No one ever bothered with the house on the corner of Maple and Twenty-third. The two-story structure deteriorated more with every day, shingles littering the lawn, paint reduced to small, faded patches.

The structure wasn’t abandoned, and to have the curtain shift as you passed, to have the owner peer out at you, was considered a sign of bad luck. Children had a habit of running up to knock on the door before the curtain could open, flee before being seen by the unknown owner. Though the house had stood for longer than the lives of most of the people in the area, no one had ever seen who owned it, the glimpse of a hand on the curtains the most anyone knew.

Edward Biffle knew all about that when he walked up Maple with a clipboard in hand, accompanied by mosquitoes and the heat of a late summer day. He’d already moved through most the area, stopping door to door, asking for donations to the Good Will.

He intended to finish the block and then call it a day, pausing when he came to the dying structure, fully aware of the talk it elicited. Salesmen knocked on the door from time to time, telling others about the footsteps they’d hear from inside, or the rustling of a nearby curtain, but they’d never get an answer, and Edward himself didn’t believe he’d get one either as he pushed open the wooden gate and stepped across cracked chunks of pavement.

Part of him walked up to the door merely so he’d have a story to tell to his nephew. Even his sister would give him a bemused look upon hearing he’d bothered stepping foot on the patio, maybe remembering youthful nights when the two of them had stood with a pack of friends to do the very same after being dared. Edward had to stifle the laughter, the smile spread across his face.

Before he even reached the door, he heard the movement, saw the shape of a person watching him. The idea struck him as sad, really, that a person would live so isolated from the world. He was so lost in the idea of it he almost didn’t realize at first when the deadbolt slid open, marked by a rusty, grinding sound. A loud creak of wood jolted him.

On the other side, an old man greeted him, so hunched over that his head seemed to come from his chest, the top of his head bald, face sunken in. Without a word he opened the screen door and motioned for Edward to enter.

“I came about donations to—” he began.

“Come in,” the old man said, voice thin from age and lack of use. Edward reluctantly did.

The inside didn’t match the outside at all. No decay could be found in the hall he passed through, everything in place, dusted, shining as if new. He waited as the man closed the door, started down the hallway. Edward followed the slow walk, eyeing the man’s back curiously, seeing what almost looked like movement beneath his shirt, but Edward couldn’t think of what that movement might be.

They stepped into the living room, the old man continuing on to a chair, while Edward himself stopped in the doorway.

Furniture-wise, the room contained only two chairs, no shelving or anything else along the walls. Instead there were paintings, or a single painting running the full length of the room. The vibrancy of it, the realism of the people, the images, only emphasized the grotesque nature of what it showed.

If there ever was to be such a thing as hell on earth, Edward suspected these images would capture it perfectly. Multiple locations were depicted, from cities to small towns to farmland, all of them filled with both the dead and the dying, along with the warped creatures descending on them. Winged monstrosities filled the blackened skies, their flesh disfigured, held together by bloody hooks, as if several skinned animals had been combined into a single entity.

When he looked upward he could see the ceiling itself overcome by these flying monsters, along with a vortex of clouds coming together into a single point at the tip of the ceiling, where another being seemed to exist, looking down on him; only the dark outline of a monstrous form visible, its angles too disjointed for him to grasp what it could be. Merely looking at the dark form disturbed him more than the mutated creatures tearing through the populous and he had to force his eyes away.

While most of the people shown were already dead, others had wide open eyes as they lived through torture at the hands of the creatures. Others were shown running, falling, being captured, being nailed to their prisons, the images always moving, it looked to Edward, until his eyes finally lowered to see the old man in his chair staring over, and motioning for Edward to take up a seat.

He did in a state of shock, too caught up by it all to have even the thought of fleeing, wondering how anyone could want to sit in this room.

“Why did you come here seeking donations?” the old man asked him, leaning in closer.

“People need help.” Edward answered without actually looking at the man, eyes still roaming the gory scene, finding new disturbing details the longer he looked. “I thought I’d try to help them.”

His gaze finally lowered to the old man, whose face looked odd to Edward, skin loose, almost detached from the rest of him, his eyes peering through a mask. “You married?”

“What is this?” Edward asked, his mind finally coming back to him, the shock of the moment wearing off.

“This is a chance to do something good for the world,” the old man said, his voice changing, lowering, and Edward could see the man’s skull growing large, pushing his teeth and gums out of his mouth.

