[#052] I always thought my brother was joking when he told me to throw his phone in the creek after he died. (Part 3 - Jake is Gone)

You told me not to do it. You were right.

I shouldn't have answered George's phone. I shouldn't have read the text messages.

It was 4AM Wednesday morning when I caved and snapped the phone open. It turns out the Overwatch theme wasn't just his ringtone; it was also his text message notification. I guess he wasn't feeling very creative when he picked them out. Waiting inside the phone were five texts, one for each morning the thing went off since I first tailed my cousins to the farmhouse last Friday.

• "KEVIN: Jake scared you off, didn't he? I'm not gonna give you shit, but you seriously don't want to get involved in this."
• "KEVIN: I know that's you with George's phone, dude. Please don't hate us. It's for your own good. We don't like this either."
• "KEVIN: Just say something, please. I need to talk to someone. I feel like this is all I do now. Itd be okay to just"
• "KEVIN: Hurt's bad... We need hlep and I don't care what Jake says family sticks together please"
• "JAKE: Dont u fuckin dare"

That was the final straw. I just knew they were in some shit. And I realize you guys don't know them. Hell, I barely know them. But Kevin's right: Family sticks together, even when they act like shits. Kevin and Jake needed help, and I didn't want to get them arrested if I could get them out instead.

And, yeah. I realize now how dumb that sounds. You told me not to go back to the farmhouse...

But I went back to the farmhouse.

I couldn't afford to call off again, so I delayed the trip until late afternoon. My wheels hit the ugly pavement by four, and I figured I had several hours to pop in and have a look even if my cousins decided to visit on their off-day. I even packed a survival kit full of water bottles, a pen knife, and...

Did you guys know you can just buy a crowbar? They're not even expensive.

Fear was my best guide, honestly. I probably wouldn't have remembered all those blind, bushy turns if I weren't so intimidated by them on the first trip. I did get lost for a while, but I looped around and somehow ended up reaching my destination from the opposite direction. The old, leaning farmhouse still perched like a crooked crown above the dead slope of a lawn, only now mine was the only car in sight.

I sat at the base of the rise and stared up at it for a few minutes, waiting out my own nausea and feeling at the same time like a kid with keys to the candy shop: For all the terror of the last week, I felt like something absolutely delicious and necessary finally lay within my grasp: A sense of closure. Answers. Rebellion?

Yeah, I admit I wanted to stick it to Jake. I wanted to know what was going on and why they couldn't be honest with me. On some level I think I secretly wanted in on whatever crazy secret they had, just so I could keep a crazy secret too. As long as they weren't murdering people or whatever.

When I eventually headed up to the house, I found the front door was still locked solid and barricaded on the other side. I thought about peeking through the window again, but the fear of somebody standing there staring back at me turned me right around and got me looking for the cellar entrance again. I scoured the tall, dry grass for almost half an hour before I found it, in large part because I kept glancing back at the road to make sure Jake's pickup hadn't pulled into sight.

My whole brain flipped a little when I found the cellar doors hanging ajar, and I realized after a moment the boards warped too far to shut completely. Figuring the trampling I gave them last Friday was to credit for the easy entrance, I pat myself on the back the entire time I spent pulling the heavy doors apart and peering down into the musty darkness beneath me.

Weird, splotchy mold laced the cinder block walls holding back the Earth. An awful smell like sawdust soaked with piss filled the air, and I had to crouch and shine George's tiny phone screen on the narrow steps beneath my sneakers because, for some reason, I had thought to pack five granola bars and absolutely zero flashlights. The pathway split off to the left twenty feet ahead, a single branch leading past a row of three filthy ponchos on hooks to a padlocked door. Nerves pushed me forward first, up a staircase winding into a dirty kitchen, and suddenly I found myself inside the farmhouse proper.

Stacks of takeout cartons littered the floor because the only table was absolutely covered with more beer bottles than I had ever seen in the rest of my life combined. Whatever Jake and Kevin -- and, presumably, George -- had been up to here apparently demanded more from them than they could handle sober. The blistering heat melded with the swarm of flies buzzing over the mess to form a barrage of offensive scents and sounds, and I choked on the stench just pushing toward the exit.

