《That Rotten Place》 1 - The Merchant House Unity. A town of nearly 10,000 residents, and home to a mixture of small-town charm and big city businesses. A place where you can chat it up with a few familiar faces at the franchised coffeeshop, then walk around a park and rest at the gazebo in its center, ahead of going to shop at one of the big-box stores several blocks away pass the church-run homeless shelter. Just like any place in the world, it¡¯s got its good and bad, but this town has something that is a special kind of bad. That something is an abandoned and decrepit manor over on the outskirts known as the Merchant House; a manor that was owned by Unity¡¯s founder Christopher Merchant. Christopher Merchant was born to a wealthy family in England. As he grew up, he developed increasingly worrisome behaviors his family would have a harder and harder time trying to cover up. By the time he left with his cousin to help settle the Americas, the authorities were seeking him for questioning about unusual circumstances surrounding the fatal hunting accident of one of his uncles. When the settlers arrived, they moved further inland until reaching what was a stretch of land, which held no outstanding significance except to the indigenous tribe whose home it was at the time. Knowing of already uneasy ties between other colonists and indigenous folk around the region, Christopher¡¯s cousin wanted to establish a trading relationship to ease animosities. The day he and Christopher left to visit the tribe to make a deal, only Christopher came back later, as the only survivor of a supposed ambush he blamed on the natives. He led the settlers in a surprise attack on the tribe¡¯s village, slaying all men, women, and children in the brutal and swift massacre. For his leadership described as, ¡°a heroic action against an act of grave cowardice,¡± he was made the new town¡¯s leader and given the honor of becoming the town¡¯s founder. As Unity was settled and quickly grew, Merchant had his estate built on top of where the now extinct tribe¡¯s village used to be, then bought slaves to work his fields and care for the manor. In conjunction with the typical harsh conditions slaves would face, Christopher would use any reason to personally punish his slaves. Limbs were amputated for escape attempts, whippings were for lower harvest yields, fingers were boiled for subpar cooking, fingernails were pried off for not being clean enough, yet not many of them died. It was said he would always make sure they were cared for, to be healthy enough to live through their maiming, which caused the residents of Unity to grow resentment against the slaves¡¯ perceived robustness. This was especially strong when famine and illness struck the town. During this time, Merchant was married to his late cousin¡¯s wife Esther. Whatever the town felt about the goings-on at the estate as news trickled out over time, she was well liked by the colonists. Other than the times her and her husband would go to church, she would routinely travel with one or two personal houseslaves to visit the shops and marketplace to usually browse or talk to the locals. She was friendly, but it was always noted how she tended to carry an air of sadness and often wore oddly thick applications of makeup on her face. Eventually, Esther seemed to stop coming to the town, and only Christopher came to church. When inquired on the whereabouts of his wife, he would say that she was treating a light malady. Everyone found nothing suspicious about that explanation except for a shop owner, who was holding her order that she made the day preceding her stopped visits. One morning, the shop owner with his apprentice decided to pay a visit to the Merchant estate to personally deliver the item and check on her welfare. They were greeted by a houseslave, who escorted the two to the manor¡¯s study; its doors still closed since last night when Christopher Merchant ordered his slaves to do so for his privacy. When the door was opened, the smell of smoke and charred flesh hit everyone, followed by the grisly sight of the master¡¯s burned corpse stuffed inside the simmering fireplace. Despite the scene, Esther was nowhere to be found.The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation. With Christopher dead and Esther still missing, the fears of a brewing slave rebellion immediately took hold of the townspeople. Since nobody else in Unity owned slaves, the solution to quell any possible uprising was simple. All the slaves of the estate were rounded up and lynched, then the slave¡¯s quarters were razed to the ground. The only things left standing on the abandoned property afterwards were the barn, the crops, and the manor itself. Throughout the years since, there were only two other owners. The first was a retired commodore, who was an avid game hunter, fascinated by spiritualism and the occult. When he purchased the Merchant House, he had it renovated with some new rooms and fixtures added. During the reconstruction, the crews seemed to be plagued by serious and fatal accidents. When the manor was finished, the commodore, a small housekeeping staff, and his three hunting dogs became its new residents. Within a couple of weeks, the staff who visited town told of strange and disturbing happenings over at the manor, which convinced the owner to reach out to a few known acquaintances to join him in holding a s¨¦ance to find