The Shadow House

"What the hell is going on?

The door creaks open about a third of the way and gets stuck. I push a little firmer, but still nothing. So I put all my weight on it and sure enough it flies open. Any harder, I think it would have come off the hinges. I soon forget about the door when i realize how cold it is in here. The Arizona air has got to be pushing 100 degrees outside. I look around standing on a rotted board that is probably infested with termites, before taking any further steps into this wretched smelling abode. I don't see an A/C unit anywhere, and this house has been abandoned for at least 15 years. There is no way this place has central air that is currently running. I take my first step into the house when it hits me. The stench in the air was from many things that have wandered in here and found death. Every square foot I swear was some kind of dead animal. Whether it was just a pile of bones, or relatively fresh. The smell was like meat in a non-functional refrigerator that sat in there for weeks. I briefly imagine Heather in here with me. Only briefly because I know the second the smell corrupted her nose she would have turned straight around and left the area. I kind of smirked at just the thought of what her reaction would be.

The smirk goes away as I hear her voice echo from the upstairs, down to where I stood, instantly making me run straight up the debris covered stairs. She sounds like she's in distress, panicking. She's calling my name over and over again. "Matthew.. Matthew.... MATTHEW!!!" By this time I feel like I'm soaring over these stairs. I'm just reaching the top when my foot breaks through the last step. Out of all the other steps, it has to be the very last one to fail me. I push up from the floor, then struggle to get my foot loose as fast as Kevin Bacon. "I'm coming! Hold on!" I cry out. I manage to finally obtain my foot. I spring up and start frantically looking for Heather. I'm trying to maneuver my way through this death trap of a house, avoiding shit piles, and other sketchy areas of the floor. There's three rooms, and a bathroom on the second floor of this house, and I looked in every one of them, high and low. I exit the last room at the far right end of the hall and stood there. Staring at what I think was wallpaper at one point, but now looks like my 90 year old grandma's cheek.

I cry out for Heather once more. "Heather?!". I stand there quietly, eyes still locked onto the wall in front of me. I don't move because I don't want to make the slightest noise and risk not hearing my girlfriend. Standing there for what seems like longer than how long I should have been standing there, I begin to think maybe I was imagining things. Maybe I was jus.... "Matthew?!" I abruptly turn my head towered the sound of Heather's voice. I feel my neck crack for doing so. There she stands, at the complete opposite far end of the hall. Dirty as all hell. She looks scared out of her mind, shellshocked, petrified quite literally so. "Are you alright?" I ask. "Are you hurt?". As the last word rolled off of my tongue, my eye caught what looked like a thick stream of slow moving blood exiting out of her chest. As I walk towards her I'm trying to grasp what exactly is going on right now. None of this is normal, it's only obvious. She looks down at the blood. A couple seconds go by and she slightly lifts her head up. Just enough so I can kind of make out her evil looking smile while she is staring deep into my eyes. I sprint towards her, this time not worrying where I step, or what I may run into down this cluttered hall. In all this time of me running towards her she has not moved a muscle, still smiling and staring. I grab her by the shoulders and gaze into her eyes closely. I have done this many times with her throughout our life together. I love gazing into those vibrant eyes of hers. Nothing makes me feel more at peace. This time was way different. She wasn't in those eyes. I have never seen anything so empty, so hollow. This is what true nothingness looks like. I'm sure of it.

I then pull her by the arm gently, thinking she will fallow me out of this place. But instead she pulls back, not so gently. She starts giggling the not so attractive kind of giggle. The giggle then turns into a quiet laugh, which eventually gets louder and louder. To the point where it is extremely obnoxiously loud, and her head can not bend back any further. The blood is no longer slowly trickling, but is spraying me like a garden hose. It just keeps coming, and coming. Will this ever end? After what seems like hours it stops, all of it. The blood, the laugh, and the echos. All is silent besides my ringing ears. She's staring at me once again, her evil smile has not gone away. She then says "How fucking stupid can you be boy? Don't you know it's not nice to stare?" I do not know what to think anymore. This is Heather, but this is definitely not Heather. The voice sounds so deep and raspy, like an old guy who has chain smoked his whole life.

"Do you believe in Hell and Heaven?" she asks me Quite demandingly.

"I definitely believe in evil now, and there can't be Hell without a Heaven. So yes.. I believe both places exist at this point." I reply with no hesitation.

"We'll see if you believe in Heaven after I get done with you. We're going to play a game. The goal is for you to complete all tasks within the time given. If you fail to do so, I will keep Heather along with the rest of these pathetic people, and destroy this putrid town along with you. See, I doubt you will succeed at this, nobody has for millenniums. Let's see what you got boy."

Before I could respond with when and where do I start. Her face went blank, serious. "Let's begin mother fucker". She says almost in a whisper. Her face starts to turn grey, slowly turning to dark black. Her face starts to crack, and then she screams as loud as she could. This time it was Heather's scream. Just as soon as it started, it stops. She looks at me like I have betrayed her, like she knows I can't help her, I let her down, her eyes are asking me why I did this to her. But I didn't do anything to start this. I don't know what to think. I don't know what to do. She's breathing harder and deeper now. All that's left of her face are her eyes, taunting me in deep sockets of a black skull. The rest of her body suddenly combust into flame like she was soaked with gasoline. I shield my face instinctively, expecting the fire to be hot. However it was not hot at all, and I was standing not even two feet from her. She then starts wailing once more. A pair of wings come out from behind her, also on fire. Wings that did not belong to an angel. They reached up like a stretching cat waking up from a nap. Then all of her vanished. Just a pile of black ash where she stood. I feel like I just witnessed the devil in the flesh. I stand there, dripping with the blood that came from Heather. I don't want to believe this is really her blood. Is it? "What the hell is going on?"