Infinity House (3 page)

And then it was gone.

Mike dropped the flashlight, nearly fired a bullet. He back pedaled, stepped on James’s foot.

“Ah, watch out.” James wrapped his arms around Mike’s waist, but it only tangled them up worse, and they fell to the floor in a knot of limbs. “Get off me, you’re hurting me.”

“D-did you see that?” Mike rubbed his eyes, squinted into the house. His sight finally began adjusting and the blackness melted away, revealed the misshapen walls and floor. There was nothing there, only emptiness.

“See what?” James grabbed Mike, squeezed. “Stop messing around, Mike.”

“I’m not… I thought I saw…” He shook his head, exhaled. Climbing to his feet, he yanked James up by the hand. “It was nothing. Let’s get this shit over with.”

James swung his flashlight like a sword and sliced open the darkness in ragged slashes. “No, what did you see? Tell me,” he said. “A… a ghost?”

Just hearing the word made Mike’s stomach plummet. He snorted. “Don’t be stupid.”

Looking around, Mike realized they were standing in the middle of what used to be a kitchen. The tile was broken, missing in some places. There were holes in the walls here and there, open wounds in the aged, crumbling sheetrock. There was no refrigerator or stove, but gaping holes where they should have been, the niches stained a dark brown, made even sicklier in the yellow glow of their flashlights.

“It stinks, Mike. I wanna go home.”

A slight movement in his peripheral. From one of the holes in the wall. Mike shone his light toward it, took careful steps in that direction.

“Mike?”

“Oh, shit.” Money. Another wad of folded cash, bigger than the last, waved at him from the rotting crevice. He pulled it out of the wall, showed it to James as he did a small dance. “I told you, man. I fuckin’ told you.”

James smiled, reached for the money. Mike let him take it, rubbed the boy’s unkempt hair.

“Are we gonna be rich? Can I get a Playstation?”

Mike laughed. “You crazy, fool. We get enough cash, we’ll get two of those mother-fuckers.”

“Cool!” James jumped up and down, dropped his flashlight. The beam reached across the floor, splashed light onto the far wall.

Flies. So many flies. Crawling over each other on the wall, vibrating, buzzing and scuttling. Beneath them on the floor was a writhing sheet of maggots, pulsating, making a wet clicking sound that mixed with the hum of the flies.

“Goddamn.” Mike added the light from his flashlight, and when it hit the flies, they burst into the air. The moving mass of multi-colored bodies shattered like a plate of glass, and the flies were everywhere at once. Blue, green, and black zooming all around them, all with orange or red eyes.

“Ahhh… get them… get them off me.” James swung at the air, spat and snorted.

Mike did the same, tried to keep his eyes and mouth shut as the flies collided with his face, crawled over his skin. The buzzing was all around them, like a revving chainsaw.

“Mike!”

And then they were gone. A few stray flies still crawled on them, on the walls and floor, but the dark cloud dissipated, moved off deeper into the house somewhere.

Mike swatted at the last of the bugs, shook the chill from his spine. “Fuck, man.”

James danced in place, wiping at his arms, chest, and stomach. His buck teeth bared, he breathed in and out like he was having an asthma attack.

Mike grabbed him by the shoulders, held him there until he calmed. “Chill, fool. They gone.”

“Why were there so many? I’ve never seen so many flies before.”

Mike shrugged. “This place is old. Probably worse things than flies up in here.” The floating white face flashed in his mind’s eye, sent a hot tremor over his body, a spasm up his spine.

James pointed toward the widening puddle of maggots, all retreating toward the darkness of the house, but slowly making their way across the floor. “You mean like those?”

Mike reached down, grabbed James’s flashlight from the floor. A couple of maggots inched up the handle and he blew them off, held the flashlight out for James to take. “Let’s do this thing. Quicker we fill these backpacks, quicker we can get the fuck outta here.”

“I don’t wanna touch that. It had those worms on it.” James put a fist to his mouth, wrinkled his nose, then burped.

“Just take it. Follow me.” Mike thrust the light into his brother’s hand, turned toward the dining room. Where the layer of flies had been, multiple holes decorated the wall. And the sparkle of what could only be diamonds shone from within them.

“You see that?” James said.

