The Correct Way to Use Your Friends

           Luis smacked the mosquito that was trying to make a meal of him. He hadn’t thought he’d be spending his night as a buffet.

           The five teenagers trudged up the secluded driveway to the old plantation house, the lights from the large windows guiding them in the murky night.

           “Thanks again for carrying my duffel, Nick,” Luis said.

           “Yeah, no prob,” the wall of a football player said, and adjusted the two duffel bags strapped to his back.

           And it really was no problem for the big lug. Luis smiled to himself.

           Rupert turned in the dark. Surely to give Luis another glare. “Typical you don’t carry your share.”

           “Now come on, Rupert,” Arthur said, from the head of the group. “It isn’t Luis’ fault that he hurt his shoulder at practice.”

           “Very convenient,” Rupert said quietly.

           That was the beauty about Arthur. He always believed whatever Luis said. He just had to spin some yarn about being sore from tennis practice and Luis could get out of anything.

           It wasn’t like Luis was the one that had gotten them into this anyway. He side-eyed Christian. He was useful when he did Luis’ homework, but it was his fault they were wasting time here. His mom had all these books to deliver to his uncle. Arthur had volunteered them to lug the duffel bags full of them. Christian was always Arthur’s charity case.

           The was the annoying thing about Arthur.

 “Christian, your uncle better appreciate this. Your mom, too. We’re wasting a Friday night,” Luis said.

           “Th-they appreciate it,” Christian said. The little nerd was never any good at talking to people.

           “Come on,” Arthur said. “We gotta help each other. Just because you never need our help doesn’t mean we wouldn’t do the same for you, Luis.”

           “Oh, Luis would offload something onto us at the first opportunity,” Rupert said.

           Of all the baffling things Arthur did, why he had Rupert in the group was beyond Luis. Of course, Luis was useless, too, but unlike him, Rupert didn’t hide it.

           Rupert was in the middle of throwing another barb as he set his foot on the first board of the porch’s staircase. The groan of age echoed through the night air, as if it reverberated in the very air. It was as if the house itself was crying out in pain.

           “Jesus,” Luis said. “Your uncle’s house is old as hell.”

           “Yeah, it-it was built when he, er, um, the family came over from R-Romania. Like a hundred years ago, um, give or, um, t-take.”

           Luis’ fist balled. Christian’s voice was always so grating.

           The house protested less as the remaining boys ascended the stairs. That same first board was nowhere near as loud with subsequent people, even when Nick the powerhouse stepped on it. Weird. But it wasn’t like Luis knew anything about how old-ass houses settled.

           Christian produced an ancient-looking key to unlock the door, and the boys crossed the house’s threshold. The foyer of the massive house wasn’t much brighter than it was outside. A dull, overhead light flickered intermittently over the planked floor.

           “Your uncle’s place is creepy,” Nick said.

           Luis noticed Nick was bringing up the rear.

           “Nick, that’s rude,” Arthur said.

           “Un-Uncle Numara?” Christian weakly called out.

           “Isn’t your uncle really old?” Arthur asked. “Probably need to be louder.” He took an inhale to yell for himself.

           “Ah…Christian.”

           Luis felt his skin crawl. The voice came from the top of the central stairwell. But it also sounded like it came from the…left hallway? Right? It was hard to tell.

           At the top of the stairs, an old, hunched man sat in a crude, wooden wheelchair. Whatever hair he had left was largely unkempt. A plaid blanket covered his legs. His arm jerked to point at the boys.

           As his uncle spoke, he didn’t seem to directly look at them.

           “These must be…the friends you’ve told me about…Christian” the uncle said in a raspy voice that seemed like it echoed through the entire house despite its languidness.

           “Y-yes…” Christian said meekly.

           “Good to meet you Mr. Carmine,” Arthur said, and hefted the duffel bag hanging at his side. “We brought the books your sister had for you.”

           “Thank you. I have few…luxuries left to me in my age,” Numara said. “All I can do is sharpen…the mind.”

           Luis thought there wasn’t much left to sharpen.

