar is filled with a strange brown liquid with herbs resting peacefully at the bottom. He realized quickly that the brown liquid is a brine. Resting at the bottom of each jar, floating in the middle or near the top, is a body part. Fingers, toes, eyes, ears, bits of flesh surrounding small bones. He makes out a couple of jars set in the back with a whole foot from just above the ankle down, or a hand.

         He pulls back and slams the door, unconcerned about his presence. Somehow he realizes that he cannot be heard. Not here. This universe is away from that of the Normal universe. He has found himself in some sort of fucked-up place—hell. The noise echoes through the whole house, drawing back into the kitchen as a distorted sound.

         Turning around, he walks to the pot and looks in, not wanting to but somehow needing to. He can see nothing except bubbling water and a few carrots bobbing up and down aimlessly. He glances to the fridge, able to read the writing on the note under through the gloom: 6 Carrots, 1 head of broccoli, 2 eyes, 2 cloves garlic, 4 ladyfingers, 1 white onion (chopped and squared), basil, oregano, marjoram,  and 1 aborted fetus. He turns back to the stew broiling on the stove and—



         The scream of a lady rips through the house, distorting as the shrill cry of horror and agony bounces off the walls of the hallway and the kitchen. He bolts down the hall and—



         —that was where the dream ended on this night. He heard the shrill cry of horror with his ears. Thankfully the cry was not in pain, yet. Looking around the kitchen, kept brutally neat and clean, the appliances are black and matches the black marble counters with chaotic white strands, a silver dual sink (empty and sparkling), and a white tiled floor (swept, mopped and almost buffed to a shine), and deep brown cabinets.

         The fridge holds bills placed under a Red Cross magnet with a printed email of a recipe for a desert called Joey's Ladyfingers. He scans over the recipe, expecting to see human body parts mixed in with the ingredients and found only those that should be there. The pot on the stove has only started to simmer, a few bubbles line the circumference. Sitting beside the pot, on a white marble slab used as a cutting board, are the basic stock of any soup: broccoli, carrots, garlic, onion, celery and fresh spices.

         Footfalls from above. He takes one final look around—a pantry and a hallway—and strides down the hallway as silently as he can, not daring to find out what might be stored in strange brown pickling juice.

         The hallway ends with the start of the living room, darkened by the shadow of night, and is as clean as the kitchen, from what he can tell. On the right hand side of the hallway, near the middle, is a simple door with a brass knob, closed. The door to the basement. He stops, grabs the knob and twists, glances up to the smooth white ceiling and waits for any sound. He hears the faint sound of footfalls from behind him, inside of a room above the kitchen.

         His only thought, as he pushes the door to the basement open, is if the police will take his call seriously, and (if they do) when they would arrive.

         The door is set directly above the stairs leading down, complete with a darkly stained wooden rail. He steps down, some Pearl Jam song is now playing loudly, and he closes the door behind him as he steps through he threshold. Quickly, Mike walks down to the floor, orientating passed the clean and orderly furnishings to the door on the left. From this angle he can see two freezers inside of the room.

         Glancing into the room on the right, the table is nearly in full view. The top, like the hem, is stained a deep maroon, the blood of past victims Mike could not help. Hell, could he even help the lady in the room straight ahead? For all he knew, that last cry could have been her death cry. Who knows what the man could have done to her. The scream was not full of pain, but the man could have doped her up to the gills with sedatives, or pain meds. All he knew is that someone, dead or alive, is in that room, somehow subdued.

         He moves closer, passed the lightly stained oaken pool table with the dark red felt, and pauses for only a brief moment as he sees the plastic film over the carpet inside the room. He can also start to smell the acrid scent of urine. The song fades away, he can hear the frantic breathing from the woman in the room—is she really alive? Could she be a talking corpse?—and thinks he hears the ceiling creak from above.

         He glances into the room on the right and shudders seeing the floor, the ceiling and the walls in that room are covered by plastic, except for hooks that jut out of the ceiling like curved claws. There are four of those claws near the window. He turns away not wanting to know what those claws are for.

