He doesn't think much of the road. No traffic.
Heading where he thought the freeway was, Peek resigns himself to being stuck in the woods until daylight comes. With any luck, he'll find a truck stop and get a lift. Be in Knoxville by this time tomorrow.
He has no particular reason to go to Knoxville. Hitching is getting a little old, though...
An hour later, he makes out the shape of an old house, set back from the road. The trees hide it well. If there hadn't been enough wind to move the branches around, he would've walked right by.
Creepy place.
He doesn't really want to stop here. But he's cold...
Walking up the winding driveway, Peek comes upon a huge parking lot. Gravel. Maybe big enough for a hundred cars.
This is a big relief, for some reason. There are no lights or cars, but the size of the lot makes him think it's a tourist attraction of some kind.
Haunted house? It could be -
Peek stops, and snickers to himself. It's probably one of those Halloween deals. They never did anything for him, but his first girlfriend had loved it. Paying money to be scared...
It must not be too far from a town. That cheers him up. People wouldn't drive more than, what, ten miles to get scared. Maybe fifteen. So he'll make it back to the interstate tomorrow.
Also... there's nobody around. That makes him curious. And glad. No caretaker living here, no guard? Peek sure wouldn't take that job.
No cars. No light... and no sound.
He chuckles again, and sneaks up the porch.
It feels wrong. Why would people just leave this place unguarded -
Oh. Of course. He shakes his head. It's November. Middle of the month. They probably abandoned the place until next year.
Definite possibilities, here.
The front door is chained shut.
But the second window he tries is his ticket in.
It won't stay up on its own, so he gets a stick. Props it up. Nothing to land on, so he slides through. His knapsack hits the stick -
Swinging his legs in fast, he feels the window rumbling down.
Slam!
"Shit," he murmurs. And doesn't move. Listening...
He gives it a good three minutes. Not a sound. He'll have to be really careful.
The stick is on the floor near him. Peek remembers the window, turns and -
The window won't open.
For a few seconds, all the bad movies come flooding back. He looks around wildly...
Nothing.
Taking two deep breaths, he tries the window again. It won't budge. One side seems higher than the other... Jammed. Maybe a piece of bark, from the stick.
There are a lot of windows. He'll break one if he has to.
Damn, I'm trapped. He smiles at the thought. Okay. So long as there's no sign of anybody else here. If he wants, he can kick his way out of the window in a hot second.
He can't see much. There might be stuff along the walls... He gets out his lighter, and looks around.
Right there, by the door. Excellent. There's a few candles. Walking carefully, he takes one. They're pretty thick. He lights it.
The place is pretty understated. Drab. Rotting tapestries, cobwebs, the whole trip. All the scary things are probably scattered throughout the rooms. It's so bizarre. He likes the idea of checking out the haunted house. So cheesy.
He eases his knapsack off with a grateful groan. Sets it under the table where the candles are, and flexes his shoulders. Much better. As he moves, the candle flickers. Cupping the flame, Peek heads back and examines the other candles, and finds one he likes better. After a second, he gets his penknife out, and digs a little. Cuts the wick, and holds it his lighter at an angle. Gets it burning... There. Alright. The flame is surrounded by a tunnel of wax. It gives off less light, but he can live with that.
So he starts trying doors.
Big, fake cobwebs through one door. Yawn. Some dried spaghetti on the floor of another room. Oily. He picks up a clump. Not dried out yet. Probably a big hit with the kiddies, two weeks ago.
A door without a knob is intriguing. He gets his penknife out again...
"Oh, hey," he says. A control room.
A bunch of audio cables. For tape decks, or maybe the PA system. Peek can do without the spooky howls.
Turning to leave, something on the floor catches his eye. It's almost hidden by the door. Cigarette pack. Box. Generic brand. His drifter's experience makes him stoop down and pick it up, just in case -
Half-full.
"Alright," he crows. "Thanks..."
They're not even stale.
Exhaling smoke happily, Peek heads down the hall. There's a kitchen - with fake blood splattered everywhere. He opens cabinets mechanically.