answers. These acquaintances arrived more than several days later to an empty building. The commodore, his dogs, and the staff had all vanished. The only signs that anyone used to live there were all the furniture, personal belongings, and food; a lot of which were splashed with blood. The second and last owner of the Merchant House was not its resident, but a proprietor of the business that called it home. After another brief period of renovation and accidents, the manor became a gambling hall and cathouse that served illegal alcohol. It was a popular establishment at the time for Unity and the surrounding towns and cities. Any deaths by or of clientele or staff were kept quiet or explained away, with new folks easily replacing them and none being the wiser. It continued that way for almost a couple of years until the owner and his partners had a falling out over how to split the profits. The former partners decided to send some associates to put Merchant House out of business by turning it into what the police described as a slaughterhouse. The massacre led to the manor¡¯s final abandonment. Though the place had only three recognizable owners, it still had many more victims than one could conceivably quantify. The most well-known incident occurred during a particularly harsh winter, when an immigrant family were forced to shelter themselves there after the citizens of Unity refused them any room and board to wait out the coming blizzard. When cholera struck the town shortly after, blame was eventually somehow pinned on the family. A mob arrived at the Merchant House to run the immigrants out. The wagons were still there, but the horses were dead and frozen from the snowstorm collapsing the barn. When the townspeople broke into the manor, they found the entire family brutally butchered, which they laid all blame upon the father and chalked it up to being foreigners. The family weren¡¯t the first or last victims after Merchant House was initially left abandoned. Vagabonds, missionaries, footpads, highwaymen, runaways, escapees, travelling salesmen, hippies, Klansmen, cops, lost tourists, addicts, drug dealers, meth cooks, amateur ghost hunters, schemers, and dreamers alike; even a serial killer if some rumors were to be believed. It didn¡¯t matter who they were or what drew them to the manor, anyone seen heading down in that direction were never seen again. The population of Unity knew of its reputation for the longest time. They continued living their lives, but they knew to keep away from the manor, which was always there waiting for its next unwitting victim. They felt it was best to ignore and mention it as little as possible. It was just part of Unity and they just had to live with it looming from the edge of town, always lurking in its shadows. However, as the older population passed on the stories less and passed away more, the tragedies became urban legend, and the younger generations became jaded and skeptical of the local superstitions. It was only a matter of time when the Merchant House would strike again. 2 - A Night to Never Forget, Pt 1 Hannah, Joel, Trejean, Tammy, Enrique, Ava, and Bruce were driving down the forest road with the essentials piled in the back of Bruce¡¯s mom¡¯s minivan. They all said to their parents that they would be sleeping over at each other¡¯s houses under adult supervision, but that wasn¡¯t true. The place they had in mind would be out of the way, where they could make as much noise as they wanted without drawing unwanted attention. A place where no one would think about going, because of the stories they¡¯ve heard over the years from scout masters, neighborhood bullies, and weird old recluses. Finally reaching the rusted, wrought iron gate, Bruce got out of the driver¡¯s seat to open them before continuing down the old overgrown road. When they arrived, they got out of the vehicle and gazed upon the decrepit Merchant House. The setting sun added an extra malicious affect to its almost foreboding and ancient visage. Whatever second thoughts they may have had were pushed to the back with friendly teasing and the prospect of having the best night of their lives so close to graduation. They mocked the manor and the stories about it while they unloaded the minivan and brought everything inside. +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ Tonight was going to be the night for Enrique. He and Ava had known each other since middle school, and he always had feelings for her, but he could never get a good bead on hers for him. He managed to convince her to skip studies just for the night to join the soiree. Originally it was planned to be just him, Ava, Trejean, and Tammy. It was a good thing Tammy got her bestie Hannah and Hannah¡¯s on-and-off-again boyfriend Joel onboard, so the get-together wouldn¡¯t feel too awkward with just the original four people. Bruce had the necessary transportation to take them all, so he made sure he was included too. After arranging the sleeping bags, snacks, and sources of light, the manor was filled with the sound of music, opening bottles, weed-fueled coughs, games, and loose lips. As the evening progressed, Enrique and Ava got to talking with each other. Sometime later, he let slip his feelings for her, she replied in kind, soon taking one of the battery lanterns and a sleeping bag, leaving for one of the bedrooms upstairs. They fooled around for a bit on the bed, after