Insatiable Series Omnibus Edition (Books 1-3)

by Patrick Logan

  Tyler raised an eyebrow.

  “Ba di ba?”

  When there was no immediate answer, Tyler reached back and slammed the heel of his hand against the door. The loud bang resonated throughout the empty house and they all jumped. Kent thought he heard Baird whimper.

  “Jesus—”

  “Just answer, Baird,” Kent said.

  “Ba di bo! Ba di fucking bo!”

  Tyler smiled.

  “What do you think happened?” Sergio asked. Although this was the third or fourth time that the question had been posed, this was the first time that it was asked by someone other than Baird, and thus it deserved an answer.

  Kent shrugged.

  “No idea. Actually, I’m not really sure where we are, to be honest with you.”

  Tyler spoke up.

  “Askergan County,” he replied bluntly. “And I think I know what happened here.”

  He grinned again, and smacked his heel against the door a second time.

  “Ba di ba?”

  “Ba di bo,” Baird answered immediately.

  It was going to be a long night.

  * * *

  Kent didn’t believe any of Tyler’s story—it was just too fantastical, a typical campfire ghost story. But when he racked his brain, he thought he remembered something about a small town sheriff being killed along with a bunch of Askergan residents. Some sort of serial killer who liked to skin his victims—or, at least, that’s what his vodka-laced mind remembered. He had only been nine or ten at the time he had first heard the story, and even then he had chalked it up to the newest version of ‘Bloody Mary’, a warning not to head out into a blizzard. Nevertheless, sitting here in the dark, in a huge mansion with a collection of odd, burnt smudges, was enough to give him pause—and evidently Sergio too, as after Tyler completed his tale, the two of them sat in silence for nearly five minutes.

  Baird, on the other hand, was nearly in tears, his constant whimpering leaking through gaps in the burnt door. Despite his whining, Kent had to give the boy credit—he had held out for much longer than he, or any of them, would have thought. Driven by the thought of being part of the group—of fitting in with them, with someone, no doubt.

  Kent turned to Tyler, who was still grinning, the scar on his cheek splitting his face in half. It was a farce; Baird would never fit in with them, and especially not with Tyler. As he watched Tyler toy with the flashlight, trying to keep the light from fading, he started to think that maybe none of them really fitted in with Tyler.

  He had a hard life, his dad had said, and only now did Kent fully realize what the man had meant.

  The physical scars on his body weren’t the only impressions that his upbringing had made on him.

  “Hey… hey, guys?” Baird whispered from the other side of the door. “Do you guys hear that?”

  Kent listened closely. All he could hear was the sound of Baird’s wet breathing.

  “No.”

  It was Sergio who answered, but despite the directness of his response, Kent thought he detected a waver in his voice.

  “It sounds like—” Baird hesitated, his voice becoming taut. “Oh god—it sounds like someone cracking their knuckles.”

  “You’re the one who is fucking cracking,” Tyler replied, still grinning. Then he added, “Ba di ba?”

  “Oh god,” Baird whispered, “there it is again, that… cracking… Don’t you hear it?”

  Kent actually thought he had heard something this time, but to him it just sounded like the old, burnt floorboards creaking.

  Someone cracking their knuckles?

  “Ba di ba?” Tyler repeated a second time.

  A part of Kent wished Baird would just wait for one more so that they could just get the hell out of this creepy house.

  What the fuck are we doing here?

  “Baird,” Sergio whispered, taking another sip of vodka, “you better answer.”

  “Ba di bo,” Baird moaned.

  The boy was crying again.

  * * *

  When Kent finally pulled the door open, after Tyler’s final and cruelly drawn-out Ba di ba, Baird practically fell on top of him. The boy’s eyes were wide, and his face—all of it, from his lips to his forehead—was wet and glistening in the light from the now nearly dead flashlight. He was absolutely terrified.

  Tyler laughed.

  “You did it,” Kent said, awkwardly pushing the boy off of him. “You passed.”

  Tyler scoffed.

  “Passed? You mean pissed… look at him—probably pissed himself.”

