Mud splattered as a leather boot stomped hard on the rain soaked ground. The man stood still as the rain poured around him, it gathered in streams to run off the rim of his hat. He was soaked to the skin, his clothes were wet. His brown cow hide jacket was wet, his white-turned-beige shirt was wet, and his jeans were wet. But his gun was dry, hanging from a holster on his right hip. He looked like an old cowboy villain, missing only a suntan and a straw in the corner of his mouth. He looked up the road; it stretched further up the hill, lined by an assortment of trees. The late summer foliage was giving way to that special melancholy autumn feeling so popular among broken hearted artists. The road was a sea of mud, but as the man went through it he did it with the same ease that Moses went through the Red Sea. Up the hill was an old house. A Victorian mansion with slanted roofs and towers for those late night studies, a house that promised sexual repression and a chronic masturbation that always ended with a Beijing surprise.

Now, of course, it was deserted since long back. Its former residents either dead or moved away by the increasing unrest of the country side, that unrest that had come after disappearances and a creepy feeling of being watch, that popular condition that had spread across the country, “The Shivers”.
This house now stood as a silent embodiment of that condition. The blowing of the wind made the house moan with that desperate voice the wind alone can muster and the shutters of the windows thrashed erratically in the wind.
The moons crept out of its veil of clouds and stood full and bright behind the house, silhouetting the building in the cold white moonlight. Far off a wolf cried its lonesome cry and like an answer the house moaned in turn. The man, that cowboy like figure, made his way up the hill. Any normal mans hands would tremble in the atmosphere of dark oppression that lay here, feeling the house stare down at him like a psychopathic clown strangling you with a teddy bears head. The man did not tremble, and as his face was washed with moonlight he drew a smile, revealing corner teeth sharper than need be. The wind whispered barely more than a breath “Turn back, time has come for the full moon to be red and risen. Time has come for shivers down spines. Go away… Jack” and to this Jacks smile grew to a grin.

He stopped for a moment, took off his hat, closed his eyes and ran his fingers through his hair. He checked his gun, 20 bullets, all there. His gun, the single strangest object on him, was like a piece of German artillery made into a handheld gun. Its barrel was like a soda can and its loader looked like that of a six shooter, only mutated and huge. It was like the muscles one gets after pumping steroids into ones body, so big they look both disgusting and ridiculous. He put it back in its holster and continued up the hill. He soon reached the stairs of the porch. He looked around a yard filled with strange things. A small shed stood nearby, in the window he could see a drawing of a pinup with its eyes gouged out. Two headstones stood forlorn next to the shed. Tabitha and Julie he read on them, underneath were two open graves gaping to the sky. Two bodies lay next to them, badly decomposed. A tree stood behind the graves and cut into it was Aimee heart Joseph forever circled by a heart, this had been tarnished by a big X cut over it.
Jack turned toward the house and walked up the stairs, as he held out his hand to grasp the knob of the front door there was a creak. Not like a floor-plank when you walk on it, or a door when it’s old, this was the creak of a rocking chair. He turned his head towards the sound. There was a rocking chair there, standing on the porch, protected by its roof which had only a few holes in it. In this chair, there was a man; he was dead of course, no eyes and a hole through his skull. But Jack fixed upon the thing in his hand, a pipe still smoking. It was curling out of the pipe like a snake out of its charmers basket, dancing to a strange tune, just waiting for someone to get close enough for a bite. He turned once again toward the door, it was locked. Locked like Queen Elizabeth’s chastity belt. One might think a silent entry best in a place like this, picking the lock, as to not let anyone in on the fact that there was a pipe smoking man with a hole in his head out on the porch. But our man, our cowboy man, was not one for discreetness. In a single kick his leg tour through the wood of the double doors. They crashed open and slammed into the wall. The shock of it throwing them off their hinges and down on the ground.

As Jack walked inside the old house there was a sound. A harmonica, calling clear over the rain, let out its rusty tunes. At the top of the stairs that stood opposite the door, there stood a man in the shadows. His hat shadowed his face but not the ghostly tunes of his harmonica. He played his tune then strode off to the left, the clank of his spurs echoing down an unseen hallway. Jack scanned the room with his eyes; the decayed entry room was dusty and empty save for some fallen debris. The large double staircase yawned upwards to the dank second floor, the railing was carved and the delicacy of the work could still be seen; wasted though it was. A fallen chandelier rested on the floor between the stairs. On the far wall up the stairs a stuffed animal sat, a moose, giving the room a hunting lodge touch. The moose was still staring with ignorant eyes, still wondering what shot it and why someone filled it with potpourri. Two doors flanked the staircase but Jacks feet took him straight to the stairs.