In the last one, there's a plastic jug. The label says it's distilled water. He opens it, sniffs, and gives it a try. Just water. That's another small relief - he can fill his canteen later...
Downstairs, it's kind of a vampire theme going on. He did score a couple quilts off the beds. More good news - he wouldn't be cold tonight. He pictures himself putting 'em back in the morning. Why not. Just another ghost, don't mind me.
He set the quilts down on the table, next to the candles and the jug of water.
The second floor isn't too exciting. Peek is getting bored. There's a kid's room, like a nursery. It lacks something. Bloodthirsty dolls, maybe. Now and then he sees rings or bolts that probably held all kinds of scary props.
But he's seen enough. Yawning, he starts back down the creaking stairs, stopping to light a cigarette before slipping into the bathroom. The door has the usual picture-sign of a stick figure, only done by a goth artist or something, in all these shades of grey - and pisses gratefully. He buttons his fly, steps out and shuts the door -
Something creaks. Behind him.
A faint sound. Maybe upstairs. Peek turns silently...
Whew. There's a loose board on the wall.
He stares, taking a long drag. A crack. Ceiling to floor. Hesitantly, he gives the wall a little... push. The crack gets bigger.
Hinged. He brings the candle closer. Not seeing anything inside.
Stepping back, he examines the wall. Very slick. He'd walked right past it. A secret passage. Cool.
He pushes until the crack is big enough to slide through.
Now this is the real deal. The cobwebs weren't fake. Or the dust. It feels authentically creepy.
Peek grins. Why didn't they put an exhibit in here? Maybe because it would make all the other shit look tame.
The room is only a few feet square. No interesting stuff. The far wall was different - hammered metal, with big bands reinforcing it. Very nice. You can't make up stuff like this.
He sets his candle down at the base of the wall. Hell, yeah. Little kids would shit their pants in here...
Well, one more smoke, and he'll be ready to stretch out for a while. Dreaming of ghosts, no doubt, in a house like this. Peek looks at the candlelight, making its funky shadows on the metal wall, and digs the pack out of his pocket. He lights a new cigarette off the old one without thinking about it. Lowers his hand, and drops the old cigarette.
Kicking the smoke out of his nose, he lifts his hands slowly.
No. He doesn't - it's as if there are hands around his forearms. Death grip.
Jerking his arms reflexively, Peek is somehow not surprised when they stay in front of him. He pulls again, twisting his body sideways, leaning.
Something moves. Silent. From behind him.
He tries much harder to yank his hands free. Taking it all in as if time had slowed down. Dark rings, backlit by the faint light of the candle below. Big studs. Or maybe they're rivets. Black, wide... shackles on chains, going to their destination -
His wrists!
They're ice cold.
Wrapping. Hooking together, somehow. Tightening.
Peek stares at them, completely paralyzed with... terror.
The pressure around his arms is loosening. When it pulls off, he has a ridiculous burst of hope. Tugging and yanking -
The cuffs barely move. Air surrounding them. He strains, accidentially sucking on the cigarette between his lips, gritting his teeth. The cuffs are impossibly steady.
And there's noise. Behind him. He twitches and leaps forward, but his arms don't move. An odd, deep sound... Metal grating over stone.
Behind him, the passage is disappearing. Metal. A wall -
The twin of the wall in front of him. Coming down. He had barely looked at the ceiling. A dark gap, there. That's all Peek saw. And now a massive wall was rumbling into place.
He throws himself backward. Jumps up, hits his knees. The cigarette tumbles into the dust.
A terrible, hollow boom. And the noise stops.
But a low clacking noise begins... above him. Peek looks up frantically.
The wall moves. Not the new one - the one he's facing.
He jumps around in a state of panic he's never known before. Grunting hard. I should yell, he thinks. Yell for help.
And his fear ramps up higher then, because he's absolutely certain there's no one else here. He broke in. A hitchhiker -
Faint light, under the rising wall.
A much bigger room. Lamplight...
Peek collapses to his knees again, and sags. Wheezing with fear. Just so afraid.
