"You are losing it!" Danny said in his strangely hissing, grumbling, and whining voice. "Think about what you're doing. This is murder!"
As Blake shoved his deformed brother aside, Jenna began to panic worse than ever. She screamed and tried to plant her heels on the floor, but her wet feet slid along the linoleum. She drove her elbows back, kicked at Matt's feet and shins, and beat at his face. When she opened her mouth to scream again, she felt his large hand clamp down over her mouth. Instinctively, she bit down on his hand, and immediately regretted doing so. The taste and the smell of his flesh was so acrid and repulsive that Jenna coughed and gagged.
At last they came to a halt in a dark hall. Cutting her eyes as far over as she could, Jenna could make out a white door that had several padlocks from its top to bottom, which looked as though they had recently been installed. She heard the jingle of keys and saw that Blake was working to unlock each of the locks.
"You know, you've kinda become a real pain, Jenna," He said. "I mean, do you know how hard it was to find a house with a basement nowadays? Now we'll probably have to pick up and move in a day or two, look for another vacant house for sale."
As he removed the final lock from the bottom of the door, he rose and turned toward her.
"You probably thought we bought the place, too, huh?" He smiled. "Just because we took the sign out of the front yard."
He opened the door wide, and a draft of cold air washed over Jenna, filling her nose with a putrid odor. Her eyes went wide as Blake brought his face close to hers. His blue eyes and handsome grin now appeared menacing and heartless to her. With a single skinny finger, he brushed her wet stringy hair away from where it clung to her forehead.
"I wish we could've had that drink, Jenna," Blake whispered. "We could have had a great time together."
His eyes bored into her own, and Jenna found herself frozen with fear and uncertainty.
"Now, you belong to someone else," he said, "and I can't be sure what he'll do with you."
Before Jenna could do anything or cry out, Blake nodded to his brother, who began to drag her toward the door. Blake disappeared and her eyes fixed on the darkness beyond the threshold in front of her. She wailed into Matt's palm and thrashed about frantically. As they neared the door, she flung her legs out desperately. She managed to plant one of her feet on the door frame, and she pushed away from it with all her might.
It made little difference to Matt. He flung her through the door and into the darkness, and her leg buckled under the force painfully. Jenna found herself sailing through the dark. She yelped briefly before landing violently on what could have only been stairs. Her arm twisted beneath her, sending a white hot flare of pain through her shoulder. Downward she tumbled, her every limb assaulted by the steps as she fell.
When at last she reached the bottom, her back slammed against a hard, unforgiving wall. The back of her head smacked the surface with a sickening thud. Her head felt as though it had suffered an explosion within. Jenna distantly heard the garbled sobbing utterances that came from her mouth. All she could focus on was the pain. She blinked and tried to allow her eyes to adjust to see something, anything at all, but it was useless. Jenna was in the darkness, and it hurt too much to move.
She was vaguely aware of the moment she sank to the floor on her side, before her world slipped into a hazy oblivion.
****
Jenna felt her eyes open, though she was not sure what had stirred her awake. Confusion clouded her mind as she struggled to gather her bearing. She shivered, feeling the icy touch of the floor beneath her. In the dark, she could only make out a few shapes and shadows.
She lifted her head from the floor and sat upright, but immediately regretted doing so. The world spun and seemed to rush away from her with a strange sense of vertigo. Then, the overwhelming throb in her head ebbed like a colossal tide crashing on the shores of her brain.
She fell back against the unseen wall behind her and rubbed at the back of her head. When she did, she gave a hoarse yelp at the tenderness in her shoulder. It was then that the memories came flooding back to her. Her heart sank in despair as she remembered where she was. Jenna wanted nothing more than to be sitting safe in her house on her couch, to be bored and watching television, but it was useless as she glanced around and realized the truth of her terrible situation.
Jenna blinked, trying to survey the scene around her. She wished that she had her glasses, but they were lost to her now. Peering through the darkness of what she knew was a basement, she could not make out anything discernible. Her world was a blurred mess of black and grey obscurities, and undefined objects lurking in the abyss before her.
She sobbed hopelessly. She was in pure shock of how fast everything had happened, of how her perfectly normal existence had gone sour. Jenna only vaguely recalled the details of the story that Blake had told her, but she could not forget the terror that it had instilled in her. Remembering the impending fate that had been intended for her, she glanced around the dark room again, desperately searching for a reason to hope.
