Nightmare Fuel #31: The House of Hurt
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I'm Dan Cummins, and I'll be sharing another original short story of the fictional horror variety. Another standalone story this week. I keep wanting to add more lore to the dark world or revisit some of the friends and or monsters we've met in these stories. But then inspiration takes me elsewhere. Very curious of what you'll think of where it took me for this one. I highly recommend Noise Cancellation Headphones for the ultimate experience. Hope you enjoy this new nightmare.

Time now for the tale of the House of Hurt. Gabe and Hassan were both getting more red-faced and sweaty by the minute. The trail guide had said their hike would be moderate, but this didn't feel moderate. Gabe's quads were burning. Hassan's feet were beginning to ache, and neither one of them felt like they'd brought near enough water.

On what would turn out to be the second hottest day of the summer, they decided to tackle the 14-mile-plus hike up and back to the fire tower that sat atop Woodhull Mountain. Not a big mountain by any stretch of the imagination, and some guides described it as nothing more than a hill, but still, they were huffing and puffing. It was mid-August, and the pair had decided to leave the city and head to the Adirondacks for a romantic weekend getaway. Or at least, a getaway.

Gabe had gone back to school the previous fall to pursue a Master of Science in Nursing and Psychiatric Mental Health Nursing. That, on top of his work as an adjunct professor at NYU and still working full-time as a nurse practitioner, was really kicking his ass. He hadn't taken a true weekend off in months. Hassan had been busy, too. He worked full-time and sometimes pulled overtime shifts as a custodian for the New York City Department of Education.

And he'd been spending most of his weekends for the past few months helping to remodel a childhood home he'd bought from his parents along with his brother. A decision he was really starting to regret. It was a good investment, at least in theory. And he didn't mind working with his brother, but his sister-in-law? Holy shit, was she a wishy-washy, indecisive, and childish mess.

At the rate they were going, they were going to spend about double their original estimate on the remodel budget, and it was probably going to look worse than it did when they started. He desperately needed a weekend away from it all. He just hoped it was going to start off a bit more relaxing than this. They'd both wanted to get a nice hike in and soak up some fresh air, vitamin D, and summer vistas, and they'd scouted out a few trails ahead of time, settling on Woodhill Mountain.

It was a bit longer than they'd wanted, but it was also one of the least popular trails in the Black River Wild Forest, even though it promised incredible views from the very top. And whenever they left the Bronx, they wanted to see as few other people as possible. The first main portion of the hike had been easy. Outside of the temperature, it had actually been pretty relaxing. They'd strolled along at a comfortable pace on fairly flat ground for almost five miles, following what was left of an old railroad bed.

They even cut over at one point to dip their feet in the cool, clear water of Moose River that ran parallel to the trail. They'd strolled through sun-soaked meadows and circled by thick groves of eastern white pine and spruce trees with their tall, straight trunks. They'd hiked past dense thickets of maples and all the bracken and cinnamon ferns and moss-covered rocks beneath them, being passed by several mountain bikers and encountering a handful of other hikers who were headed back down.

And then came the climb. They'd seen a few other hikers come back down when they first began to ascend up the mountain. But then, nothing. They'd gotten a late start for how hot it was. That was part of it. It was now over 90 degrees and muggy as the clock approached 3 p.m. And they attributed not seeing anyone else to the combination of the time of day and the weather. And then, about a mile into the ascent, close to the top, they saw it.

A large, craftsman, two-story home, rising up from a small clearing about 50 feet above the trail. It was a gorgeous house, beautifully rustic. It blended in perfectly with the natural setting around them, with its cedar siding, big, broad, overhanging eaves with exposed rafters, several large windows letting in a generous amount of natural light, and its big, wide, and inviting front porch with tapered columns. But its placement was...

Well, weird didn't fully describe it. It was beyond fucking surreal. There was no driveway leading up to it. Of course there wasn't. There were no roads at all in this area of the forest preserve. There wasn't even a footpath cutting up from the trail, at least none that they could see. It didn't make any sense. There was no semblance of a yard, no landscaping of any kind from what they could tell.

It looked like someone had somehow magically lowered a house down from the sky onto the side of a mountain in the middle of a forest. "'The fuck?' Gabe said with a smile as he looked up at the house, laughed nervously, and then glanced over at his partner. "'Right?' agreed Hassan. "'What the hell?' They both had stopped hiking to stand up and stare up the slope at the strangely placed building, strange only in the sense that it definitely didn't belong where it sat.'

Had they seen this exact same house back near where they had parked in the quaint little rural hamlet of McKeever, they'd be talking about how gorgeous it was, how lucky whoever lived there was to have such a great home out in this peaceful stretch of country. They'd be dreaming about having a house just like it for themselves one day.

Something they'd already been saving towards for over a decade. A place to entertain all the wonderful and eclectic friends they'd curated over the years. A home of loud laughter, quiet reflection, big meals, and small gatherings. Being able to finally buy a home was one of the main reasons Gabe had decided to go back to school and get yet another degree in his late 40s. But instead of thinking any of those thoughts, they just felt anxious. Anxious.

Gabe was about to say, how is his house not mentioned on all trails? The app they'd used to plan their hike with when he saw her. The greatly distressed face of a young woman who looked like she could be anywhere from her late teens to her early 20s appeared in one of the home's two upper story windows facing them. And even though they couldn't hear her and were both very surprised and confused as to how they couldn't hear her, she definitely looked like she was screaming for help.

"'Oh, shit!' Gabe gasped. "'Hasan then also saw her and exclaimed, "'Oh, my God!' as he turned to Gabe and asked, "'with notes of panic rising in his throat, "'What do we do?' "'Gabe had always been the strong one of the two, "'the one Hasan leaned on and looked to "'in scary or stressful moments. "'He'd naturally taken on the role of protector "'very early on in their relationship. "'Hasan had grown up so sheltered, "'surrounded by a supportive family and friends "'since the day he was born, "'and he was naturally just so damn sweet.'

He'd only ever lived in the city. He'd traveled enough, and of course understood, based on what he'd read and seen on the news and learned through conversations and social media and all the many, many podcasts he consumed, that most of the world wasn't nearly as tolerant as his big blue bubble of a hometown.

But he'd never experienced the day-to-day casual torment of living somewhere, being hated for who he was. He'd never carried the stress and fear of always worrying when the next ignorant comment or even physical confrontation was going to come from. But Gabe had. Gabe had grown up in a traditional Mexican family with a traditional Mexican dad in a dusty little agricultural town in Washington state that was backwards in more ways than one. But at least it had hardened him up.

There wasn't much you could say or do that he hadn't heard or seen before. And, educated as he now was, he just might still revert back to the angry teen he once was and smash you in the mouth. He'd fought fairly often growing up, both with his words and with his fists. He'd learned how to identify threats and make snap decisions to either walk away or confront someone head on.

and having once been a scared little kid who could have used someone like him now to step in and help save his ass on more occasions than he cared to remember, by the time he was an adult, he'd become a quick defender of just about anyone in trouble, for better or for worse. And so, without even consciously making a decision, he found himself running up towards the house to help the woman in the window, yelling, "'Hey, ma'am! Are you okay?' She certainly didn't look okay."

Her eyes and mouth were both opened wide with fright. And now, although they still couldn't hear a sound, the whole forest around them had become eerily quiet. Now she was alternating between spinning her head around to look behind her for someone, presumably her captor and or attacker, and pounding on the window and screaming her silent-to-them scream. "'Gabe, wait!' Hasan called out. He was also, of course, worried about this woman, but he was more worried about Gabe.'

They had no idea what she was afraid of. What if there was a man inside with a gun? What if there were several men inside with several guns? Was this a domestic dispute or something even worse? But although he hadn't had time to properly process this new feeling creeping into his mind and wouldn't in that moment be able to even articulate it, those possibilities weren't what truly concerned Hasan. What worried him most was something about the house itself.

It was, well, wrong. It wasn't that it shouldn't be where it was. It was, as impossible and nonsensical as this thought was, that it somehow wasn't where it was. It was like what they were seeing wasn't real somehow. Not being able to hear the woman pound on the window or scream. How was that possible? Gabe felt this too, vaguely. But his concern over the woman in the window overrode any and all of his other thoughts.

He didn't even slow down when Hassan yelled at him to wait. Instead, he just yelled back, Stay there! Call for help! and kept moving. Hassan quickly pulled his phone out of his pocket. It immediately felt even worse when he saw the dreaded two words of no service. Now he yelled with more urgency, Gabe, stop! I can't call! I don't have service! Gabe did stop, but only for the briefest of moments.

