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  Ian was the last to move up to the window frame. “I’m coming down.”

  “Wait,” Keith called up to him, “take this first.”

  The front tire of Keith’s bike rose up to the window. Ian took hold of the spokes and the striped handlebars, pulling the bike out of the basement. He leaned the bike against the bushes, out of sight from the street. Ian moved back to the window.

  “Make room for me.”

  “There isn’t room for us,” Keith called up.

  “Too bad.”

  Ian followed the others through the window into the dank, lowest level of Missy’s house.

  Had Ian known what was going to transpire, and who was going to expire, in such a short amount of time, he would have put a stop to this mission. He could have simply told mom about his brother’s cockamamie plan, and gotten him grounded. That wouldn’t stop Keith, who would probably climb out his window in defiance. Ian could have stolen all of their bikes tonight, committing the same crime of which they were accusing Missy. Only Keith wouldn’t be stopped by lack of transportation; he would have walked the few miles in his stubbornness. Ian could have broken both of Keith’s ankles with a sledgehammer, now that would keep him from walking to Missy’s house, and that would have also been a mercy to them all.

  As Ian lowered himself into the basement, he really had no idea how quickly the world could come crumbling down on top of them, like a cardboard box collapsing beneath a massive, unstable, twenty ton hoard.

  Chapter Four

  Keith’s hands grabbed onto Ian’s waist, helping him down onto the uneven, elevated floor of garbage. The ground gave another inch when Ian’s shoes landed on it. Keith, Dani, Will, and Ian stood cramped up against each other in the space previously occupied by Keith’s bike. They all looked around, stunned by their surroundings. They had already been swallowed by the hoard.

  “I thought it smelled bad up there,” Ian began, and decided not to finish once he tasted the acrid air again.

  “The air smells poisonous,” Will warned. He was no expert on the subject of toxic fumes, but he was convinced of it nevertheless. He trusted his instincts, and he wished he had the foresight to bring a gas mask, or four.

  Dani found a flaw in Will’s warning. “It’s not poisonous to the cats, or Missy.”

  Will did consider himself an expert on Missy, and he thought his theory stood. “She’s not exactly a picture of good health. I’ve seen her dripping sores up close.”

  Ian found himself looking less at the hoard and more at the wasted structure that contained it. Simple contact with the hoard was enough to warp walls. There was not one inch of exposed wall or ceiling that was unaffected by discoloration, wetness, or mold saturation. More amazing still were the rotten holes in the soggy structure, creeping black fuzz growing out of them.

  “There’s so much mold in here,” Ian stated.

  “We won’t be here long enough to be affected,” Keith replied.

  Ian thought his brother was wrong about that. Ian had felt the ill effects of this noxious atmosphere when he first stuck his head into the house and breathed it in. Granted, Ian knew he was sensitive and allergic to just about everything. But even a modest dose of poison was still poison. This was like getting limited exposure to radiation. You might not feel it now, but it could sure fuck you up in the future.

  While the three seniors filmed the potentially stolen junk around them, viewing it more on their cameras’ flip screens, Ian continued his structural inspection. It wasn’t just the mold that posed a danger. He was surprised there were lights on down here, showing every stark detail of this garbage pit. The bare, hanging light bulbs had mold and webs on them, and one was hanging within splashing distance of a broken, dripping pipe. Missy’s place was a house fire waiting to happen, and Ian was highly uncomfortable being inside such a massive firetrap. Fire moved fast, but humans in the hoard could not. That’s why hoarder houses were so frequently condemned.

  Keith didn’t consider the house that had Ian’s full attention; his focus was on its contents. He was still fuming over the theft of his bike, and he made sure he got footage of every bike held in this basement. He knew exactly how all of the other bike theft victims felt. It stung.

  “Looks like every missing bike in the neighborhood can be traced back here. And missing toys.”

  “She doesn’t have any kids. What would she need a bunch of toys for?” Dani questioned.

