Blaine stares out the windshield of his rented Honda Odyssey, his jaw dropping open, stunned out of his senses at the sight of the disastrous house in front of him. His hands grip the steering wheel for support. His knees knock together, completely out of his control. A low, pitiful whining noise rattles around in the back of his throat. The house to his right, nestled incongruously behind a manicured lawn, carefully pruned rose bushes, and a well-established Mulberry tree, is so incredibly awful that he can't stop looking at it. It's like a horrendous traffic accident – lots of blood and twisted metal, but try as you might, you can't make yourself look away.

“What's wrong, squirt?” Cooper, Blaine's older brother, asks. “Is something wrong with my new investment?”

“Uh, I'm looking at your new investment right now,” Blaine groans, sounding strangled and pathetic, but he couldn't care less.

“And…” Cooper asks, his voice an annoying, disembodied presence in Blaine's Bluetooth since there is no way that Cooper Anderson would actually deign to come out to a new project house himself.

He leaves that kind of grunt work to his baby brother, Blaine.

Cooper Anderson's Complete Home Renovation started as a way for Blaine's brother to translate his B-list (to put it kindly) celebrity status into a steady paycheck. At first, Blaine thought this show would turn into another fad - a superficial hobby that Coop would get really excited about for a few months and then become bored with when the hard work began. Cooper had a reputation for those – Catamaran racing, model plane building, volunteering at the Greyhound rescue. But this time, Blaine had to give Coop some credit. When he started the show a year or so back, he did research, found a reputable contractor, and learned the ins and outs of foreclosed property auctions. It was the most responsible Cooper had been about something in a long while. He flipped a few houses, got a desirable time slot on a basic cable network, and made a decent amount of money doing it. But the show was dull as dishwater and the ratings tanked. That was until Cooper decided to do things his usual way, which basically meant firing every capable person involved with the production of the show, managing everything himself…and soliciting the help of his younger brother.

Cooper purchased the properties, usually through a third party company, and then turned Blaine loose on whatever disaster he had bought. Blaine would perform a preliminary walkthrough of the various houses, with Cooper accompanying him through the aid of a wireless webcam, while back at command central (Cooper's fancy name for his breakfast nook), Cooper and his contractor, who remained silent through the walkthrough to make Cooper look like the knowledgeable one, made plans for the renovation. In no time flat, Cooper ended up with a sensational cult following, as well as a membership-only website. Members to the website got the privilege of watching the live webcam feed and witnessing all the hilarious - and embarrassing - pitfalls that Blaine suffered. Later on, the feed would be edited for television. The show became a bigger hit than Blaine could have ever imagined - which was one of the many reasons why Blaine wanted nothing to do with it.

Blaine had a strict policy not to participate in any of Cooper's harebrained ideas. This one, being a television show, pretty much screamed, “No! Don't! Turn back!” Blaine had dreams of being on Broadway one day, and he didn't need his brother destroying his reputation before he even had one. But Cooper never took no for an answer, and in this case, he knew his brother's Achilles' heel.

College.

But not just any college.

NYADA.

The premier college for musical theater, located in none other than Blaine's dream city – New York.

Blaine was desperate to get there, especially now that their parents decided last minute not to pay for it. It was all right for Blaine to say he wanted to go to NYADA, but in the end, his parents were counting on a more practical college choice, like Stanford or Princeton. They would even bend as far as accepting NYU, as long as Blaine majored in business or medicine, but not NYADA. No. They didn't want another foolish child with dreams of making it big as a performer making a mockery of the Anderson family name.

Not like Cooper.

Sure, Cooper had managed some bit parts in a few movies, and a one-line speaking role on a television series, but before his renovation show took off, his claim to fame as a thespian had been one FreeCreditRatingToday.com commercial.

His parents were less than impressed.

Cooper knew Blaine was trying to find a way to save up for college, and truth be told, he felt guilty. He realized that, in a way, he had caused all these problems for Blaine, but it wasn't in Cooper's nature to simply come out and apologize…especially when his idea to have Blaine as a lackey on his show was so much better.