they took off its dust cover and laid out the fully opened sleeping bag on top. Both began to undress, but they were both shy and thought it was a good idea to do it in separate rooms. Ava stayed in the bedroom, while Enrique went into the connected bathroom. In there, he stripped down to his boxers. He sat on the lid of the toilet, as he pulled out a wrapped condom from one of the pockets of his pants and stared at it. He couldn¡¯t believe that it was all happening, and a parade of worries started flooding his mind. His hands felt clammy, and his heart was stepping on the accelerator. He closed his eyes and took deep breaths. At last calm after what felt like hours, he stepped out of the bathroom only to be greeted by an empty bed. His mind immediately began thinking she got bored and bailed ¨C no ¨C he was the butt of a prank, but that made even less sense. Then he saw that her shirt and pants were on the floor, before he realized the very large and very old dark red stains on the sheets they were making out on not long ago. She must¡¯ve noticed it herself, freaked out and ran out of the room; that¡¯s what likely happened. Hoping the night could still be salvaged, he threw his shirt and pants back on, took the lantern and left the bedroom. As he was reaching the bottom of the stairs, it occurred to him that there was no sound of music playing, no conversations, nothing. He checked the living room where the party was, seeing torn sleeping bags, a smashed stereo, a crack in the large window, broken bottles, and strewn-about snacks, but no friends. He looked out the front door and saw that the van was still parked with no signs of any activity lately, meaning they didn¡¯t leave so they must still be somewhere in the building. A bit uneased, he decided to continue looking around for them quietly to possibly see what was going on. Maybe, at least, find Bruce since he still probably had the keys. Enrique soon came upon Joel, who was standing still and facing away from him. Enrique called for Joel in a loud whisper with no response at first. He continued to do so as he approached closer until Joel loudly whispered back for him not to move any further. When he listened and stopped, Enrique was at a better angle to notice the fear on Joel¡¯s face. Joel was staring at what his flashlight was shining on. At the end of the hallway was what looked like a big dog, but it was covered in seeping wounds and had skin and fur missing, with the face missing the largest share exposing nothing but snarling bone with two glimmering eyes. Joel told Enrique to back up as slowly as possible to the room at the far end behind them, just as two more of those dog-like creatures slinked out of the side rooms growling. The slow retreat seemed to work until the demonic canines charged barking and howling, which caused both teens to book it for the room. They could almost feel the things nipping at their heels when they reached the room and tried slamming the door shut. One of the dog monsters got part of its snapping jaws through the door. Enrique pushed the door as hard as he could, as Joel used his flashlight to beat the creature before it pulled out to allow the door shut fully.Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author''s preferred platform and support their work! Both boys started to barricade the entrance with anything they could lay their hands on while the mad barking and scratching continued from the other side. One teen reached for a stuffed, black trash bag in the corner of the room, when it suddenly started to violently shake. It was then they realized that it was sitting in a pool of blood, as pained, muffled noises emanated from it. Then they heard what sounded like the revving of an engine. They looked around as the revving slowly approached. Out of the darkness they saw him emerging with a wide, bloody, bare grin and a burlap sack covering everything from the nose up, except for tufts of hair protruding through ripped holes and the bleeding eyes through the eyeholes. In his hands was the true source of the sound: a chainsaw, which with one last yank of its pull cord, caused it to roar into action. Enrique and Joel ran and ducked out of their predator¡¯s swings, which led to them getting chased around the large table in the center of the room. The fiend stopped on the opposite side. They waited for his next move so they could run in accordance to keep their distance. After a moment, the madman began revving the chainsaw again, then started moving his way towards his two targets. He continued walking effortlessly as the table neatly passed through the upper thighs like a knife through butter. The boys panicked and ran for the exit, hastily tossing the objects barricading it, and swung open the door, completely forgetting about the awaiting dogs that immediately pounced on Joel. Enrique tried to kick the beasts off what was becoming a gurgling mass of flesh and blood, but the chainsaw man closed in on him and sliced his shoulder, forcing Enrique to run away with his pursuer in tow. +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ From the closet where she hid, Hannah could hear a chainsaw and Enrique screaming as they rushed past the room where she was located. She stifled her cries as she clutched her empty candelabra, wondering where all the others could be. She wondered if they were doing any better, if any had turned, and why all of