         He stops just before entering the room, silent as a creeping mouse, and grips his stick harder. He cannot imagine what he would see through that door. The only sure thing about the whole fucked-up night is that he cannot be ready for anything he experiences, especially now that he is in uncharted territory that his dreams had not yet touched.

         For a short moment, less than a moment, he closes his eyes long enough to draw in a deep and ragged breath. Footfalls hit the floor above him, wood whisper creek down into the basement, and he knows that a confrontation is about to happen. He knows he can easily hide in the room, but in that moment he realizes that if the lady in the next room knows that he is here (trying to help) she could inadvertently give away his presence. He slips back, through the manageable maze of tidy furniture, and presses himself against the wall made from the stairs, next to the door.

         The door to the basement opens above him. He stops breathing. One foot lands on the top stair. Then the next. He hears the first foot hit the second stair, and then the next foot. His heart pounds loud in his chest, hard that he can hear it reverberating in his ears. For a moment he thinks that his heart might be pounding so loud that the monster above him might hear. He had to take that risk. He could not just stop his heart. He takes a hard grip on the wooden rod with both hands, and waits for him.

         He counts the stairs that the feet take, slow and steady, and turns his head towards the base. From the upper corner of his eye Mike sees the leg appear, naked and dotted with barely visible blond hair. He readies himself for the final confrontation.

         Uttering a quick prayer in his mind, he watches as the foot travels down to the next step—two steps left—and feels the muscles in his stomach clench. His arms clench and unclench, ready for a blow that hopefully knocks out the bastard with one fell swoop. It has been so long since he has had the need to use violence against another human; in his mind he reminds himself that this man cannot be human. He is a monster.

         One step.

         Right foot.

         Left foot.

         The doorbell rings as soon as his feet touch the light tan carpet.

         “What the fuck?” He mutters. His voice is light but annoyed, hurried.

         The bell nearly scares Mike into a heart attack, not expecting what must be the arrival of the police at the moment that should have been their decisive meeting. He waits perfectly still, ready to give the man a whack if he does ignore the bell. He sees the feet turn around and listens to the occupant walking back up the stairs. He peels himself from the wall only as he hears the door to the basement close.

         Now is his opportunity arrives. He bolts from the stairs, around the furnishings to the door on the left and runs in. He starts to turn around and freezes looking under the plastic sheet in the far upper corner of the room. His eyes are staring at two pieces of black and dark blue luggage, something he should have missed. Obscured by the faintly dusty plastic sheeting are two large pieces of black luggage with a dark blue stripe running along the zipper from one side to the other. He could barely see WestJet’s colors on a small tag around the black handles.

         “No, no.” He whispered under his breath, glancing over to the staircase leading back to the main floor. He turns back to pair of luggage shaking his head. “No, no…”

         The woman moaned from one of the rooms, it almost sounded like his wife. Almost. No, this can’t be. No…

The luggage haunted him, unable to keep his eyes from the dyed leather he walks over and collapses to his knees. His hands shake badly as he reaches out and grabs the zipper from the side. The strength runs out from his hands as he starts to open the luggage, shaking his head back and forth.  No, she’s safe and sound. In a hotel or at dinner with someone, maybe she’s even having an affair. Anything other than…

He found the strength to open the black and blue striped luggage with the deep seeded fear that the luggage might belong to his wife, quickly realizing that his fear had not been without truth. On top of a white blouse she liked to wear to lengthy meetings—it kept her cool and dry—is a picture of himself holding a fairly large rainbow trout in one hand and his lucky red and brown fishing rod in the other. That picture had been taken last year on the May long weekend.

His mouth opens and closes silently, staring blankly at the picture resting neatly on top of his wife’s folded white shirt suddenly unaware of anything else, even the woman in one of the other rooms. All that exists is the picture of him standing on a dock grinning like a twelve year old holding the fish and the rod, and the knowledge that his wife was here in this house. This fucking house!

Now the fear and confusion started to settle in with Mike thinking such thoughts as ‘What was she doing in this house?’ and ‘how long has she been here?’ under that he felt anger. Pure rage. Looking around, searching for anything he could use as a weapon and figuring out where his wife was being held: straight ahead beyond his right shoulder. The door leading into a dimly lit room was cracked slightly open.