Blaine caved when he realized that Cooper's offer, no matter how destructive it might be to his future career, was his only real hope, especially considering what Cooper was offering to pay him in comparison to working part time at the Lima Bean, which only paid minimum wage plus the occasional tip. So, Blaine spent most of his free time and all of his school breaks helping Cooper flip houses.

That included his summer vacation.

This summer would be Blaine's final hoorah on the show until his next big school break, which prompted the idea to bring Blaine out to the West Coast to do a Fun in the Sun edition of Cooper Anderson's Complete Home Renovation.

Blaine was initially thrilled by the idea. A couple of months at their family's old beach house (God, they hadn't been there in years), spending some time lying out on the sand, relaxing, rescuing his upper arms from an unsightly farmer's tan, and escaping his mom and dad's constant looks of disapproval every time he entered a room.

The first three vile houses he renovated in San Diego, however, almost made any fun and relaxation Blaine had planned for this trip completely immaterial.

But this house – his last house – takes the cake for sure.

“Blai-ney?” Cooper sings through the earpiece, cutting through Blaine's thoughts and the dead air.

“Do you ever see these houses before you buy them, Coop?” Blaine asks. He tilts his head from side to side and cranes his neck to peer out the windshield, refusing to move from his seat until he absolutely has to.

“Why? Is it the wrong house?” Cooper asks in a panic. “It's the Victorian, right? Please tell me it's the Victorian!”

“It's the Victorian, all right,” Blaine confirms with a long, heavy sigh. Or it will be a decent Victorian house once they get rid of the hodge-podge of vomit-worthy paint that had been slapped on for God knows how long. The house looks like the whole color scheme was chosen by a drunk toddler. The main body of the house is a bright, fire engine red; the scrolled pillars and the sconces look to be hazard orange; and everything else is either bright blue or deep purple. If the house hadn't been declared a historical landmark, Blaine is sure that the neighbors would have torn it apart panel by panel.

“Then what's the problem?” Cooper sounds worried at the reluctance in his brother's voice, not that Blaine isn't always reluctant. That's part of the shtick. Cooper makes it a point to buy the worst houses he's heard of, sight unseen, because Blaine's initial reaction is a big part of his TV show's draw.

Besides, torturing his younger brother has always been one of Cooper Anderson's favorite past times.

“So, are you inside yet, squirt?” Cooper pipes up over Blaine's Bluetooth. “Because I'm seeing a serious lack of anything interesting on my computer screen. Of course, I'm not all that tech savvy. Check the feed on your end.”

“I'm not in the house yet, Coop,” Blaine moans.

“Wha--- well, why not?” Cooper sputters. “Time's a-wasting here, kiddo. We have a show to put on. Chippity-chop-chop, Blaine!”

Blaine sighs and switches on the portable webcam, focusing the lens on his own face so that Cooper can check the feed.

“There's my handsome little man,” Cooper coos, thrilled to tease his baby brother in front of his slew of dedicated viewers. “Now go and show me the house that's destined to become my newest masterpiece.”

Blaine's shoulders slump, weighed down by the inevitable. He opens the minivan door, ready to step out and get the full effect of how awful it truly is, when he is hit with a smell so powerful it forces him back into his seat.

“Ugh! Blech!” He locks the doors and turns on the air conditioner to flush the evil smell out, but that doesn't work the way he hopes. The conditioned air circulates the smell throughout the car. Immediately, the stench sticks to the upholstery and his clothes.

Blaine doesn't want to breathe it in any more than he has to, but there's something curious about the smell. Yes, it's disgusting to think that the house stinks so badly he can smell it all the way from his minivan with the windows rolled up, but now that time has passed, he realizes it isn't altogether a bad smell. It's more odd than bad. Against his better judgment, Blaine takes a deep breath in through his nostrils and holds it, shutting his eyes to get a better idea of what the smell reminds him of.

Melancholy.