He looked back at Hassan, furrowed his brow in concern, then looked back up at the woman in the window, who appeared more scared than ever. And that was all it took for him to ignore the growing ball of worry forming in his gut. Off he went, up onto the porch to bang on the front door, consequences be damned. But then, before his fist could find the door, it opened, and now Gabe and Hassan could hear the woman inside screaming bloody murder.

Still, Hassan didn't want Gabe going in after her. Gabe, no, please, don't go in there, he screamed. The feeling in his gut that things were wrong, that things weren't what they seemed, had grown exponentially the moment the door opened. His intuition told him, and Hassan had always been a very empathetic, intuitive person, that this was a trap, a trap that the woman in the window was trying to lure them into. He didn't know why or what it was, but he knew it wasn't what it seemed. But Gabe couldn't help himself.

Her scream was a siren song, and it pulled him straight inside the house. Hassan watched helplessly as the door slammed shut behind him. Gabe! He cried out as his stomach sank. The woman's scream cut off immediately when the door closed. Hassan initially assumed this was because the house was somehow soundproof, and it certainly was, just not in any normal, natural sense. But also, the woman had stopped screaming. When he looked back up at her, he let out a startled shriek.

She no longer looked upset or distressed. No, she looked pleased. Not only was she no longer screaming, she was smiling. She looked satisfied that her trick had worked, and she was staring right at Hasan. She cocked her head, studied him for a moment, and then waved. "'Fuck!' Hasan muttered under his breath."

He put his hands atop his head and shuffled back and forth, groaning in frustration and concern before he mumbled, Come on, Gabe. God damn it. Come back. Get out of that house. Then he stopped pacing, faced the house and screamed, Gabe! Gabe, it's a trick! Get out! Get out now! Gabe! Hassan yelled as he watched his partner slam himself up against the ground floor window closest to the front door. It was now Gabe who appeared to be silently screaming.

It was he who looked wide-eyed and terrified. He looked scared in a way that shook Hassan down to the bottom of his soul. He'd never seen Gabe look this afraid before, not even close. Gabe frantically motioned with his arms for Hassan to head back down the trail as he mouthed the words, Get help! over and over. And then, after he'd mouthed those words for the third or fourth time, someone or something pulled Gabe away from the window and Hassan could no longer see the man he'd spent the last dozen years of his life with.

The man he had planned on spending the rest of his life with. The man who was supposed to protect him, now needed to be saved. But Hasan didn't feel ready for that. He just stood there, dumbfounded, shocked into silence. And he stared at the strange house unnaturally situated on the side of a mountain in the middle of the woods. Not only was Hasan silent as he tried to figure out what to do next, so was the world around him. He spun around looking for some sign of life.

He would have thought he'd suddenly been struck deaf if he couldn't hear his own panicked breathing. Outside of any of the noises he himself was making, he couldn't hear anything else at all. No birds chirping. No insects chittering. No pine cones falling and bouncing down branches. No leaves rustling in the breeze. No Gabe screaming in that house. "'Gabe!' he screamed again. What was he going to do? He wished he was brave enough to run up into the house after him and save him, but he wasn't. He was too damn scared.'

He wasn't strong enough, and more than that. He knew, somehow, that it wouldn't be possible. That he wouldn't be able to save him no matter how hard he tried. At least, not on his own. But maybe someone else could. He had to run down and get help. He had to speed back down the trail and keep running until he got service again so he could call the police and tell them what, exactly. He decided he'd figure that out when the moment came. He looked back up at the window where the woman had stood.

She was gone. Hassan couldn't see her or anyone else in the house, even though there were no shut curtains or blinds as far as he could tell behind any of the windows, the great big windows that appeared to offer unobstructed views into the big home. But he couldn't detect any movement, no sign of life whatsoever. And then a strange thought floated up into the back of his mind. You don't want to see what's in that house. After a full-bodied chill left him shuddering,

Hassan ran back down the strangely silent mountain, failing to completely fight away the fear that he might not ever see Gabe again. Gabe knew something was off before he'd entered the house. He also knew that if he hadn't have run inside and had instead ran back down the trail until he'd been able to call the police, and then had found out that in the time it took the authorities to make it back to the house that the woman had been killed, he would have never have been able to forgive himself.

And therefore, he'd made the right choice. The only choice. But then, when the door slammed shut behind him despite no one standing near it, followed immediately by the woman screaming, abruptly stopping, he immediately wished he'd listened to Hasan. And then he saw the monster, and his blood ran cold. The child thing.

What at first glance appeared to be a pale, androgynous, tow-headed child of around eight or nine, wearing a school uniform reminiscent of AC/DC guitarist Angus Young, black blazer over a white shirt and tie, schoolboy shorts, knee-high white socks and black leather dress shoes, approached him from further inside the house. Whatever this thing was, it definitely wasn't actually a child.

That became obvious the second Gabe saw its black as coal eyes and mouth full of piranha-like teeth, and he had to fight the impulse to start screaming and maybe even soil himself. Gabe had always hated childlike monsters in horror movies. Anytime a kid was the villain, or a thing looked sort of like a kid but was actually some evil demon or something like that, he was out. It was too much for him. This was way too much for him.

and then, as if its basic appearance wasn't scary enough, it ratcheted up the terror factor further with how it spoke. Its mouth, from the first moment Gabe saw it, was open wide in an unmoving, predatory grin, a grin that now didn't move one bit as it spoke, as if it were practicing ventriloquism. But it wasn't merely throwing its voice, not in any normal, traditional way. Its voice, its strange, robotic, inhuman voice, came from everywhere around Gabe at once, as it said...

Hello, Gabe. I'd like you to join us for the next round of games. Follow me. Gabe now heard himself let out a whimper, a pitiful sound he didn't at first even realize he was making. He'd never felt so simultaneously afraid and confused. The fuck was happening? How could any of this be happening? How did this thing know his name? He spun around and frantically tried to open the door, but it was locked. And he couldn't see a button or bolt he could press or twist to unlock it. If you wish to leave, you'll have to win.

The child thing said from not just behind him, but again from all around.

"'Let me out!' Gabe screamed, succumbing to an inescapable and all-encompassing wave of panic that was washing over him. Feudally trying to twist open the doorknob one last time before he moved over to the window, looked out and saw Hassan staring up at the house and screaming for him, or at least he appeared to be screaming. Gabe couldn't hear anything outside the house. Hoping Hassan could somehow hear him, Gabe screamed, "'Get help!' several times over as he motioned for Hassan to head back down the trail."

Gabe wailed in response to being grabbed by some invisible force that had just pulled him back away from the window. He stumbled backwards and fell to the floor before he was spun around and then found himself impossibly sliding, feet first, towards the child thing that still flashed that same frozen smile and continued to stare at him with its cold, unblinking Onyx eyes. The monster announced,

And then the child thing turned around and walked back towards an open door leading down to the basement. And Gabe, as if he'd been caught in a tractor beam or was being pulled along by a magnet, screamed for help and followed against his will as he struggled and writhed in vain against the invisible, mysterious, and unstoppable force.

In this manner, he was pulled unceremoniously down the steps to the home's basement, which he recognized immediately as being far too large for the home above it. It didn't make sense. Nothing about any of this followed any sort of logic that he could ascertain. It felt like he had entered a completely different world when he'd stepped inside the house. A world he already feared greatly, but was still a long, long ways from understanding.

Once he'd been dragged about halfway to the bottom of the stairs, he saw others who looked like they had been captured by the monster in the house at some point as well. Or was the house itself a monster, he wondered. The woman he'd seen screaming in the upstairs window was not amongst them. He wondered if she was real, and if she had really ever been there at all. Once he'd made it to the bottom of the stairs, the magnetic pull on Gabe ceased, and the child thing spoke again in its strange way, telling him, "'Take your seat and await instruction.'

"'Gabe instinctively wanted to run back up the stairs, "'but he knew that would accomplish nothing at best "'and could result in some type of punishment at worst. "'So he did as he was told "'and sat on the long wooden bench before him "'in the spot where the child thing was now pointing. "'As he looked around the room, "'he had to fight against an overwhelming feeling of madness "'that wanted to settle over and envelop him completely. "'Everything that had happened was so absolutely fucking insane.'"

His chest was tight and he struggled to breathe in fully. The child thing walked across the room and stood about 30 feet in front of him and the others. Gabe looked to his left and counted 11 other people. Some of them spoke softly and in other languages. There was an Asian woman by herself who looked to him like she was probably Japanese. There was a group of three who appeared to be Nordic, maybe Swedish or Danish. A husband, wife and their teenage son.

There was a thin man by himself of around 30 or maybe 35, wearing filthy work pants, boots, suspenders, and a long-sleeved wool shirt. He looked like he'd sprung forth from some old sepia-toned historical photograph of life on the American frontier from the mid-19th century. There were three teenagers huddled together, two girls and a boy, who looked Eastern European, perhaps Russian. They were all dressed like they'd been camping, but not recently.

