putrefaction - extract

The room was grand but it had seen better days, it’s shabby interior echoing the seedy exploits it had more recently contained. The once red curtains hung faded and patched across the blemished stage, speckles of glitter littered the moist surface, no-one had succeeded in nor even tried to remove them. In the corner of the cavernous hall stood an organ, now the graveyard of a thousand spiders and occasional nesting place of dying pigeons. One such creature burst through a sun-bleached rag barely concealing the broken window beneath. It circled the room manically for a while then, exhausted landed heavily on a disused, leather bound chair. The chair belched a dusty cloud weakly then was silent as the pigeon snatched its’ last rattling breath.
At the far end of the room a door creaked and allowed a slender band of light to penetrate its’ murky depths. It was far from ideal but it would do for now. It was safe.
The children crept, one by one, into the musty tomb looking over their shoulders nervously, fearing what lay ahead and what lay behind. The tallest of the group stepped forward, a dark haired boy of maybe eleven, his blackened face illuminated in the dim band of light. He beckoned them forward and made his way through the maze of chairs. Climbing onto the stage and righting himself he wiped the anonymous grime his hands had acquired onto his already filthy clothes and disappeared behind the curtain. The others waited, eyes flashing, for his return. What felt like hours passed but he returned, he nodded once, it was clear. The children scrabbled feverishly onto the stage, staying in their herd and slowly making their way behind the curtain.
There stood an array of old wooden crates and boxes, fabrics and worthless antiquities spilling over their surfaces. The children grabbed armfuls each and created a den where they settled to sleep. The dark haired boy sat, his hands clasped on his knees and kept watch. His darting eyes witnessing the restless dreams his group experienced.

His eyes snapped open, it felt like he’d only blinked but he must have drifted off. The scene that now greeted his bloodshot eyes was one of devastation. The rotten ceiling caved, the walls disintegrated as though made of chalk, and crack after crack appeared in the mottled stone floor. Gaping mouths that threatened to swallow them whole. The rest of the group milled around in various stages of bleary-eyed panic, waiting for instruction, looking intently at the boy with the blackened face. He was equally clueless but hid it well, he navigated the group through the crumbling building as the earth below gave another shudder. The ground opened further and for a minute they swore they could see into the eyes of hell, Satan himself staring up with a burning malice.