Feeling his hands aching from holding the wooden weapon, Mike slowly brings himself back up to his feet, glancing away from the doorway leading to his wife up to the door atop the stairs, and walks over to the cracked door. He pushes the door open slowly, only a bit at first remembering the deadly traps found all throughout the Saw universe, and pokes his head in. He looks down at the floor and then up to the ceiling, and glances to the right.

         Her arms are strung up above her head, bound by shackles and chains attached to large metal circles dangling below the smooth white ceiling. Her wavy brown hair dangles around her face, bordering it like the dead corpse in his dreams, with her make-up smeared and oozing down her dirty tear-stained face. Her blue eyes are lost in terror and confusion. Her cheeks are red with the rest of her face pallid, nearly white. She is wearing a blue t-shirt with white hem around the neck, a shirt she loved to wear when wanting his fancy for a couple hours in the bedroom, and a pair of skin tight jean-shorts that always enticed him. Her crotch is dark and wet, a line of fresh blood oozes down her right inner thigh.

         “Fucking Christ!” He cries, pushing through the doorway into the den of horrors. Tears sting his eyes and drop down his cheeks, shaking almost violently. He drops the stick and reaches up to the shackles and tries to pry them open unsuccessfully and sees a keyhole.

         She hears his voice and throws her attention from the window on the far right wall to him. Her fear outmatches his tenfold, instead of being light blue her eyes are dark and red, lined with dark lines. Her thin, almost blue, line-like lips open and fill ever so slightly as she whispers his name. Her skin is pale, almost a deathly white, from the loss of blood. Throughout all of that, she still is lucid.

Dear God! How didn’t you go insane? He asks her silently and looks down to her crotch and somehow manages to hide a shiver. The baby must be in distress, if not already miscarried. He knows it, but does she? How am I staying sane? The answer is simple: somehow the dreams—whatever they are—built up some sort of tolerance. 

“Maria…” He whispers. “Oh Jesus Maria!”

“The baby!” She cried. “Something’s wrong! The baby!”

Yes, the baby. He thought, almost incoherently through a building cloud of rage overtaking his conscious mind. Instead of asking for him to let her go she instantly asked about the baby. Such a humanitarian. Mike wants the baby. He wants to hold him in his arms, change his dirty shit-filled pampers, stay up late soothing his tears; eventually he wants to teach him how to play catch, watch television with him and help him with his home work; he wants nothing more than to help him catch the girl, or the boy, of his dreams and be there for him when said girl, or boy, break up with him. He wants to be there when his boy gets married and has his own child, but at this moment the baby means very little.

Maria is everything.

“I’ll be back hun.” He whispered, looked up into her terrified eyes and nodded. “I’ll be back.”

“I need an ambulance!” She cried. “I need to get to the hospital! The baby—”

He nodded and turned around, eyes casting down to the wooden rod. “Don’t worry. We’ll get you there.”

         He grabs the stick and runs out of the room into the downstairs den, around the furniture over to the stairs and runs up, not caring who may hear him. Seeing his wife chained up to the wall, crying in horror with blood from her crotch oozing down her inner thighs that should have been keeping the baby alive and well, somehow made the desire to keep his whereabouts secret vanish.

         He wants blood.

         The door between him and the upstairs is closed. He grabs the knob with his off-hand, twists and throws it open, exposing a hallway leading into a kitchen to the left and directly towards the front door on the right as the door crashes hard enough against the wall to break drywall.

         The owner of the house, the fucked up freak who had his wife chained to the wall, quickly turned to look over his shoulder wide-eyed, not expecting anyone—the girl—to have done that. Those chains had kept more than a few dozen people in place until the ritual was done and the food was ready to be chopped up and frozen. Who he saw was even more unexpected.

         “Ah shit!” The monster muttered and tried throwing the door closed.

         Everything happened so damned fast.

         The police officer, Cliff Sinclair, a young detective doing a patroller’s job for the evening, heard the basement door slam against the hallway wall from deeper inside the house—Robert Frost said he was alone this evening—and quickly turned around on the balls of his heels to watch as the door quickly started closing. Instantly, without a single thought, his hands came up and stopped the door from closing and shoved himself into the precious small space between him and the door. The edge of the door smashed into his forehead opening a small cut and slammed him against the frame, blood quickly oozed out from the small cut leaving a small red trail down the slope of his nose.