They creaked as he started up them, leaving footprints in the untouched veil of dust that coated the house like a fine film of Teflon. Jack kept his eyes on the doorway to the corridor the Harmonica Man went into. As he completed his ascent he noticed the absence of that mans footprints and the old grin came back to him. Two pictures sat on a table underneath the moose’s head next to a large table clock. The pictures seemed to be of the last resident family, a fat father, a skinny mother and two ugly kids posed in one of them outside the house and on the other on a beach where they all looked hideous without any clothes. The clock had stopped; it showed the time 4.44 am with its ornate dials. What most folks forget is that expensive clocks tend to stop just the same an inexpensive one does. Jack turned from the table and entered the hallway. The shadows were thicker as he left the open room of the entry with its tall windows. He picked up a steel-lighter and lit it, casting a faint yellow light on the hallway. It was a long hallway, and he could see doorways at equal distance from each other. No sign of the Harmonica Man though, that was what Jack thought. He walked down the hallway, his grin gone and one hand on his cannon.

As he walked down further into the corridor there became visible a faint sound, a wheezing, an escape and drawing of air, a breathing. He stopped. Listened, it came from the right. He drew close to the wall, put his ear against it and stopped breathing himself.

It was there, faint breathing.
From inside of the walls, he heard it almost clearly as his ear rested against the wall.
Then it quickened, quicker again.
A great inhale, then;
A shriek… The terrible banshee wail of the dead crashed into him and made him stagger back.

He drew his cannon, aimed at the wall and pulled the trigger. The gun crashed loudly, drowning the wail for a second and the bullet tore the wall apart leaving a great hole in it. There was nothing there, it had gone. But before that, Jack had seen it. The face of a woman, a pale, skinny woman; her face contorted in a mask of agony and hate. Her lips chewed off and a great big hole in her cheek, her eyes had been gouged out and left black and empty, forever staring. Jack stood for a moment to listen, recovering from the wail and hoping that the ringing in his ear wasn’t permanent.
He turned again back to the hallway, still the same, that old sinister hallway. He took a look behind him, nothing there except the way he had come. He continued his journey into the house.

The hallway was filled with paintings, some of religious things like the creation or when Abraham tried to kill his son. Others were old family portraits showing the same thing only different faces, that stern looking, harsh man with black hair and empty eyes surrounded by his family looking all scared. Like the big bad wolf were real and just happened to be their father. The truth was probably not far from it, Jack thought. Had Jack been a man keen on details he might have looked closer at those fathers faces, and had he done that he would have seen a likeness far too close in all those pictures for them to be a picture of different generations. The eyes were all the same.

The house was quiet now, the rain had stopped, and it was as if the whole building was holding it’s breath after the cannons fire had died away. Jacks steps made the hallway creak sinisterly, mockingly. He passed several doorways; the rooms were in various stages of decadence. Some had old, dusty unlabeled bottles in them; others had that typical drug addict paraphernalia, the bent spoon, the belt and the needles. But one room had something more malicious. Hanging from the ceiling beam there was a man, a chair lay knocked over under him. He wore a white shirt and a pair of shoes. His legs were bare as he was missing that matching pair of pants; his underwear was stained with life’s last gift, a bowel movement. His face however did not show embarrassment, it showed a madman’s grin of relief. The black teeth showed bare by those curled back lips. Jack stood there for a moment and took in the man, and then he took a step inside the room, looking around him. When his gaze fell on the man again, the eyes opened. Jack felt cold as he stood on the threshold of eternity, beckoned by a madman hanging from his own gallows. As he teetered on the brink he felt cold hands reach under his clothes, under his shirt, in his pants, making his skin dead cold.

For the second time, he drew his gun. The mans head was to bits, his limp body crashing to the floor. It landed in one of those unnatural positions only the dead fall in. No blood flowed from the open neck. Jack turned away and went on his merry way down the hallway, ever excited of what next would pop up and make him wonder if his underpants were still dry.

He stopped dead once again, a noise. A sob; further down the hall, oh how the hall seemed to drag on. Jack walked on again, gun still in his hand, nerves wound as tight as a virgin. He stopped at the doorway of the room where the noise came from. He heard the sobbing clearly now, miserable throaty little sobs, and another sound. Like someone carving meat. Jack stepped out square in the doorway, gun ready at his hip. In the room sat a girl in a white dress, no more than a teenager, with a knife in hand. Down her arms ran long open gashes, she was busy carving a new one, sobbing all the while. Her dress had been stained by the blood. She turned to Jack. “I don’t want to go to school, Daddy. Please don’t make me, please don’t.” Jack stood speechless. “The other kids hate me, Daddy. Teacher hates me, ‘cause I don’t want to go home, Daddy. Please don’t hate me ‘cause I don’t want to go home, Daddy.” Jack turned away from the sight, puke in the back of his throat, trying to keep from spraying it all over the hallway. A merciful man would’ve shot her, but our cowboy man was only into being merciful to himself.