They dressed like they'd been camping in the 1940s or 1950s. Even stranger, there were two small, very tan-skinned men dressed in primitive jewelry, loincloths, and nothing else. They looked like they were Pacific Islanders, and like they were from a thousand years ago. One could have been anywhere from 25 to 50. The other looked like he could be anywhere from 40 to 65.

And there were two others. A massive and muscled man, probably in his 20s, either wearing the most authentic Roman legionnaire costume Gabe had ever seen, or he was a Roman legionnaire. And finally, there was a young black woman of around the age of 30, dressed like she'd come to the house straight from Coachella, or from the first actual Woodstock concert from the summer of 1969. Gabe's mind swirled. He wondered if he'd fallen on the trail and hit his head and was having the most intense hallucination of his life.

or if he'd been drugged somehow. Although he would have never thought this before, the events of the past few minutes, he wondered if some of these people were actually from the past. The thought made no real sense, but nothing made sense anymore. More upsetting than the ridiculous possibility that the house had traveled through space and time to collect these people for some game were the state most of them were in. One of the Indonesian men, the older one, held a very bloody scrap of cloth over his left hand.

The Japanese woman was doing the same thing, holding a bloody scrap of fabric which Gabe guessed correctly was the missing right sleeve of her shirt over her left hand. Two of the Russian teens were also holding bloody rags to their hands. The boy to his right, the girl to her left. The girl pulled her rag back to reveal what it was covering as Gabe looked and gasped involuntarily. She was missing two fingers, her pinky and her ring finger, both gone all the way down to the bottom knuckle.

and based on how the wounds were still bleeding, it looked as if she had lost them very recently, possibly within the past half hour. Gabe now of course assumed that everyone holding rags over their hands were also missing some of their fingers. Many of these people also had bloody lips, bumps, and black or blackening eyes. Others bled from various other wounds all over their bodies. Many cried.

Some, like the Roman and the Japanese woman, stared vacantly out in front of themselves in a way Gabe recognized from previously working with patients who were transitioning to hospice care. They had resigned themselves to die, or at least it appeared that way. Gabe observed all of this in about ten seconds on his first scan of the room, and then the black woman who sat closest to him asked, in all seriousness, "'What year is it?' Before Gabe could answer, the child thing spoke."

Silence, Anisha. It's time to explain the rules. It's important that everyone listen carefully. I will not repeat myself. Gabe did not love where any of this was going. You will be playing a series of four games, followed by a bonus round. The first game will begin momentarily. The winner of each game will receive two points. The loser will have two points taken away. Everyone else's scores will remain the same after the four games have been completed.

All of you will have the chance to attain additional points in the bonus round. Following the bonus round, whoever has the highest point total will be allowed to leave the house. The loser will be fed to the house. The house will then choose a different location, recruit a different player or players, and the next round of games will begin, providing you all with another opportunity to leave.

Gabe assumed correctly that everyone could hear the child thing speak in their own language, based on their collective reactions. Following the child thing's horrible final words, one of the Russian teens, the girl missing two of her fingers, stood up and started screaming. Unbeknownst to Gabe, she had, only an hour or so earlier, been on a week-long camping trip with her so-called "tourist club" back in 1954 in the Ural Mountains.

Four members of the state-sponsored outdoors club had ended up entering the mysterious house, which had appeared to them as a rustic log cabin, appropriate for the time and area, but also strangely out of place location-wise, like how the house had appeared to Gabe.

I think the guy who lost the last game was her. Anissa was about to whisper the word boyfriend to Gabe when the child thing looked at her, commanded silence, and she began choking, clutching at her throat, and she fell off the bench onto the floor and began thrashing about her eyes bulging. The child thing then turned back towards the Russian teen as the girl, still screaming, ran towards it. Gabe screamed, oh shit, as he witnessed the teen's neck be snapped without her being touched. Her

Her head tilted quickly and violently to the left, accompanied by her screaming ceasing, and immediately followed by her body falling limp and dead to the floor. Then the child thing spoke again. You are not allowed to protest or refuse to participate in any aspect of the gangs. The punishment for protesting or refusing to participate is death.

Anisha, whose body was just about done thrashing as she began to lose consciousness, suddenly gulped in a huge breath of air and then she started to alternate between coughing and inhaling deeply as she scrambled back up and retook her seat on the bench while no one else was talking anymore. The room wasn't quiet. It was loud with sobbing, crying, the loudest cries coming from the two teens who had just witnessed their friend die.

and that same invisible force that had pulled Gabe from the front door all the way down into the basement now pulled the girl's dead body back up those stairs and out of the basement. The child thing then, as if all of this was normal and not worth commenting on, began to explain the rules of the first of the four games. In a few moments time, you will be playing hide and seek. You will first all draw a number out of the hat.

Right on cue, a series of hats materialized out of thin air in front of each player or group of players. "Take your number now. Whoever draws the number one will be it." Gabe, along with everyone else, reached into the floating hat in front of them, pulled out a folded piece of paper, and looked at their number. Gabe drew four. After a brief pause, the child thing announced, "Sucarno, you have drawn the number one, and you are now it."

The younger of the two islanders, an 8th century Indonesian Hindu man from a fishing village on Java, nodded his head in solemn acceptance. The child then scanned the room with its unblinking all black eyes before it continued. Sukarno will have 15 minutes to find you all, or not. If he finds everyone, he will win the game and the first person he found will have lost. If he is not able to find all of you in time, Sukarno has now lost the game.

Gabe remained where he was as the others, outside of Sukarno, headed to and then up the stairs. He felt nauseous. He was covered in a cold sweat. He also felt like he was dreaming, stuck in the worst nightmare of his life and desperate to wake up.

Just for a moment, he considered charging towards the child thing with the piranha's smile. He didn't think he would be able to overpower it. In fact, he strongly assumed it would quickly kill him, but he thought maybe that was the only way he could wake up. But then, as the last of the others began to ascend the basement stairs, he looked up above him and he saw the red numbers of a digital clock projected up towards but not onto the ceiling above him. They were counting down. 22, 21, 20, 21.

Gabe snapped out of his stupor and began marching up the stairs. It was no dream. It felt like a dream. He wanted it to be a dream. But he knew that as surreal, absurd, horrible, and confusing as it all was, it was real. And he didn't want to risk losing the first game and taking the lead in the race for who dies next. Then he thought of something the monster had said. Whoever has the highest point total will be allowed to leave the house.

If he could win, maybe it would honor its words. Maybe he could make it back to the trail. Back to Hassan. No! Hassan tripped over an exposed tree root and tumbled forward to the ground. He cried out in pain as his knee smashed into the sharp edge of a rock that both tore into and bruised his skin.

Hassan had also scraped both of his palms thanks to throwing his hands out in front of him to prevent literally landing face first. Hassan grimaced as he pulled his wounded leg up towards his chest after rolling over and onto his back. Someone help me! He yelled out towards the blue sky above in frustration. Where the fuck is everyone? He added, not quite as loudly to himself. It had been almost ten minutes since Gabe had disappeared into the house and he'd taken off running.

And despite yelling out for help frequently and moving downhill as fast as possible, he hadn't run into anyone. He scrambled painfully to his feet and took his cell phone out of his pocket, both thankful that he hadn't smashed it when he'd fallen and equally frustrated by its reveal of the dreaded two words, no service. Hassan started running again, slower now and with a pronounced limp.

The 30-second hiding countdown had expired and been replaced by the 15-minute countdown, and Gabe still hadn't found his hiding spot. He was on the second floor and could hear Sukarno running around on the floor beneath him. He tried two different rooms already, but both had been taken. There were occupants hissing at him in languages he didn't understand, but he knew the gist of what they were saying. Some version of, "'Fuck off and find your own spot.'"

He'd also tried opening a window, hoping somehow he could get out of the demented torture chamber of a house. He was struggling to focus. His thoughts ping-ponged around with a growing, seemingly endless list of questions. Who were all these people? Where, exactly, were each of them from? Did they all have anything in common? Had any of them seen any past winners actually get to leave the house?

Did any of them wonder why they had been somehow chosen? Had they, in fact, been chosen? Or was it all just random? What other games would they be playing? Why were some of them missing fingers? What was that childlike monster? Were there other monsters? And on, and on, and on. Gabe was pulled out of these thoughts when he heard someone yell downstairs. They'd been found. He felt a bit of relief. He at least wasn't going to lose the first game.