“My wife!” Mike cried, rushing for Robert Frost bringing up the makeshift bat up to smash his goddamned head in. “You son-of-a-bitch!”

The last fight Mike had been in was during grade eleven, and it showed. The adrenalin roaring through his veins peaked, soaking every muscle in his body to tighten up and work in a fight-or-flight response. So much so that when he brought down the stick in a tight arc he missed Robert Frost by half of a foot.

Frost dropped back, hitting the front door as Cliff pushed, and swore loudly as he watched the rod swing passed him knowing full well that he could have stood there and it would have still missed him, and reached behind his back his back. He met some resistance from the door and then felt himself being pushed forward towards Mike, drawing the stick up for another attempt at Frost’s body.

He threw himself at Mike, behind him the door flew open revealing Cliff Sinclair as he stumbled in, not expecting the resistance to vanish, and saw Mr. Frost drawing out a small two inch blade from his belt as the man with the wooden bat attacked. Cliff’s hand went straight for his hips, flicking off the button holding the leather strap between his hand and his gun. Frost’s arm darted forward with the blade glinting under the pale yellow light permeating the thin hallway.

Mike saw the knife and felt his body adjusting to the new dire threat. His arm brought the makeshift weapon down fast and hard watching with utter delight as the wood met the monster’s arm and the wonderful sound of bone splintering buried under a layer of flesh and muscle.

Cliff pulled his gun out from his holster as Mike’s body automatically adjusted to the new dire threat, barely seeing the thin blade in time, aimed at Frost’s general torso area as the makeshift wooden bat came down, and pulled the trigger as Mike’s weapon connected square in the middle of Frost’s forearm. The report was deafening for all three of them, Mike almost swore he might have had an erection as he felt the satisfying solid connection, and felt the blessed feeling of bone breaking under the massive blow wishing he could have heard it or Frost’s screams.

Frost didn’t scream. The bullet hit him a few inches under his right shoulder blade, vanished into his body, followed by a spray of blood, for a quick moment and exited through the front. A gout of blood splashed the floor in front of him with a fine mist spraying Mike’s midsection. His mouth opened but not a single audible sound could be heard, even as his forearm bent impossibly in the middle between his elbow and wrist with blood welled out from his arm instantly from his bone ripping through the bottom onto the dark hardwood floor. He crashed into Mike, pushing him off balance, and both of them fell to the floor like a lover being pounced.

Only Cliff watched as the blade flipped end over end to the floor through the blue haze of gun smoke, gun still pointed at Frost’s torso as he stepped in, and stopped a few feet inside the hallway.

“You sick fucking freak!” Mike screamed throwing the bat to the side and pushed the injured, possibly even dying man off of his chest onto the floor against the wall.

This was not the first incident where Cliff had to draw his sidearm and use it, but it was the first time his target was not screaming in sheer agony, and it was the first time the target started to get back up. Frost cradled his broken arm up against his chest and lifted himself up off the ground with his other hand, blood spilling down his back from the entry wound and drooling onto the carpeted floor below his chest. He held the gun steady, watching with the keen eyes of a hunter waiting to see what his prey had planned as his next move.

Frost shook his head glancing at Mike as he settled down on his knees. “Out of all the centuries I’ve been doing this, I am always astounded on just how bad events can turn out.”

“Don’t move.” Cliff warned reaching up for the microphone clipped to his right shoulder.

Robert Frost turned to Cliff, sporting a sideways grin. “Did you ever figure out what happened to your wife?”

Cliff Sinclair’s hand froze, the muzzle of his standard issue gun raising to take aim at Frost’s forehead. “W-what?”

The disappearance of Cliff’s wife three months ago was a highly publicized event in the media. Anything that the Sinclair family went through was publicized in some form or another, being a family of business people, and the private owners of Sinclair Industries, and hero’s dating back since Cyan’s creation. When Cliff’s wife went missing the media went on a rampage.

