What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Zombier by Allison Wade Page B

the many holes, in order to get a glance of the strange interior, composed by tapestry of unusual color, furniture of disparate shapes, weird ornaments and so on. It looked like even the thieves weren’t interested in what was inside that strange house.
    One day, at the end of summer, a young tramp came to town; he had run away from home and was wanted for small robbery. After spending some nights at the train station and being chased away by the sheriff’s son, he found himself wandering around town, looking for a place to stay. During a sudden storm, he stumbled upon the old abandoned house and decided to break in.
    The stranger didn’t know a thing about the legends of the town and so, even if with some kind of concern – due to the crumbling appearance of the building – he walked on the front porch, which squeaked a moan under his feet. He forced the planks that barred the door, and that wasn’t difficult at all, since the wood was rotten like the rest.
    He entered the hallway and suddenly found himself thrown in an alien space. Beyond the familiar dust and the familiar webs, in front of his very eyes, there was a really weird house.
    A long corridor cut in half the ground floor; under his feet laid a rug stained with mold and corroded by time, where, among the curls of dust, he could see a complicated pattern of strange black stick figures, tangled in an arabesque of exotic plants and unknown animals, on the background of a village of huts and fires burning under strange spits.
    The wallpaper was worn out and torn so much that big portions were missing, showing the frame of old wood. The still noticeable spots had a pattern of freaky masks with triangular eyes and pointy fangs.
    The boy considered the above just the eccentricity of some rich guy and went on exploring the other rooms. On one side, a stair with missing steps led to the upper floor, but was so shabby looking that it would have been impossible to climb. On the left a door, or just the frame of it, because the door was long gone, led to a kitchen as odd as the entrance. A bamboo mat, gnawed by the usury and the moths, covered the lower part of the walls; the cabinets, broken and bent, made of a dark wood, were inlaid with leaf motives.
    The table and the chairs were tipped over, crushed and scattered all around, like there had been some kind of violent struggle. And behind a chair, lying on the floor, stuck out something gray and elongated that looked quite convincingly like a bone. What kind of bone he couldn’t tell, but it was enough to make him feel uncomfortable.
    He turned toward another room, from the opposite side of the hallway, the only one that still had a door, the only one that was closed.
    He put his hand on the brass knob, but the door didn’t move. The humidity must have made it swell and stuck. He pushed, but it wasn’t enough. He stopped for a moment, because something grabbed his attention. Like a crawling noise, a subtle hiss coming from the other side of the door. He stepped backward.
    What the hell.
    He took a run-up and hit it with his shoulder. The door gave up with a snap, and the guy lost his balance and fell face to the ground.
    But under his body, instead of the usual shabby and dusty floor, he found something slimy and creeping. The entire surface was covered with worms. Larvae, earthworms, bugs, but also centipedes and cockroaches, a swarm of ravenous creatures that looked like they were chewing on strange masses scattered around the floor.
    The tramp jumped up, like he was on fire, and started hopping and shaking the bugs off.
    He was turning around in order to regain the door, when a sharp whistle froze his blood. It came from above his head. He looked up.
    In the dim light of the incumbent night, the snake-like body was moving sinuous between the ceiling beams. It hissed and slithered toward him rapidly.
    The only thing the tramp was able to see was the long yellow fangs and a black tongue that wrapped around his