In fact, he had a chance to win it. He scanned the hallway around him and his eyes settled on the string attached to the access panel to the attic and the fold-out ladder he assumed was behind it. He pulled the string, brought down the ladder and climbed up and into the darkness. Once inside, he remembered that he still had his cell phone with him, took it out of his pocket, hoped against all reasonable hope that it didn't say, no service, which of course it did.

then turned on its flashlight feature and felt his stomach drop. Just like the basement, the attic didn't fit with the rest of the house. Whereas the basement was too big, the attic was too small, and the slope of the roof above him didn't match what he remembered seeing from the outside. Much, much more upsetting was that it looked familiar. It was the attic in his grandparents' house, looking, feeling, and smelling exactly as it had on a hot summer's day almost 40 years earlier.

when he'd hidden his two older cousins who, while babysitting him, had decided to terrorize him. They'd also decided to play hide-and-seek that day. And one of them, Carlos, who wasn't it, encouraged him to go hide in the attic. Carlos had led Gabe to believe that he was going to hide up there with him. But then instead, once Gabe had made it up and found a hiding place, Carlos had turned off the attic's only light and then snuck back down and left him there.

He could then hear both Carlos and Angel laughing downstairs. He was too scared to try and find the ladder, and he didn't understand how it worked anyway. So he just yelled and begged them to let him out. But they wouldn't. They just kept laughing. And eventually, after he had broken down and started screaming and sobbing so hard he'd begun to hyperventilate, those assholes left the house and rode their bikes down the street to grab some slushies at 7-Eleven. They just left him up there, in the dark, for over two hours.

and at some point a spider had dropped down onto his neck. Later, another one had crawled across his leg. He'd been terrified of the dark and of spiders, nearly to a phobic level, for years after that. It had taken a lot of therapy in his twenties to eventually somewhat get over it all, but now those old fears came rushing back.

Gabe did his best to push past those fears and hid in the same spot he'd found as a kid, behind some old boxes of his grandmother's clothes. At least this time, he wouldn't be there for hours. He looked above his head, and there were less than 13 minutes left. He actually laughed a bit at how quickly the concept of some magical digital display casually following him everywhere he went had become normalized. Gabe also took some solace in the fact that at least this time around, he had some light.

But then his flashlight went out, and he was immersed in total darkness. Somehow, the floating time display emitted zero light onto the space around it. The old feelings of panicking in the attic as a kid now came back and... What the fuck? How? He heard laughter coming from the hallway beneath him. Angel and Carlos' laughter. He felt like if he were to look into a mirror at that moment, he'd see the reflection of his scared seven-year-old self, and his cheeks would be wet with tears.

He had to fight the urge to break down. He didn't want Sukarno to hear his sobs. He looked up. Twelve minutes. Sixteen seconds. Time was moving slowly, but he could still do this. He focused on his breathing, inhaling slowly and deeply through his nose for five seconds, holding it in for a second count of five, then exhaling slowly through his mouth for a third count of five while he held the tip of his tongue to his mouth's roof.

In less than 50 of those breath cycles, he could win the game, if Sukarno still hadn't found him. This breathing regimen kept him somewhat calm for a few minutes, but then, after about 10 of those cycles, he felt it drop down onto the back of his neck. A spider, but not the same spider from his youth. A massive tarantula-sized spider. He stifled a scream and slapped it onto the floor, but then, no more than 10 seconds later, a second one descended upon his head.

And as soon as he slapped that one away, he felt a third crawl over his calf. They were fucking everywhere. He was trying so hard to stay calm, but he couldn't stop at the beginnings of a panic attack. His heart was racing. He was shaking. His chest felt dangerously tight, like soon he wouldn't be able to breathe. He wanted to jump up and run, screaming back towards the ladder. He suddenly didn't care if he got caught. No. No, that wasn't true. He did care. He reminded himself. He wanted to live. He wanted to see Hasan again.

He smashed his eyes tightly shut, stiffened his body, and mentally repeated over and over, They're not real. They're not real. They're not real. Whether that was true or not. He did that for minutes. How many, he didn't know. And eventually the spiders stopped dropping and crawling on him. And he hadn't even been bit. He finally dared to open his eyes and look up, and the clock revealed there were less than three minutes left. But then, the entrance to the attic opened.

And a few seconds later, he could hear Sukarno crawling up the ladder. Thankfully, he didn't have a phone with a light. Gabe could hear Sukarno speaking to himself and calling out to Gabe in a language Gabe didn't recognize as he crawled around the attic now. Luckily, he'd started his search on the opposite side. Gabe looked up, and there were less than two minutes left. He wondered if he was the last one still hiding.

He stayed perfectly still and focused on his breathing as he listened to Sicarno now crawl over towards his side of the attic. Less than one minute now. And then the biggest spider of all dropped down directly onto Gabe's face. It was the size of a rat. So large he could actually hear the wet clicking noises its chelicerae made as it moved its mouth around as if preparing to bite or feed or both.

Gabe knew he couldn't keep it together much longer. He pictured it preparing to bite his eyeball. It took all the restraint he could muster not to slap at it and risk making enough noise to be found. In addition to hearing and feeling the massive spider crawling on his face, he could hear Sicarno crawling closer and closer to him. Then the spider shifted its weight, took a few steps on its spindly yet weighty legs, and positioned itself over his mouth, lowering its heavy, hairy body onto his nose and lips.

He was afraid to open his eyes, his mouth, or breathe in or out. It was truly torturous. And after a few seconds, he couldn't take it anymore. He was so fucking close, but he couldn't do it. He felt like he was about to lose his mind. He screamed and swatted the massive spider off of his face, heard it hit the floor, and then heard Sukarno start to move in his direction. But before he was truly found, the attic lit up as if it was outside and the noon sun was shining brightly above him and the voice of the child thing rang out. The first game has ended.

Return to the basement at once. Had he won? Gabe wondered. He looked over at Sukarno, who grunted incomprehensibly before turning and beginning to descend down the attic ladder. Gabe quickly followed. He didn't want to be dragged downstairs again for not following the rules. Or worse. Back in the basement, everyone took the same spots on the bench where they had sat earlier, as the sinister child thing stood where it had when it first shared the rules, and where it had broken that girl's neck without even having to touch her.

Everyone looked pretty shaken up and Gabe wondered what they had witnessed as they hid. Gabe has won the first game, the child thing announced. Sukarno has lost. Gabe now has two points. Sukarno has negative two points. Everyone else shares a score of zero. After taking the briefest pause to stare at Gabe as if it expected him to thank it or celebrate, the child thing continued. Now we shall play the second game. Holy shit, Gabe thought.

They didn't even get a break. Gabe wondered how long some of the people around him had been continuously or nearly continuously playing. Did they at least get a break when the house moved to a new location to gather more players? Or did the house always show up right before people saw it? And there really wasn't ever much of a delay between when one round of games ended and the new one began. Did they ever get food? Water? A chance to use the bathroom? The child thing's next announcement pulled him out of these thoughts.

We will now play the second game: The Box. The rules of the box are simple. Each of you shall enter the small box before you. You will remain inside until you ask to be released. Whoever asks to be released first loses. Whoever can remain inside the box the longest wins. You now have 15 seconds to enter.

Right on cue, a box materialized between Gabe and the monster just like other boxes did for everyone else. The simple box was made of wood with a single opening facing Gabe. It looked just barely big enough for him to fit inside. He looked up above him, and the floating clock was ticking down. Thirteen. Twelve. Eleven.

Gabe got up off the bench and got down onto his hands and knees. Then, right before he crawled inside, he turned and saw Anisha looking at him and said, 2024, to answer her question from before the first game of, what year was it? She nodded and replied, 1970, before crawling into her box as Gabe did the same. Once inside, the opening shut tight behind him. Gabe heard it lock, and his heart began to race.

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And now before we actually return to the basement of the mysterious house of horrors Gabe is stuck in, to find out how long he can handle being trapped in the box, what's going on with Hassan? Hassan had been limping down the trail for over 15 minutes now. It had taken him about 10 to slowly make it the rest of the way down the mountain, and for the past 5 or so minutes, he'd been making a little better time on the straight stretch following the old railroad bed, even though his knee was swelling and stiffening. He still hadn't run across anyone, and he still didn't have any cell service.

He'd been crying nearly the entire time, worried sick about Gabe. But then, finally, he saw someone approaching on a bike. "'Help!' he shouted as he waved his arms back and forth above his head. "'Help! Please!' The cyclist, a small, fit man in his fifties, raced towards him before stopping. "'Please!' Hassan pleaded with him. "'My partner is stuck in a house up by the summit. A crazy woman lured him in. He needs—' "'Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!' The man stopped him. "'Did you say a house?'

