your penis?”
“Where are we going?” I interrupt them in a screech. Chancing a glance, I find the thing crawling silently over the wall toward us with a speed that shouldn’t be possible for something so cumbersome.
They reply in unison, “Basement.”
Dust laden air swirls around us as we burst through the unlocked door and switch on the light. Concrete steps lead down into a long room. Doors lead off in a warren of smaller rooms. It feels more like a concrete bunker. I instantly sense spirits lurking, specters skulking in the shadowy corners. Their whispers reach my ears. Requests and pleas. Stifling, oppressive closing in around me. Pushing them from my mind, I do my best to ignore them.
Searching around the space, I look for anything that could be used as a weapon. “Now what? We should have brought some weapons with us!”
“Christ, like I was going to foresee you summoning something from a Japanese horror movie! I swear if I see a little girl with long black hair hanging over her face, I’m going to lose my shit. Get creative,” Leo suggests, slamming the door. Together with Snatch they heave a heavy, empty, wooden bookcase across the entrance.
Poking around the room to my left, I discover some stored building equipment. “I told you it wasn’t me. How about these?”
Leo grabs the hammer that dangles from my hand. “Perfect.”
Snatch accepts the pliers with a pained expression. “What am I supposed to do with these?”
“Distract it,” our leader proposes.
A thud against the door makes all of us jump. Another comes more ferociously proceeded by another. Trying not to think how we might all be about to die, I return to the room of tools hunting out something for myself. The gleam of something metallic catches my eye in a corner. Reaching for it, my fingers encounter cool metal.
A haze drifts in front of my eyes making everything slightly out of focus.
“Not now,” I hiss at the ghosts growing bold enough to approach me feeding on my awareness of them.
The sound of cracking wood intrudes. Dodging out of the little room, I’m in time to see the creature springing toward the others, clawed hands ready to rip anything it meets apart.
Swinging the metal pipe, I send the monster flying in the opposite direction. Hitting the wall, the limbs writhe in pain. Before I can even catch my breath, it launches off the surface straight toward me. Slamming the length of my weapon into its fleshy mass a second time, I send it to the floor.
“Now that was badass!” Snatch shouts excitedly.
Bringing the pipe downward, I beat the thing over and over. Leo joins in clubbing it with the end of his hammer with a meaty thwack. We don’t stop until the concrete is a sticky, scarlet abattoir of blood and flesh. Pausing I catch my breath, hands shaking round the pipe. I’m riding on adrenaline and a need for whatever the hell it is to be dead.
Snatch takes the interval to bend over the monster. “Is that?”
“Human body parts.” Leo nudges one of the arms with the tip of his hammer. “It looks like they’ve been sewn together and imbued with magic. I hate necromancers.”
The taloned fingers twitch in reaction, causing the other man, still bent over, to leap away in shock. “This murderer is one sick puppy.”
“You’re telling me. We can safely say we’re on the right track.”
Eyebrows shooting up into my hairline, I give a hysterical little laugh. “If you mean, have we attracted the Doll Maker’s attention and he’s out to kill us? I’d say yes.”
I should feel sick at what we’ve just done, and to be honest, I feel a hint of nausea curling in my stomach. The flicker of excitement, though, at the violence is something that’s been growing. I should feel repulsed, but I’m not. Entranced I watch the blood spreading against the grey floor.
“Honey, there’s no us,” Leo points out from beside me. “It’s clear that you’re his target. We don’t have tits and a vagina.”
“Thanks, Leo, that’s not in any way reassuring,” I mutter, finally tearing my attention away from the corpse.
Giving me a half-smile, he shrugs a shoulder. “I just tell it how it is.”
“I’ll text for a clean-up crew,” Snatch cuts in perching himself on a low wall off to the right. Finding his phone, he clicks a number. A short-murmured phone call later and he stuffs it away in the pocket of his jeans. “They’ll be here in fifteen minutes.”
The thing spasms