“I’ve got to hand it to you, she was a beauty!” Frost chuckled and started to push himself up off his legs and knees towards his feet.

“Stay down!” Cliff hollered.

No one on the force had ever seen Cliff’s hands anything but calm and still, now Mike and Robert could see the hand holding his weapon quaking out of rage and fear. The left corner of Frost’s lip quivered and grew backwards into a grimacing cruel grin.

“Do you want your wife out from her chains, Michael?” Frost asked, never taking his eyes off Cliff.

“Y-yes…” Mike whispered.

“Go upstairs into the second door on the left, my bedroom, you will see a desk with a small jewelry box on it, bring that to me.” Frost said, his sideways grin broke over his whole mouth.

Mike glanced up at Cliff, concentrating down on Robert Frost who had stopped trying to get back to his feet. Cliff flicked his eyes to Mike and nodded slowly, dropping his gaze back to Frost right after.

“Be careful.” Cliff said.

Mike stood up and walked passed Frost and Cliff, wanting nothing more than to kick the monstrous son of a bitch in the jaw—wanting to hear his jaw break and the scream that would come out—and vanished up the stairs leading towards Robert’s bedroom.

“Did she have her cell phone on her that day?” Frost asked. “And if she did, did she try to contact you?”

“Shut up.” Cliff growled.

She did have her cell phone on her and she did try to call him. It was a Saturday morning, one he decided to sleep in after drinking a little too much the night before. She went to the used book store to see what new wares they had, looking for a certain book she had not been able to find for almost a dozen years, and called home after finding one of the tires had been slashed. That was the last time he had heard her beautiful voice.

Frost chuckled and dropped his voice to a bare whisper. “How much do you miss her, Cliff?”

Cliff reacted out of blind rage and instinct. He shot forwards and slammed the butt end of the gun into Frost’s forehead, pulled his arm back and set the muzzle against Frost’s temple, blood instantly trickled down from the brand new cut. Frost pushed against the muzzle and orientated his eyes back on Cliff’s furious green eyes.

“Shut the fuck up!”

Frost broke out into a fresh, dark, joyous gout of laughter. “H-how did you manage not to g-give into those beautiful brown eyes?”

Cliff pulled the muzzle away and slammed the butt back into the side of Frost’s head almost as hard as he could if only to knock the monster out. The inertia rocked Frost’s head to the side, nearly knocking him over. He did not so much as wince. He could never resist those eyes.

“And those legs! Oh those precious, ever reaching—”

He lashed out and broke Frost’s nose with his fist, feeling the cartilage snapping into pieces under the bones of his hand. Blood flowed freely out onto his lips and down his chin. He punched Frost across the right side of his face, again and again until blood freely flowed from his split lips, mingling with the blood of his broken nose as it washed down the underside of his chin.

For a long moment Frost said nothing, only looked down at the bloody carpet below him, feeling a line of blood gushing out of his mouth and nose only to drop down into his lap. He looked up and grinned—his eyes held only malice now. His split upper lip curled back and exposed freshly broken pink teeth—and still he did not seem to notice the pain!

“And how about that tattoo on her mound?” Frost asked, grimacing in anger. “Did you kiss it before you went down on her? Did you—”

Cliff dropped to his knees and pushed the muzzle of his gun up against the blood underside of Frost’s neck and pushed himself close enough to kiss. Two furious sets of eyes stared balefully into the other. “Say one more word and I’ll blow your fucking head off.”

“Word.” Robert Frost growled.

Cliff, though sometimes a shady cop when it came to arrests and tampering with evidence to make sure a conviction was made, was not a murderer. He pulled himself back and stood up, turned around for a brief moment and slammed the bottom of his boot into Frost’s face, driving his head hard against the wall behind him, kicked him in the stomach, barely missing Frost’s broken arm and went to kick him in the chest. Frost grabbed his foot and twisted. Cliff howled in pain and pulled back as hard and as fast as he could, managing to pull his leg away before Frost broke his ankle, and collapsed to the floor.

“I made her scream for you!” Frost yelled between gasps for air as Cliff hit the floor. “She sobbed your fucking name as I cut her!”