He sees metal, and wood. Chains, dangling from the walls, from the ceiling, motionless chains. Recognizing things, and immediately refusing to know what they were. Being uncertain is so much better than knowing...
Instead, he forces himself to look at a number of huge cabinets along one dim wall.
The noise stops. The wall is gone. His candle sits on the floor, still lit. No longer needed.
Several lamps are lit. They surround a pair of... long pads, attached to a frame. Impossible to comprehend.
The frame looks like it could weigh a couple tons.
Slowly, the cuffs move. He plants his weight and growls. The thought of begging is rejected as soon as it comes. Few things have ever been clearer to Peek than the uselessness of begging here. There's no one to hear him beg.
The chains straighten his arms slowly, and drag him forward. Detouring a little to the left, around the candle - but his leg drags over it anyway, grinding it into the floor. Metal floor. How could be not have noticed that? The dust sweeps away to reveal tarnished black metal...
Just like the ceiling. Lantern-light flickering over the bands. All metal. A metal box.
The cuffs start to rise. He scrabbles. Kicks his legs, as they lift off the floor.
Pressure - growing. Pulling at his hiking boots. Peek yells, flopping even though he's stretched out -
The pulling stops, and the laces are loosened.
More cuffs float over.
One boot lands on the floor. The other joins it - and then, even more horrifying, somehow! - his socks are pulled off.
His ankles feel the metal take hold.
"No," he whimpers.
Then he backs up, in the air. His ass bumps against the pad. Peek thrusts his hips out -
Shoulders and calves make contact.
Awful sounds. Metal clanking, whispering. Nuts being spun, perhaps.
He has to look. Huge nuts, on crude black bolts.
More shapes arrive. Thinner. Metal.
As he tries to lunge, they curl over his biceps. Around his shins. And his thighs.
He arches until a longer band touches his stomach. It pulls him down to the pad, and slides. Sitting right over his belt -
It tightens, making him gasp.
Something lifts his head. A little. Peek presses back hard when the invisible hands let go of him, and finds another pad. The edges move - folding in, maybe. He slams against it... and discovers he can't turn his head very much. He definitely can't throw it around. The padded edges are in his peripheral vision. Almost like blinders.
Systematically, he tries to pull his arms up. Shoulders. Torso. Ass. Legs. Ankles.
He can't even squirm.
A loud click, underneath -
He moves. Lowering... No, just tilting. Back. His feet are rising. With another thud, he stops.
His feet are slightly higher than his head.
Peek would be so happy if he thought begging would... be heard.
The wall rumbles back down.
Definitely in a metal box. And not a soul knows.
He forces himself to breathe. While he'd like to stop pulling at the restraints, his body is completely ignoring him.
Glass rings, so quietly. He looks, to his right, as a lantern goes out. He stares, with his mouth open, as the globe lands back in place.
Another globe rises.
"No," he says, just about ready to cry.
In all, six lanterns are extinguished. The last two are picked up...
Louder clanking noise, from the frame under him, echoes dully. Metal, scraping on metal -
Peek's legs separate. The pads, apprarently, are... hinged.
When his ankles are a yard or so apart, he hears a deep clank, and then another.
Lamp-stands are moving. Being dragged. The floating lanterns go down to them. Beyond his feet. Not too close, but it's such a little relief that it makes him want to scream.
He would never, ever have guessed this room was... that this room existed anywhere. There was no limit to what could happen in here.
Peek fidgets miserably.
A different metallic sound -
One of the cabinets. Swinging open.
The lantern isn't very close, but he squints...
Boxes in there. Cans. He makes out the brightly colored logos of candy bars, nuts... EnergySlabs. A big shelf full of energy bars. All of the labels jump right out - not dusty. New. Or at least new enough.
The next cabinet is filled with jugs. Milk-jugs. No, he realizes, almost beyond being shocked any more. Water. A hundred jugs? One hundred and twenty?
Is that all - or, hell, there could more water... and food, hidden somewhere else in the house.
