Jesse’s master key picked locks, grappled onto the walls and even helped complete the bad, bad idea of breaking into Tenner’s old home. As the nagging guilt inside rose, he’d decided to tell Tenner’s parents the truth about what happened to him. But he didn’t want to, really didn’t want to, come near the boogiemen. The best solution was to break in and leave a note.

“God, no! I’m not doing this,” Jesse said to himself, continuing to climb to the second floor. He was in reach of a windowsill and grabbed on. Three deep breaths later, he nudged himself to the middle and started opening the window.

His master key stuck in under the glass. Scratching the wood, it searched for the mechanism that kept the window closed.

Through a gap in the blinders, two eyeballs stared.

An awful storm seemed to erupt, lightning struck, and zombies arose from the ground! Jesse slipped from the windowsill. The eyes followed him down his descent. He crashed and the master key slammed into his neck.

“I’m dead, this is it, this my end.” Jesse groaned. After twitching every limb, he realized he was not, in fact, dead and in perfect shape. He stared up and met the mysterious gaze. Standing, then shamefully walking to the door, he thought, Hop, oh Hop, you’d do absolutely nothing, but I’d still really like you by my side. This is like knocking on the teacher’s room.

Since Tenner disappeared a week ago, there never seemed to be anyone at Jesse’s side. Even if they did some evil things or deceived half the neighborhood, he needed that someone and their ten percent of good. Otherwise, losing his mind was too damn easy.

Jangling. From somewhere. Was the bell of the cemetery ringing for him? Was the grim reaper coming? Even more panic. Absolute fear. This was a situation you heard and thought to yourself, that could never happen to me! If it did, I’d kill myself! Jesse licked his dry lips and realized his hands were shaking. And on those shaking hands, his robbery souvenirs jangled. Out of common sense, he’d never robbed this house, but he still pocketed the hundred-year-old jewelry to make things less awkward or lethal.

Once, he knocked on the door. It tore open.

“Good afternoon, sweety.” Forced smile on her lips, hands behind her back, Tenner’s mother greeted him. The flowery dress chilled Jesse out that he wouldn’t die here -- his blood would ruin her housewife outfit. “My bad, I should call you the last person to see my child.” And there that was.

“Yup, I am and I… I came to talk about him--”

“Very well!” Tenner’s mother said, still as excited as a woman who hadn’t just lost her child. “Else this would be a waste of time. Time I have little of. Speak!”

Jesse put his thoughts, which were running about, into order and started. “When I brought you the money, I didn’t tell everything. Mr. Jonson got me out and went searching for Tenner. He didn’t bother going deep, deep in the darkness. But that’s where Tenner went. You’d think the sewer went in circles and what could possibly be different if you explored two hundred meters instead of a hundred, but there was another person there. I thought it was creature. But that person was real, I swear on my li-- luck. I guess Tenner saw me running back and investigated. One of them died. I saw, believe me I did, the bloody remains, float in the sewage--”

“Why didn’t you tell anyone this before?”

“We card freaks don’t really trust anyone--”

“Fat but you have some brains. Good. Tell his father. He’s in the kniferoom. My spare time has run out, sweety!” Tenner’s mother marched out of the front door. For a second, Jesse got a glimpse of what she’d held behind herself.

Sugar.

Jesse breathed in relief before meeting with his good old friend paralyzing fear. Oh, the kniferoom! You can’t live here without hearing a story about it. Sure, Tenner talks a lot of shit, he thought, sneaking through the dimly lit house, but it’s the only thing you know is true by the screams at night.

The hallways led to a wide-open door. A chair creaked. A constant metallic shink pierced Jesse’s ears. From bottom to top, all sorts of blades covered every wall. At the room’s end, a small table stood and Tenner’s father sat. The man that was infamous to every resident of the neighborhood. The man that was turning his head to Jesse.

He had a middle-finger-long greying beard, obvious veins everywhere and a nice sweater. He needed to get rid of the machete in his grip to look like a humble grandpa. After one long look, he turned back to the table and kept playing with the knife.

“All along, Jesse’s eyes whispered into my ears, ‘He knows more! Come for him in the night!’ I didn’t for one good reason. Kids don’t hold secrets. Not for long. And here you are, letting go of your secret. I’m grateful for the truth, even though late and so useless like a life.”

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“Mister…” Jesse started, but didn’t get far -- what in the world was Tenner’s last name? “Mr. Tenner, the truth that I didn’t tell anyone is… I returned to that sewer.”

“You found a way out?” Mr. Tenner’s brows furrowed. He stopped playing with the weapon. “Secret facilities? Aliens? What was it?!” Jesse tried speaking, but the man kept cutting him off.

“I found a… corpse and something else. I don’t know what to make of it, I’m a little too scared to go all the way, and maybe if you went there, you could bring my friend back.”

The man stood up. Jesse flinched.

“I wouldn’t want to scrape your adventuring corpse off the sewer floor. You’re not Tenner -- people saw you come here. I’d get blamed for your death as well. I’ll come.”

