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Part 2
Evan Sent - Part 2
With the speed of blinking an eye, Evan found himself at the end of a long path leading to a house in need of a fresh coat of paint twenty years ago. It was dusk. The grounds of the house were littered with cardboard boxes, torn pieces of cloth and leaves from a tree he didn’t see. Stairs grew skyward from the long sidewalk and Evan hovered above them.
All that could be heard by Evan was the jingle of his keys and a cold wind that pushed fog across the ground. Evan stopped his ascent when abruptly, the wind ceased and everything around him became still. A noise drew his attention to a window above him. The face of a child with blackened eyes and a shaved head appeared in the window. A tiny hand rubbed small fingers across the glass, wiping away a thick coat of dust from the window. The little boy could see him. What he heard next was the sound of a rusty nail being raked across glass. He watched as the child etched an arrow shape into the window. Evan’s eyes followed where the arrow pointed, it led to the front door.
Before Evan could insert the key into the lock, the door threw itself open violently. No one helped it open. It was as if the house wanted him to come in without a doubt.
The door swung by one hinge and the seven locks it broke to open it dangled uselessly from its edges. Evan hovered into the house.
The interior of the house was dark, several inches of dust and dirt covered the floors and walls. A large portrait of a married couple hung lopsided on a wall nearby, the eyes and mouths of the happy couple were smeared with caked, maroon red blood. The stairs that led to the house’s second story was missing. A remnant of its frame splintered up from the floor like unearthed bones.
The adjacent room surrounded a grand dining table. Thick, black and formidable, the table was crowned with a mound of dirt. Several decaying bouquets of flowers sprung from the dirt. The cellophane of one flapped in a breeze that rifled its way past the collapsed front door.
The living room housed several more mounds of dirt. Each sitting next to each other like rows of festering bread loaves on a bakery shelf. Some were adorned with flowers, some were not. A shovel plunged into one of the mounds was a makeshift tombstone for one of the graves.
It was curious to Evan that the mounds were not long enough to house a full grown adult…
Suddenly, Evan remembered the child in the window. Surveying the graves again, he came to the realization that they were the graves of children.
Evan threw himself towards the stairs that lay broken and disheveled and floated up towards the second story. The walls of the entire second floor were removed. The entire area was littered with large boxes made from wooden doors, chain link or press board. The boxes were crudely constructed with over-sized nails protruding from all sides in awkward angles. He noticed that each one had a window to peer inside. He did just that to the nearest cell and saw a small child bound and gagged within.
Evan turned to see the child who looked at him in the window. The child was shackled to a radiator near the window. The boy looked at him happily.
Evan approached him.
"Don’t be scared." Evan said.
"We’re not." The boy whispered with cracked, chapped lips.
"I’m going to help you." Evan said.
The boy just smiled at him his tears turned to mud on his cheeks.
Evan watched as the child’s elated expression melted away like candle wax escaping a flame. Evan heard a car door slam. Evan hurried to the window and saw a police car driving down the sidewalk and stop suddenly where the stairs began.
A police officer, large, barrel-chested with sunken bloodshot eyes hurried up the stairs. He pulled a club from his belt.
"Thank goodness." Evan said.
The child hid his face in his dirt stained hands and screamed.
Evan turned towards the opening in the stairs and heard the policeman yell.
"Who the hell broke my fu cking door?!"
The world caved in on Evan as he heard the cop pull the door completely down from it’s lingering hinge.
Evan made his way to the first floor as the police man tried to hurriedly prop the door up in the battered doorway.
Evan crossed to the living room and pulled the shovel from the dirt. He turned to face the man in the doorway.
Evan slammed the shovel straight down into the floor at his feet. The man turned suddenly. He gasped and drew his gun, the door flopped to the floor. Firing two rounds at Evan, he smiled. When the bullets flew through Evan and planted themselves into a nearby wall, the smile faded.
The dark man turned just in time to see the door lift itself off of the ground and slam itself into the doorway with a thunder clap. His best attempts to pry it open it failed. An unearthly grip held the door in place.
The cop spun again to see Evan face to face with him.
"It’s playtime." Evan said as he swung the shovel’s sharp edge against the man’s neck.
Fin
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