Burnt Blood: The Werewolf Within

Thirty Nine

Being around all this death, the smells drifting out of the nightmare are giving my body a mind of its own again. Claws were sliding free; I could feel my jaw tightening, changing with the fangs coming. I needed to get a grip. I look at the keypad again.

Upstairs, we got twelve; the rest must be around us. The cogs juddered a little, shaking the chains as they pulled tighter. Piggy three let out a pain-riddled squeal, bringing my neck hairs on end; they will be ripped apart if we don't end this. Each major cog turned clockwise, clunking away, connected to a spindle with a round track underneath that cranked the chains tight.

'Surprise! Bet you were pissing your pants, hearing the chains. How do you like it? Do I at least get points for originality? Silly horror films are all the same these days: run, scream, stab, die. Rinse and repeat. I wanted this slightly different: nostalgia meets hope, meets a twist. Now, the question is, can you save a little piggy and earn yourself the ultimate truth? I only hope the ending is to your liking. As someone once put it around this basement of horrors, there will be four numbers, a simple six-digit code. A date of somebody's birth. But who? That's all pinned on you. Four minutes is all you have. TikTok.'

Neither of us spoke; Skip began looking around the craft table, and Dalton moved towards the stranded victim, checking over and under the body suit, looking for numbers. Playing over the message, I stayed by the jars; they made me gag. Every rattle from the struggling chains made me shudder, twisting my neck. There had to be something out of place; we were looking for the impossible.

All I saw were the countless times these people experimented, torturing kids, and when it failed, break them apart and start again. I'm looking at a jar with a sticky label on the front, holding an arm no older than three or four, yet no one cared. Even after the crime scene in 1962, it's all left in place—thick dust, as if none had been touched.

Corruption is all I keep coming back to; going on for years, and nothing has changed. No wonder Skip bounced around after that, trying to find somewhere he could fit in. Only for Chris to inadvertently open old wounds. Prompted to by 'C', if it had been Charlie, surely Skip would've known about it. We were down to three minutes and still had no joy; I was missing something obvious, as it had felt all along.

'Remember Georgie, the closer you look—'

Chris pops up behind me; my heart nearly leapt into my mouth. His timing was terrible, but he had a point. I was two feet away, soaking up the savagery and limiting the view. I took three strides back, feet clumsily crashing into old gardening equipment. We all jumped; Skip looked like he wanted to kill me for the mini heart attack.

There are six rows at least eight feet long, each holding twenty jars with small labels. My first thought was the number six for the rows or zero six if I were considering the previous game. Dalton was coming up blank, fingers trailing over markings in another pillar, claw marks. Would the puppeteer follow the same pattern with limited time?

I almost disregarded the jars to move on when I saw the third row down, eight jars across, facing the other way. Thick grit squidges under my fingertips; the jar was cold, the green fluid sloshing around as I carefully twisted the glass. Up close, breathing in the nauseating ripeness had me feeling a little lightheaded. The label came into view: thirty-eight and another smiley face.

I saw that each time was getting to me, taunting me. We had twelve and thirty-eight minutes left, a little under two minutes. I heard every clank, rattle, and painful scream in surround sound. Little Piggy Three was being stretched apart. Cartilage was clicking, and muscles were tearing little by little.

'Either of you got anything?'

"Other than a bad back and the urge to be sick, fuck all," Dalton was pacing in circles, fingers tearing into his hair.