this was happening. She felt there was nothing she could do except wait it out, so she attempted to calm herself down by trying to focus on something else. She turned and saw something¡­someone in the corner of the closet, motionless. Convulsing with dread, hoping that it was probably her fear-induced imagination, she pulled out her lighter. The rushing blood to her ears grew louder with each strike of the flint with the sparkwheel and fork. When she finally got a flame going, she started to scream but stopped herself so that it would only come out as sobbing whimpers as she backed away. It was Ava, in her underwear, bloodied with her eyes missing, her entire person covered in deep cuts and gaping wounds. As Hannah tried stopping herself from escalating her sounds of shock, cold, sharp hands burst from the darkness behind her, grasping and clawing to pull her into the bleak nothingness. She screamed and struggled, accidentally setting some old clothing on fire with her still lit lighter. She felt the slashes into her skin from the long, uncut fingernails. Hannah broke free from their clutches and burst out of the closet, crashing onto the floor crying aloud. She quickly turned to look towards the closet as a wave of laughter came at her from the darkness, which grew as the fire on the clothing burned out. Hannah clumsily jumped to her feet while attempting to run away. She had just made it into the hallway when Trejean almost bumped into her, causing her to swing the candelabra at him and flee. Trejean followed her and tried getting her to stop. They both turned a corner before she then swung her candelabra at Trejean again and continued to do so as he was trying to calm her down out of reach, showing her that it was just him and he meant no harm. Hannah demanded that he confirm that he was not infected. Trejean was baffled but he tried complying the best he could guess, showing all the parts of him that could¡¯ve possibly have been easily bitten if the zombie films he saw in the past taught him anything. Hannah told him to stop when she collected her senses and realized what she asked of him was impossible, since it seemed like it wasn¡¯t that type of infection. This time, Trejean demanded to know what was going on. He only went outside to use the phone for several minutes prior to giving up on the bad cell reception, only to come back in to find everyone gone. After being asked about how he couldn¡¯t hear all the screaming and other loud noises, he was adamant that he heard nothing, then asked what Hannah meant about ¡°infected¡±. They both turned their attention to the sound of scrapping steel across the floor. They saw a figure in the shadows dragging an axe behind him, blissfully whistling a melody. Trejean had no idea who it was, but Hannah knew. She grabbed Trejean and pulled him by the arm to get him to start running with her in the opposite direction. 3 - A Night to Never Forget, Pt 2 Bruce was having the time of his life. He always hated being the third wheel whenever he hung out with people. He always hoped that one day some lonely girl at a party would look pass all the other boys and see him for the nice guy he was. Joel said there would be girls at the get together, but there were only three. Two already had boyfriends, and the only single woman ended up running off to bed with that greasy-headed Enrique. Bruce felt used with no payoff once again. It was going to be another bust in a long line of disappointments, but then she came to him as he was drinking by himself in the kitchen. She looked like one of those flappers from those old-timey gangster movies; she had quite the magnetic personality too. There was heavy bruising around her neck, but that didn¡¯t matter. Bruce was in love. He knew he wanted her to be his, however it could never be unless he made a trade with the house. Give the house blood and she will be his forever. He wanted to so badly, but he didn¡¯t have a weapon. That was until a stocky well-dressed man in a brown overcoat and fedora appeared from the shadows and presented an axe to Bruce. Despite there being a large hole clear through where most of his head should be, Bruce was not scared of the man, but comfortably excited. It felt like he belonged. Like he was finally getting what was owed to him. He enjoyed seeing the panicked and confused faces of Joel, Hannah, and Tammy, and hearing their screams, as he chased them around, swinging the axe, smashing, and slicing through nearly everything it touched. He almost managed to decapitate one of them, but they moved out of the way so that he hit the large living room window creating a crack. They tried talking him down, they tried fighting back, they tried running away, but there was a force that injected itself into his muscles, making him unstoppable as it strengthened and guided him. He never hunted in his life, but it felt like he had somehow returned to some long-forgotten roots, looking for big game on a safari or tracking natives during some military operation in some faraway land. He enjoyed the hunt. It took a while, but he found Joel. Joel was desperately crawling on the floor and in bad shape. Wasn¡¯t much of a challenge but it had do. Bruce swung down the axe, each swing sprayed blood on his body and face. He enjoyed the taste. He wanted more. Bruce came across Trejean and Hannah, but he gave them a head start. He didn¡¯t know how, but he knew his