The house on Clover Street.

George Matlock laughed as he skinned the girl.

            He laughed until his sides felt as if they were splitting and tears rolled down his cheeks and dampened the collar of his shirt. Stupid bitch! She’d made it so easy. And now she hung from one of the seven meat hooks suspended from the basement ceiling and begged him to stop. She was as good as dead – no use in stopping now – and that was her fault. She brought it on herself.

            Why don’t people stop to think these days?

            With an acidic shot of laughter, his job done, he slit the young girl’s throat and watched her bleed out onto the plastic sheet meticulously spread out beneath her. Once she was empty, he uncoupled her, dragged her into the corner of the dimly lit room. A moment later he tossed her skinless carcase into the well.

            He stood there a long while, smiling. The smell of so many rotten bodies curdled his stomach. For a long while he thought he would puke, but he didn't. Beneath him, the rancid soup s glistened in the half light. A moment later, and almost as if by magic, the single bulb burning above his head went out.

            He spun on his heels; blind.

            “Who’s there?” He asked. “I know someone’s there. Whoever you are, turn the lights back on.”

            But ... but how could anyone be there? He was alone. Nobody knew about the house on Clover Street, he'd made sure of that.

            “Hello, hello,” the voice said. It was wet and watery. “I’m afraid I can’t turn the lights back on,” the voice said coolly. “It hurts my eyes. I don’t like the light. I hope you don’t mind?”

            “Turn it back on!”

            “I can’t do that.” The bodiless voice laughed and sent a sharp lance of horror through him.

            “Who are you?”

            There was another bout of laughter. “You don’t know me, but I know you. Isn’t that the way it works, George? Or maybe you’ve done this so many times you’ve simply forgotten who is who. I was the first one, I think. The first of many.”

            Panicked, George continued to spin on his heels, hoping that he would be able to pick out even the slightest form out of the dark. “Get out of here,” he screamed. “I won’t tell you again.”

            “You still think you’re in charge, I see. Funny.”

            George yelped as something nipped and tugged on his legs. There was a moment of bright and lucid pain, and then it was gone. The sensation came back a moment later, this time on his upper thighs ... then his forearms ... then his upper arms. He yelped like a wounded puppy.

            The bodiless voice laughed.

            Now, footsteps. They shuffled around him in the dark, bringing more pain with each and every turn.

            He screamed.

            George Matlock screamed and screamed and screamed as the thing in the darkness undid him.

            George begged, George wept, and George cajoled.

            The darkness – no, what hid in the darkness – crippled him. It was littering his body with a hundred cuts, severing tendons and chipping bone until he couldn’t stand. Eventually, he fell to the ground and lay there for a long time.

            The thing in the dark laughed again as it seized his ankles and proceeded to haul his reluctant body through the dark; across the slick concrete floor. That was when he felt the ground disappear beneath him. The moment he felt himself fall through the air and career into the soup filled well.

            The soup splashed into George’s nose and mouth, forcing him to gag on the sour potage, and burnt each of the hundreds of cuts and gouges on his body. Oh, God, the pain.

            He floated there a long while, listening to the quiet, waiting for the watery voice to speak again, when he felt something sharp beneath the surface claw at him.

            Suddenly there was an earsplitting screech and George Matlock was pulled beneath the surface and devoured.