"'Yes,' Hasan said emphatically. "'A big craftsman just above the trail, right before the fire tower.' "'No,' the man said flatly. "'I've lived around here for over a decade, and I've been up to that tower dozens of times. "'I was up there just yesterday. There is no house. There's no house anywhere along this trail.' "'Yes!' Hasan argued. "'Yes, there is! I just saw it! My partner and I saw a woman screaming for help in one of the windows, "'and he ran in to help her, but whoever's in there locked him in. We have to call the police!'

The cyclist stared dubiously at Hassan as he said, ''I think we might need to call an ambulance instead. You look like you fell. Did you hit your head?'' He didn't believe him, which made Hassan feel more desperate to make the man believe him, which unfortunately had the exact opposite effect he wanted and made him sound less believable. ''What? No, I'm fine. I know what I saw. Please give me your phone. Mine doesn't have service here.'' The man looked almost afraid of Hassan now, like he was about to race off on his bike.

Mine doesn't either, he said as he stared at Hassan warily. And I wouldn't be calling the police to report someone going into a house that doesn't exist if it did. Please, just give me your phone and let me try! Hassan yelled as he stuck his hand out and stepped towards him. Stop! Don't come any closer, the man said seriously as he grabbed what looked like a can of bear spray from his fanny pack. I don't know what drug you're on, but there's no damn house. Go home and sober up.

and then he took off on his bike, cutting a wide arc around Hassan and proceeding towards the mountain. "'Please!' Hassan screamed in frustration after him. "'I'm not in anything! My partner, my friend, he's in trouble! You have to go call the police! You'll see the house!' The cyclist didn't acknowledge Hassan's cries in any way. He just pedaled off, gaining speed and putting more and more distance between himself and the man he clearly thought was high on something. "'No!' Hassan screamed in frustration. "'Damn it! Fuck!'

He buried his face in his hands for a few moments and sobbed before he returned to limping down the trail as fast as he could, checking his phone for his signal every 30 seconds or so and striking out every time. Inside the box, Gabe couldn't hear anything outside of it, much like how he couldn't hear that woman in the window screaming when he was on the trail and then couldn't hear anything outside the house once he was inside of it. He couldn't see anything either. He couldn't even tilt his head up to see how long he'd been inside.

After who knew how long of listening to his own pounding heartbeat, labored breathing, and muttered profanities, the door behind Gabe opened, and he actually felt something close to happiness just for a moment. He'd won again. He'd be up four, zero, and as long as someone else didn't win the next two games, and he didn't finish dead last, he'd be released. He'd be able to go back to his old self.

He'd be back on the trail and running off to find Hassan, the only other person on Earth who would ever believe any of this shit. Who, maybe, would believe it. It would be a lot for anyone. He himself figured he might even start to doubt it and write it all off as some weird fucking fever dream or group hallucination or... Gabe now felt the feet and fur of a large rat hit his calf a millisecond before the opening to his box slammed shut again. And he was once more immersed in total darkness. But now, not alone.

Are you fucking kidding me? He squealed as he felt the rat squirm around his body and listen to it chirp, squeak, and hiss. It moved its way around to his ass, to his prone, exposed ass.

He could feel it hovering on his shorts right above his asshole that now felt dangerously exposed. He imagined it trying to eat through his shorts and claw its way inside of him. "Fuck you!" he yelled as he tried to slam the rat up against the top of the box. But he couldn't generate enough force to kill it or even seriously injure it. Instead, he'd hurt it just enough to really piss it off. It went berserk.

It fell to the bottom of the box, hissed, and then bit him on his inner thigh. And when he screamed and reacted to that, he ended up pushing it between his legs and towards his crotch. It started to claw at his shorts near his zipper, and that was it. Out! Let me out! Let me out! Let me the fuck out! He screamed wildly. The box opened, and Gabe backed out as fast as he could. He couldn't feel the rat anymore and worried it would start biting him again at any moment, but when he got out and was able to stand up, it was nowhere to be seen.

Did it bite you too? Anisha asked him. Gabe spun around and patted himself all over before he sat down on the bench. Yeah, he muttered. Where the fuck did it go? I think they just disappear when you ask to be let out, she said. Gabe stared at the child monster standing perfectly still in the center of the basement before he spoke next, making sure it wasn't watching them and wasn't about to have him choked or worse. What the fuck is this place? He whispered. I don't know. Hell? Anisha whispered back before she asked.

Where did you see it? The Black River Wilderness Area in New York, Gabe answered. You? Pescadero Creek Park is outside of San Francisco, she said before she asked. What did it look like? Big, two-story craftsman, cedar siding, Anisha considered. It was a small A-frame cabin, single-story when I saw it. Did a sweet-looking elderly couple lure you in, she asked. No, Gabe shook his head. A young woman who looked like she was...

The second game is over, the child thing now announced, and both Anisha and Gabe immediately stopped speaking. Patrick has won, it continued, and both Anisha and Gabe looked over towards where the monster's black eyes were staring at the guy who looked like, and was, a 19th century American homesteader. Miyoko has lost. Gabe and Anisha now shifted their gazes over towards the Japanese woman who sat with her head in her hands. She was weeping. The child thing spoke again. Patrick now has two points.

The Nordic mother, she and her family were Swedish and had been on a hike back in 1923 just a few hours ago before spotting what they thought was a rustic cabin built above a natural hot spring. And she now began to utter words of protest Gabe couldn't understand as she pointed at one of the boxes.

Silence! warned the child thing, and the woman stopped talking. Your husband did not last the longest. He is dead. He died of fright inside the box. The woman now screamed, and her teen son fell to his knees and wailed with grief as the invisible hands of the house dragged the man's dead body out of the box, across the room, and up the stairs. Now we shall play game three.

The Nordic woman screamed again, a scream of rage more than grief this time, and she started to run towards the monster in charge of the sick games. And just like the Russian teen before her, her neck snapped, her head tilted quickly and violently to the left, and she fell dead and limp to the floor. And then her body began to be dragged across the floor, towards the stairs, before anyone had any time to even process the horror that they'd just witnessed. The monster resumed speaking, as if nothing terrible had just happened.

We will now play "Stay Out of the Water" when the game begins. At the far edge of the room behind me, there will be a pool of deep water. This game ends when only one of you remains dry. That person has won, and whoever has spent the most time in the water has lost. Stand and move to the wall behind you now. Once everyone is touching it, the game begins.

Gabe got up and moved to the back wall, as did everyone else. Well, almost everyone else. Everyone but the teen son of the two Swedish people who had just died. He'd fallen to his knees and was sobbing inconsolably. Stand and move to the back wall now, commanded the child thing. I will not tell you again. Gabe stared anxiously at the teenage boy. He hated how he felt. He'd never felt this way before ever in his life, and it disgusted him.

He wanted the kid to stay where he was so the child thing would kill him, and he'd have one less competitor and that much better odds of escaping this death house. He waited to watch the kid's next snap and see him be dragged out of the room. But instead, what he witnessed was worse than that. He watched as the kid floated up into the air, saw his body straighten out, with his arms and legs fully extended and stretched out on either side of him.

And then Gabe heard the kid start screaming louder and louder, obviously in more pain than fear. And then right before Gabe saw what happened next, he heard it. He heard the tearing and popping sounds. And then he watched as the kid was literally torn in half. Right down the middle, Gabe doubled over and vomited.

And then he was able to stand back up just in time to witness the new bloody halves of the teen both drop to the ground, and then be dragged by the force of the house up and out of the basement, leaving a trail of blood and gore behind. Once both halves of his body had reached the base of the stairs, the monster coldly announced, The game has begun. Oh, thank God! Hassan exclaimed once he'd finally made it back within cell phone range, only about two miles from where he and Gabe had parked.

He hadn't come across anyone other than the cyclist, who thought he was high and talking nonsense. If he wanted to get Gabe the help he needed, and quickly, he'd have to come up with a better story for the police. After dialing 911 when dispatch answered, he told them that he and a friend had been hiking together, and that his friend had fallen down and broken his leg up towards the fire tower. And not only was he now unable to hike out, he was bleeding, and badly.

Hassan figured this lie was the best way to get the police to send a rescue helicopter out to the mountain. And he was right. It might have medics instead of officers, but he assumed that at least one of them would be armed. And hopefully, that would be enough. The operator, once Hassan had revealed his location and explained how his friend didn't have cell coverage where he was, told him to head back to his friend to help the helicopter spot them.

Hasan agreed, and as soon as he got off his phone, despite how tight and swollen his knee had become, he turned back around, intent on limping his way back towards Gabe so he could wave down the officers and direct them to the house above the trail and explain what had really happened when they could see it all for themselves with their own eyes. As he began to walk, with each step more painful than the last, he also promised himself that if given half the chance...

