Page 37 of Housesitter

“Don’t—”

His heel scuffed the worn-smooth bricks at the edge of the well, and he slipped. For a second he teetered on the edge of a fall, eyes wide with surprise and arms flailing. Then he caught his balance, weight shifted forward on the balls of his feet. He exhaled raggedly in relief, the knife situation momentarily forgotten.

A fish-belly white hand shot up out of the dark pit and latched onto his ankle. Ash-blackened fingers clamped down, broken nails digging into the skin, and wiry, corded muscles bulged through the withered skin as it pulled.

Indecipherable, guttural mutters rolled up from the well, mouthed from a pale round shape that could just about pass as a face, and down in the darkness the sound of nails and stone echoed up.

Kel went down. He twisted to save his knees and landed on his ass, fingers dug into the cracks in the concrete floor as the thing yanked on his foot. His jaw clenched, the knot of muscle visible under pale skin and stubble, as the darkness wrapped around his shins.

OK, that was a bit further than Shepherd had expected this to go. He’d expected the house to show its goods, not get handsy with his hook-up.

“Hey! Stop that!” Shepherd snapped. He put his knife away and grabbed the mop he’d used to clean up yesterday’s…unease…and jabbed the wet, fouled head down at the maggot-leer of the thing. It snapped at the wet knots of fabric with the sharpened ridges of its gums, and then recoiled at the taste. “Go on! Get. Down. No jumping on people.”

The thing reluctantly let go and slouched back down into the dark. Not far. Black shark-eyes glittered wetly up at Shepherd from a few feet down.

He tsked at it as he grabbed Kel under the shoulder and pulled him back from the edge.

“And don’t try and look hard done by,” he said as the thing muttered profanely to itself. “You know better than that.”

The thing huffed at him. He pulled the mop, the head of it now clotted with thick, waxy spit, back and offered it to Kel to use as a crutch.

Kel grimaced a no and used Shepherd instead. He hauled himself up and braced himself on Shepherd’s shoulder. Blood dripped from his ankle, and his knee had already started to swell. He stared into the well as the sound of in-fighting and scuffling bounced back up to them.

“What the fuck?” he said.

Shepherd couldn’t help himself. “What?” he said. “You never saw that in your gran’s trailer?”

Kel gave him an unamused look. That was fair. Sometimes Shepherd forgot his privilege.

“That,” he said. Then paused, nose wrinkled, as he tried to work out where to start. He guessed at the most relevant part. “...was yours. Or it is now, anyhow.”

Shepherd gingerly tipped the platter of dead rats over the sink. He caught the end of his tongue between his teeth as he tried to make sure it all went into the colander instead of down the sink. Sewer-slick bodies slopped wetly into the plastic utensil, which immediately took the opportunity to prove that it was indeed collapsible.

“Shit,” Shepherd said as the sewer-slick lumps of rat parts slurped and sloughed down into the pipework.

“Seriously?” Kel asked from behind him. “There’s a pit of monsters in the basement.”

“Yes, and they aren’t getting treats after making a show of me like that,” Shepherd said. He watched as marinated lumps of rat meat visibly clogged just a few inches down in the drain. Wet, sloppy noises squelched out as they slowly sank downwards. He shook the last jellied bits off the tray and turned to wedge it into the dishwater. “I don’t usually comment on how clients want things done, but frankly Dio spoiled those things rotten. The unnatural abominations that I grew up with would never have gotten away with behaving like that. They’re a working breed, you know; they need a job, or they start acting up just for the attention.”

He shoved the tray of the dishwasher in, kicked the door up, and turned to look at Kel.

Kel looked back at him. He was slouched back in one chair with his foot propped up on another, a bag scavenged from the freezer held against his knee. His knuckles were red and sore-looking from the cold.

“How hard would I need to work to convince myself that this was just a bad trip?” Kel asked. “Laced weed. Cannabis psychosis. A bad strain. Anything along those lines.”

Shepherd pulled the dish towel off the hook and wiped his hands on it fastidiously. He watched his hands as he did it.

After he’d got away from the cult, he’d tried to be normal. There had been a room in a borderline condemned house and a job washing dishes in the kitchen of a strip club. He’d tried to convince himself that was reality.

It had ended badly.

“Harder than you want to work,” he said as he hung the cloth back up. “And it doesn’t stick.”

From Kel’s expression, that wasn’t the answer he wanted, but that didn’t seem to surprise him either. He leaned back in the chair, shifted the cold compress around to the side of his knee, and looked at Shepherd.

“Why me?” he asked. “I’m not special. The closest I came was that for six months I could run faster with a ball than anyone else in town. I can’t even do that anymore. I’m nobody.”

Shepherd pulled a chair out and sat down. He leaned forward and rested his elbows on the edge of the table. There was a stain on the wood, and he rubbed at it absently with his thumb.