He was looking at his own face, the features warped and distorted by the broken glass. All the same, the illusion sent his heart racing, down now to just a splotchy flutter as Rule approached the cottage entrance. This was the very cottage in which he’d been forced to hang from the steam pipes, the cottage he’d returned to in later years as a counselor himself. The big heavy door had splintered away, just chunks left at the hinges where it looked kicked in, probably by local kids out for an adventure or adults in search of more to salvage and pawn. Rule entered out of the chilled air into something even more cold and dank. Because there was something for him here at Black House, in this very cottage; something he needed to know, something he had left behind that was a mystery even at this point of the journey. His cheap flashlight made enough of a dent in the darkness for Rule to see the cottage as it had been fifty years ago. He looked up through the collected dust and cobwebs to find the steam pipes, from which he’d once hung by his fingers, were gone, torn from the walls so their generally worthless steel might be salvaged for something.
