The Confluence

The Confluence Part III

III

It had been raining for almost a week straight. It was the end of the summer of 1983, in the town of Kennedy, Oregon. The people of Kennedy were your typical small town lot, mostly grumbly old men, weathered by the cold, wet winters and the all too short summers. The older women all knew each other, and they all knew each other's marital and sexual lives just as well. Most kids went to the local grade and middle school called Pierce, and the high school teens all went to Kennedy High. There was only one community college, which never saw as many people coming through it as they used to. It was a small town, but a town you could still wander around in and somehow always end up lost. Its extreme amounts of dead ends, back roads, and streets that just end up spilling into rail yards was always enough to vex any of the few tourists who swept through the place on their way to Portland, Seattle, or further south into California.

It was a place with few parks, seeing that the town was surrounded by dense woods on one side, and on the other a mountain. No matter where you went, you would always find a dive bar right next to a coffee shop. There was some outdoor seating still, despite the very rainy summer, but they were completely sodden, and every time a car flew down the road, it splashed stagnant water which collected by the curb onto the seats. It was a place of few colors, except for one bright red 1970's Camaro that was speeding down a nearby highway, heading towards one of the rail yards on the north side of town.

In the car, Suzie Mayweather was starting to get worried. She and this guy she met a few weeks ago at a local punk show were driving over to this abandoned house he knew about. She knew he wanted to screw her, but she was worried about how far out this house was. She really didn't feel like having sex in some half rotted house, and she didn't know what she'd do if he wanted to. Plus, she really didn't need any cops if someone heard them in there. The last time the local police force took her back home, her dad almost gave her a black eye. "Shit Johnny, I dunno if going to this place is such a good idea. I mean, who knows how old that place really is."

Johnny, a skeletally thin guy, with deep bags under his eyes, looked at her slyly, a small grin playing at the corners of his mouth "Oh, c'mon Suzie. I been there before, it's kept up well." With that, he turned his attention back to the road, as if that had settled all her worries. She rolled her eyes, and then tried again. "But what if someone notices us? I don't want to have a run in with the cops."

"There aren't any neighbors around that place." He didn't even look at her. She scoffed, and the urge to shove the car door open and jump out grew ever stronger. The sound of Joy Division being blasted on the radio didn't even help soothe her. The rain was pelting down on the windshield when the house loomed before them. It crouched on top of a slight incline, with a giant barbed wire fence behind it. The house was made out of this rotted black wood, and it was big, larger than Suzie suspected it would be. She felt like she was being watched from every single window that faced her. She gazed through the rain spattered windshield, her palms beginning to be slick with sweat. She focused her vision on the attic window, a circular window that stared out into the rainy day with a black thousand yard stare.

Fear crouched in the pit of her stomach, making her knees quiver. She started breathing heavily. She stared at the window, and the window stared back, the formless darkness lurking behind it, whispering all the things it wanted to do to her. She could hear the squirming, gibbering darkness inside her mind, the bugs gnawing the wood, the rats scrabbling inside the walls...

Johnny slammed the door , breaking her reverie. She looked at Johnny outside the car, and shot him a dirty look. He mouthed "What?" at her, she just rolled her eyes and looked back at the window. She seemed to sense more than see something moving in the darkness above. She opened the door, and the rain beat its way down on her, dripping down on her neck, like long, thin, icy fingers caressing her. She shivered, and flipped the collars of her leather jacket up. Johnny was crouched, and had pulled back a part of the fencing that had been cut some time before. "Suzie, come on!" He growled at her. She hurried over, crouched, and slid through the hole in the fence.

Almost immediately she felt colder. It was as if the whole place was somewhere else. Johnny pulled himself through the fence, stood up, and shivered. He looked at her, blinking through the rain, and started walking towards the house, motioning her to follow. They crept towards the back of the house, peeking into the windows as they went. It was almost pitch black inside, and most of the windows had yellowed newspaper covering them. The backyard had grass almost up to Suzie's waist, and there was weird junk littering everywhere. They approached the back door, which was only a dented screen door. "Come on, let's check it out." Johnny muttered, walking up to the door. Suzie felt that fear again, as if being watched. "Johnny, come on man, this place is shitty. Let's just go hit up the arcade or something..." She wanted to be anywhere else but here.

"What the fuck is your problem Suzie? It's just a house." He whirled on her, his eyes boring into her. She looked down, hurt. He grunted, turned around, and wrenched open the door. He stood there, looking in for a while, and Suzie hoped he was having second thoughts. Then he stepped inside and was swallowed by the shadows. "Aw shit..." groaned Suzie, exasperated. She followed Johnny inside the house.

The first thing that struck her when she walked inside was the smell. It reminded her of this time when a raccoon had gotten stuck in her chimney as a kid, and her dad tried to get it out, but it was stuck. They called people to try and get it out, but it couldn't move. It died soon after, and the smell of it's rotting corpse permeated throughout the house. Nobody could stand it, until her dad broke a hole on the outside of the chimney and dragged it out. The house smelled like that dead raccoon. There was trash from all the squatters that had been there, and in the living room was a blood stained mattress, along with foul smelling brown stains. Suzie retched, clenching her nose shut. She heard Johnny's footsteps proceeding upstairs, and she half ran to the stairs, which creaked with a sinister rotted sound. She saw him make his way past the landing, as the stair made a sharp right upwards. She caught up with him, and she looked at him. He was sweating, and breathing heavily.

"What the fucks going on?" She asked him, but as the words barely left her mouth, he shoved a clammy hand over her mouth. She yelped, and he glared at her, fear dancing in his eyes. He whispered to her "I heard somethin move upstairs." He looked back up the stairwell, which ended in a weird trap door built into the ceiling. There was a wooden bar keeping it from being opened. "Fuck that Johnny. Let's fucking go." She whispered to him, her breathing ragged. Her heart was pumping in her throat, and her gut was a twisted knot. Johnny moved up to the trap door, arm around her waist, almost forcing her up there with him. She watched helplessly as he undid the latch with the wooden bar, and threw open the door. They both poked their head's up, and what they saw haunted both their dreams for the rest of their lives. A body, it's face horribly disfigured, jaw almost completely torn off, it's limbs wrapped in barbed wire, blood and fecal matter were everywhere, and there were rats gnawing on the corpse's legs and stomach. The black and brown rodents had chewed a ragged hole through the body's abdomen. Half eaten intestines were slithering out of the dark red hole, being shoved around by the rats eating them. Some of the corpse's bloody rib cage could be seen through torn flaps of skin. The rats turned towards them, and with pieces of the corpse in their mouths, scurried towards them squealing. They screamed, and were still screaming as they ran outside, down the street, and called the cops on the nearest payphone.