Free Dark Corners - Twelve Tales of Terror by Michael Bray

knew a way in.
    “ Go on then. Don’t leave us hanging. Tell
us,” ordered Denton.
    He
did.
    Ten
minutes later, we had squeezed our way through one of the kitchen
windows at the back where a board had been partially pulled away.
Steve was with us, although he hadn’t wanted to come. It was
written all over his face, but Denton had insisted. So the four of us
stood breathless in the gloomy dilapidated kitchen. The inside of the
house was bare, and sunlight diffused dust motes hung heavy, making
it hard to breathe. Graffiti covered the walls, some of it colorful,
some vile. Hundreds of orange-tipped drug needles littered the floor,
and the air was acrid with the stench of rot and urine.
    “ Watch
your step,” Denton said as we made our way through the kitchen.
    “ Fuckin’
smack needles everywhere,” Snoddy muttered under his breath.
    “ You
think there’s anybody here?” Denton asked with a huge
Cheshire grin.
    “ Could
be. Hell, we got in easy enough,” I said, still unable to shake
the horrible feeling in my stomach.
    We
came into the living room. There was a huge graffiti mural on the
wall of a woman being raped by a multi-headed snake, and more
evidence of drug use. Several empty beer cans were stacked in a neat
pyramid in the corner, and there was an old rolled up sleeping bag
covered in a thin layer of black mold, which spread like spider webs
across the corners of the walls.
    “ What
now then?” Snoddy asked, his face looking waxy and tired in the
diffused light of the room.
    Denton
grinned and kicked the can stack, sending them clattering noisily to
the ground.
    “ Fuck’s
sake, Denton!” Snoddy hissed as we collectively held our
breaths, waiting to see if some crazed crack head would come racing
down the steps, or out of one of the adjoining rooms. I realized then
that ghosts were the least of our problems; the living were far more
dangerous. But nobody came. No crazy old man, no cracked out
lunatics.
    “ Suppose
that answers the question. It’s just us. Let’s take a
look around,” Denton said as he walked off towards the stairs.
So that’s what we did. We split up and explored. There wasn’t
much to see really. It was a typical old, empty house. No ghosts, no
slimy things crawling around in the shadows. Just damp, and rot, and
rats.
    There
were a lot of rats.
They were everywhere. You would walk into a room and they would
scatter, squeezing through gaps in the walls, or under old husks of
forgotten furniture. Some of them were big too. I saw one the size of
a fully grown tomcat, somehow squeezing its huge soft body between
two of the broken kitchen cabinets. I could tell Steve didn’t
like the rats. You could see it on his face. Whenever he saw one, he
would grimace and shy away, and I think I even heard him let out a
small yelp when we found a nest in the corner of the bathroom, the
blind newborns like plump, pink slugs.
    I
was leafing through some old newspapers from the 70’s, when
Snoddy and Denton shuffled over to me. I didn’t like the look
of their matching grins.
    “ We’re
gonna play a prank on Steve. We need you to help out though,”
Snoddy said, showing too many of his not quite white teeth.
    I
asked them to leave me out of it, and to go easy on Steve, since he
showed us how to get into the building in the first place, but there
was no swaying them. It seemed that Denton’s mean streak had
somehow rubbed off on Snoddy, and I knew there was no point in trying
to talk them out of it. I asked why they needed me anyway, why they
couldn’t do it themselves.
    They
explained their plan and I began to laugh too. I laughed and went
along with it, because that’s what I was expected to do. It’s
hard to explain, but I felt somehow obliged to go along with it,
despite my own misgivings. Even now I hate myself for it.
    The
plan was this: I would lure Steve upstairs to see some nonexistent
but amazing discovery, and as he came down the hall, Denton and
Snoddy would leap out of one of