The only door from the kitchen lead out into the hall, and I realized I was retracing Kevin's footsteps from my last visit. From this side, I could clearly see the heavy chest of drawers shoved up against the house's front door, its surface coated edge to edge with dust save two clean handprints right in the center where someone had pushed themselves up to see out the window.

Kevin's handprints. If the texts hadn't confirmed it, these did: He definitely saw me.

The fact the chest still weighed against the door in their absence confirmed my cousins always entered the house through the cellar. I played my hands across the handles of the drawers and found they came away clean of dust. The top drawer stuck shut, with something hard jammed against the frame. The lower drawer pulled right open, and at least a dozen dirty knives and hammers lay scattered among the rusty rags inside. My guts leapt up and wrapped around my throat as I slammed it shut as quick as I could, hard enough to knock the chest up and slam it back down into the hardwood floor. The sound of it echoed through the house like a car crash, amplified by the long, empty hall behind me.

Somewhere far below, a voice cried out in response.

Hours passed in my head as I stood with my hands frozen in a claw-shape before me, inches from tossing the heavy chest away from the door and bolting for the safety of my car. I craned my neck and pointed my ears at the hall, straining for some evidence I was imagining the long, mournful sobs rising from the basement. They had to be inhumanly loud, or at least amplified by the uncanny acoustics of the house.

Finally I heard it again, and I followed it to the end of the hall because I needed the truth. I followed it all the way down the stairs and into the branching path, all the way to the door with the padlock. The crowbar leapt from my pack before I knew what I was doing, and...

It took forever, even as old as the lock was. I found myself pounding on the door and yelling to the voice inside, begging them for the calm I couldn't show myself, and I cursed and spat as I pulled and pulled at the lock until, after what felt like ages beating the crap out of my arms, it snapped off with an explosive crack.
The door must have been airtight, because the room inside curled with heavy smoke as though a wildfire blazed in the basement of this tiny house. I dropped the crowbar and spilled across the floor to escape the acrid cloud whirling out into the hall, and the sobbing grew louder and closer as I climbed to my knees until...
Until a man appeared through the haze. But he wasn't just a man.

A rusty liquid bled through the cracks in his bronze flesh, flesh that hardened and crackled like imitation leather as it shifted. The smoke trail filling the hallway with the pissy sawdust smell billowed out of his sagging mouth as he gazed at me with his round, yellow eyes and drooled. He reached out across the darkness toward me with a hand tipped in mangled nails filed into points, and his pitiful, deathly cries echoed down my spine and weighed on me like an anesthetic.

I couldn't move. I could only watch as the man slouched toward me, the claws of his left hand dragging trenches through the concrete floor beneath him with some hideous strength. I stared until the cellar doors burst open and heavy boots thundered down the steps. I woke to my name, screamed in my ear by someone looming over me in dirty jeans and a band shirt. He lifted me physically off the ground and shoved me toward the cellar doors, and I ran until I collapsed in the driver's seat of my car and shot off down the road.
George's phone didn't ring that night, or the next night after.

Mom just got off the phone with my aunt. Jake and Kevin haven't come home in days, but the cops found Jake's truck this morning all smashed up off the road five minutes from a certain farmhouse. It looked like he had wrapped it around a tree, and then that tree got up and left.

And another thing: One last text arrived on George's phone this morning:

• "KEVIN: Hurt is bad, and now he's seen you. Jake's gone. Hurt will find you after he gets me too, but he just wants to feel pain. Doont be afraid to go crazy, you cant kill him :)"

I'm not sure I understand it all, but I can figure what he means by "Jake's gone." I think I'm in this now, whatever this is. I think I have to go back to the house and help Kevin, or... I don't know. Maybe this should be my last update. I should just rest a while and let Kevin sort this out.

I think I'm starting to feel a little sick anyway.