  Kent frowned, yet despite his disapproval of Tyler’s comment—Jesus, hasn’t the boy been through enough?—he couldn’t help but look down at Baird’s burr-covered pajamas. Even by the dying flashlight, he recognized a dark spot around his crotch—one that grew as he watched.

  Shit.

  He really had pissed himself.

  Tyler noticed the stain around the same time and he took a step back, pointing.

  “Look!” he shouted, his outstretched finger aimed at Baird’s crotch. “Look! He did piss himself!”

  Sergio’s face contorted in disgust, and Baird bowed his head in shame.

  “Gimme that bottle,” Tyler demanded, and snatched the vodka from Sergio’s hand. There was only a sip or two left.

  He finished it.

  Kent yawned and rubbed at his eyes; the day had been long and hot, and like the flashlight, he was starting to fade.

  “Anybody have the time?” he asked.

  The sky outside had become overcast, the moon and twinkling stars no longer visible through the open doorway below them.

  When no one answered, he turned to Baird and told him to take out his phone. At first, the boy didn’t answer, resigning himself to keeping his head low and continuing to whimper.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake, Baird! Get it together,” Tyler said.

  Baird sniffed hard, trying to collect himself, and slowly reached into his pajamas. Kent was slightly perturbed that Baird—who had been sleeping soundly before they had roused him—had kept his cell phone in his pajamas when he slept. And again Kent was struck by the strangeness of pajamas with pockets—what kind of pajamas have pockets?

  Eventually Baird’s fingers—moving painfully slowly—grabbed the phone, and he pulled it out of his pocket. As his trembling hand held it out to him, there was a loud whoosh sound to Kent’s left, and he turned just in time to see the now empty vodka bottle careening through the air above their heads.

  “Tyler!” he shouted, but the grinning boy ignored him, intent on watching the bottle tumble through the air, end over end.

  Kent wasn’t sure if he had missed the phone being handed to him or if Baird had simply dropped it when the empty vodka bottle exploded in the foyer below. Either way, Baird jumped backward at the sound and promptly fell on his ass. The chubby boy moaned in pain, but quickly scrambled back to his feet when he realized that he had fallen back into the foul-smelling room.

  “What the fuck, Tyler!” Kent shouted.

  Tyler reached into his pocket and pulled out a cigarette. When he finally finished the ritual of lighting it and raised his eyes, all three boys were staring at him, anger pasted on their faces.

  “What?” he asked with a shrug.

  Then he exhaled a large cloud of blue smoke that billowed about his face.

  “It was empty.”

  13.

  ”Well I’m not going anywhere,” Tyler said petulantly. “Not just yet, anyway.”

  Kent opened his mouth to reiterate his desire to leave this place, but Tyler continued before he had a chance to speak.

  “What’s your problem, anyway, Kent? You want to head back now because you know it’s your turn?”

  Kent made a face and shook his head.

  “Oh yeah, that’s it, isn’t it, Kent? Scared now because it’s your turn?”

  There was a gleam in his eyes that Kent didn’t care for.

  “I’m not scared,” he said bluntly, and it w
as the truth. Yet while he wasn’t really afraid, he was disturbed—very disturbed. The story that Tyler had told them wasn’t—couldn’t be—true, but there was something wrong with this empty house; the place wasn’t quite right. It was the multiple burn marks throughout the house, as if the fire had been deliberately started in several places at once, and it was the sound that he had heard when Baird was alone in the room.

  Disturbed. Yeah, that was a good word for it. Not scared; disturbed.

  “Well then, my friend, I think it’s your turn.”

  Kent shook his head.

  “It’s late—I’ll play tomorrow.”

  Tyler made a face.

  “How do you know it’s late? Dumbass there”—he indicated Baird with a flick of his head—“dropped his phone and it won’t turn on. Besides, you promised me.”

  “Fuck, I’m tired, the flashlight is low on batteries, and this place stinks. Let’s play tomorrow.”

  Now it was Tyler’s turn to shake his head. He was about to say something, when Baird surprised them all by speaking up.