He was going to do his best to knock that prick he'd spoken with earlier off of his bike, take it from him, and ride it back to Gabe. Plain's stay out of the water seemed to have snapped the Roman out of his previous stupor.

The man with the vacant stare, who had seemed resigned to die when Gabe had first arrived, was the clear favorite to win this one. He was young, strong, trained in hand-to-hand combat, and battle-hardened. And he immediately approached the next strongest man, Patrick, the homesteader, and punched him hard in the face. Hard enough to clearly break the man's nose.

Gabe remained against the wall near Anisha, who did the same, not wanting to expose himself to anyone else, the Roman in particular. Outside of the Roman, next to the man he'd currently punched, the most capable other player was probably the younger Indonesian man, Sukarno. His older companion was almost certainly missing an unknown amount of fingers on his left hand and had lost a fair amount of blood. Same for the Russian teen boy, except it was his right hand that was damaged.

The young woman from Japan was small and was also missing both blood and fingers. And that left outside of Gabe, who wasn't particularly athletic, but had some size at 5'8 and almost 200 pounds, a Russian teen girl, who was tall but thin and not noticeably muscular, and Anisha, who was fit and somewhat athletic, but only around 5'2 or 5'3 and thin. Gabe liked his odds against all of them, outside of the Roman and Patrick. And then, very soon after this assessment...

He'd have one less player to worry about. The Roman grabbed Patrick and hip-tossed him down to the ground, hard. He knocked the wind out of the man whose nose he had just broken, and then he started punching him in the face, over and over and over. Patrick feebly half-deflected the first few blows, but then the Roman landed a heavy hit cleanly, and it seemed to nearly knock Patrick out. And then he hit him again, and again, and again, and again.

The sound of his fist smashing into the man's defenseless face grew more and more wet as more and more of his blood flowed. Soon he was clearly unconscious and looked like he was either dead or very nearly dead. And then the big Roman lifted him up, tossed him over his shoulder, walked him all the way down to the pool that reminded Gabe of a moat or a canal, threw him in, and roared. If Patrick hadn't been dead before he had entered the water, he was certainly dead now because he was floating face down and not moving.

The Roman then spotted Gabe and started marching towards him. Shit. Gabe had to think fast and do something. And he soon was racing towards the two Indonesian men. I'm sorry, he yelled as he grabbed the older man and tossed him to the ground as the younger of the two now punched him in the ear. He didn't want to fight either of these men. But he hoped if he was involved in a fight, the Roman might go take care of someone else. At least initially. But his plan didn't work. The Roman still came for him. So Gabe changed strategies.

He took off towards the Japanese woman, Miyoko, with tears in his eyes. Miyoko threw her arms up to shield herself against any attacks, but Gabe had no intention of attacking her. Instead, he picked her up and threw her over his shoulder, much like the Roman had done with Patrick, and he started hustling towards the water. That did the trick. The Roman walked towards him now instead of ran. He was content to let Gabe toss another player into the water before he made sure that Gabe also got wet. But he wouldn't need to help Gabe in that regard.

Once Gabe made it to the pool's edge, he tossed the poor, crying, and thankfully not heavy woman in. And then, after waiting just a second to make sure the game recognized that she had gotten wet first, he jumped in after her. He'd accepted that he wasn't going to win this game, but he didn't want to lose it. And as long as Miyoko stayed in the water longer than he did, he wouldn't. He hated what he was doing, but he didn't make up the rules.

He didn't want to die any more than she did, and unlike her, he still had a chance at getting out of the house where and when he had been taken. From the water, Gabe wondered if any other players would follow his lead. Now that others were in the water before them, maybe they would be happy to take zero points rather than risk the Roman doing to them what he had done to Patrick. The two Russian teams entered the pool voluntarily next. That left only the Roman, the two Indonesian men, and Anisha. The Roman moved towards the Indonesian men now.

"'Don't do it!' Gabe muttered quietly as he continued to tread water and made sure Miyoko didn't leave the pool. "'She'd have negative four points if she lost this one,' Gabe thought and was overcome with guilt. "'She'd almost certainly be fed to the house.' He didn't know exactly what that meant, but he knew it would be absolutely horrific and that he would witness it. And they would have to live with having a hand in marking her for that terrible death. What else was he supposed to do? Playing nice in this place wasn't going to get him home."

The Roman had made it to the Indonesians now. The younger of the two, the one who still had all his fingers, tried to attack him before he made his move. He charged him and went to grab him around the waist, but the Roman sidestepped his thrust and put him in a reverse headlock. Then, using his strength and height, he tightened his arm around his neck, lifted up and pulled back, completely cutting off both the man's oxygen and blood supply to his brain. The smaller man swung his arms around and hit the Roman in the back, but not nearly hard enough to do enough damage to cause him to loosen his hold.

The older man used his one good fist to hit the Roman, but to no effect. The Roman continued to flex and tighten, and soon the smaller islander's body went limp. And stayed limp, as the Roman then roared as he continued to squeeze. Once, the man was almost certainly dead. The Roman let his body drop to the floor, and then he grabbed the older man, who continued to try and hurt him. He picked the old islander up and lifted him as high as his chest before spiking him back down into the ground.

Everyone heard a loud pop in addition to the dull slap of the man's body hitting the floor, and then the old man started screaming in pain. His shoulder had been separated and his clavicle had been broken. The Roman then grabbed the limp body of the man he had killed, dragged it down to the pool, and threw it in before he returned to grab the older man, who was still lying on the floor and crying out in pain.

he grabbed the poor bastard by one of his ankles and started to drag him as he struggled and screamed down to the water. Oh, shit, Gabe now said shocked as he watched Anisha start to make a move. She'd taken her shoes off while everyone was watching the Roman who had forgotten about her for the moment.

She then ran along the wall over towards that side of the room where the Roman had fought with the two Indonesian men. And once he had started to drag the old man down towards the water, she silently trotted down towards the water behind the two while everyone in the pool, everyone still living at least, watched her.

The Roman dragged the old man to the water's edge and then quickly flung him in. And mid-swing, he saw Anisha now running towards him, but it was too late. Momentum had him committed to continuing his throwing motion, and after he let go with the man before he could spin back around, Anisha threw her hands into his arm and shoulder, pushed him with everything she had, and sent him flying into the water. "'The third game is over,' the child thing announced immediately. "'Anisha has won. Miyoko has lost.'

Anisha now has 2 points. Gabe has 2 points. The only other game winner, Patrick, is now dead and eliminated. Miyoko now has -4 points. The only other game loser, Sukarno, is now dead and eliminated. Everyone else who remains holds a score of 0. Return to your seats at once.

Gabe pulled himself out of the water as he watched Anisha return to the bench. The only one of them who was both dry and uninjured. There were now only seven of them left. Anisha, Gabe, the Roman, two of the Russian teens, Miyoko, and the older and now badly wounded Indonesian man. Moments later, there would be only six.

The older islander, with missing fingers on his left hand and a busted upright shoulder, was unable to pull himself up out of the water. The child thing with the onyx eyes and the piranha smile stared emotionlessly at the badly injured man, its face never changing expression, as it coldly announced, ''Everyone return to your seat on the bench at once. I will not repeat myself again.''

The monster in the child's body stared coldly at the old man, who struggled for a moment more to get out of the water, and then seemed to give up and accept his fate. He screamed something in his ancient tongue, and then he was violently sucked under the water so quickly everyone watching gasped in shock. A large thick cloud of blood soon rose up on his place. Before the room shifted back to how it had looked before the game had begun, and the pool in the man's remains disappeared.

The child thing addressed the remaining six hostages from its standard position in the center of the room. Now for the fourth and final game. Face your fear. Hasan saw the helicopter flying overhead right as he made it to the base of the mountain. His knee was killing him. He'd picked up a branch about the size of a walking stick a few minutes back, and now he felt like he might not be able to walk without it. But could he climb with it? He'd been half-joking earlier when he'd fantasized about taking that guy's bike...

Now he for sure would, if he could. But he highly doubted that in his gimped-up state, he'd pose much of a threat to that man or anyone else. No, he'd have to somehow hike back up to the house alone. And he would. Because he had to save Gabe. He had to. He couldn't imagine living his life without him. He hadn't thought about a life without Gabe in years. All his future dreams included him. And now, some monster or monsters were holding him hostage inside of that house.

If only he knew how literally true that thought was. If only he knew that the house itself was a monster. Ahsan did have more than an inkling that whatever was going on with Gabe wasn't natural though. He couldn't stop thinking about what the man on the bike had told him. How there definitely was no house above the trail. No house anywhere in these woods. He kept thinking about how the woman in the window had smiled and stared at him. How he couldn't hear her scream.