  The answer was obvious to Will. “To play with. She talks in an annoying child’s voice, and has a matching IQ.” Will imitated Missy in a squealing girl’s pitch. “Oh lookie-loo! It sparkles! I’ll buy all of them!” Will waved his hands in enunciation, just as Missy did.

  Dani spotted a white cat slinking across the basement. She was the first to step up and out of their pit, trying to forge a path through the hoard toward the animal. “Here, kitty,” Dani cooed.

  Keith wished Dani had not stepped out first, since he thought he should lead, but he also knew there was no controlling her. Keith and Will stepped out of the pit and forged a different path through the basement hoard. Before Ian would follow, he had to inquire, “Where are we going?”

  “Pussy hunt,” Will replied, “You’ll like it.”

  Ian didn’t like anything inside this oppressive basement. Keith looked back at his brother and instructed him, “Follow me.”

  Ian took a big step up to get out of the pit. The refuse he stepped onto collapsed with the shattering of hidden glass beneath. Ian pitched to the side, his right hand going out to brace against the wall.

  Ian’s right palm hit the wet wood and punched right through it, his hand disappearing into the soggy structure up to his wrist.

  “Aww fuck!”

  Keith didn’t see Ian’s fall, but he responded immediately to his cry and reversed course.

  Dani forgot about the white cat and turned along with Will.

  Ian pulled his hand out of the wall, which had the consistency of black butter. Dozens of large cockroaches scurried out of the hole that Ian left behind. Ian’s hand was caked in black mold, wet wall mush, and more running roaches.

  Revolted, Ian shook his hand, flinging off the wet rot and skittering vermin. He saw a mass exodus of cockroaches coming through the hole he had opened in the wall. Ian was their reluctant liberator, and he shivered. “Yuck!” was a simple word, but it was the only one that fit the situation.

  Keith stopped backtracking when he saw his brother wasn’t injured. “You okay?”

  “I’m doing great.” Ian flung more parasites off of his hand. Wherever they landed, they were quick to disappear into the nearest dark crevice. Worse than the roaches exiting the wall were the swirling particles of mold spores, or hoard spores as Ian thought of them, certain to set up camp inside of him.

  Ian spotted a blanket caked in its own funkiness and bedbugs. He grabbed it to wipe off the muck, the little brown bugs scattering as their home was invaded by human hands.

  “We didn’t need to break a window. We could have punched our way through the wall,” Ian observed.

  “Be careful,” Keith instructed his brother. He hoped his younger sibling wouldn’t defy his instruction. He wasn’t trying to be a dick; he was genuinely concerned for Ian’s safety inside this house of collapsing crud.

  Keith moved back into the path behind Will. Ian followed his brother. He didn’t want to play hero or comedian, move an object unnecessarily, and start an avalanche that would jeopardize their safety. He tried to follow his brother’s footsteps exactly.

  Dani was relieved to see Ian on the move again behind the others, and she shifted back to resume her search for the white cat. She felt a sharp stab to the back of her neck, and she gasped. The guys turned to Dani as she spun around.

  The open blades of hedge clippers stuck out of the hoard. Dani could see a bead of her blood on the tip of the dirty clipper blade she had backed into. She wondered if the tetanus shot she received in kindergarten would still protect her. In hindsight, sh
e should have gotten a booster shot before attempting tonight’s mission.

  “Don’t decapitate yourselves on these,” Dani warned the guys. She squeezed around the protruding clipper blades.

  While Keith was concerned with the other bikes he saw, Ian focused on the overturned, dirt caked animal cages. All of their doors hung open.

  “What’s she got all these cages for?” Ian wondered out loud as he came upon another one. Up close, he could see the cage wasn’t covered in dirt; it was coated with dried crap. With the knowledge came the smell, and it revolted him.

  “They’re caked in excrement.”

  “I thought I smelled dead poop in here,” Will added.

  Dani grew angry from the observation. “Whatever was in them was abused.” She knew that any animal living in its own waste was living in neglect, and she didn’t understand how anyone could be so horrible as to allow it. The more she thought about it, the more outraged she grew, and to think of Fiddlesticks within one of those cages… Dani banished the thought.