  “I did it,” the boy said meekly.

  Kent turned to face him, incredulous. Baird’s eyes were downcast, and he was digging one of the toes of his boots into a charred floorboard. Kent had managed to convince them to come downstairs, and they were nearly out the front door—the ragged opening that Tyler had made by pulling off the rotted plywood—before this; before Baird of all people trying to pressure him.

  “Baird? What the fuck?”

  “I’m just saying,” he whispered.

  He didn’t dare look at Tyler, didn’t dare look over at the boy’s shit-eating grin.

  “Well,” Sergio said, speaking up for the first time in several minutes. The word was slurred, and Kent could tell by the way the boy swayed slightly even though he was standing still that he was buzzed. “He’s right. Baird did it. And it is your turn.”

  Kent’s eyes went from Baird, to Sergio, and then back to Tyler. The latter pressed the flashlight to his chin, illuminating his face in a shadowy glow.

  “You scared, little Kent?”

  “Fuck off.”

  In the end, it was Baird’s comment that cemented it.

  One more round.

  Kent shook his head and pressed his lips together.

  Fucking peer pressure.

  * * *

  “No fucking way.”

  “Yes fucking way.”

  It was like déjà vu—only this time it was Tyler trying to convince Kent and not Baird.

  Kent was staring into what could only be described as a dungeon, the dim flashlight—now starting to flicker—illuminating a set of wooden stairs that looked so rickety that an inquisitive fly might cause the entire staircase to collapse.

  “I did it.”

  Baird again.

  “Shut the fuck up, Baird,” Kent nearly shouted.

  They had found the trapdoor toward the back of the house in the kitchen when Baird had nearly tripped on a small brass ring that was nearly flush with the hardwood. The kitchen, unlike the foyer or the room upstairs, looked relatively untouched by the fire, and aside from the ubiquitous layer of dust, it looked pristine. But once they had opened that door—the trapdoor hidden in the hardwood—a waft of horrific-smelling warm gas told a completely different story. A story that Kent had no interest in reading the prologue of, let alone the ending.

  “Kent,” Tyler said, changing tactics, “take a drag of this cigarette.”

  Kent reached out and snatched the cigarette from Tyler and put it to his lips. He inhaled deeply, and when the harsh smoke hit his throat and then his lungs, he sputtered and coughed. He turned his head and spat phlegm on the floor, then took another drag. His head started to swim.

  “Good,” Tyler said. “We’ll make this one quick, I promise.” When he went to reach for his cigarette, Kent took a third drag, then flicked it to the ground.

  “Here, take the flashlight,” Tyler said, pulling another cigarette out of the pack.

  Kent banged the head of the flashlight twice against the palm of his hand to get it to stop flickering. Then he again turned the weak beam of light to the dungeon. Although he could barely make out the bottom of the stairs, the ground below looked like it was covered in dirt instead of concrete or hardwood.

  Why the fuck am I doing this?

  Still shaking his head, Kent extended his leg, his foot tentatively searching for the top stair. When his foot found purchase, the wood creaked but held.

  “Oh, and Kent?” Tyler said.

  Kent turned, hoping that Tyler had changed his mind and would tell him to get out of the fucking dungeon so that they could leave this place and make their way back to their respective tents.

  Fuck him and fuck this game.

  “You have to go to the bottom.”

  Kent swung the flashlight around again.

  Eight steps—nine if you included the one he was presently standing on.

  “All the way?” he asked, his voice sounding more like Baird’s high-pitched whine than his own. He cleared his throat and asked again, more forcefully this time.

  “All the way.”

  The smile had returned to Tyler’s face. A grin. A fucking shit-eating grin.

  Kent decided to just get it over with. It was just a house, after all. An old, abandoned, burnt, undeniably creepy fucking house—but just a house, nonetheless.