Cliff scrambled onto his back and sat up as Frost somehow started gathering himself up onto his feet. The lower half of his face smeared with blood.

“I cut her fucking fingers off while she was alive!” Frost screamed, darted and grabbed Cliff by the collar and started lifting him to his feet. “I ate one while she watched!”

Cliff slipped the muzzle of his gun against Frost’s stomach and pulled the trigger. He felt the warmth of Frost’s blood splashing over his hand and saw the fine spray splash against the wall behind him. Frost stopped, looked down at his stomach and over to cliff. Cliff pulled the trigger again, more blood splashed over his hand and against the wall behind Frost.

Frost threw Cliff across the hall as if he had the weight of a ragdoll. Cliff’s back slammed into the front door with a resounding crack as the wood splintered behind him, pain flared through his torso and his lungs expelled their contents. His right hand opened and the gun fell uselessly to the floor beside him.

“Did you know she was pregnant?” Frost asked. His belly, covered in a ruined white t-shirt, quickly soaked in his own blood, two holes gushing blood and still he did not seem to feel it! Frost, bloodied from the neck down, started almost strutting towards Cliff. “Your baby tasted so damned good!”

What are you? Cliff tried to say, instead he gasped out a hoarse whisper of pure agony. In front of him, between him and the monster with a broken nose, teeth and three bullet wounds that should have had him rolling around in agony—at least—he watched as Mike walked down the stairs slowly, holding the jewelry box and a large shiny knife. He kept his eyes forward on the beast in front of him, watching through the corner of his eye as Mike set the box down on the stairs and got into a position.

“And now you and your meddling friend will join your beloved wife.” Frost growled; blood washed out of his mouth now.

Mike had little time to prepare himself, as soon as he pressed himself against the wall he saw Frost’s toes appear on the floor beside him. He lashed out with the knife, the shining blade singing as it cut through the air, ending its song as the blade pierced the skin of Frost’s neck. The blade slid through the skin, tendons and muscles with ease—powered by Mike’s fury and fear—and cut through the artery.

Even before the wave of blood excited the wound, Cliff watched as Frost’s eyes went wide and his mouth slipped open. The blood splashed out in a gory torrent and his hands started to reach straight up. Cliff pulled all of the strength left in his body, reached out and grabbed the gun, brought it up and aimed at the monstrosity’s temple and pulled the trigger.

Frost through Cliff like a doll, now he swiveled on his feet and dropped to the ground like one with blood, hair, bits of skull and brains smattered against the walls and floor. Mike pulled back into the hallway and Cliff sat against the front door holding his gun up and out, quivering as he tried to keep up his strength.

No one moved—they barely breathed or gasped—for a long moment, Cliff watching Frost as he lay face first on the floor in an expanding pool of blood. Finally his right hand dropped onto the floor, the gun toppled out onto the carpet. They waited a little longer until Cliff reached up with his left hand, took hold of the microphone and pressed the Push To Talk button.

“Dispatch, this is Cliff Sinclair at 321 Wiccam Street, I have a 217 with the perpetrator…dead.” That almost sounded like a question. He felt it was questionable. “Possible multiple 187s and a 207. I need back up, CSI unit and a couple ambulances. I’m hurt.”

“10-4, Cliff, back up and ambulance on their way shortly.”

“10-4” Cliff muttered and dropped his arm to the floor, eying the mess in front of him and what appeared to be the corpse of Robert Frost—hoping it was a corpse.

“He took three bullets and a broken arm and didn’t even feel it.” Mike said and picked up the plain wooden box Robert wanted him to retrieve from his bedroom.

Flipping the lid open, sitting on the top of necklaces, rings and earring is an old iron key looking small enough to open the shackles holding his wife captive. Mike took the key out and closed the lid, holding it in his tightly balled fist, turning to Cliff, he wanted nothing more than to get down into the basement and free his beloved wife.

Cliff knew what Mike was thinking. “Give me the box and go.”

Mike heard everything said between Cliff and Robert, probably most of the neighborhood heard the commotion and knew Cliff needed to know if his wife had fallen victim to Frost or not. He hoped she had not except he couldn’t help but have a sinking feeling in his heart. The dream led him here for the apocalyptical battle between good and bad—he seemed to have been the instrument to start the fight—and somehow he believed Fate would have brought Cliff here no matter what. He was Robert’s counterpoint.

