Many miles away, Iggy finally skidded to a stop in front of a small decrepit house that was isolated in the middle of the woods. It was completely alone. He stepped over rusted machines that were littered across the yard on both sides of the long gravel driveway and half swallowed up by overgrown grass. He noticed the faint glimmer of a lightbulb through the newspaper plastered over the windows and he approached it. The front door was peeling paint, and as he forced it open, wood chips landed at his feet. A whoosh of thick musty air filled his lungs from mold in the water damaged ceiling and a pungent decay of something big.
Holes in the old roof allowed for wild animals and rain to enter freely. Brown muddy light glowed amongst spider webs that were strung from wall to wall, dancing on the flow of air. Scattered newspapers, articles of clothing, empty cans, and other pieces of garbage covered the floors in all directions. Across the entranceway, Iggy spotted small discolored legs lying flat against the floor out of the way of trash. The scent of dry aged blood and semen plagued whoever it was and insects were feasting and reproducing on them, and had been for many quick generations.
A hack sounded from around the corner. "Ha!" The voice was raspy and hard, and belonged to a man. "Ha! Son of bitches…" he said. "Motherfuckers thought they could kiss me..." The man swore incoherently thereafter, yet angrily as if he were speaking to someone else in the house.
Iggy couldn't feel anyone else there, though. Well, besides the body. He drew his head out from around the wall to see the sweaty man of more than three hundred pounds sitting on a flimsy wooden chair that creaked under his rapidly shifting weight. His small rounded eyes were deep in his skull, and his face was overgrown with a nappy beard. The ringlets of hair frizzing away from his head were so greasy that they shimmered wet under the light hanging above.
Their eyes met.
The man's toothless mouth spread large and wide, as he hacked a cough in Iggy's direction. "Ha!" he said, "little boy came to the tea party?" Then, he giggled in a tone that seemed too high for his natural voice. His tongue peeled out from the base of his mouth and licked the hair on his chin. He laughed and coughed simultaneously, arched his back over his massive arms, and sang, "you, you ain't gonna do shit. You better bring the pigs back here, cause I ain't goin' anywhere."
From across the way, Iggy could have sworn that he saw something move. He quickly focused his attention on the body. The decomposing small body of a child… The leg moved. Or twitched more or less. His chest squeezed tight.
Underneath the stained white sleeping gown, the foot with one sock half pulled off rose and fell. Iggy pounced back. Even as that nasty man cackled and laughed, Iggy knew that something was not right, and even more wrong than what he already understood. He swallowed hard, collected all of his courage, and approached the dead child. He heard no heartbeat from her, and he didn't see her breathing. Her short dark blonde hair was matted to the back of her head, pieces of the chipped paint and hardwood floor were tangled inside of it.
The stench became even thicker as he lifted her like a piece of moldy wood from a sticky surface. Instantly, as he peered into her large lifeless gray eyes, he recognized who she was. Baby Madison. And she was certainly dead… but her glazed eyes shifted and now stared directly into his.
Was she looking at him?
He moved away from her rotting corpse. His knees were going to break. He arched forward and breathed deeply, but tried not to breathe all at once. That horrible smell! The walls before him slithered up toward the ceiling and the light waved. All of his senses were warping.
The man in the chair resembled Jay too much, and the girl, oh the little girl! Iggy peered over his shoulder at the burly mess of a man through his double vision, but he heard him loud and clear, laughing over and over in his ears. Iggy wanted to tear as many parts off of him as possible before he bled out and died.
As Emi entered the clearing with a man named Takeshi at her side, she tilted her head and listened hard for the noise that she'd faintly been hearing minutes before. The pounding and squealing sounded like a pig being beaten to death, or running for its life, and now that her ear pointed toward the dark entryway of the lonely decrepit house, she heard it better than ever. "Let's go in," she insisted.
Takeshi pulled back, hearing, smelling, and seeing exactly what she saw. His gut clenched tight, and his shoulders rattled, fearsome. "This is foolish." He clenched his trembling arms over his briefcase. "We shouldn't go in there. Let's sleep in the woods again."
"Oh, it will be fun," she replied in a voice that was alarmingly calm and persuasive. "You don't want the fun to stop already, do you?"
Takeshi inhaled hard then exhaled through the narrow passage of his tight lips, and he followed her up the creaking steps toward the open door. Peering inside, a flash of bright red blood sprayed across their path and a hard, wet stomping noise shook the floor. Still, Emi wasn't redirected! She took a step inside. Out of nowhere, a thick arm came flying through the air right past her head and slammed into the wall next to her. The heat burned in her cheeks. She paused, perhaps she was going to phase out? No. She had impeccable self-control and she'd prove it. She took a long deep breath, and continued, blinking forcefully. She peeked around the first corner.
The man was face first on the dirty floor with bloody foam oozing from his toothless mouth and he was convulsing, flailing his one remaining leg and arm like hammers. Iggy arched over him, smiling and screaming all at once, digging his fingers into the man's fat upper arm, pulling and shredding the muscle, tearing it off and chucking it across the room. Iggy cried heroically, covered in blood, breathing hard, and itching so irritatingly much, "one more to go!" He didn't even notice her standing there.
In the back of his mind, he still heard screaming, so he crushed the man's head with his bare foot. He held his breath, but he still heard breathing, and he stared over at the little girl so intently as to not miss her body moving, but she wasn't moving at all. And the man wasn't breathing anymore either.
He turned his cheek, and through the dark doorway, he saw the light pouring in from behind the shining figure standing there. Her arms hung at her sides, her skin was fair, healthy, and unharmed. Her black eyes were the only thing amongst the rest of her that had any darkness at all. But couldn't really be her.
Iggy blinked hard to clear the double vision. Her lips parted, and just as her foot stepped forward, Iggy threw himself forward and clamped his hands around her shoulders. He felt her. He could see her. He could smell her. But it couldn't be her!
Behind him, the man started hacking again. He was sure of it, and as he peered back at his body, he saw his brains mushed up in the bowl of his skull, squirming like worms. His severed arm lying near Iggy's foot twitched and Iggy kicked it far away.