How he couldn't hear Gabe scream, not when the door was closed. How the house didn't look like it had been built where it sat. No roads, no paths led up to it. He did his best to ignore the suspicion growing in his gut that Gabe was in a kind of trouble that the police might be powerless to save him from. The child thing now explained the rules for Face Your Fear. Just like I know your name, I know what you fear above all else. And now you will have to face it.

What's after this? What's the bonus round? Gabe quickly asked Tanisha.

You don't want to know, she replied. And then Gabe looked up at the magical red countdown above him. Four, three, two, one. And then darkness. Gabe was suddenly immersed in complete sensory deprivation. He couldn't see anything. He couldn't feel anything. He couldn't hear anything, not even the sounds of his own breathing or heartbeat. Totally and truly alone with his thoughts, he wondered what he was most afraid of.

Was this it? After that experience in the attic as a kid, he certainly didn't like darkness, but he'd already faced that. He didn't like spiders either, but he'd already faced them as well. And then the immersion lifted, and the darkness was replaced by the sights and sounds of he and Hassan's apartment back in the Bronx. Gabe was standing in the corner of his living room. Hassan was sitting across the room on the couch, and he was crying.

He looked like shit, like he hadn't shaved in weeks or had been sleeping much, and he was writing a note. No, Gabe said under his breath. Don't do it, Hasan. Don't you fucking do it. This, this was what he feared the most. Hasan dying before he did, and dying in this way, the way that would hurt him the most. Gabe wondered if what he was watching was real. How long had he been in the house?

He suddenly worried that time worked differently inside it. I mean, why not? If it could travel through space and time. If sound didn't travel out of or into the house in any natural way. After every other impossible thing he'd already seen, why would time working differently not be possible? Had the house disappeared from Woodhull Mountain already? Was he wrong about still being in New York? And now Hassan thought he was already dead or gone for good?

"'Hassan finished writing his note "'and placed it in the center of their coffee table. "'He then got up, grabbed a framed photo of the two of them, "'his favorite photo, "'that a friend of theirs had taken of them kissing "'when they thought no one was watching "'at another friend's rooftop wedding reception "'overlooking the Manhattan skyline. "'After kissing that photo, "'Hassan placed it on top of the note, "'and then he got up and solemnly walked into the bathroom. "'No!' Gabe screamed. "'No, Hassan, don't do it! "'I'm still alive!'

Suddenly, Gabe found himself transported into the bathroom. A few minutes had passed. In that time, Hassan had drawn himself a warm bath, stripped and gotten into the tub, and he now held the straight razor he liked to use to shave his face for special occasions in his right hand. Stop! Hassan, stop! God damn it! Gabe screamed as tears rolled down his cheeks. Don't do it! I'm still here! I'll find you! But Hassan couldn't hear him.

and looking as if he had been sedated Gabe assumed he must have taken some pain pills to prepare for this he lifted his left forearm up out of the water cleansed his jaw in despondent determination and then sunk the blade into his skin at the wrist once the blood began to flow from the fresh wound and into the water Hassan grimaced and began to slowly pull the blade up his arm carving through muscle tendons and veins blood poured out of him and he didn't suddenly snap out of his stupor jump out of the tub and call for help

Instead, he dropped the blade and slid down under the water. This was no cry for help. This was a definitive choice to exit. Stop, son, stop! yelled Gabe, and then he lunged forward to try and save him, and once he moved, the entire scene instantly melted away, and he was back in the strange nightmare of the mysterious home's basement. Gabe, you have been eliminated. Sit and remain seated until the game is complete. The child thing coldly droned.

If Gabe thought in that moment that he had even the tiniest chance of hurting that little monster, he would have taken it regardless of the price he would have to pay. But he knew he was powerless in this place. And he did nothing. Anisha was already sitting on the bench where Gabe took a seat. She was softly crying. Gabe was curious what she had seen, but had no intention of asking her. He certainly didn't want to share what he had just witnessed. Instead, he asked, Anisha, what are you doing?

What is the monster who explains these games to us? What does he look like to you? The question snapped her out of the sad, reflective day she'd been in, and she said, Like the dead old man I saw at an open casket funeral when I was six, but rotten, and with fangs and no eyes. Like the way he showed up in the nightmares about him I had off and on for years after that. What do you see? I knew it. Just like the house itself shows up differently to different people, I wondered if this thing did too. Gabe responded. And then he actually answered her question.

A child. I see a child with piranha-like teeth, black eyes, and an expression that never changes. Something I would hate to see in a horror movie. A horror movie I would have stopped watching if I saw it. It's like everything in this place is custom-built to scare the shit out of us, to scare us the most. It can somehow access our minds before we even walk through the door. Yeah, Anisha nodded absentmindedly as she stared out into the middle distance. I haven't thought much about it.

I don't really care what this thing is, to be honest. I just want to get out of here alive. Anisha. Gabe asked next. Do winners really get to leave? Yeah, I think so. She quietly responded. Whoever won last game walked up out of the basement and I haven't seen him since. Gabe nodded. Had she said no, he might have just given up and charged the monster like some of the others just to get his neck broken and be done with it. He now asked, what happens in the bonus round?

Anisha turned and stared at him as she said, sounding sad, You'll find out soon. Why can't you just tell me now? Gabe asked. You don't want to know, she said. When you find out, you'll be glad I didn't say something. And then she returned to looking lost in whatever thoughts of whatever horror the game had just shown her.

Gabe was both eager and anxious for the bonus round to begin. Since Anisha hadn't won the last game, and the only other previous winner was dead, while two people would be tied with him, no one would finish the first four games with more points than him. He really could win this thing, but what would he have to do in order to push ahead and take the lead in the bonus round?

The fourth and final game is over. The child thing, but not really the child thing since it appeared differently to everyone announced. Gabe would now think of it as the house itself. It was all one and the same. The house, or whatever it really was. The entity they were all trapped inside of. That was the real monster. And what a powerful monster it was. Miyoko has won, the house told them. Miyoko now has negative two points. Anisha has two points.

"'Gabe has two points. Everyone else enters the bonus round with a score of zero.' This was good news. Only Anisha was tied with him. He could do this. Gabe wished he didn't have to defeat Anisha, but he could go home. The house continued. "'In thirty seconds, the bonus round begins. The rules are simple. No interfering with anyone else. You will each have a meat cleaver.'

For each finger and toe you choose to remove over the course of 60 seconds, you will gain one point. Whoever has the most total points at the end of one minute leaves the house alive. Whoever has the least points will be fed to the house. While multiple players can lose, only one can win. And with that, the house stopped speaking, and Gabe looked down at the floor in front of his feet where a heavy steel and wickedly sharp-looking meat cleaver had appeared.

He felt sick again. His knees felt weak. Of course. This is what had happened to so many of the other players' fingers before he'd arrived. He looked up at his clock. Twenty-one. Twenty. Nineteen. He looked over at Anisha. "'I fucking hate this place,' he said. "'I wish we could both win together.' "'Hate isn't even the word,' she replied. "'I never used to believe in pure evil, but now I've seen it.' And then she clenched her jaw and picked up her cleaver."

Holy shit, Gabe grimaced. He looked back up. Twelve. Eleven. Ten. Could he really do this, he wondered. Could he really slice off his own fingers? Or some of his toes? Seven. Six. Five. Four. He grabbed his cleaver, but decided that he would wait to make his first move. He wanted to see what the others did first. Find out how much he would have to sacrifice. The game has begun.

Gabe looked down the bench at the other players. Most of them were holding their cleavers and waiting as well, looking around as the 60-second clock began to count down. And then the Russian girl dropped her cleaver, threw herself to the floor, and began to wail and sob. She couldn't do it. Seconds later, Gabe witnessed how someone else could. A loud, FWACK! sound was followed by a pained yell from the Roman, who then held up a hand missing three fingers.

A rag was already tied tightly around his forearm. He must have used the 30 seconds leading up to the bonus round to make a tourniquet for himself in preparation. Damn it. Gabe would already have to lose two fingers to have a shot of going home. And they'd only just begun. Lucius has gained three points and taken the lead with a score of three. The house announced 49, 48, 47. The clock counted down above him.

Gabe placed his left hand down on the bench beside him after he got down on his knees on the floor to face it. And with his right, he raised the cleaver up above his head as he spaced out his fingers as far as he could. He quickly took in a few deep breaths, sharply exhaling with each one, and then he let out a loud roar to amp himself up for what he had to do next. Ah!

Gabe has gained one point and tied for the lead with a score of three.