           “Christian, show them to the library,” Numara continued. “I’m afraid…I must go eat. I’m positively…famished.”

           “Y-yes Uncle,” Christian said. The poor sap didn’t even make eye contact. He just led the group down a hallway to the left of the stairs.

           As Luis was leaving the foyer, he passed a last glance at Christian’s uncle. The decrepit codger didn’t seem to be moving.

           When they got to the spacious library, they went to work finding space on the shelves for all the new tomes. Nick and Arthur went right to work.

           Rupert plopped down on an old, cushioned reading chair. The wood seemed like it’d give away as he did.

           “Not gonna help?” Luis chided.

           Rupert glared. “Unlike you, I actually had to carry something here.”

           “You seem to be the only one bothered by it,” Luis said. “As usual.”

           “Because unlike you, I can feel shame,” Rupert said. “And I mind when someone doesn’t pull their weight, even if Arthur doesn’t.”

           “Good old Arthur,” Luis said.

           “Too good to recognize a leech.”

           “Big talk for someone who also doesn’t bring anything to the table.”

           Rupert shook his head. “You really don’t understand Arthur.”

           “I don’t need to understand any of you,” Luis said as he walked off. Rupert was the only person who came close to getting under his skin. But it was a small price to pay. Someone who’d always had friends would never understand him. High school was torture, but it’d been so much easier after he’d scammed Arthur into joining his friend group.

           As he made a show of putting a book on the shelf, the word “leech” kept creeping into his thoughts. It didn’t matter. Rupert could call him whatever he wanted. It was still paradise here compared to before. The lonely lunches, the lack of motivation to do schoolwork, being one of the last to be picked in gym, sitting bored at his dad’s apartment on weekends, the pain of hearing other peoples’ laughter.

           He wouldn’t go back to that. So he’d use Arthur and his friends as long as he could. They’d eventually realize he had nothing to add and cast him aside. Until then, he’d milk this.

           “Just put them in that cupboard,” Arthur said.

           Luis looked back to see Nick opening the cupboard doors to-.

           “Whoah, look out!” Rupert shouted as he leapt from his chair.

           Luis jumped to his feet as he saw the cupboard lean forward. It happened so fast that Nick was under it in a flash.

           “Nick!” Arthur dropped his books on the floor and knelt by the fallen cupboard. He clasped the other side to lift it, but he strained from its weight. “Luis! Help me with this.”

           “But Nick is…” He usually had Nick do any kind of physical labor. Luis wasn’t out of shape or anything, but he was just a subpar tennis player.

           Rupert ran over from the corner and rounded the opposite side of the cupboard from Arthur and contributed to the lifting effort. Eventually they got the cupboard standing up again, but Luis gasped when he could see under it.

           Nick was gone.

           There was nothing on the floor or in the cupboard to indicate Nick had ever been there.

           “What the hell?” Luis said.

           They all stood there in silence for a second until Arthur looked around. “Where’s Christian?”

           “Who cares?” Luis asked. “What happened to Nick?”

           “I don’t know, maybe there’s some…trap door he fell through or something. Christian’s uncle would know,” Arthur said.

           “A trap door?” Rupert asked. He pointed at the faded red rug. “The carpet hasn’t moved. And…” He leaned down and peeled the rug up, to show an undisturbed plank floor underneath.

           “Well something happened,” Arthur said.

           “Of course something fucking happened!” Luis yelled.

           “Let’s just…find Christian,” Arthur said. “Maybe him or his uncle know something…”

           The three boys awkwardly shuffled out of the library. Luis knew all of them were having trouble reconciling what had happened.

           “Oh, there’s Christian’s uncle,” Arthur said.

           At the end of the dark hallway, Christian’s uncle sat there in his wheelchair, unmoving.

           “Mr. Carmine,” Arthur began as he walked toward him. “Sir, something weird happened to our friend. He…”

           In a flash, Christian’s uncle leapt down the hallway from the wheelchair with his arms stretched out. It was almost like a marionette jerked forward by its strings. He collided with Arthur, knocking him down. Arthur screamed to high heaven, but he was able to knock the old man off him with relative ease. The ancient assailant fell in a heap at the side of the hallway.