  Keith shifted his handheld camera from the bikes to the cruel cages that had captured the group’s attention. In his camera’s close-up, he noticed something worse than the caked crap. There were dried bloodstains and patches of fur on the bars, even a few scraps of flesh. Keith decided not to announce his discovery. He didn’t want to distress Dani any further. She would see it all on the tapes later anyway.

  Keith understood that their discovery of the cages upped the stakes of their expedition, and the power of their footage. Being a thief was terrible and a personal outrage for the victims, he knew that all too well. But an animal abuser was offensive on a far deeper level, and once discovered, they could not be allowed to continue. Keith was concerned that they were going to find worse than wild cats and filthy cages before this exploration was over, and now they were obligated to document every horrid detail and use it to bring Missy down on charges of animal cruelty. Missy was going to lose her animals, her house, and her precious hoard when this was over, thanks to their anonymous videos.

  Dani made her way into a thin culvert in the center of the basement. Will, Keith, and Ian squeezed into the space with her. Keith looked around for an exit and couldn’t find one. While he had planned for an invasion of this house, he had done so without a map or a floor plan.

  “Where do we get out of here?” Keith asked.

  They all looked over the piles of junk towering around them. Ian was the first to see it, and he pointed high to the northeast. “Up there.”

  Over twenty feet high in the corner of the basement, atop a steep mountain of stuff, was a four-by-four foot opening, the upper half of an open door. The door itself had been long removed, probably to allow room for more storage.

  Discovering the basement door so high made Ian realize how deep they really were. This basement was twice as low as any house basement needed to be. This was more like the multi-level boiler room beneath the school, only moldier. The sheer scale of Missy’s house made Ian feel exceptionally small, like one of the many rodents he shared this dwelling with. They were all interlopers inside Missy’s massive mansion.

  “Where’s the stairs?” Will wondered aloud, since there were no stairs to be seen.

  “They’ve been swallowed,” Ian responded, and he was right. The steep slope of refuse that led to the door was packed down tightly, like a rocky slide. The white cat Dani saw earlier darted out of hiding and bounded up the incline, disappearing through the half door into the house above.

  Dani squeezed around the guys, but Will didn’t want her up front. “I’ll lead,” he said.

  “No, my cat will run from all of you. I’ll lead.”

  Dani led the guys through the shrinking culvert in the hoard. She hadn’t gone ten feet before she had to stop. The path ahead was just over two feet wide, and directly above it was a pipe generously dripping brown water.

  “Maybe we can climb around it,” Dani suggested.

  Dani saw three wooden chair legs sticking out to the right of the path. Dani grabbed onto the high shelf of a leaning, busted up armoire and stepped up onto a chair leg. The furniture pile took a startling shift, threatening to collapse on her and close the path.

  Dani stepped back off of the chair leg and waited as the furniture settled. She knew climbing around the dripping pipe was no longer an option. A few drops of stink were better than a concussion or impalement.

  “We have to go through it,” Dani stated.

  Dani pulled up her hood, and three more hoods came up behind her. Dani leaned her head down as she squeezed past the dripping pipe, not wanting any wastewater to hit the spy cam on the bill of her cap. The top of her hoodie took a few drops of the foul fluid, which saturated into the fabric.

  Will, Keith, and Ian squeezed through the path, also getting baptized by the hoard house holy water.

  “That’s a sewer pipe,” Keith commented.

  “Tastes like it,” Ian confirmed.

  The path narrowed to just over a foot wide. Dani had to turn sideways to squeeze through the shrinking channel. Her knee bumped a loose bike tire, which shifted and caused a cardboard box wedged against the handlebars to shift down. The open box top faced Dani, revealing its long forgotten contents to her. She froze where she stood and Will bumped into her.

  “Sorry. What is it?” Will asked.

  “In the box.”

  Will looked down over Dani’s shoulder. Inside the cardboard box he saw a web draped animal skeleton.