Bittersweet.

Like a musty old funeral home parlor, where each grain of wood, each fiber of carpet seems to be infused with the sorrow, pain, and tears of mourners grieving for loved ones lost.

To put it simply, the house smells sad.

Regardless, whatever is causing that smell can't be healthy.

Even more than the smell, which is disturbing to say the least, it's the silence that unnerves him.

Blaine had gotten lost on his way here. He had parked in the cul-de-sac on the opposite side of the street and sat for a good twenty minutes checking his GPS before he realized his mistake. Harbor Drive cuts in half with a strip of neighborhood right down its middle. He had ended up on the other side. The side he originally parked in is a lively, typical suburban neighborhood, with kids riding their bikes and people in their yards gardening, watering their lawns, talking and laughing, enjoying this beautiful Southern California afternoon.

The cul-de-sac this Victorian house sits in is much the same – the same identical houses, the same green lawns, the same suburban atmosphere - only there are no children playing here, and no busy neighbors tending to their gardens. Blaine looks up at the sky. For two whole minutes, not a single bird passes overhead, and there isn't an insect to be seen.

Life seems to avoid this neighborhood, and probably for good reason.

Blaine can't shake the ominous feeling that he's being watched…and he probably isn't the first person who's felt that way. Blaine had heard that this house got no foot traffic. Even when it was put up for auction, few people came by to take a look at it, which is strange considering how popular real Victorian houses are in this area of the country.

But something as trivial as the possibility of a supernatural threat to his life will not deter Cooper Anderson from ratings and equity. Blaine will eventually have to get out of the Odyssey and go into the house. He reaches into his glove box and pulls out a dust mask, which Cooper must see since he starts yelling into the earpiece.

“No! Blaine! What are you doing?”

“Coop, I can smell your house all the way from the van,” Blaine explains, giving himself permission to be haughty. “I'm protecting myself from whatever lives in the air around this place.”

“No, you can't cover your face!” Cooper complains. Blaine might find Cooper's desperation amusing if he wasn't trying to talk him out of keeping himself safe. “You know my viewers tune in to see my dapper brother's handsome face. Your face is my money maker!”

“So, you're going to risk my health, and my future as a singer, for ratings?” Blaine argues, annoyed at his brother's overwhelming lack of concern. When he doesn't receive a response, he decides to appeal to one of Cooper's real loves – money. “You know, one stray mold spore gets into my lungs and your insurance premiums take a hit.”

“Hey,” Cooper says in a sly voice, “it's a risk I'm willing to take.

But Blaine knows better than to let his brother dictate matters of life and death, and squirrels the mask into his back pocket. He won't be on camera the whole time, and it's an easy enough thing to slip on and off without Cooper noticing.

He had to do it for those last three houses.

Blaine grabs the webcam and climbs out of the minivan. He takes extra time to make sure the doors are locked and the windows rolled up, deliberately stalling. Finally, he gives in and walks up to the cartoon-esque fun house that smells like heartbreak and woe.

Blaine stands for a moment to take it all in. Then he trains the webcam on the house, and Cooper laughs like a hyena through Blaine's Bluetooth.

“Holy crap!” he roars. “Stop, Blainers. Just…just give our audience a moment to appreciate the monstrosity before us.”

Blaine scans the scene, starting from the far left and moving to the right.

“What the hell colors are those?” Cooper chokes the words out between the most unattractive chortles Blaine has ever heard. “It looks like a carnival funhouse.”

“Yeah, well, you sure know how to pick ‘em, Coop,” Blaine recites in a practiced flat and sour tone. It's one of his many catch phrases that he is required to say through the course of filming. Unoriginal, but it seems to make the viewers happy. Twice in the last six months the phrase ‘Pick a Winner, Coop' has trended on Twitter.

And Blaine has been a huge part of that.

Yippee.

“You know, this house has a really well-kept lawn to go with that crap paint job.”