way around the manor as if he always lived here. He ran to where he expected to intercept them both and decided to wait for them. He heard noises come from behind a pair of wooden sliding doors. Could it be Trejean and Hannah somehow? Bruce slid open the doors and saw Enrique, tied up spread-eagle off the floor with his bare back torn to ribbons. Bloodied Klansmen and mutilated cops stopped whipping him and heating up fire pokers, long enough to turn around to look at Bruce. After a moment of hearing Enrique¡¯s pleas for mercy, Bruce nodded in approval and the torturers nodded in approval back. After the exchange, Bruce closed the door. +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ Tammy watched through the dirty greenhouse windows, as Bruce decided to leave the area to continue his hunt elsewhere. She felt the danger had passed, but now she needed to find a way out of the manor through the slightly rancid smelling greenhouse. She tried the doors leading to the outside, but they were jammed from years of rust. While looking around for a possible weapon to use to maybe break one of the doors open somehow, she noticed some flies buzzing around, but it didn¡¯t seem to be anything out of the ordinary. She continued searching. That rancid smell seemed to be getting stronger for some reason. The sound of buzzing started to grow louder. Tammy felt something small bite her, causing her to yelp and slap the bitten area. She swatted at a fly that buzzed near her ear, then she felt another bite, and then another. She abandoned her search and started making her way to get back inside to the rest of the manor, just when the buzzing started becoming a deafening drone. Tammy swatted around like crazy attempting to lessen the amount of biting as she hurried towards the door. At first it seemed to be jammed, but she managed to push herself through and close the door behind her fast.This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. She looked back though the door¡¯s window expecting to see a cloud of flies banging against the glass. Tammy did see a cloud of flies, but they were forming a humanoid shape, peering back at her. As she was taken aback by what she saw, the humanoid became formless and began attacking the old dirty greenhouse glass. When cracks started to form, Tammy ran away as fast as she could. She tried running even faster when she heard the shattering of glass, followed by the growing sound of near earsplitting droning. She came to a junction when a dark figure ran at her in the dark. Tammy screamed and immediately rounded the corner to get away from her new pursuer. She heard a familiar voice call out to her from behind to wait. She stopped to turn around and saw her bestie Hannah, illuminated by the moonlight outside. For a split second, Tammy was relieved, until the approaching buzzing reminded her of why she was running. She tried warning Hannah, but it was too late, as the swarm picked Hannah up and pinned her against an adjacent wall. Tammy could somewhat make out Hannah within the cloud of flies. The top half of the humanoid formed, which along with the pain from all the bites, caused Hannah to scream in shock and terror. The humanoid shoved a fly-formed fist down her throat, ceasing the screaming and choking the life out of her. Tammy had no choice but to continue running. As she ran, she felt eyes watching her from every room she passed. It only made her run harder and faster as she tried outrunning her worst childhood nightmare becoming true. She heard no sound but the beating of her heart going faster than her own feet. She became focused on only trying to catch up to her own heart, she stopped paying attention to exactly where she was heading, then suddenly she crashed into someone. +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ Trejean lost consciousness for a few seconds before he woke up on the floor with his forehead bleeding. He gathered himself and looked around to see who slammed into him, and to see where the knife he found to protect himself went. He saw Tammy on the floor struggling to breathe, with the knife sticking out of her chest. Trejean scrambled over to his high school sweetheart, not knowing what to do about the bleeding stab wound, begging her to not die, begging her to forgive his mistake, for all his mistakes. None of it was enough as her life quickly faded away, until she was still; her eyes looking pass all physical barriers to some other place never meant to be viewed by the living. Upon her expiration, Trejean cried and began cradling her close as he continued crying into her shoulder. Just then, somebody plummeted from the second floor and crumpled headfirst into the foyer floor near Trejean, startling him back to the immediate danger around him. Trejean carefully approached and noticed it was Bruce, who sported the creepiest smile on his twisted face. Trejean remembered the minivan and needed to search Bruce for the keys. He began searching for them on the body but sped up when he heard distorted whispers all around him coming closer. Soon as he found the keys, he looked up and saw ghastly crowds emerging from the darkness around him. He ran for the entrance, but they blocked him from reaching it. Turning around, they were all almost upon him. He screamed for his life as he avoided their grabs and ran into the living room, where more of them were coming for him. He was running out of room to keep avoiding capture as they closed in on him. Trejean then noticed a crack in the large window, so with nowhere else to go, he bolted for the window. Covering his head and neck with his arms, he leapt, and crashed through the glass screaming. 