He, with his steel mind, staggered along further down the hallway. This house was bad; he could feel it tearing at the strings of his soul, trying to tear it away from him. He breathed for a while, took another few steps and then breathed again. There was a door up ahead, the end of the hallway. On the other side he could hear it, the eerie tones of the harmonica man. The decaying hallway took on an even more sinister look with the added background music from the maniac behind the door. The walls looked alive, as if they were somehow pulsing, quite like a vein pumping blood. Through little holes in the walls came its residents, insects and worms of all kinds, scurrying like rats from a sinking ship down towards the floor. Jacks boots stepped on a lot of them when he finally walked towards the door. He reached out towards the handle and when he touched the cold brass the harmonica stopped. As the door slid open from Jacks slight push and whiff of decay escaped the room. No one was in there, the room was empty. A light bulb that had once hanged on the ceiling now lay on the floor, its red light giving the room a look of burlesque backrooms and whores with painted smiles. On one of the walls there hung a picture, a stripper hanging upside down from a pole with a tantalizing smile of lust on her face. In the middle of the room was a large hole, it looked like a giants fist had crashed through the floor.

Jack took a few cautious steps and looked down into the hole, he saw the bottom floor. He felt something pushing into the small of his back, where the spine connected with his hip.

A whisper in his ear

Jack, jack, jack
What am I ever to do with a hack?
Down the hole with a crack
Come on up, and give it another…
Whack!

And he felt himself pushed and falling into the hole, a thunderous madman’s laugh ripping through the dead air of the house.

He woke later, the old hammer- and anvil headache pounding. He laid there for a moment, trying to determine if he had broken anything in the fall, the madman’s poem still fresh in his mind. All his limbs moved okay and aside from his headache he wasn’t hurt. He tried to stand up and as he got on his knees and saw his own body he realized his clothes where gone. He was now naked, unarmed and had no idea where he was. Even Jack had to admit he might’ve bit off more than he could chew this time. He stood up, took a calculating look around him. The room was barren of all but a chair; in the chair was a man who had been burned alive. His skin was blackened and his eyes were gone, his scorched tongue lolled stupidly out of his mouth. On the ground it said Learn or burn written in coal. There was a door, right centre in one of the walls. A wooden door with the text Welcome written in white across it, Jack crossed the room and went through it. If I’m gonna’ die I might as well to it in the nude, he thought.

He crossed the room, trying to avoid the bits of glass spread in places. The door was painted with a blue color, turned brown then grey over the years. It looked as if the door itself would splinter and fall down at the mere touch of it. Jack gingerly pushed it open. Smells rushed forth instantly, not the rotting tree and dusty corner smell he was used to by now but one of incense and sweat. The red light poured into the room where he had fallen and in that other room he say what could be described only as an orgy. The room was bathed in red light, incense sticks burning everywhere and it was filled with cushions. Upon these cushion laid at least fifteen men and women, all naked and engaged in fucking one another. Jack, somewhat of a clergyman in these matters, quickly turned away in disgust from the hardcore fucking he saw in front of him. Ignoring the grunts, moans and slopping sounds he stepped into the room. Giving it another survey he saw a man sitting in a corner. He was blind, as he had no eyes, but he was looking right at Jack.

The man was old, giving Jack the impression that the only thing keeping him out of the sex was his age. No one in the room acknowledged Jacks presence. All were to busy, except for the old man. In the far end of the room Jack could see a door, flanked by pentagrams and witches symbols scratched onto the wall. As he started to cross the room, the people in it suddenly knew he was there, trying to grab his naked body or suck on him. He swatted them away like flies and they soon returned to their previous interest. But when Jack reached the door the old man spoke up.
“You wish not to go in there. My master gives you one fair warning.”
His voice rattled and creaked like a rock in a tin can.
“Your master can go to hell!” Jack answered in fury.
“My master is hell…”
Jack put his hand on the door handle, and the man flew up from his seat. Jacks impression of an old man with erectile dysfunction was shattered. The man matched his strength.

The room was silent as the two men struggled; the fuckers had stopped and scurried away into the corners. Jack threw and was thrown across cushions, candles and sticks of incense. For a while they were matched in strength. But when the man stepped on a cushion that slid from underneath him he lost his balance. Jack saw the moment and grabbed the man by the hair and the crouch, throwing him head first into the wall. The old man slumped down with his neck at a disgusting angle. Jack stood panting in the middle of the room, staring wild eyed around him. The fuckers had already started again, now huddled over in the corner.

Jack stretched himself, smiled at his prowess and walked over to the door. As he pushed down the handle he thought of the warning. Ignoring it he tore the door up. What he saw was indescribable. It was the vast yawn of time and space, ripped open for viewing. He saw the entire universe and all that time ever was. He saw the past, the present and the future.

And he screamed, he screamed until he could not scream anymore and he ran, ran as fast as he could.

***
“How is he fairing?” An old man stood over Jack, who was lying on the bed with his eyes wide open and his mouth slightly ajar.
“Worse, he will not come out of the coma like state for more than a few moments and in these moments he just babbles something about Dagon and Yogg-Sathoth.” Another man answered the old man examining Jack.
“Too bad, he was one of our best.” The old man leaned back from Jack and checked his watch. “Well, terminate him. He is far beyond usage.”
“Yes, sir!” The other man said and readied a needle.