“The realtor told me that the ladies from the historical society were taking care of the landscaping,” Blaine remarks as he trots up the walk, not that Cooper actually cares, but because Blaine does his best to fill in the silences with informative little tidbits. If anything, maybe he can use it as a way to showcase his professionalism and dedication to the craft - his ability to improvise.

Blaine Anderson – Master of Finding the Silver Lining.

Blaine takes the keys out of his pocket. He had to pick them up directly from the realtor's office. For some reason, the severe, dowdy, and unnaturally petite woman wouldn't meet him at the house.

She said specifically that she never went down there.

That, in itself, is not a reassuring testimonial.

Blaine works to unlock the deadbolt, balancing the webcam beneath his chin and pulling the door toward him when the lock won't turn.

“Anyone want to take a bet on what it looks like inside?” Cooper asks, filling up the empty air space while Blaine fumbles with the uncooperative lock. Blaine feels his phone buzz in his pocket which means that Cooper also tweeted that question to his viewers. “Op! Blaine's struggling with the lock! Nobody must have gone in this house in years! This is going to be horrible! I can feel it!”

Cooper chuckles wickedly and Blaine rolls his eyes. He isn't sure that he likes the strange, sadistic pleasure Cooper gets from tormenting him like this.

Blaine jiggles the doorknob while turning the key, cranking it left and right, but it isn't just that the lock itself is stuck. It feels like the door is being held closed from the inside. All of Blaine's inner alarms start going off – in his head where his ears ring with Cooper's inane laughter, in his chest where his heart races so hard that his ribs hurt, in his feet where he shifts weight from one to the other, as eager to be in the house and done with this as he is to get into his minivan and leave.

At the thought of leaving, the door finally opens, shoving in about a foot and then stopping dead. Blaine pushes and pushes, but the door won't budge any farther.

“Uh…Blaine?” Cooper's voice calls through the Bluetooth. “I like your shoes and that lovely sweater vest you're wearing as much as the next guy, but do you think you could hold the webcam up so we can see what's going on? All this bouncing around is making me want to hurl. It's like a scene from Cloverfield or something.”

Blaine pulls the webcam out from beneath his chin and sticks it around the corner of the door. If he can't make his way into the house, at least Cooper and his audience can see what he's up against.

“Well…that's a…dark room you're showing us there, Blainers,” Cooper teases in a straight voice. “In fact, that's an incredible shade of grey we're seeing at the moment. Do you think you could open up a curtain or turn on a light there, squirt?”

“I'm…hmpf…I'm trying…” Blaine grumbles, struggling to keep the webcam aloft while fighting to open the door. After a few backbreaking heaves, he gives up and shimmies through the narrow crack he's already made, sucking in his stomach to keep from snagging his sweater vest on the edge of the door. He slips through the opening, having to stop a second to maneuver his leg around the bend, and stumbles inside. His right foot comes in contact with the floor, his left foot raised behind him, and the front door slams shut.

The room he's standing in goes from grey to black, and everything becomes eerily silent.

Even Cooper's chuckle dies to muffled breaths over Blaine's Bluetooth.

Blaine stands completely still, praying that nothing runs at him from out of the shadows.

Of course, it doesn't help in the slightest that he had stayed up late last night streaming Stephen King's mini-series Rose Red. Whatever possessed him to watch a show about a haunted house hours before coming here, he will never know.

His eyes adjust to the lack of light. They water excessively, clouded by thick layers of dust that he can smell and taste with every breath he takes. He holds his breath, sure that any monsters hiding in the dark will hear even the slightest inhale.

“Blaine?” Cooper whispers harshly. “Do…something…”

“I'm…trying…” Blaine whispers back with an added huff of annoyance.

Blaine finally dares to turn his head, sweeping the webcam around the room. He reaches out his free hand, his arm shaking as he tries to stay balanced on one foot, and feels for a light switch on the wall by the door. His fingers come in contact with one; he flips it up and down madly, but with no results.

“Coop…I thought you called SDG&E and had the power switched on,” Blaine says, continuing to flip the switch rapidly in hopes that a loose wire somewhere will spark after enough tries and the lights will flick on.