  * * *

  By the time he reached the bottom stair, the flashlight was nearly dead. Twice, he had to stop partway down, terrified that the rotted wood would collapse under his weight. When he finally jumped from the bottom step to the ground—which was indeed dirt—the pathetic beam of light from the flashlight had become so weak that he could only make out just about as much as he had from the top of the staircase. The basement wasn’t empty, that much he could tell, but truth be told, Kent, his breathing shallow, didn’t really want to know what kind of shit was down here. Instead, he turned his attention back up the staircase and into the kitchen.

  “Okay, let’s get this—”

  But Tyler’s face suddenly filled the opening—he was smiling again, that goddamn hideous scar parting his face in two—and then he slammed the trapdoor closed.

  Kent was alone. His heartrate immediately kicked into high gear.

  “Okay, let’s go!” he shouted.

  The sound echoed off the walls and low ceiling and slapped his ears.

  He heard Tyler laugh but then, true to his word, he quickly got into the game.

  “Ba di ba?”

  “Ba di bo.”

  The flashlight flickered and went out. This time, Kent decided not try to bang it back on. Instead, he clicked it off, deciding to let it recharge just a little so that he could use it to get back up the stairs later.

  “Ba di ba?”

  “Ba di bo.”

  Kent was blanketed in an oppressive darkness, like being submerged in oil. There was no light, not even a sliver of illumination splaying through the seams of the trapdoor above.

  This is nuts.

  “Ba di ba?”

  “Ba di bo,” Kent replied quickly.

  Twenty-three to go.

  It was after the sixth Ba di ba that Kent first heard it: a faint crackling noise, like someone stepping on dry leaves. His heartrate quickened and he whipped his head in the direction it had come, but he was still drowning in the oppressive darkness and saw nothing.

  “Do you guys hear that? Sounds like something cracking…”

  A rat. It was a fucking rat.

  “Ba di ba?”

  “Ba di fucking bo.”

  “Ba di ba?”

  Then he heard it again, a muffled cracking sound—and Kent knew then that it was definitely not a rat. It sounded like someone cracking their knuckles underwater.

  “Fucking weird cracking sound.”

  The boys above ignored him.

  “Ba di ba?”

  “Ba di bo.”

  As his ears slowly began to adjus
t to the silence, he thought he heard something else as well—an underlying rushing noise, like slowly boiling water.

  He swallowed hard.

  “Fuck me! There are fucking rats or something down here.”

  Not rats; rats don’t make that sound.

  Kent’s breathing was coming in shallow bursts and his eyes, ineffective as they were in the complete darkness, were spread so wide that the corners of his lids started to hurt.

  He soon lost count of how many Ba di bas had passed. Not enough—definitely not twenty-five.

  “Ba di ba?”

  A loud crack suddenly erupted from his left, and Kent jumped back onto the first step of the staircase.

  “Ba di—”

  When he lowered his hand to where he thought the wooden railing was, trying to make sure that he kept tabs on where he was, it landed on something soft—something soft and hairy, and he screamed.

  “Oh my God,” he gasped, “there is something down here with me!”

  His heart thudded so strongly in his chest that he found it difficult to stand still without rocking. A cold sweat broke out on his face.

  When the door at the top of the stairs didn’t open immediately, Kent stumbled forward in the darkness, desperately probing for the bottom stair with an outstretched foot. He heard another crack, and his withering resolve snapped.

  “Tyler, open the fucking door!” he screeched.

  Kent fumbled with the flashlight, eventually managing to switch it on. The light was dim and yellow, but—thank Christ—it actually worked. He swung it in a wide arc behind him, but he saw only dirt and—and something else, right next to where he had stumbled only moments ago.

  “Kent, you know what happens if you come out before the game’s over,” he heard Tyler say in his best patronizing tone. Kent ignored him.

  There, just beyond his scrambled footprints in the dirt, was a shape—an oval covered in what looked like a thick comforter.

  What the fuck is that?

  “Tyler! Open the fucking door now!”

  Heart thumping in his chest, he turned his attention back to the stairs, and when his foot finally found purchase, he jumped up to the second step, ignoring the wood’s protests. Something heavy had been on this staircase before him, something so massive that it had loosened the nails and warped the boards.