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image of Tessa in the oven door’s window melted and faded into a mash of skin and blood cooking to a blackness he would never forget.
     
    He had watched as she videotaped the water drip out and sizzle on the floor. He’d seen how she almost floated into the oven and how, on its own, the door slammed closed, engaging the external lock. As morbid as the sight was, Clayton watched while young Tessa cooked in her own oven.
     
    He’d suspected something had been going on in the house for years but he’d never known for sure. Many years of disappearances, and people who lived in the area refused to go near the house.
     
    He’d always figured it was the natives driving people away. Many years ago, the Indians claimed that area as theirs.
     
    He sat and watched the tape until nothing but white noise filled his screen.
     
    Then he decided what he must do.
     
    Giving the gun to Eric was a precaution. If it really was the natives, then that couple needed protection if they were about to go missing. Since no one had seen them in town except for him, he’d figured they’d gone back to where it was they came from. Now that Tessa’s family had reported them missing, he needed to do something about that. Now he had proof that Tessa was forced into the oven and burnt alive. That was enough for him to enter the house and see for himself what was really going on.
     
    He made one phone call and set his backup plan in place.
     
    He grabbed two large boxes of black gunpowder and carried them out to his trunk. In a little box on the right, he grabbed the electric match that would ignite the powder. He held it up in front of his face and examined the small piece of thin resistance wire coated with a flammable substance. A small current through it and the wire would heat up, igniting the powder. He had done his research and bought the e-match at the local hobby shop where they sold rocket supplies.
     
    If everything went to shit, he had decided last year after the disappearance of Jared Tavallo, his brother-in-law, that whatever was in that house would have to deal with his homemade car bomb.
     
    He put everything in his trunk, jumped in the cruiser, flicked the lights on and raced away with the VHS tape in the passenger seat beside him.
     

Chapter 10
     
    Clayton arrived at the house before anyone else. He sat in his cruiser and stared at the house’s windows, trying to imagine all the terrors that had gone on inside its walls. It felt like the house watched him too, like it was alive.
     
    The sun moved toward the horizon, the sky darkening in the east first. It would be full dark soon, and he wouldn’t set foot inside the house after that, so he opened his door and got out, determined to get the answers he needed.
     
    After adjusting his gun belt, he started for the front steps. There were no sounds in the wilderness surrounding the property. No insects, frogs, or mating calls. Nothing. The silence would normally be welcoming, but this close to the house where Tessa had been murdered two weeks ago, the lack of noise only caused unease.
     
    He set one boot on the steps, pushed down and then lifted his foot off again. The rubber sole remained intact.
     
    He walked up the porch steps and stood in front of the door. One more check of his boots. They weren’t melting.
     
    Conscious of his duty and responsibilities, Clayton knocked on the door and waited. After a minute, he knocked again and turned to examine the woods behind him. All he could see as the sun dropped below the ridge of mountains were pockets of black where the trees were thick. He was running out of time.
     
    He tried the door knob. It turned without a key. One shove and the door opened all the way to the stopper.
     
    The inside looked nice and clean. Everything had its place. Furniture sat in a comfortable arrangement, surrounding a marble coffee table.
     
    Maybe he was wrong. Perhaps what he saw on the tape was someone’s amateur attempt at a horror movie