“I did,” Cooper responds in an unnecessarily low voice. “Maybe there's a blown fuse or a busted circuit.”

Blaine whimpers. He's not looking forward to negotiating this mess without any light. He attempts to put his elevated foot down, his knee sore from tensing to keep it bent up, but everywhere he steps he feels bulky items in his way, disinclined to be pushed aside. He finds a loose…something…and shoves at it, sliding it across the floor about a foot and making a space to take a step.

“Okay…” Blaine says, both triumphant and anxious as he creeps across the room in this manner. He can't see anything but shapes and silhouettes that change when he relocates some blurry mystery object. He ignores the sounds of shuffling that echo through the room in response to his movements, keeping his eyes fixed on a single ray of light streaming in through a crack in the curtains. Blaine counts his steps, trying to estimate how big the room is by his strides across the floor.

“Can you see anything?” Cooper asks conversationally, keeping the show moving along while Blaine picks his way at a snail's pace through the unseen clutter.

“Not yet,” Blaine replies, only a hair louder than a whisper because he's still wary of talking too loudly - a hidden childhood fear of the dark rearing its ugly head. “I'm trying to make it to the curtains on the windows, but this room is large and packed with stuff.” Blaine looks down at his feet, aiming the webcam at the floor. “Do you see anything, Coop?”

“Naah, not yet, squirt…” Blaine smiles when he hears Cooper sound mildly concerned on his behalf, “just a really, really dark blur.”

“Congratulations, Coop,” Blaine chirps, tripping over something that clangs metallically when it comes in contact with his foot. “You purchased a void.”

Nervous laughter follows Blaine's comment and he smiles wider. It's nice to know that every so often his big brother actually cares.

“If you come across any television sets, don't turn them on,” Cooper warns. “I wouldn't want you getting sucked in and crossing over to the other side.”

Blaine shakes his head.

“Poltergeist? Really?” Blaine groans, hopping a few steps and finally making his way to the window. “You do know you just aged yourself, don't yo--”

“I see some light there, squirt,” Cooper cuts in, smoothly evading the mention of his age. “Did you finally make it to the window, or do you feel like walking around in the dark for another ten minutes?”

Blaine doesn't answer, having deftly slipped the dust mask over his mouth and nose, preparing to open the curtain, which he is sure has to be caked with dust.

He's right.

With his free hand, he pulls open the heavy fabric of the first curtain, watching as dust motes swirl in front of his eyes, dimming the sun's light as it pierces the grime on the windows. He moves aside the second curtain, stepping over what he can see in this new light are various metal and wooden objects, peculiar faces peering up at him, staring with chipped and empty eyes.

Dirty light is better than no light at all, but Blaine has a hard time making sense of what he's seeing. He has been in houses before that had rooms piled high with all sorts of trash – food containers, two-liter bottles, dirty plates, newspapers and magazines with yellowing and cracked pages, even one house with rooms stuffed from floor to ceiling with filthy used diapers, but what he is currently looking at is downright bizarre. Everywhere underfoot there are twisted limbs, contorted bodies, orphaned heads, and a mass of brightly colored clothing and costumes. They're small – child sized. He makes his way to the next set of windows and opens those curtains. Light floods the room, defused through the layer of dried gunge on the glass, giving it a sepia hue, but with better illumination, Blaine can see the room clearly.

Toys. Piles and piles of toys - dolls, puppets, trains, cars, stuffed animals by the pound. Some are stacked along the walls, mint in their boxes, but the majority lay in heaps, overflowing mountains and dunes, filling the room from corner to corner.

“Holy...”

Cooper's voice cuts off when Blaine turns and focuses the camera on a long hallway, as foreboding as the living room but inconceivably darker. Blaine swallows hard, knowing that's the next place Cooper will tell him to go.

“Whoa, Blaine…look at that…”

Yeah, yeah, Blaine thinks, taking a step in that direction. I'm going.