“Yep… I sho do.” Mike ignored the crunching and squishing of the maggots’ bodies under his sneakers as he approached with an outstretched hand and wide eyes. “You right, fool.”

“What?”

“We gonna be rich.” He pulled the necklace from the hole, found even more jewelry beneath it. Rings and bracelets and watches, all encrusted with diamonds. He peeled the backpack from his shoulders, pulled it open with both hands, tossed the treasure in. “Check all the holes in the walls.” His voice came out squeaky and his hands shook. Excitement swirled in his chest like hurricane winds.

James stuffed the folded money into his backpack, made his way to the opposite wall in the dining room.

Mike stuffed his hand into another hole; his knuckles collided with something cold and hard. He grabbed a handful of it, pulled it out for inspection. Gold coins. Each one flawless, covered in markings he didn’t understand. “James, you got anything over there?”

“Money! Lots of money.” He giggled and Mike heard him unzip his backpack. “Is this real?”

As Mike let the coins roll from his palms into the backpack, he wondered the same thing. Too good to be true? But it was true, his bag was getting heavy with riches. He wouldn’t believe it if it wasn’t happening, but it was. “Just keep packing it up, man. Don’t stop.”

“I did good, didn’t I? I made you proud, right?”

Mike chuckled, moved to the next opening in the wall. He reached in blindly, looked toward James and nodded with a wide grin. “You did fuckin’ gr…”

His hand plunged elbow deep in an ocean of writhing, squishy bodies. He gasped, dropped his flashlight, and when he tried to yank his hand away, he took part of the wall off with it, the wood soft like moist cake.

A waterfall of maggots poured out, rushed over his sneakers. They shimmied up his arm, danced on his skin. “Shit!” He brushed them off and backed away. They scooted across the floor at him, as if they wanted to taste more of him, devour his flesh.

Then James screamed. High-pitched and deafening.

Mike spun away from the approaching larvae and pulled out his pistol at the same time. He expected to see an emaciated squatter or something, clawing at his brother with boney fingers.

James held the hand of a corpse, rotted down to the bone, its body alive with the movement of more maggots. The body was small, smaller than James. As the boy tried to shake it off, sheets of the wriggling larvae poured forth, splashed onto the floor. James fell backward onto his rear, kicked at the bones until finally breaking free.

“Mike, Mike get me outta here!” He jumped up and ran to Mike, wrapped his arms around his waist and buried his face in his stomach. His body jerked with his weeping and he wailed.

Without hesitation, Mike pointed his gun at the corpse. He expected it to stand, reach out for them as it skated across the layer of maggots. But it just lay there, motionless but for the wiggling of its inhabitants. The gash in the wall where the aged bones must have come from oozed more squirming paleness, and flies crawled out. Spread across the wall like a disease, some launching into the air.

“It’s dead. You’re okay, you’re fine.” Mike massaged the back of James’s neck.

“I don’t care… take me home. Let’s go, please let’s go.” He kept his face buried in Mike’s abdomen as he spoke, sniffled between words.

Fuck it, Mike thought. We probably got more than enough to start a new life. The weight of the backpack made his shoulders ache.

“All right. Okay… let’s go.” He knew he should probably call the cops, let them know there were human remains in the house. But he wouldn’t. He’d never called the cops for anything, knew it was pointless. Especially in the Oak. They only showed themselves to drag people to jail, meet their quotas. Never to help anybody.

But the cops were here, he thought. Mama said they found the man’s body here, with the bodies of children. How could they miss this?

Worthless fucking pigs.

And as fast as it took to blink, the house went dark. It was already dark, incredibly dark, but now, it was as if they stood in a void, in some endless limbo where nothing existed except each other. And Mike only knew James was there because the boy never let go of him, squeezed tighter, whimpered.

His grip tightened even more when the voice whispered into their ears. Guttural and thick as if coated in mucus. Each word accentuated with an insectual buzz.

“Sweet little kiddies.”

“No… No!” James shook his head, smeared snot and tears onto Mike’s shirt. Mike shut his eyes and held on to his brother.

“Don’t be scared, child.” The voice was above them, under them, on all sides.

Tiny, tickling legs crawled over Mike’s face and hands. The buzzing of wings assaulted his eardrums, and he wanted more than anything to scream, but he didn’t want to open his mouth. Part of him tried commanding his hand to pull his pistol out, drill a hole in this motherfucker, but the voice in his head told him it was useless. Mama’s voice.