  Ian and Keith could not see into the box from further back. “What is it?” Ian asked.

  “Bones,” Will replied.

  “A dead rat?”

  “I hope not.”

  Will spotted the handle of a broom and pulled it out of the hoard. The broom’s removal caused more junk to shift and a fresh plume of dust to rise. He turned the broom to hold the dusty brush end and fished into the cardboard box with the handle, puncturing the carcass. It was as easy as punching through brittle paper.

  Will lifted the cat mummy out of the box for all to see. Dani filmed it with her handheld camera but not her cap cam, since her head was turned away.

  “Is that Fiddlesticks?” Will had to ask.

  “No, my cat would be fresher. I’m liking this lady less and less.”

  Will got a whiff of the cat carcass, and it made his stomach lurch. He didn’t think that an animal this deep into decomposition could reek this badly, but there was the proof dangling in his face. Will flung the carcass into the hoard and tossed the broom after it.

  The broom landed out of view, but their ears told them it triggered a chain reaction. They heard metal clang together, followed by wood banging against wood, followed by a long paper rip, followed by glass rolling against glass, followed by a half dozen thuds on the floor, followed by glass rolling on wood.

  “Cat’s eye,” Will guessed.

  Keith instructed the group, “Don’t disturb the hoard.” He saw the hoard as a sleeping beast. Disturb it, and it might inflict a fatal bite.

  The procession led by Dani reached the bottom of the steep slope beneath the basement door. Ian looked up at the exit, and then he looked higher at a wooden beam beneath the ceiling. The beam was packed with boxes and other stuff precariously balanced on top. The junk appeared four times wider than the beam supporting it.

  “I hope you guys can climb,” Dani called back to the others.

  “Can you?” Keith called back.

  “Follow me and find out.”

  Dani slid her handheld camera into the front pocket of her hoodie, letting it record without her hand on the controls. The guys pocketed their handheld cameras in the same fashion. Dani started her climb up the slide, using both hands to test the surface stability.

  Keith followed Dani up. Will climbed up beneath Keith. As was always the case, Ian followed last.

  “Good thing I grew up a tomboy,” Dani commented as she scaled the garbage mountain with as much experience as the guys beneath her. Not that any of them
were experienced with this kind of hoard climb. It was a slow and awkward ascent for them all.

  “I knew you were a boy. Dani’s short for Daniel, isn’t it?” Will teased.

  “You wish.”

  Dani had three quarters of the slope scaled when a large rat sprang out of the hoard and ran over her right wrist. Dani instinctively pulled both of her hands back, losing her grip on the surface. She began to slide down.

  Keith looked up as Dani’s right shoe landed on his face. His nose erupted with blood and he was knocked loose on the slope. Keith was momentarily thankful that Dani’s shoe had missed the camera on his head as he slid down. He shouted, “Look out!”

  Will saw Keith sliding toward him and moved fast. He gripped a table leg to the right and swung his body that way. There was a painful spike of pain against his upper back. Will looked over his shoulder at the edge of the wooden table he had just swung into. Keith slid down beside him, passing within a few inches.

  Ian looked up at his older brother sliding down toward him. Ian raised a hand and caught the bottom of Keith’s shoe, just hard enough to stop Keith’s slide.

  Dani’s left foot punched through a discarded screen door, stopping her slide. Below her, Keith tested his grip on the slope and started to climb again. Will resumed his climb beneath Dani. Ian followed his youthful elders.

  As she tried to dislodge her foot from the torn screen door, Dani felt something warm and furry brush against her buried left ankle. She panicked, evincing her gender for the first time with a high-pitched shriek.

  “There’s something down there!”

  Dani’s left leg thrashed as her foot sought freedom. There was another pass of warm pressure against her calf. Dani kicked her leg back and the screen ripped further. A black cat was even more eager for exit, leaping out of the screen and climbing over Dani’s ass as it ran upwards. The cat’s color was not lost on her.

  Dani released a mad bark of laughter. “I love cats!”