“Hold up,” Cooper says. “Go back to the toys on the floor.”

Blaine breathes a sigh of relief at his temporary reprieve. He aims the camera down, trying to get the best view he can in the low light of the toys scattered over the floor.

“Are those made of metal?” Cooper asks.

“Yup,” Blaine says, moving the mask away from his mouth so he can speak. “Well, some of them. Some of them appear to be wood.”

“Get a closer shot, Blaine. I want to look at those.”

Blaine moves from toy to toy, holding the webcam still for a few seconds so his brother can get some decent screenshots. He hears Cooper typing frantically, researching something on his computer.

“Are you seeing this, Blaine?” Cooper asks excitedly over the earpiece. “Those tin banks? That's some early 1900s shit. And there're loads of them! The stuff in that room alone could be worth a fortune! Imagine what we might find in the rest of the house?”

We, Blaine thinks, shaking his head. Right.

Blaine hears more frantic typing, quiet cheering, some scribbling and muttering as Cooper takes down notes on his end of the line. “Okay, Blaine,” Cooper continues, not revealing any of the information he uncovered on his web search, “why don't you head down that hallway and see what else we're dealing with?”

Blaine lifts the webcam to show the view of the hallway, partially blocked by a mound of what looks like original Care Bears, and columns of stacked board games. Blaine catches sight of a familiar yellow box with the word OPERATION written across the side in red block letters. It immediately brings to mind all those days he spent kneeling at the coffee table in his living room, playing the game over and over…even if he played mostly by himself.

Good times, he thinks. Good times.

At least he has that happy memory to carry with him into the afterlife, because he is fairly certain that he is going to be murdered in this house.

Blaine has never been in a house before that has so much emotion attached to it. In his property searches, Cooper gravitates toward houses previously owned by hoarders since they have the potential to be the most horrendous, but the one thing Blaine has learned by visiting these houses is that hoarders have a tendency to attach importance to the most off-the-wall things.

It's not the item, of course, but what or who it represents – and the inability to let go.

Maybe he doesn't always understand the reason behind the hoard, but it breaks his heart to see it every time.

Hoarding toys, though - this he can understand. It's holding tight to the best part of a person's life – their childhood.

Blaine makes his way to the hall, opening the last two sets of curtains along the way until the room is nearly, but not quite, cheerful.

Something still troubles him. Something the immense dark wasn't hiding after all. The feeling of being watched lingers, but it's joined by a feeling of being called. As insane as it sounds, Blaine feels there's something in this house that wants him to find it.

When he gets closer to the hallway, he can see that the extreme darkness of this narrow pathway is an illusion. The mountain of toys blocks the living room light head on, and throws shadows along the floor, but as soon as he turns into it, it becomes a tunnel of light. Behind him, the sunlight in the living room extends its way to the hallway. Blaine sees square windows lining the walls, as grimy as the living room windows, but letting in more light as the sun moves across the sky. This space is littered with toys on the floor just like in the living room, but less so because here they also hang from the walls.

“Blaine, is that a puppet?” Cooper asks.

Blaine takes a step back. “I think so.”

“Blaine, turn to the puppet on the wall - the one with the red hair.”

Blaine turns toward the wall, where a row of puppets hang from wires by thumbtacks embedded in the plaster.

“That…that looks like an original Howdy Doody puppet. That's got to be worth some money. What do you say, Blainers?”

“I imagine so,” Blaine agrees, taking off his mask and stuffing it in his pocket for the time being since the air here doesn't seem as dusty. He's getting sweaty with that thing on anyway.

“Don't you know?” Cooper sounds distracted, and Blaine hears Cooper typing again. “Aren't you all puppet savvy and whatnot?”

“I make puppets,” Blaine corrects his brother, moving on to the next puppet down the line. “I don't collect them.”

“Same diff,” Cooper comments. “It's still creepy as hell. Let's see the next one.”

