Horror 100 Volume 2

Corner of Parks and Druding

He got a call from Patrick.

"Hey, Alan, want to come over and hang out for a bit?"

He hadn't spoken to Patrick in three years.

"I know it's been awhile, but I figured hey, we aren't too far from each other."

There hadn't been any reason they stopped hanging out, just the transition from high school to college getting in the way, Patrick moving on to a four year while Alan chose to go to a community college, and then to load trunks in a warehouse, though he wouldn't really say he chose that one.

"I'm renting a place, an old house, great deal given the amount of space in this thing. It's off of Parks and Druding."

Not as if he ever disliked Patrick, and the place was pretty close.

"I've got a twenty-four pack, and there's no way I'll get through it alone."

Wasn't a hard decision. Alan said he'd come over.

****

The building was more than just old. It looked all but run down, practically condemned, and Alan might've thought he'd been given the wrong address if he hadn't seen Patrick's thick, freckled face and red hair in the window, hand waving for Alan to come up the sidewalk to the place.

The lawn was a patchwork of scraggly grass and healthy enough weeds. He even saw a few yellowed newspapers and decaying phone books by the front door. As he stepped up to the door he could see the building itself looked sturdy, just ugly from lack of paint. The door opened smoothly into a sparse living room.

Stepping inside Alan realized sparse was being too generous. The whole home looked completely empty. There wasn't a single piece of furniture to be found, his footsteps echoing on the wood flooring as he glanced over at the window where Patrick had been less than a minute before. He tilted his head around the wall to see a grandfather clock, pretty new, or at least well kept, ticking off each second. Next to the clock he saw a small wooden table with an old style rotary phone on it, the plastic black, but just like the clock, the phone itself looked brand new.

"Patrick?" he called out, heard his voice echo in the empty building, his eyes crawling over the peach color walls, the staircase leading up to a second floor, hallway off the living room going back into a kitchen, and a door along the wall beside him opening into a dark closet. Place did look like it had quite a bit of space, especially for one person, and given the cramped studio Alan had been calling home for the past year, he briefly wondered what kind of rent a house like this one would go for.

"Yo, Patrick, you here?"

"In the kitchen," Patrick called out.

"Didn't tell me you just moved in," Alan said as he walked through the place with the sound of the ticking clock following him, a picture starting to form, to make more sense given the situation. Maybe something had come up in Patrick's life, something bad enough to make him move out right away, so he thought of Alan, and figured he could get help moving, pay him off in beer. As a whole Alan figured there were worse ways to spend his Saturday afternoon.

As he walked through the hall towards the kitchen he wiped the sweat from his forehead, realizing just how hot the building was. Wasn't exactly cool outside, but the place felt sweltering, certainly no AC going.

"Think we can open up some windows?" Alan asked, stepped into the empty kitchen, no Patrick, and no beer, to be found. The kitchen didn't even have a fridge where beer might be, nor did it have a window for him to open, the room just as empty as the rest of the house, but also, Alan thought, there wasn't a door leading anywhere. The place was a dead end. He frowned and looked around to find where Patrick could've gone.