4 - Several Years Later Trejean awoke drenched in sweat and felt his heart working overtime. He sat up in his bed; the burning in his chest made him belch. Proceeding to look around his dingy studio apartment, he looked at his collection of empty alcohol bottles on the nightstand, accumulated last night prior to sleeping. He couldn¡¯t tell whether he got up this early from the reoccurring nightmares or the acid reflux this time. Was this rock bottom? One thing was for sure: his survival from that horrible night placed him on a path that instantly crumbled away beneath him, and he¡¯s been falling since. As the only survivor of the Merchant House, he was held in custody just for questioning, until the authorities decided to charge him with all the murders of his friends. None of the criminal charges stuck, but that didn¡¯t stop the families from taking him to civil court, since by this time he turned eighteen years of age. They weren¡¯t the only ones, since many people in Unity would rather have wanted to believe he was a highly efficient and effective mass murderer who could cheat the justice system, than the other more uncomfortable alternative. In the streets they gave him dirty looks, the police harassed him, no one wanted to hire him, and not many were willing to let him rent. Even worse, the colleges he wanted to go to didn¡¯t want to risk accepting someone enveloped in so much controversy and stigma. He had to stay with his parents, but they would be harassed too, and their property vandalized. It got to the point where his family had to move to a different city, but not before the relationship between Trejean and them were left in shambles, making him part ways so that he was left to stay in Unity. He used what money he still had left to rent a studio apartment and worked two share economy jobs with long hours to make ends meet. During this whole ordeal, something else was still antagonizing him to make matters even worse than it was already. Hannah, Joel, Tammy, Enrique, Ava, and Bruce. Their faces still haunted Trejean as much as everything else that happened in the Merchant House. He still remembered the horror he encountered and witnessed. He remembered how powerless he felt not being able to save his friends. He remembered how even after he jumped through that window and sped away in the minivan, he still felt those hands reaching out to grab him. He still felt it all, and he couldn¡¯t afford the insurance to get the proper help he needed, so the next best thing he thought was to self-medicate. Alcohol seemed to work the best in quieting the spirits shrieking at him from the recesses of his mind, but he became the town drunkard, which made him an even bigger target for the cops and even less of a potential candidate for good employment. Late one afternoon after a particularly rough round of deliveries, Trejean parked his bicycle and sat on the grass on Unity¡¯s largest hill overlooking the town, nursing a forty ounce. He looked off into the distance where on another hill was the Merchant House, somehow looking darker and more ominous with the setting sun shining its last rays of the day on it. He thought of how he just had to learn to live with it like everyone else in town, since it was always there as far back as he could remember. That was just the way things were. No, why did it have to be that way? There were other things in existence previous to it; they were better and more beloved things and yet they went away, while a cursed place like that gets to continue existing? Who says it had to be this way? For the first time, Trejean began seething with anger and hatred against what ruined his life and snatched away many others. He decided to do something that night. That night, it will be its turn to meet the reaper. How to do it he wondered.This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there. ¡­¡­¡­¡­¡­¡­¡­¡­¡­¡­¡­¡­¡­¡­¡­¡­¡­¡­¡­¡­¡­¡­¡­¡­¡­¡­¡­¡­¡­¡­¡­¡­¡­¡­¡­.. He could hear the sirens closing in from a distance behind him. Those two gas truck drivers will thank him later once he does what he¡¯s got to do. Trejean floored the acceleration pedal and rammed through the rusted, wrought iron gate, speeding down the overgrown road towards the Merchant House. He looked to the canvas bag full of oily rags that covered a canister of siphoned gasoline sticking out from the center. He then looked up at the fast-approaching manor before taking out a grill lighter. Trejean unbuckled his seatbelt, then lit the rags with the lighter, opened the driver¡¯s door, and jumped out of the moving vehicle. He heard something pop accompanied with pain as he rolled on the ground to a stop, but he endured through it to watch the truck barrel through the front entrance of the manor and have the cab go up in flames. Trejean stood up with a mix of relief and joy at the sight of the front of the Merchant House get demolished, not noticing the approaching police cars behind him, or the officers exit their vehicles. Two shots rang out, dropping him to the ground. He heard the officers yell at each other to stay back, moments prior to watching the truck explode, blowing apart much of the building