Then, as she craned her neck around to the side, her eyes were blessed with the sight of a large area of bluish white light. Turning so that she could find its source, she spotted a large square window in the foundation of the house at ground level. Jenna tried to picture the street in her head, and noted that there was a street light not far from that particular side of her neighbors' house.
As a small glimmer of hope caught fire inside of her, Jenna willed herself to stand. Her knees were sore and bruised, and there was still a dull pain in her upper arm. She winced from the pain but lifted herself up. Again she shivered, for her bare legs felt as though they were coated in ice, and her soggy shirt that clung to her body was useless against the chill of the basement.
Jenna took a few steps forward, her eyes scanning the blurred darkness around her fearfully. She felt a hard stone floor beneath her feet. Extending her arm out in front of her, she felt her way through the shadows slowly. The window was only a few yards ahead, though to her grief, it looked to be a foot or two higher than her head. It would not be easy to reach.
She suddenly ran into something large and metallic in her path, perhaps an old stove or washing machine. Clutching her hip and grimacing, Jenna stepped around it only to bump against a heavy object that hung from the basement ceiling. As she made contact with it, the object swayed before her. Startled, she recoiled from it, her eyes searching for its shape in the gloom. The object moved between her and the bluish light ahead, and Jenna cried out in shock.
While much of its features were shrouded in the dark, Jenna had no trouble discerning its overall shape against the light. There was no mistaking the silhouette of human hands and legs dangling limp from a lifeless body above. She lost control of her breathing as she panted in short gasps. It was then that the smell hit her, akin to that of a dead animal carcass baking in the sun.
Clamping her hand over her mouth, she absently wondered if her eyes had begun to tear up because of how frightened she was or from the stench. Looking away, she continued on, cutting a wide path around the body. She fixed her eyes on the light from the window. Jenna thought that she could see some sort of latch that she could possibly reach, but she couldn't be sure.
Just as she quickened her pace toward the window, she froze in her tracks. Her vision was impaired, but at that distance she could see plainly enough. Something had moved from the light, fading away into the dark. It terrified Jenna to know that she had been staring at whatever it was the entire time, but had only noticed it when it moved away. A burst of fear shot through her body, and her skin suddenly tingled as though a million spider legs were crawling all over her.
There was something in the room with her, of that she was certain. Jenna wanted to run, but she had nowhere to go. Her only option was to make a mad dash for the window and hope to reach it. There would be no time to search for something to stand on, not if the being in the room was who, or what, she suspected. The thought made her tremble.
Then, from just beyond the light that cascaded in through the basement window, Jenna spotted two pale green discs shining reflectively. Immediately she thought of the night she had seen the eyes at her window, and dread filled her chest, choking the breath from her lungs. The eyes floated slightly toward her, and the light from the window illuminated the face that came into its path.
Jenna was locked in the gaze of its wild lidless eyes as they studied her eerily. She recognized the wretched grin and hanging jowls as when the creature stepped into view. The few dead strands of grey hair that hung from its head shined brilliantly in the light, giving it a strange but terrible glow. Its long fingers worked tirelessly, feeling and groping at the air. The familiar wheezing and growling of its breath was just audible to her.
Jenna's mounting terror grew to an unbearable level. Without thinking she dashed toward the window. In an instant, she was at the window and clawing to get a grip on its ledge to pull herself up, but she was not fast enough. She felt a hand, albeit a rather large and oddly shaped hand, slip through the strands of her hair and pull her back.
Jenna screamed as she lost her balance and stumbled backward towards her attacker. Her feet kicked and stumbled along the floor. The roots of her hair hurt so badly that she feared her scalp would be torn from her head. Though the hand did not release her, the pain subsided and she found herself on the floor staring up at the thing that had grabbed her.
She stared up the length of its long bent legs, studying the creature in horrified awe in the light from the window. Its torso was a strange sight to behold. The abdomen was sunken and almost skeletal, with large folds of loose porous skin dangling down. The chest, however looked altogether different, for it was rather bulky and defined. The flesh there was stretched and thin. She stared at the arm that was curled close to its chest, and the elongated hand with its black fingers scratching at its chest.