           Luis nervously took a step forward and nudged Christian’s uncle with his toe. He didn’t react at all.

           “Dude, what the hell?” Rupert leaned in and pulled the man’s unresponsive arm up. A big chunk of wood was jutting out of his elbow. But there was no blood or anything. His skin was like a torn sheet of paper.

           Their attention on the pile of old man was broken by a whacking sound behind them.

           Luis and Rupert turned to see Christian, holding a large wood block, standing over an unconscious Arthur.

           “S-sorry guys,” Christian muttered.

           And before Luis or Rupert could do anything, the boards below Christian and Arthur silently split open, and they both fell through. The large, jagged hole remained.

           Luis realized he was about ready to fall over and caught himself on a small table at the side of the hall.

           But Rupert was moving toward the hole, one leg already swung down in. “Come on, we gotta go after them.”

           “Are you crazy?” Luis said, knowing his voice was cracking.

           “Luis, they’re going to get killed,” Rupert said. “Arthur’s going to get killed.”

           “And? The fuck are we going to do? Christian’s uncle just did an Exorcist on us. And Christian just took Arthur through a funhouse floor, or something. And who knows where Nick is.”

           “Look, I’m scared, too, but we’ve got to do something.”

           “You’re crazy,” Luis said. He turned and started toward the entryway.

           “Are you serious? I know I give you crap all the time, but you can’t act like a coward right now.”

           “Shut up.”

           “They could die.”

           “We’re useless!” Luis shouted. His palm hurt as he gripped his hand. “We aren’t useful to any of them day-to-day. What are we supposed to do here?”

           “So we just let them die?”

           Luis continued toward the entryway.

           “Selfish ass.”

           Then Luis heard him drop into the hole.

           He didn’t understand. Rupert was a pain in the ass, but he wasn’t dumb enough to not realize how useless he was going to be. Suicidal, that’s what it was.

           Luis kept walking toward the foyer. He’d just need to slide into someone else’s friend group. It didn’t matter who it was, after all. They were just a means to an end. A survival tool.

           He was a piece of shit. That was why he’d never have real friends, he knew that.

           All those times Nick forced him to help practice for football. All those times Arthur dragged him around to all those parties. That one time he and Rupert had been the only ones to enjoy a movie they’d went to.

           He’d never have had those moments if he hadn’t tricked them into joining their friend group.

           All those moments.

           “Oh my god,” he whispered.

           Before he realized it had happened, he had jumped into the hole.

           He thought there would be some sort of sheer drop, but in the darkness of the pit, his velocity became erratic. Unnatural. He fell down, then to the side, then up, then down again. At some point, something grabbed his ankle and dragged him.

           Eventually he tumbled onto a floor of dirt, a good amount of it getting in his mouth. The memory of the ankle grab on his way down jolted him to stand up. It looked like he was in some small underground cavern, surrounded by walls of dirt. The ceiling was covered by the same planks as the house’s floor.

           Arthur and Nick were being suspended from the ceiling with a wide variety of electrical cords wrapped around them.

           In front of them, Christian was wrestling Rupert to the ground. Christian lifted his wooden block over his head.

           Luis shuffled his feet to find purchase, then leapt forward. Christian saw him, and gave a shocked expression. Luis tackled him with all the strength a mediocre tennis player could muster, and the two tumbled end-over-end across the dirt.

           “You w-were supposed to r-run, Luis!” Christian huffed.

           “Holy shit,” Rupert said from behind.

           Luis held down Christian’s arms. The wooden block had fallen to his side during the scuffle. “What the fuck is going on Christian?”

           “The pathetic boy is but my tool,” a voice reverberated through the space.

           Luis frantically looked around. He knew that voice, even though it sounded stronger now. But they’d left Christian’s uncle in the hallway above…

           “My former vessel is not here you buffoon.” The planks above them suddenly began to move, and snapped boards began to angle toward him. “You have been snared within my jaw from the moment you entered this abode.”