Edward rose quickly, backed away from the changing man, from the blood beginning to soak the man’s shirt, large humps pushing up from his back. “I get a lot of people coming to my door. More than most would think. I put my house on a lot of lists, you see, but not my name. I want them to come, but I can tell by looking who will be suitable, and who won’t.”

The man rose, flesh stretching outward, arms beginnings to grow longer, knees disjointed and barely supporting him from what Edward could tell. Though Edward had entered the room last, the door behind him had somehow been locked, the knob catching when he tried to turn it, to flee.

The first screams of pain began faintly, and what had once been the old man stopped as well to listen to them, to see the painting coming to life. Other kinds of shrieks accompanied the shouts for help or reprieve, and Edward could see the flying creatures swooping downward, emitting that piercing cry.

“It’s beginning,” the old man said, and Edward saw some of the changes reverting, a look of concentration and pain on the man’s face, becoming human again. He dropped to his knees, face sheathed in sweat, a shuddering wheeze making his chest heave in and out repeatedly. He reached for a cane beside the chair and used it to stand. Blood ran down the sides of his mouth from where the skin had split open.

The noises returned from wherever they had come, the painting no longer in motion, but different from before, retaining its changes.

“I don’t have much longer,” the old man said, upright again. “Holding it back is becoming harder with each day. That’s why I let you in. I need to be replaced.”

“What are you going to do to me?” Edward asked.

“You’ve seen what I have in me. I have to keep the guardian contained. Keep it from getting free,” he said, pointed upward, towards the center of the vortex and the Being staring down at them. “I’m not sure what that creature is, or even when this first started, but these walls, they represent the world to come if it or its brethren are set free.” He brought out his arms, circled around to take in the whole room. “It changes, too, the pictures do. Just look at the cars, the buildings, always modern, changing on their own, perfectly reflecting what might come, unless you help me.”

“Who are you?” Edward asked, an odd feeling coming to him that this man wasn’t so different from Edward himself, or hadn’t been at one point, and the man smiled at the question.

“My name is Sidney Turbeville. I used to sell bibles some seventy years ago, and I walked up to this house just as you did. A haggard old woman let me in and led me to this room. I thought she was the devil itself when she started to change, showing me such things. I know only the pain it brings me. She asked me to sacrifice myself, same as I’m asking you, and keep this creature trapped in me. Only the flesh can hold it, and I don’t have much longer for this world. I can feel it, kind of control it, I think, but only so far.”

Edward let himself slide down to the floor, his back against the closed door, seeing the changes already beginning in the old man’s face again, his teeth stretching forward, skinning growing tight.

“Gets worse everyday now, and it's started talking to me, not in words I can understand, but I hear its anger. Soon as I die, the guardian goes free, and it’ll free its master next, unless you take it into yourself.”

“What happens if I do?” Edward asked, aware of the cries rising again, of the shapes coming to life in the paintings.

“You can never leave this house until the day you die. You won’t need to eat, to sleep, but you can’t invite others in, not unless you want to take the chance of him crawling into their minds. You’ve felt it, haven’t you, the whispers, and the desires?”

“Do I have a choice?” Edward pleaded. “I have friends, people I help.” He pulled himself up, staring into the face of what Sidney was becoming, the skin of his face nearly torn off, massive wings ripped from his back. He reached out a thin, muscular arm, the tatters of his flesh still clinging wetly to it, almost no humanity left in the creature standing nearly a foot taller than Edward.

He leaned in closer to Edward, hot breath nearly making Edward gag, the stench like rotting flesh. “You can’t imagine yet the pain, listening to him try to change you, to make you give up. I never did, and deep down, I don’t believe you ever will, either, but one thing I can tell you, something in me, something born from his constant attempts to tear into my mind, allows me to take a bit of pleasure from trapping you, and forcing you to endure your fate.”

His left arm shot forward, wrapped long fingers around Edwards’s neck and lifted him up, his back still pressed against the wall. With his right hand, Sidney dug into his deformed chest, needle-like fingers tearing loose a pulsing, fleshy orb. “It’s trapped in here,” he said, “but destroying it would only set him free.”

With the orb gone from him, Sidney quickly began to change back, but not before thrusting his sharp fingers forward, cutting into Edward’s chest, through his ribs, and placing the orb deep within his heart.

The pain of the cut meant nothing compared to the eruption of images and emotions he felt in those first few seconds, almost feeling, he thought, the depths of the creature placed inside him. The room faded to darkness with the twisted memories circling his mind.

* * * * *