As we reached the second floor landing, I glanced into the room across the hall and spotted Mikey standing motionless in a corner, his back to us and partially illuminated by the moonlight seeping in through the deteriorated ceiling above. I was having a flashback to the final scene of the Blair Witch Project but then Mikey let out a loud groan as he started to urinate.
Most of the tension I was feeling quickly deflated as Mikey sighed and said, “You two might as well come in.”
Grace and I looked at each other and then we started into the remains of what appeared to be a child’s bedroom. The walls in here were scorched, as if the room had survived a fire. A clearly wasted Mikey zipped up his fly as he turned to then offer us a lit joint. Grace shook her head and I replied, “Well, I don’t wanna be rude.`”
I took a hit from the joint and handed it back to Mikey as he slowly approached a broken window overlooking the backyard. He just stood there for a moment, silently staring down into the overgrown grass below, and then finally Mikey said…
“The Eldritch family used to run this town. Pretty much anyone who made a decent living was employed by them. Their patriarch, a bigoted old codger named Walton, had made a fortune mass-producing cheap-but-elegant looking furniture and when Walton died, his even-more-pigheaded son George took over and managed to expand the business nationwide. George had two sons. And while Georgie Jr. turned out to be a douche bag just like his old man the younger one, Sam, had been my first love.”
Mikey briefly looked back to give us a sad smile and I saw that his eyes were already welling with tears as he went on…