He nodded, walked over to the officer that saved him and killed Frost, handed him the box, turned and walked for the stairs leading to the basement.

Cliff took the box, set it on his legs and opened the lid and sifted through the necklaces and pendants and rings. A flash of white gold caught his attention, closed his eyes and prayed for the best, a silent prayer to God he knew had long since abandoned his people. He took the ring between his fingers and held it up in front of his face, not daring to open his eyes—not daring to find out if Frost had been telling the truth.

He had to know.

Sitting against the front door, the young man—he didn’t even know his name—had a second chance with his wife when, in his hand, that second chance might not be in the cards for him. He drew in a deep breath and released it and opened his eyes. In his hand is a fairly small ring with a small diamond, not the one set in his wife’s ring.



Mike walked down the stairs at a brisk pace, listening to anything that might be happening upstairs—in case Robert Frost was somehow still very much alive—and waiting to hear the sirens of Cliff’s back up and the ambulance. As soon as he touched down on the cement he broke out into a fast stride, almost running for his wife.

Grabbing the door he stopped himself, quickly rounding the corner stopping beside Maria. Her arms strapped above her head by chains ending in a small clamp with a small MASTERCRAFT lock on each wrist and two clamps keeping her legs in place, also locked with newer looking locks.

She turned to him with a terrified squeak thinking it was Frost. Without uttering a single word, Mike grabbed her closest wrist and tried to slip the key into the small hole. It proved too small at the moment. His hands kept missing.

“I heard a gun…” She whined sounding tired.

Blood loss. He thought and forced himself to slow down. He finally managed to slip the key in the lock and twisted. For a moment he thought the key wouldn’t fit the lock, but it twisted easily and the lock popped open. Of course, there are three more locks the key didn’t have to fit into.

“It’s okay. He’s not going to hurt anyone again.” He whispered watching her arm flop limply down to her side.

He couldn’t hear a sense of relief in his own voice.

“The baby…are the police coming?” She asked.

“Yah, they are.” Mike whispered, crossed to the other side and pushed the key in the lock without looking at the blood staining her shorts and skin. He closed his eyes and turned the key, praying it would work, and felt the second lock open. He opened his eyes, positioned himself against his wife and pulled the clamp open, instantly she tried dropping towards the floor with his body getting in the way. “Your going to be…just fine.”

Yes, he believed his lovely wife was going to be just fine, but he doubted he would have a child in another six months. The shock was starting to pull back from his heart letting him feel a little remorse and pain for the loss of his son or daughter, but relieved that Maria and him could try again.

“No.” She whispered shaking her head very slowly. “Nothing’s going to be alright.”

That he could believe, at least in the short time. “Can you keep yourself up?”

She nodded and somehow found the strength to push off Mike and press herself against the wall. Mike waited for a moment before dropping to his knees and unshackling his wife utterly and completely from her stay at the Frost household.

“Okay, I’m going to get you to sit down.” He whispered, took hold of her and slowly lowered her to the floor. He wrapped his arms around Maria and hugged her close, whispering: “We have an officer upstairs. All we have to do is wait until the ambulance comes.”

Now safe away from Robert Frost, Maria began to cry in relief. Mike held her close and cried as silent as he could knowing just how close to death the love of his life had been.

The ambulance arrived a few minutes later and took care of Maria as fast as they could, checking for other injuries by the standard First Aid patting pattern, put her on a stretcher and whisked her to the hospital. A paramedic took a quick look over Mike and gave him a clean bill of health physically, after that he rushed over to the hospital to be with his wife.



Cliff sustained two cracked ribs, four misaligned vertebrae and a thrown out hip and one hell of a massive internal investigation due to the situation, how he conducted himself—the current chief of police talked to Mike and asked him to use a certain concocted story and lied by saying Frost would be seen as innocent if the story was not followed—and why the body was beaten and shot three times.

On the third day of the investigations, Robert Frost’s corpse vanished from Cyan General’s morgue.