The next cabinet opens more slowly, the door easing back without help -
Other than having dark things in it, he can't make out what's stored inside. Only the top shelf... Bottles. Like a pharmacy. Pill bottles, syrup bottles. Some of them are big. Not syrup, then. Drugstore stuff. Filling the shelf. And the cabinets are so deep.
All that modern stuff. Out of place in this old room. Deliberately shown to him -
Something moves. Inside - the large, dark middle of the cabinet.
Peek stares, and watches.
Not one, but two.
He can't put it all together.
The... objects refuse to be recognized. Yes they are, his brain hollers. No way. Can't be right. Some other explanation -
This just wouldn't happen. It could, apparently... but it just won't. So he tells himself, as they come closer. More and more obvious in the flickering light. What they are.
I am leaping to a ridiculous conclusion, Peek thinks. He even nods his head, rubbing it against the low pads. Just not real.
But the bands pinning him down prove otherwise. The ankle-cuffs aren't enough. Sure. The extra metal around his shins and thighs... that much more impressive. I really can't move my legs.
And the impossibility gets closer. To him. Coming over. Right there -
Soft edges.
Almost like... fur.
Good thing this isn't really happening, Peek tells himself, growling with the effort of trying to snap his wrist-cuffs, the extra bands around his thighs -
They drag down. Hardly any pressure. His breath catches in his chest. Heart racing...
Tender waves ripple down to his heels.
It just can't be believed. Much the same way he can't understand that his legs will not move. Or his feet.
The touch continues moving. It demands his attention. It feels good -
Peek needs it to stop. Go away, right now, before...
Dragging slowly unders his toes.
Now. It has to stop. Clearly it's too much of a good thing. Right now.
Down the outside edge of his insteps... and up the inner curve -
His feet twitch. A ridiculously inadequate response. This is getting intolerable.
Peet thinks of his ribs - a quick flash of his sides, bare, with... the feathers. Say it. They're feathers. On his feet. Then he slams the door on that thought.
Tips make slow, loose curves down the middle of his soles.
Really, positively too much. Stop.
"Stop!" he bellows. It came out so suddenly, he's stunned by it. A very long shout, echoing -
The... feathers sweep, low on his heels. He watches the quill-parts. The stems. Moving easily.
He tries to scoot back and slam to his left, then to his right. No good. He watches them.
Fluffy, springy excitement swings across his arches. From side to side. Tingling, becoming a strange burn.
It would seem... the restraints are solid. This is just bizarre, he thinks. Absurd. He looks around the room. The perfect horror of being... kept, in here. Surely there must be some explanation.
He takes in all that food.
Judging from what came out of the darkest cabinet, it seems reasonable to make some guesses about some of those bottles, there. Creams. Skin creams. Probably oil.
So many pill-bottles...
The edges are soft. So very soft. Working their way between his toes, even though he's obviously bending his feet as much as he can, squeezing his poor toes together -
He flails with his arms and legs... one last time.
The feathers push further in, and pull back slowly. Dragging.
Peek takes a breath. A good one. Planning on a real loud yell.
But it comes out wrong.
He laughs instead. Calmly. Nothing half-hearted about it... but it's a slow, relaxed laugh. A knowing laugh. No point in getting frantic now. Hell, no.
Forgetting the pads, Peek tries to shake his head.
The feathers drag slow, wide circles over the soles of his shackled feet. They scream, in their way. Too much stimulation. And such a gentle... texture. Way too much.
Peek snags another breath and laughs. A rumbling, happy sound, thrown back at him by the metal ceiling, and the walls.
This has to stop. I can't take this -
The stupidity of that thought makes him laugh a little louder.
Dusting, sweeping pleasure that doesn't stop -
He closes his eyes, after giving all the restraints a long, hopeful... push.
Flicking under his toes. Diagonally, and around his heels. Lingering in the center of both soles. Almost nesting there.
The center. That's what it is. The very center. Starting point of the obscure fever that's growing and building now. Taking over. Ready to fill his whole body, his cell, this deserted house. The world.
10oct01