The next puppet is an animal puppet, but what kind of animal, Blaine can't really tell. It might be a horse…or a dog…or a bear. It's a scruff of brown fur with eyes and a pointy snout. He vaguely recognizes it as being from an old kids' TV show that he saw mentioned in a documentary about Vaudeville performers on PBS. Blaine looks down the length of the wall ahead of him to where it dips back into the semi-darkness and sees additional animal puppets, most of them from the same show.

The hallway leads straight to the dining room. From where Blaine stands, he sees only two pieces of furniture - a round, wooden table sitting right at the entrance, its top covered in newspapers and photo albums; and a matching China cabinet standing up against a far wall. This room, too, is full of toys, stacked on the floor and along the walls, but the boxes of these toys look better cared for, the colors crisper. These toys are newer, Barbie dolls and G. I. Joes from the last thirty or forty years perhaps. There are so many that Blaine can't pick out one specific doll or action figure from the lot. But this room has one interesting feature that the living room and hallway don't have.

There are posters all over the walls, framed beneath glass.

“Jesus H...we can open our own toy store with this much crap,” Cooper mumbles, but Blaine ignores him. He points the webcam at the boxes, but his own focus drifts to the posters. They're hard to see through the inches of dust obscuring his view, but they look like antique theater posters. He leans in close, careful not to breathe and disturb the micro-organisms snoozing away amidst the crud. He narrows his eyelids and tries to make out the words or the pictures, but the sunlight reflects off the glass and into his eyes. He starts thinking of a way to clean the dust off and examine the poster properly, but a chuckle in his earpiece tips him off that his brother has made a new discovery, and Blaine is going to have to investigate.

“Blaine, I'm looking at the floor plan that the realtor emailed me, and there should be two doors in this room – one with a staircase that goes to the upper level, and one with a staircase that goes down to…” A strain of sinister music plays and Blaine puts a hand to his head, squeezing his eyes shut to banish the headache that's starting to grow – “the basement.”

Blaine opens his eyes and finds the doors quickly, situated between the China cabinet and a shuttered window. He walks to the window and pulls at the clasp on the shutter. The metal hook has rusted completely into the looped eye it's been buried in for decades, but Blaine shakes the hook back and forth until it slides free. He pulls open the shutters and smiles. This window isn't as coated in dirt as the others, and now the room is brightly lit.

“So here's the question,” Coopers rambles on. “Do we send Blaine upstairs to take a look at the bedrooms, or do we send him downstairs to the basement?”

Blaine hears more tinny, old tyme horror music, with dramatic organ notes playing in a minor chord. He can't help but laugh. This whole thing is ridiculous, but at least Cooper has found his niche in the world.

Blaine opens the doors one at a time. He knows he's going to be sent to the basement eventually, so he decides to hurry things along. The staircases are pitch black, but the longer he spends in the house, the less perturbing it seems. He feels like he's being led along, like a hand is guiding him, and when he opens the door revealing a staircase leading down, he wastes no time.

“Hey, wait!” Cooper objects. “We didn't finish voting!”

“Too late,” Blaine quips, his feet scuttling down the concrete steps. “You took too long.” He jumps off the last step and is encompassed by another sea of pure inky nothingness, but this time he doesn't hesitate. He feels around the walls, looking for a fuse box as he makes his way deeper into the room. The air down in the basement is colder, less inviting, and the walls are damp, but that sensation of being called is stronger down here.

It feels urgent, and he actually becomes excited by what he might find down here.

Blaine's hand crawls across the wall until he hits a covered metal box.

“I think I found the fuse box,” Blaine grunts, pulling at the box, trying to find a way to open it. He tugs it left and right with no success. He considers hitting it with his fist, but the cover suddenly pops off and falls to the floor. Inside the box is a single, long-handled switch. Blaine grabs it and pushes it in an attempt to flip it up. It takes a little shimmying before it flies upward with a loud clack.

Blaine leaps back and waits for the lights to come on.

Nothing happens.

He hears a buzz…then a pop.