           “Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit,” Luis repeated.

           “Christian, is your uncle…” Rupert started.

           More cords shot out from between the ceiling planks. Luis grabbed Christian’s wooden block, but before he could swat the cords away, he felt them wrap around his waist and jerk him upward. They bit into his skin, and it became hard to breathe.

           The cords shot toward Rupert, but he managed to avoid the initial volley, and ran toward their hanging friends. He gripped the cords entangling Nick.

           “Nick!” Rupert started slapping their friend’s face. “Wake up!”

           Nick jolted awake. “Whuh-?”

           “If you don’t get out of these cords, we’re going to die!”

           Luis had always thought Nick’s simpleminded nature was a detriment, but in that moment, even with how disoriented he probably was, he immediately listened to Rupert and lifted his arms against the incredible tautness of his serpentine restraints. He got his arms free and grabbed the cords suspending him. With his massive bulk, and with Rupert’s help, they pulled and brought him back down to earth. With some footing, Nick began to pull even harder.

           The entire structure violently shook. The reverberations caused Luis to feel like he was going to burst.

           “I will consume blood, bones, and soul!”

           But Nick kept pulling, and eventually the cords pulled something through the ceiling planks that was like a big ball of flesh. Blood and ooze secreted all over the grotto.

           Rupert jumped off and pulled Arthur closer to Nick. As Rupert undid his ties, Nick grabbed his cords as well, and pulled harder.

           “Stop!” Christian tackled Nick, but the little nerd was so weak that Nick didn’t even budge.

           “Useless spawn,” the house echoed.

           Suddenly Luis felt himself pulled toward the fleshy ball so fast he almost got whiplash.

           “You will replenish my strength.”

           A fleshy maw opened in the grotesque sphere, and Luis could see what looked like a desiccated, shriveled heart.

           Luis couldn’t hear himself screaming through the vibrations. Wet, slick flesh closed in around him. But there was still enough room for him to swing the wooden block he clutched. In an instinctive flailing, Luis brought the block down hard on the malformed heart.

           As the heart was squashed, the reverberations somehow grew even stronger, like they were at the epicenter of an earthquake. Luis felt the sensation of freefall before thudding onto the ground, still entangled in the fleshy sphere.

           “Luis!”

           Rupert pulled Luis out of the ball by his armpits, then undid the cord around Luis’ waist. Somehow, the makeup of the grotto had changed drastically in the short time he’d been in there. The planks had collapsed all around them. If it weren’t for the opening Nick had made, they might have been crushed.

           “Come on!”

           Nick had made his way up a makeshift ramp of planks that had only partially collapsed into the underground area. He cradled Arthur under one of his arms. Luis got to his feet and ran up it alongside Rupert.

           Before Luis crested the top of the ramp, he looked back to see the weakened, fleshy ball shoot out more cords that tied around Christian. He clawed the dirt as he was pulled toward it, but his screams were drowned out by the house’s roar.

           Luis looked away and ran.

           The escape from the house was a blur. Despite carrying Arthur, Nick ran ahead of them the whole time. For the duration of their flight, the house wailed.

           Even when they fled beyond the entryway, the teenagers didn’t stop moving until they were well into the surrounding forest.

           Eventually Luis and Rupert collapsed. When they did, Nick placed Arthur down and took a seat on a stump.

           “I’ll never give you shit again,” Rupert panted.

           “It’s fine,” Luis said. “This is the only thing I can contribute, I guess.”

           “Why do you think I gave you crap?” Rupert asked. “It’s because you think being friends is some kinda exchange of services or something.”

           “But why would Arthur keep me around if I’m so useless?”

           Rupert clasped Luis’ shoulder. “Because the only thing you need in a friend is to like the guy.”

           For some reason it felt like someone had taken something heavy off Luis’ body. It was still the dark of night, but for some reason it felt so bright with Rupert, Nick, and Arthur there.