A foul odor seeped under the sturdy oak door. An aroma that carried hints of rotten meat and sulfur, it watered the eyes of the young boy kneeling before it. He was between the ages of eight or ten, and was wearing a tattered blue shirt with stains in multiple colors. His knees were scraped into a medley of dried blood and pus that was no doubt infected.

He wore no shoes or any kind of foot coverings for that matter, and the soles of his feet had deep cuts that any man who knew better would have thought he had skipped through a field of broken glass and jagged rocks. He was sobbing like a newborn, muttering broken sentences and pleas for help that echoed throughout the abandoned house where he found himself in his current predicament. The house was something straight out of the most clichéd horror movie. It was surround by an iron cast fence and the grass had not been tended to for some time. There wasn’t a single window that was intact, and there was an uneasy feeling that those who walked past the house felt on the regular.

There was also of course, the smell. It reeked in front of the house, but no further in the surrounding areas. It was almost as if it was a warning from some ethereal entity to stay out away from the manor, an appeal to the most basic of human instincts. A boy with any common sense would have steered as far away from the house as possible, and this was the case with the young man who found himself sitting in the old, dilapidated manor. He would always walk on the other side of the street with his friends, careful not to look into the windows too long lest he see something that would fuel his nightmares for months into the future. His friends were not so wise. They would often brag about how they had been inside the house, and found that it was nothing scary at all.

The rumors that were spread among the townspeople were false in their eyes, and as young boys do they often disregarded them as nothing more than gossip and hearsay. These were all lies of course. None of them would dare to even touch the giant looming gate that towered over even the tallest of men. The very stuff of nightmares would be found in the house, but they would never tell each other that. The boys valued bravado and toughness over truth and fact, and they would often pick on the young man who openly expressed fear of the unnatural home. He was picked at whenever they walked past the giant house on their way to school or to play. Every foul and insensitive name under the sun was thrown his way, and anger boiled deep within him to prove them wrong. On this very fateful day, a dare was thrown in the boy’s face. Walk into the house and stay inside for twenty minutes or be labeled a coward and be banished from the group. The other boys just wanted to see what would happen of course. None of them would even consider stepping foot inside, and the very thought of it sprang forth the same kind of fear that was felt when their fathers raised a hand at them.

The most powerful motivating force in a young persons mind is peer pressure, and the boy had no other so-called friends. What else was he to do? He did not want to be labeled a coward, so he approached the home with weak legs and clammy hands. Every step was agony, his feet being weighed down by imaginary stones and his legs weak as if he had just sprinted a country mile. He reached the gate and stretched out a hand to touch it. His fingers were met with an unnatural cold that radiated throughout the steel. It was almost unbearable to touch, and thoughts of dread raced deep within his mind. Images of death and despair flashed before his eyes, of unholy creatures that God himself had abandoned twisted and perverted beyond their natural form. He did not want to continue this endeavor, but the jeering of his friends gave him a fire in his belly that motivated him. He made it through the gate and past the uncut grass came upon the front door, large and rotting. It had flecks of paint that suggested it had once been beautifully painted with vibrant shades of maroon and violet. The door knob was rusted to all hell, and it was a miracle it was still attached to the door at all. He reached out and turned it, and tried pushing the door open. It wouldn’t budge an inch, and a sigh of relief raced through him. He did not have to go into the house after all, and now he had a reasonable excuse. He turned his back on the old home and made his way back across the street but as he walked away, the door creaked open slowly.

The rusty hinges on the door made the most eerie noise that he had ever heard come from a door, and suddenly a man appeared in the doorway. He was a squat and short man, with hairy arms and hairy legs. He wore a pig mask and a filthy butchers gown, but nothing else. His hair was long and greasy and red, and his bloodshot red eyes stared lifelessly from behind the mask. The gown had a myriad of stains on it, from blood to feces to anything in between. His hands were bloody, his fingernails filed with muck and blood. This was a madman, a man shunned by the highest Himself. He looked straight at the boy, and he made a low grumbling noise. He was no more than ten feet away from him, and the odor he omitted was unbearable. It was the same odor the house omitted, only more pungent and direct because of his distance from the boy.

With a speed that should not have been possible from a man of his stature, he ran at the boy. His stubby legs were more than enough to carry him to the boy. He snatched him up and let out a howl that echoed in the minds of the boys’ friends and created a sense of helplessness and dread as they watched their friend taken by the beast in human form. His hairy behind was the last thing they saw of the man as their friend was taken into the house. The boy was in such shock he could not even comprehend what had happened. In his mind, he was still on the street waking back to his disappointed friends. He saw none of the house, as it was pitch black inside.

No light from the outside world made it in here, and the stench grew greater with every step that was taken deeper in to the house. When they finally made it to the basement, the boy snapped out of his trance and began screaming. This startled the man, and he began screaming as well. He dragged the boy across the stone floor I attempt to shut him up, but to no avail. He resorted to just hitting him over the head and that seemed to do the trick.

The boy went unconscious. When he awoke, he was sitting in front of a sturdy oak door. He heard screams coming from the other side, unearthly screams that shook him to his core. The stench became unbearable as the door opened and he waited for his fate.