Gabe had never felt pain like he did now. Fresh blood bubbled out of the wound above the knuckle of what was his pinky with each heartbeat. He swooned and feared he would pass out. He felt both nauseous and dizzy. He roared again to try and pump fresh adrenaline through his body, and he brought the cleaver back down and finished the job with his ring finger, and then promptly threw up all over himself. Gabe has gained one point and taken the lead with a score of four. He looked up. Thirty-six. Thirty-five. Thirty-four. Thirty-five.

"Alexei has gained three points and has a score of three." Gabe looked down and the Russian teen had just cut off all the remaining fingers and thumb on his right hand. All the digits he hadn't hacked off the previous time he had played just before Gabe had walked into the house. "Lucius has gained two points and has taken the lead with a score of five." The Roman had now cut off all the fingers and thumb from his left hand. Jesus Christ, Gabe thought. Now we'd have to cut off two more fingers to take the lead. And what if Anisha started to cut off her fingers?

Twenty. Nineteen. Eighteen. And then a piercing scream cut to the basement, followed by another loud THWACK! and a louder scream. The scream continued as the house monster announced, "Miyoko has gained five points and now has a score of three." Holy fuck, Gabe thought as he looked down at the Japanese woman who had stopped screaming and was now laughing. She'd snapped. She'd completely lost her mind. She had just cut off all the toes on her right foot and was bleeding terribly.

12, 11, 10. Thwack! Another scream from Anisha this time. Anisha has gained three points. She is now tied for the lead with a score of five. Six, five, four. Damn it! Gabe looked down at his bleeding left hand and raised the cleaver back up with his right. He'd need to take off two more fingers. At least...

He thought of Hassan as he began to scream, a scream added to what sounded like the screams of all the other players as everyone but the Russian girl prepared for their final swings. Three, two, one. Hassan made it back up the hill to where the house was, or to where he thought it was, just a minute or so after the helicopter had landed. A second wind of adrenaline, fueled by the need to help save Gabe, had carried him. Under no other circumstances would he have made it.

It felt like the wind had been knocked out of him when he couldn't see the house, and he dropped down to one knee. How? How could it not be there? Had the helicopter landed in the wrong spot? Did they need to head further up? But then he saw that some medics had just strapped a body to a stretcher, and they were carrying it to the helicopter, and he felt a surge of hope rise up inside his chest. Gabe had gotten out. He was injured, but he'd made it out. "'Gabe!' he cried out. "'Gabe! I'm here, baby!'

An officer ran over to him and shouted over the noise of the helicopter. Do you know what happened here? Yes, Hassan answered emphatically. That's my partner. Whoever was inside the house must have heard him. Him? The officer shouted back as he drew close to Hassan. It's not a him. It's a her, he stated. What? Hassan exclaimed, confused. It must be the woman from the window, he thought. Maybe she really had been hurt. Maybe she had just smiled and waved because she had lost her shit or something.

"'Do you know who the woman is? Do you speak Japanese?' the officer asked. "'Japanese? What? No!' Hasan yelled back before he blurted out, "'I don't know that woman. I only saw her in the window. Where's Gabe? Where's my partner? He must be here too. Maybe he's still in the house.' "'There's no house up here,' the officer shaded firmly, looking at Hasan with growing suspicion. And then he drew his gun and pointed it at Hasan. "'Did you do that to her? Get down on the ground, now, and put your hands behind your back!'

Then he turned back towards the helicopter and yelled, "'Take her to the hospital! I'll stay here with him until someone comes for us! Go! Go now!'

And with that, Miyoko, a badly mutilated young woman from just outside of Akita, Japan, who had been out picking wine berries with her husband in July of 1952 when the two of them had stumbled across a remote Shinto shrine before they had been thrust into hell, a hell that had claimed the life of her husband in the previous game. She barely clung to life as she was flown to a hospital in Syracuse. Considered a suspect in her attack, Hassan was handcuffed and read his Miranda rights.

It would be nearly a week before he'd be able to return to where he had watched Gabe enter the house to futilely look for him again, and he would go mad in the process. He would then soon be placed in a psychiatric facility in Manhattan on an involuntary hold. Time has expired and no further sacrifices will be added to your point totals. Anisha has gained two points for a final score of seven. She'd cut off all four fingers and the thumb on her left hand.

Lucius has gained two points for a final score of seven. The Roman, after already cutting off all the fingers and thumb from his left hand, had cut off the two smallest toes on his right foot. Alexei has gained three points for a final score of six. With his final swing, the Russian teen had cut off the three smallest toes on his right foot. Gabe has gained three points for a final score of seven.

Gaben went for it at the end and cleaved off the two remaining fingers and thumb on his left hand. But despite all that horrific mutilation, it wasn't enough. Miyoko has gained five points for a final score of eight. Unbelievable. Miyoko had cut off all the toes on her left foot with her final swing, which meant she had, in under a minute, crudely amputated all ten of her toes. And she'd already cut off two fingers in the previous game.

Gabe couldn't believe she wasn't passing out from blood loss. Instead of losing consciousness, she was laughing. "Miyoko has won the game. Miyoko, you are free to leave." And with that, the basement door swung open. And then the remaining five players who didn't win all watched her crawl across the basement floor on her hands and knees, leaving a trail of blood behind her and laughing the whole time. Gabe kept waiting for her to collapse, but she never did.

She kept crawling all the way up the stairs and out of the room. And then the door to the basement shut. And while Gabe and the others couldn't see or hear her, Miyoko crawled out of the house and onto Woodhole Mountain in upstate New York, where after smiling faintly over feeling the warm sun shine on her face, a small kindness that Miyoko never thought she would feel again, she did collapse as she lost consciousness from blood loss.

But despite the severity of her injuries, thanks to Hassan calling the police and getting them to send a helicopter, she wouldn't die. But when she later woke up in a strange land, in a different time, where all of her relatives, in addition to her husband, were now dead, she wished she had. Back down in the basement of the hellish house, the Roman, knowing he was about to die from his wounds and unable to win another game even if he wasn't, desperately charged the monster and got his neck snapped in the process, just like he had hoped.

and then Anisha, Gabe, and Alexei, all badly wounded and bleeding heavily themselves. Watched as Alexei's friend, the Russian teen girl whose name Gabe had never learned, the girl who had given up during the bonus round and refused to mutilate herself, the shy girl whose mother had encouraged her to join a tourist club back in 1954 to help her make some friends, was fed to the house.

The invisible force of the house pulled her towards the monster that appeared to Gabe as the pale child with the black eyes and the piranha teeth. The monster that appeared to Anisha as the dead and rotting old woman with fangs and no eyes. The monster that was the house itself and appeared differently to all who saw it. They watched it devour her.

Gabe watched as the child thing opened its piranha mouth impossibly wide and then bit each of the teen's feet off in one chomp each, chewing them up and swallowing them impossibly quickly before moving on to her calves, and then on to her thighs, and then on to her pelvis. She was somehow still alive when it made it to her stomach, and in that manner, it devoured all of her. And when it was done, it said nothing. It simply walked up the stairs and out of the room.

And then, no more than two minutes later, it walked back in and down the stairs, followed by four men of various ages from Brazil being dragged behind it, a hunting party from the Amazon rainforest from the 12th century who had walked into what they had thought was nothing more than an abandoned hut.

and as Gabe fought to remain conscious, as he bled all over the bench around him and crudely ripped at his shirt to try and tear off a sleeve to use to cover his mutilated hand, as he tried to entertain some semblance of hope that he somehow, someway, might still find his Sonic N, a new round of deadly and horrible games began. And that's it for this Nightmare Fuel.

I hope you were horrified by, and not too saddened or angered by, today's tale of The House of Hurt. Today's tale was written by me, Dan Cummins, and scored by Logan Keith. And it was, I know, especially fucking brutal. Sometimes in the world of horror, no one wins. There's no redemption. There's no explanation of why the horror even happened in the first place. Evil needs no rhyme or reason to hurt who it hurts. Motivation to commit evil.

can be as simple as enjoying the suffering of total strangers. If all the stories I told were this brutal, I imagine many of you would tap out. I might too. But if it gets this bad sometimes, I think it enriches the entire catalog because now you never know with any given story in the future if things are actually gonna work out for anyone. And that's good for tension and suspense, right? I think so. I hope you agree. If I don't keep you on your toes, on the edge of your seat, so to speak, why would you keep coming back?

If you were entertained by this story, check out the rest of the Bad Magic Productions catalog. Time Suck every Monday at noon Pacific time, with little short sucks on some Fridays, and these nightmare-fueled episodes on some Fridays as well. And new episodes of the now long-running Paranormal Podcast, Scared to Death, every Tuesday at midnight. Please go to badmagicproductions.com for all your bad magic needs, including all show-related merch. And stay scared. Bad Magic Productions.

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