Through his eyelids, Mike could tell that the darkness was gone, that there was light surrounding them now. Just the presence of light made some of his fear dissolve. With darkness came evil, but with light… with light there was hope. Hope for survival, hope that he could get his brother home, safe and sound.

So he let his eyes roll open. And yes, there was light.

But the old man was there, bent down and hugging James from behind. He puckered his lips and rubbed his wrinkled face against James’s back. “I love the little kiddies.”

The decrepit house was gone. The run-down, rotted wooden structure they were in only moments before had been replaced. They stood in a new house with new furnishings and… strange wallpaper. No, not wallpaper. Flies. Much more than before, covering ever centimeter of wall space. The sound they made tunnelled into Mike’s head, rattled his brain, turned his thoughts into madness.

He could only stare down at the old man, couldn’t make his body obey the brain signals that told it to move, to protect James. It felt like thousands of razor-winged butterflies were flapping in his stomach. The old man radiated heat, an intense temperature that sucked sweat from Mike’s pores and nearly choked him. A heat that, for some reason, Mike knew without question was evil. Pure, bubbling evil.

Mike finally yanked James away, pulled his 9mm out and pointed it between the old man’s eyes. “Stay the fuck away from us. Don’t fuckin’ come near us.”

The smile that had stretched across the man’s face twisted into a knot of hatred. The bushy gray mustache looked like the legs of spiders, wiggling and reaching. The tips curled into infinite spirals. He uncurled his body and stood. Short and toad-like, his shirtless gut hung over his waistline, hairy and pale as cottage cheese. Something writhed within the stomach, pressed against it from inside; red suspenders hid his nipples. A smell like burnt match heads wafted off of him. His eyes looked like empty pits, but something moved there.

More flies.

Where his eyes should have been were masses of the winged bugs. They crawled out and into the sockets, their iridescent bodies scuttling over his cheekbones and the bridge of his nose, orbiting his head in chaotic flight patterns.

“Give me the child.” His voice was made of phlegm with a high-pitched squeak at the end. And as he spoke, more flies burst forward, rushed past his long, yellow teeth. They flew out and in, suckled his lips. The old man reached out a hand, his fingers like the claws of a sloth. The skin was wrinkled and spotted, bulging with veins the size of earthworms. “Give me the child… Now!”

“Fuck you.” And Mike pulled the trigger. The bullet crashed through the old man’s skull, hit the wall behind him. The flies burst into the air, then settled back on the wall, covering the bullet hole immediately.

The old man lay on his back. He didn’t move, he didn’t make a sound, though the incessant buzzing never stopped. A swarm of flies circled over the man’s head, a humming tornado.

Mike bent down, held James at arm’s length. “You okay?”

James’s bottom lip hung from his face, wet and pink, quivering. He shook his head.

“I got him. He’s dead,” Mike said. “Let’s get the fuck outta here.” He checked over James’s shoulder, saw the man’s body still lying there, still motionless. The flies hovering over him increased their speed, became more chaotic and violent in their flight.

Mike pulled James along, back toward the kitchen, toward the back door where they had entered. No matter where they turned, there were flies. The walls were made of them. Every time one would land on him, Mike swatted it away, had to fight to keep his panic at bay.

They moved past the dining room and into the kitchen.

And they sunk.

Before he knew what was happening, the floor swallowed them up. Mike and James screamed in unison. A rotten stench rose up, penetrated their noses and mouths and entered their bodies.

Meat. The kitchen floor was meat, curdled and putrid. And filled with maggots. The vile quicksand sucked them in, and Mike grabbed James under the armpits and hoisted him up. The maggots tickled him, stung his skin as they tried to burrow. With a surge of adrenaline, he shoved James back onto the dining room floor; James slid backward, slick with putridity. The boy scrambled to rub the maggots off his skin, retched as he did so.

Mike tried to scream, tried to tell James to run, to try and find a way out of the house. But as he opened his mouth, soupy meat filled it. Larvae crawled in, wiggled against his gums, the insides of his cheeks. Down his throat. The meat choked him, blocked the vomit that tried to rush out. The weight of his backpack dragged him down further; he tried to shrug free, but couldn’t move enough in the thick meat muck.