Page 25 of Housesitter

The pie was untouched.

Shepherd had dished it up in a child-sized, red pottery ramekin that sat beside Shithead’s cracked, patent leather bootee. It still looked fresh, the custard glossy and unclotted and the cream thick and fresh. A fly walked over the rim of the little pottery dish and flew away again.

“Just eat the damn pie,” Shepherd told her as he scraped a chunk of ectoplasm out of his hair. The texture was halfway between rice paper and snot. He flicked it into the sink and gave Shithead an annoyed look. “I’m not in the mood to coddle you today.”

Between the sex and the soothing, foreboding feeling that something was about to come home to roost, Shepherd had slept well last night. A good thing too, since today everything that could go wrong had gone wrong. The fetid gateway to Hell under the house had puked inhuman filth and bones all over the basement, there was a letter from the HOA notifying Dio that he was delinquent on his dues, Dio Madden’s books had somehow gotten the Danielle Steel novel on the quarantine shelf pregnant (Shepherd didn’t know how and he didn’t want to either), and they’d had four different teens scale the back wall and try to get in the house.

Shepherd had chased them all back out again, but by the time he’d done that and headed back to the basement to finish up, the fetid gateway had horked up again.

He was not in the mood to deal with Shithead being precious.

“If you don’t want it,” he said as he pulled his singed, cotton T-shirt over his head. It was soaked through with bile, his skin pink and itchy in patches. “I can just throw it out. But I’m not ‘inviting your friends for a tea party,’ OK? It’s weird, and we might have visitors later.”

He tapped his foot on the pedal of the bin. The lid clanged up, and he tossed the wad of lightly smoking fabric on top of the deformed fetuses he’d found wedged into his free-range eggs this morning. Something in there squirmed. Shepherd let the lid drop down and hid whatever it was from view. He had enough on his plate. Whatever monsters had tried to hatch in his omelette this morning could be someone else’s problem.

The fly that had been buzzing around the kitchen faltered mid-loop and fell out of the air. It landed on its back, custard-tipped legs up, on top of the bin.

“And don’t just pick at it,” he said. “Eat it or lose it. Your call.”

A bubble of sour corruption popped on top of the pie, splattering cobwebbing spores over the table. Shepherd spread his hands dramatically.

“Thank you,” he said sarcastically. “Was that so hard?”

Shithead ignored him.

“Be like that,” he told her as he grabbed the Syrup of Figs and the drain cleaner from under the sink. “See if I care!”

He did care.

Shepherd poured a glug of drain cleaner into the Syrup of Figs bottle, stoppered it with his thumb, and gave it a brisk shake. While he waited for it to dissolve the last of the sticky residue from the bottom of the container, guilt pinched at him.

He could have set up the tea party. It wouldn’t have taken him long. Was it creepy and disturbing? Obviously. Did he wish there weren’t so many upsetting stains on Mr. Theodore Brown? Absolutely.

On the other hand, Shithead was…something…trapped in the body of a cursed doll. There were only so many ways she could entertain herself.

Shepherd sighed to himself and used the side of his foot to nudge a twitching lump…

…OK. That was more liquid than he’d expected.

Shepherd grimaced as he hopped to the side and tried to scrape the hair-laced, tallowy ooze off his sneaker.

“What have you been eating?” he asked the pit. “Did a teenager get past me?”

The pit screamed in the voices of a hundred souls sent unfairly to Hell, and then burped. It smelled like rotten eggs and figs.

Which was good. Teenager usually smelled of Axe body spray and feet.

Still.

“If you have eaten someone, you need to let me know now,” Shepherd said. “I’m not going to lie, I’ll be disappointed. But you’re only hurting yourself in the long run if you don’t tell me.”

He waited expectantly. The gateway gurgled uneasily. Before he could try to decipher that, a voice filtered down through the slightly ajar cellar door. Shepherd’s hand froze mid-shake as he snapped his head around to stare at the sliver of sunlight.

“...inside the actual Madden House,” an excited, vaguely familiar voice enunciated. “Longtime followers will remember that this case was—”

The rest of the sentence faded off as whoever it was moved on down the hall. Their heels clicked on the old tiles.

Shepherd heaved an aggrieved sigh and rubbed his forehead with the heel of his hand.