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"Mr Hobbes?" she called "Mr Hobbes!"

He didn’t answer Where was he? Where was she? Why had she gone with hi off with a coer, she reht she was pretty and special Mr Hobbes who ht be her ticket to the big time

So why did her breath catch so?

Around her, the house seemed alive with some evil There She’d said it Evil This word occurred to her just as she passed the lone gas la flame cast doubt on the true nature of the walls One olden hue The next, Ruta stared at filthy paper peeling away froed across a spot illuerprints No Not dirt Blood A bloody handprint Four Only four fingerprints One was

Ruta’s heart fluttered wildly and her legs jellied This had been a terrible mistake She would leave at once Ruta turned and watched in horror as the last of the illusion crumbled and the house transfor hole, the rot crawling up the walls toAnd there were rats Oh, god, how she hated rats With a little cry, Ruta stuet her Where was the door? It was nowhere to be found! Al it from her As if it wanted to keep her here

" ‘And upon her forehead was a name written in Mystery: Babylon the Great, the Harlot…’ "

She couldn’t see the stranger but she could hear hi of his There had to be another way out of here! Aoff to her right looked proh the wooden slats nailed there, she could see a bu into the vacant lot across the street to take a piss

"Hey! Hey, mister, help me! Please help me!" she shouted When he didn’t hear her, she beat her palainst the wood She tore at the immovable planks until her nails were bloodied, her palms crosshatched with splinters Outside, the oblivious drunk finished his business and wandered off into the night, and Ruta sank to the filthy floor, sobbing

When Ruta was three, her mother had locked her in a trunk so the landlord wouldn’t find out they’d had another baby and kick them out on the street She’d sat there alone, cramped, quiet in the dark, and utterly terrified It seemed like hours before they let her out, and ever since, any feeling of being trapped ain Panic e house in desperation Mazelike hallways funneled her into squalid rooms; doors opened onto brick walls All around her, she heard theAt last she spied a door she hadn’t tried She put her hand on the knob The floor gave way beneath her, and she pluotten hole of a baseht and she cried out with the pain She tried to take a step but it was agony, and she crashed back to the hard, cold dirt floor

The floors above her creaked She could hear the stranger’s distant whistling Her hts of survival She blinked in the darkness, forcing her eyes to adjust She had fallen quite a ways; the cellar was very deep, probably twenty feet below street level She was sure she could scream all day and not be heard What she needed was a weapon She dragged herself by inches, feeling with her hand for so she could use Finally, her hand caht, but applied with enough force against an eye or a throat, it could wound She held the stick tightly to her chest and waited Far above her, a door clanged open, allowing the thinnest shaft of light to penetrate She could see a staircase behind a wall, but there was no way she could e it in her current state The stick was her best shot She ht have to do more than wound

Mr Hobbes closed the door and the light vanished She was plunged into total darkness again, just like in the trunk Ruta struggled to keep her breathing quiet when she wanted to screaer’s footsteps druer had his cane His song echoed in the cellar This tihty John, does his ith his apron on Cuts your throat and takes your bones, sells ’eht in the back of Ruta’s throat; she was too frightened to s The old furnace flared suddenly to life, filling the rooht that cast macabre shadows