A bulb blinks overhead – off…on, off……on – its rhythm punctuated by an unnerving spit. The buzzing gets louder. The popping increases in tempo and becomes a hum. The blinking bulb clicks on and starts crackling. Then it burns. The yellow light from that single bulb lights the entire room. When Blaine can finally see without spots dancing in front of his eyes – a side effect of jumping the terminus between dark and bright – his jaw drops.

Down in this dreary basement is a fully-equipped workshop, with several sturdy work benches lined up in rows, each one running the width of the room and covered in tools – newer shop saws, drills, and lathes sitting alongside older, antique picks and files, along with some handmade metal implements. On a final bench pushed up against the far wall are wooden blanks in all shapes and sizes, and bolts of cloth printed in dated patterns. Above it, more puppets hang from pegs on the wall – bare wooden skeletons, some with porcelain heads, unpainted and unfinished.

“Come on, Blaine,” Cooper says, reminding Blaine that he's not alone, “pan around and let us get a good look. What's with all the tools?”

Blaine walks toward a saw that has the partial remains of an unfinished cut piece (an arm, maybe a leg) beneath its blade. The saw looks almost brand new, and the wooden appendage appears freshly cut, with a mound of sawdust collected nearby, as though some craftsman might have been working on it yesterday.

“I think” - Blaine moves down the workbench to examine a lathe - “this is a workshop for making puppets.”

“Geesh. This guy must have had a serious puppet fetish.”

“I don't usually like to agree with you, Coop,” Blaine says with more fascination than disgust, “but you might be right.”

Blaine's webcam trails over the many benches, holding saws stopped likewise in the middle of unfinished projects. In the corner sits a squat, oblong kiln, about the size of an average nightstand. He runs his fingers over its surface as he passes by. He stops to peruse the contents of cardboard boxes with their tops hanging open. There are more tools, more wood pieces, more body parts and heads than Blaine has ever seen in his lifetime, definitely more than he had to work with in the arts and crafts class he took at McKinley. Blaine lifts the lens to take in the view of the puppets on the walls, the bolts, and then another door. He comes to a full stop and stares at it. He's drawn to it, but he doesn't know why. As Blaine walks toward it, he can hear the rustle of papers and the clattering of computer keys on Cooper's end of the line.

“Uh, Blaine?”

“Yeah? What is it?” Blaine approaches the door as he speaks. He has a strong feeling that what he's searching for, what's calling to him, is somewhere behind this door. He reaches out his hand for the knob when Cooper talks again.

“Be careful when you open that door, Blainers.”

There's a tone in Cooper's voice that sends a chill down Blaine's spine.

“Why is that?” Blaine asks, his fingers resting on the doorknob while he waits for an answer.

“Umm…because that door isn't on the blueprints.”

Blaine's brow furrows, but he doesn't remove his hand.

“What do you mean it's not on the blueprints?”

“That means there isn't supposed to be a door there, Blaine. No room, no closet, no staircase. It's not listed, so just…be careful.”

Blaine breathes in sharply and nods. He understands his brother's trepidation. Homeowners sometimes do unpermitted renovations on their houses, and a lot of them are unsafe, but Blaine feels very sure that he needs to open the door in front of him.

He grabs the doorknob and holds tight, turning slowly.

The action of the tumblers feels smooth, not sticky or rusted like the other fixtures he's encountered. He turns the knob till he hears everything unwind, and the door gives. It creaks open, swinging outward easily. The light from the basement breaches the opening, and a shaft of it falls on the floor, filling the room to the left and right of it with shadows. Carpet in a deep crimson color covers the ground. Blaine follows the path of the light with his webcam up from the floor and looks further into the room.

Cooper sees it before Blaine does, and lets out a scream of terror.

“H-holy f-fucking shit, Blaine!” he hears Cooper yell into the earpiece. “Oh my God! Are you seeing this? Go back! Go back down!”

Blaine pans down, following the webcam with his eyes, and his heart leaps into his throat.

Lying on the floor at his feet he sees a partially dismembered body, and a smashed in human head.