and turning what was left into an inferno. He was in such pain that he couldn¡¯t move, but he felt like letting out a jubilant and full-spirited laugh despite it. As he overheard the police calling in extra units and firefighters, he bragged to himself in triumph about what he did and mocked the now destroyed manor. A police officer called out to the others in shock that there were people in the fire. Trejean¡¯s heart stopped for a split second, not from the bullets embedded in him, but from the thought that he may have accidentally killed innocent people who might have been inside the manor at the time without his prior knowledge. Upon looking into the fires, he saw figures obscured among the flames, but they weren¡¯t screaming, running, or flailing around in agony. They were just standing there, and then they began moving calmly towards their audience. One of the first to fully step out of the fires seemed somewhat familiar to Trejean. They were at a distance, so it wasn¡¯t too clear who it was, but it looked like it was Tammy. She was not only strangely untouched by the roaring flames, but she was also still as young as he remembered seeing her last alive, with one thing that really stood out: she had a massive, bloody knife wound in her chest where she was stabbed. Then another familiar face stepped out untouched by the flames. It was Bruce, or it was something that looked like him, but his neck was angled all funny, with his face still twisted and baring a creepy smile. Another stepped out looking like Hannah covered in bleeding welts, another appeared like Joel as if he had been stuffed in a meat grinder, another like Ava, and Enrique. More stepped out of the fires. Some weren¡¯t even human in nature, but most were and most wore clothing as disparate in styles as their wearers¡¯ various gory disfigurements and tortured looks. A few Trejean recognized from that terrible night, yet there were two he had never seen, who were literally standing out from the crowd. One was a gaunt, sickly woman in an Eighteenth-Century nightgown with copious amounts of blood drenching the abdominal and pelvic area. The other was mostly charred black, but he could tell that it wore what used to be a powered wig, with Eighteenth-Century leggings, shoes, and coat. When it stepped to the front of the throng of phantoms, it opened its eyes. Despite the distance and angle, Trejean could see what looked like runny egg whites glistening in the night. The being made a large grin, revealing burned and broken dentures made of wood and what may have been actual bone. As his vision began to fade to black, Trejean could hear the thing somehow growing in volume as it gave off a sinister drawn-out chortle. When all went black, the final things he heard were the shooting of guns, screaming, tearing of sinew, splashing of blood, and lastly silence. 5 - Superfund Government warning signs dot the chain link fence that stretches the entirety of the outskirts of Unity¡¯s borders. Since the incident, a no-fly zone has been in place, the four military checkpoints are the only way in or out, and only researchers with the proper clearance can pass through. All others were ordered to be immediately apprehended or shot onsite, though there have been no known attempts since the security measures were established. The official reports said it was a widespread chemical leak. The conspiracies on the internet on the other hand, will say that it was a terrorist attack, an invasion from another world, the opening of a hell gate, the beginning of the apocalypse. Not many survived to tell what really happened back then, but those who did either disappeared soon after or ended up institutionalized. If you are lucky enough to ever speak to one, they will tell you first of an explosion over at the Merchant House. Then not long after, hideous ghosts attacked the townspeople of Unity. They seemed to appear out of thin air where you would least expect, and anyone of these things could brutally mutilate, torture, and murder their victims. Everywhere you went, there was utter chaos and carnage and not one soul was spared if caught. There was no chemical leak or terrorism. The invasion was otherworldly but not in terms most outside of town would think. Hell needed no gate to cross over, and it was not the beginning of the apocalypse, because both were already there from the time of Unity¡¯s founding.This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it Unity was like a wild animal exhibit at the zoo: at night, the beast sleeps and eats in a cage connected to its larger enclosure, but when morning comes, it is let out of its cage to roam the exhibit for the day. The Merchant House was never the true domain of the undead, but just a cage that released what it contained upon destruction. The Merchant House might have been where all the worst things happened in town, but it was only the most obvious symptom of a deeper cancer, which used weakness and malevolence as tools to sate the land¡¯s thirst for blood. Whether it started when the settlers spilt innocent indigenous blood on the land, or from the very moment the settlers trespassed onto land that was never theirs to begin with, the foundation was forever tainted. Built upon greed, ignorance, selfishness, arrogance, callousness, and cruelty, Unity was that rotten place doomed to fail as a town; however, it was the perfect cornerstone for a graveyard.