Michael Collings - The Slab

“Stop it,” Kyle said. “It’s not blood. It’s probably just…just oil or dirt or something.”

“Aw, come on,” Brady answered, punching Kyle lightly on the shoulder. “Get into it. This is a Haunted House, see, and this is the blood of a crazed axe murderer who slices his victims’ throats with a rusty knife and drinks their blood. Only he got nervous and spilled some. And I’ll bet if we looked around we’d see the white, blood-drained bodies hanging on great big hooks on the walls.”

“Don’t,” Kyle began, but almost instinctively he swung the tiny beam of the penlight in a wide arc.

Both boys screamed.

The penlight clattered to the floor, blinked twice, and died.

The boys screamed again, Kyle’s voice higher and sharper than Brady’s. Something filmy, cob-webby, and slightly sticky flickered against his cheek. He yelped and slapped at the thing with his free hand.

“Oww!” Brady yelled as Kyle’s open hand caught him on the shoulder, right where a long strip of mummy wrappings had become unraveled and flapped back and forth. “Oww! That’s me.”

He grabbed Kyle’s arm. Kyle let out a small screech, then a whimper before he understood that it was Brady. Only Brady.

“I…I saw…something,” Kyle said finally, his breath still catching in his throat. There was a moment of silence. Something rustled in the dark. Brady’s feet, Kyle decided.

Hoped.

“Yeah,” Brady admitted, his voice echoing hollow and frail. “Yeah. I did too.”

“What was it?”

“I dunno.”

“Should we…”

“Where’s the light?” Brady’s whisper had dropped almost to inaudibility.

“I…dropped it.”

“Shit.” There was another long moment. Nothing moved in the garage. There was no sound.

Maybe, Kyle thought frantically, maybe if we don’t move, it won’t know we’re here. We’ll be safe. Something shuffled to his right. “Brady!” He grabbed out and found Brady’s arm-or what he hoped was Brady’s arm. It was swathed in stiff bits of cloth that in the dark depths of Kyle’s imagination hung fetid with mold and clotted with long-rancid mummy-sweat.

“Here. I’m trying to find…just a sec.”

The arm wrenched away and Kyle was left alone in the darkness. He scrunched his eyelids so tightly closed that blue lightning streaked across the darkness. He concentrated on every sound. A small scrape. A smaller flick. And Brady’s laugh, harsh and hollow.

“Gotcha.”

Kyle jerked his eyes open. He was staring into the pale yellow eye of his own penlight. He held his hand over his eyes. Even the dim glow seemed too bright. The light disappeared. As his eyes adjusted to the near darkness, Kyle saw Brady sweep the closest wall with the beam. There was so little illumination that he could make out no details-just a broad stretch of yellow-grey drywall. And a hint of white. He drew in his breath with an audible hiss.

Brady laughed again and walked toward the thing apparently hanging in the corner. As the light spread across its smooth surface, even Kyle felt a flood of relief.

It was not a blood-drained corpse after all. It was only a water heater. Brady touched the slick enamel surface with his free hand. The mummy wrappings hung like dead moss from his arm.

“Cold,” he announced, as if he had discovered an important clue. He bend over and peered into the darkness under the heater.

Kyle’s arms shot out, as if to grab Brady and pull him back, away from there, away from the darkness that might hold…rats, snakes, spiders, anything at all.

“No pilot,” Brady said. He straightened up and turned the penlight toward Kyle. For the second time in moments, Kyle’s eyes took the full force of the light and he blinked against it

“Come on,” Brady said, motioning with the light. Their shadows bounced crazily from the ceiling and the walls and the shiny white water heater. For an instant, Kyle felt dizzy and sick. But there was no time to worry about shadows. Brady was already through an open door-open? — and playing the light across dark wood cabinets.

The kitchen.

Kyle shuddered and followed.

He caught up to Brady and put his hand on Brady’s shrouded arm.

“We been inside, okay. Now let’s go.”

Brady flicked the penlight off for an instant. When he turned it on again, he was holding it against his chin, the light spilling upward across his face, half swathed with wrappings, the other half scarred and shadowed with his mother’s best lipstick and eye shadow.

Kyle yelped, knowing all the time that he was being silly, that it was only Brady showing off, but frightened nonetheless. He fingered his silver six-shooters, wishing that they were real, that he was a real Texas Ranger and not afraid of anything.

Brady turned the light away and started moving through the kitchen.

“Hey Brade, how ’bout it? Huh? Let’s go.”

Brady swiveled and thrust the light beneath his chin again and spoke in a low whisper that almost made Kyle wet his pants. “Velcome to my castle. My name is Drrraaacuuula!”

It was the wrong line, given Brady’s choice of costume, but neither boy cared. Kyle was too frightened by the darkness and the eerie shadows and the coldness and the sense that he had better get out of there right now. Brady was just having too much fun to worry. He disappeared into the living room.

Kyle watched for a second, debating whether or not to back on out through the garage and head down Oleander toward the welcoming lights. But as the cabinets and fixtures in the kitchen disappeared and matching shadows began bobbing on the bit of the living room wall he could see through the walkway, he knew that he wouldn’t, couldn’t go back, not alone. Not without the light, puny as it was. There was that water heater, after all, that just might not really be a water heater, not any more. And the blood on the concrete that just might really be blood. He started after Brady.

By that time Brady was turning another corner into the hallway. The living room was empty, its blank walls and high, open-beam ceiling looming as vast as an aircraft hanger in the darkness.

Kyle half-ran across the room, noting vaguely the shuffling sound of his feet on unworn carpet. He caught up to Brady just as the other boy was shining the light into the first opening along the hall.

A bathroom. The toilet and sink glowed ghostly pale. The shadow line on the tub wavered and quivered, and it didn’t take much for Kyle to imagine the porcelain half full of something dark and thick and oily that wasn’t oil and that might hide…

He backed out, pulling Brady with him. The door opposite opened into a bedroom. It was empty. Kyle was relieved to see that the closet door was tightly shut. No shadows. No bogeymen hiding in there. A bit of light from the houses down the hill came through the dust-caked window, dimming the tiny penlight even more. The corner room was another bedroom. It was empty too.

Brady flashed the light along the final stretch of hallway. Three…no, four doors. Two closed, one open just enough for the difference in colors to suggest a slit of black caught between two larger surfaces. And one wide open.

“Brady,” Kyle said, not caring how much fear came through in his voice. “Come on. Let’s go!” He was whining, he knew it. He heard the childishly petulant tones he used (not always successfully) on Mom and Dad when they wanted one thing and he wanted another. And right now, he wanted another thing more than he had even thought possible. He wanted to leave.

But Brady didn’t, and Brady had the light even if it was Kyle’s light to begin with and the…the creep wouldn’t give it back.

“Just one more room,” Brady said over his shoulder, already partway down the hall. His mummy-strips trailed a foot or two behind him.