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Walking into Mr. Lacey’s house feels like stepping into another dimension.
For all intents and purposes, it’s just a house, one that conceivably houses a widowed old man. William has been inside this house a hundred times before, sent on little errands by his mom or of his own accord to check on Mr. Lacey. None of the decor nor the furniture is the offputting part.
It’s the smell.
If it was strong out on the front steps, when they were just barely peeking in through the front door, it was all encompassing now. Rot. It permeates his nose, the kind of smell that clings to your olfactory senses and stays there for hours. The anxiety thrumming in his chest tightens, an instinctual voice in the back of his head begs him to run. Norah, standing on his heels, is the only thing that kept him from booking it outside.
Getting upstairs is worse, somehow. The steps seem to go on forever, ending in a void of shallow darkness at the top. Each step creaks and groans angrily beneath their careful feet, making fear thrum all the way down through his fingertips, pulsing in time with his heart. The smell, that he thought was the strongest it could’ve possibly been, seems to become suffocating the further up they get.
The stairs finally end, in the small landing with moss green carpeting that he’s familiar with. The lights’re off, the curtains drawn. The dim lighting makes it take much longer than it should to notice something wrong. The carpet’s mottled with something orange, little… bits of something sprinkled about it.
This substance clings to the rug, faintly damp, shimmering wetly in what little sunlight slipped through the curtains, but mostly crusted over. In the darkness, part of him’s terrified it’s the blood of Mr. Lacey, seeping out from behind his closed bedroom door. He and Norah share a wide-eyed look, before they both drop into crouches and gently run their fingers through the carpet fibres.
Whatever it is, it’s sticky, adhering to his skin. The smell of rot is coming from it, so strong it makes his stomach roll. He rears back, a noise of disgust breaking from his throat against his will, “Oh, god,” he coughs, “That’s not blood, at least?”
Beside him, Norah hesitates, “William…” she murmurs, “Is this what you were smelling?”
Something resigned settles deep within in him, a foundation that hums beneath the constant anxiety in his veins, “...Yeah.”
“...Okay.”
“This is it.”
He gets to his feet, slowly, deliberately, and moves toward the door. His cheek’s beginning to ache from biting it so hard. The handle is cold to the touch, and the hinges creak, protesting the hesitant opening.
Mr. Lacey is sitting in his chair, the same one William saw him in from outside.
There’s a beat where he doesn’t notice.
A beat where it’s just the old man, passed in his sleep. His is skin taut and calloused, pulled unnaturally tight across his bones. He sees the setting sun beaming in from slits in the curtains hitting the ground and reflecting off a pool of that orange liquid that stains the aged green carpet under Mr. Lacey’s chair.
And then his eyes trail up, up, up to Mr. Lacey’s face, and William’s heart stops.
“Oh, god,” he chokes out. Behind him, he hears Norah gasp, the quiet slap of her hand hitting her mouth, as she sees it at the same time he does, “Oh, god. Oh, god, they came out of him, didn’t they?”
Mr. Lacey’s face is caved in, cracked open like something dug into it– out of it– barely even recognizable as a person anymore. His jaw hangs from its hinges, one eye still partially intact and dangling lazily into the abyss of what was once a human face.
Norah steps past him, her body coiled tight with the same fear that coursed through him. He needs to know more, needs to inspect the body, needs to understand, the same as she does. So he follows.
What he sees doesn’t… compute. It doesn’t fit into his understanding of reality. The inside of this man is… empty. Gore clings to his bones and the outline of skin, and within the impossibly empty space is more of the orange, shimmering liquid that was on the ground.
William lurches to the side, losing his balance and falling to his knees. They hit the soaked carpet with a wet thud, pain singing up his muscles. He barely notices, keeling over and gagging. The force pushes against him, a bodily heave that drags bile out of his mouth to splatter on the ground. Tears burn at his eyes, unholy terror permeating through him.
“Oh, fuck,” he breathes, coughing. Tiny gags and shivers keep wracking through him as the image repeats in his mind, playing over and over again. His stomach aches, his throat feels seared, and that awful vomit taste clings to his tongue, “Oh, fuck, Norah.”
“This–,” Norah’s voice is squeaky, highpitched and horrified. There’s this undercurrent of nervous laughter beneath her words, “This isn’t gonna happen to us, ‘cause– ‘cause–”
“You don’t believe in god, right?” he gasps out between the full body trembles that make it impossible for him to even move.
“You don’t believe in god–”
“--Cause if you believe in god–”
“And I don’t believe in god–”
“You don’t believe in god,” he breathes, relief briefly flashing through him, before it’s rapidly washed away with realization. “My mom believes in god.”
This fear is different. It isn’t seeing something incomprehensibly horrifying, it isn’t the fear of something discovering you and killing you. It isn’t the fear of the unknown. It’s slower. This cold, ice-like feeling that hits him and settles into his limbs.
His mom.
“I gotta go.” he stumbles to his feet, grabbing for the nearest piece of furniture to steady himself on his shaking legs. Norah opens her mouth to respond, but he can’t. He needs to get to his mom, he needs to make sure this isn’t happening to her. How could he have left her alone, when he knew something was wrong? What if he’s too late? What if she’s already dead?
He runs. Uncoordinated, shaking, frantic. He hits the doorway with his shoulder and rams into the corner of the stair railing with his hip, but doesn't stop. He books it from the house, straight down the street to his own. Somewhere in his mind, he recognizes the sound of Norah trailing behind him.
William slams the front door to his house open– and for a beat, his hand is still damp with whatever that shit was from Mr. Lacey, and he thinks it’s on the door. That he’s too late– some part of him expecting to see his mother on the couch, bugs crawling out from within her.
Instead, she jolts, yelping at his obnoxious entry, “Jesus Christ, William!” she exclaims, “You scared the hell outta me!”
She’s okay.
She’s gonna be okay. He would make sure she's okay.
He could fix this. He has to.