“This is the one!” Billie screamed. She then in her own method of rational thinking decided that the best way to approach the house would be to shut of the headlights, drive past the house for about fifty or so feet, barrel turn into the opposite lane, drive back towards the house, jerk the car right off of the road, and park my goddamn ’69 pine green Dodge Charger behind a corn silo. As we got out of the car, I told Billie how she’s one of my closet mentally challenged friends.
“Suck my dick.” She giggled as she popped the trunk.
“You can’t afford it. Anyway what’s the plan?” I pulled the gas can from the trunk. “Are we going to knock on the door like asshole scouts trying to sell asshole flavored cookies, or are we just going to throw eggs until old man Jenkins chases us off with the hose?” Billie opened up her guitar case.
“Um, I was thinking more along the lines of death by murder.” From her case, Billie pulled out what I assume to be an intentional disregard for standard Geneva Convention protocols. “This,” Said Billie while loading a couple of shells, “is a Franchi SPAS-12, ten rounds, mounted flashlight, and an industrial grade suppressor. It’s probably the best tactile shotgun ever manufactured in Italy. They stopped making them a few years ago because the U.S. banned it from import. Don’t ask me how I got this one, but let’s just say I didn’t follow the two week waiting period.”
“Dandy,” I said.
We moved quickly towards the house, crouching low to the ground as we snaked through the tall weeds. It may have been dark, and the fog was still coming in thick, but we left nothing to chance. Between the two of us, we’ve seen enough horror movies to know better. When we finally reached the side of the house Billie pressed herself up against the cracked siding and motioned for me to look in through one of the windows. I gave her the universal gesture for anal fisting, which to us was code for, “something spooky is going to pop out and bite my face off.” Billie then gave her shotgun a pump, signaling that she did indeed have a shotgun. With that sound logic in mind, I carefully pressed my hands against the sweating glass, peering into darkness. I could just barely make out the vague shapes of furniture, but nothing much else. Scraps of paper and trash seemed to litter what I could see of the floor, and there appeared to be a sofa of some sort, and absolutely no movement what so ever. A static environment if I ever saw one. I lowered myself from the window, giving Billie the thumbs up before picking up the kerosene. Billie moved up to me, and in a low voice whispered that the hitchhiker apparently smashed through a window during his escape, and we should look for a welcome mat to bypass the broken glass.
“Cool,” I whispered back. “But shouldn’t we try the front door first?”
We did, and as luck would have it, it was unlocked. I eased open the door doing my best to keep it from creaking, Billie standing behind looking down her iron sights into the shadows of the house. Nothing jumped out at us from that still darkness, yet we expected it to occur at any moment. Just jitters I told myself as we moved in. I shut the door, locking it from the inside just as Billie flicked on her flashlight, I did the same. Instantly the room was illuminated by the white cones of light, revealing the living room set up. There was indeed furniture in there, all of it covered in plastic blue tarps. Interestingly enough, besides the tarps and random bit and pieces of trash that scattered the floor, the place actually looked pretty well lived in, except for the terrible smell that is. Kind of like roadkill and patchouli oil it seemed like. We did our best to ignore it as I wandered the room while Billie searched every corner. I held onto the kerosene as I perused the bookshelves along the back wall. I was just tucking away a dusty copy of the complete works of Alistair Crowley when Billie tiptoed to my shoulder.
“Besides that damn stink wafting around, I think this room is fine,” I whispered. “So I guess that leaves everywhere else.”
“How about over there?” She asked, nodding her head towards her right. I followed her gaze to a door at the end of the center hallway, a door with several deadbolt locks and covered in smudged handprints of varying sizes.
I had never been here before, but I could just sense that this door in question led to something awful.
“Somewhere besides that” I said back.