Jesse waited while the man grabbed a jacket and locked twelve locks. He led them to an old swing rope he’d hidden under a bench and journeyed over to the barrier. In the middle of the street, a hole gaped. Only a “Watch where you step” drawn with chalk on the asphalt warned of the sudden fall to death.

“I’ll need you to…” Oh god, I can’t believe I’m ordering Tenner’s family around. “Tie this rope around something heavy.”

Mr. Tenner nodded and stabbed into the street. A few black pebbles flew up. Jesse backed off, keeping track of the hole. The man made sure the machete wouldn’t budge and wrapped the rope around it. Jesse snatched the rope. A beat later, he was falling into the sewer.

He swung about before sliding down and shouting an “All good!”

If this rope couldn’t hold you, I would’ve died a week ago when we tested this with Hop.

Mr. Tenner followed. “This is a good place to hide, be a rat in peace. I would’ve hated hiding here twenty years ago. Without the iron skin of a decade long torture experiment, living in the shit would be an unbearable disgrace. I wouldn’t know how worse it could get.”

Jesse’s parents were one of the few people who hadn’t hunted Mr. Tenner because of the allegation. They did tell him what had happened. “There were mobs, I heard.”

“Selfish, brainless bastards spent every single day of a decade searching for me. I hid in their basements and attics. Experience to quickly become a man and see the truth about the vermin we call humans.”

I hope nothing like that ever happens to me or Tenner when he comes back. “I really, really thought you’d already come here.”

“I could not. Years passed, but there’s still figures in the night, watching my every step, hoping to find even a shred of evidence to justify ruining my life... Walking the night is walking on shards of glass -- my fate will be sealed with blood.” The man took out a flashlight. There was a rotting, limbless corpse. Flies circled around it and two rats ate its intestines. One rat, with a small streak of red fur on its head, stared up at Mr. Tenner and they both floored it. “A corpse that doesn’t smell so bad you want to become one?”

“The sewer. It’s the sewer. It hides the smell,” Jesse said. “When I crashed in here, I thought my lungs would explode from the smell.”

“You’re right. But this could never be Tenner’s corpse.” The man pointed the flashlights at the depths of the sewer.

“Why?”

“Why? Do you want to rot beside that corpse? Don’t disrespect me and don’t question my infallible vision!” Mr. Tenner jumped at Jesse and pushed the kid against the wall. “You little shit, you’ve never experienced what I have, and you have no right doubt me. Now I’m thinking you killed my son! Huh, did you?” He pointed the flashlight in Jesse’s eyes.

Jesse shook his head relentlessly. “Oh, God, no! I was just curious how you could so easily tell!”

The flashlight pointed back at the rotting corpse.

“It’s obvious, but you young rats have never been turned into men so you can’t do the elemental. Look and when you look, see!” Mr. Tenner grabbed Jesse’s neck and pushed his head forward.

Jesse’s eyes teared up. He blinked a few thousand times and tried making out some details through the blur. “Looks… wrong.”

“Yes! Wrong figure. Tenner’s different. And I once talked about something like this to him,” the man said. “Good to know he’s got the wits to use my wisdom. Let’s go see where he ended up.”

This person couldn’t have known about the money, Tenner’s name or why I should bring it to his doorstep. How didn’t I realize that before?!

They reached a boiler room. There were all sizes of pipes on each of the walls and they all moved in peculiar ways but made not a sound. Mr. Tenner honed in on a corner of the room. There, ten crimson lines led up some stairs.

“That was Tenner?”

“That was Tenner. Can’t rip a corpse apart without getting your hands red. And I’ve noticed gloves don’t help, either. The smell is a dead giveaway to any chaser. That’s why you must drench a cloth…” The man trailed off and nodded at the stairs.

Jaw open, Jesse followed Mr. Tenner to the end of the snow-white corridor. The gap in his mouth widened even more when he saw what guarded its end. “Lasers,” he uttered.

“Damn. He’s gone now.”

“Can’t you… disable them?”

“I’d rather not. The truth is good to know, but it’s not going to put a fucking smile on my face. The neighborhood is not prepared for what might go down.” The red glow of the lasers tinted Mr. Tenner’s eyes maroon. “There’s one thing you all can hear, but do you want to?”

It might lead me to Tenner, Jesse thought and raised an eyebrow.

“Hiding in the homes of countless people showed me the secrets everyone in the neighborhood kept locked away and a few even piqued my interest. I became the fiend for their answers. I don’t remember how much searching it took, but I found it. I could stab the barrier with television antennas and communicate with the outside. The world is not what I, or you, or anyone in this place except for a family that’s already dead, thinks it is. Tenner is in the eye of a storm right now. A great, big storm. Some of its tides might crash here. The driftwood they’ll carry will be the truth. Take this in case you learn it and in case that has consequences.” Mr. Tenner pointed the machete at Jesse. Jesse grabbed it by the blade and glared at the weapon. The man grabbed Jesse’s hand and put it around the handle, adjusting his posture. “My greatest knife yet. Consider it a gift for your favor.”

“Thank--”

“We are leaving now. Watch out at night.”