Winter time.

As he rounded the abandoned movie theatre, emerging as an island fortress in the paved parking lot sea, the house set back in the woods behind the Foxy crept into view.

The late-night police calls, the emergency trips to the hospital after someone caught bloody Hell in the teeth, the multitude of damage working in red vengeance against a black-inked profit explained weight of the image which flashed into his mind upon first glance of the house. A photograph of the name carved deep into the front porch’s wooden banister. ‘SCUDDER.’

Jay parked by the front lawn. The cool night air kissed his face exiting the vehicle and he looked upon the abode while ambling up a cracked, uneven cement path leading to the doorstep. ‘I’m just going to check on them,’ he thought. It’s important to monitor one’s investments.

Heavy evening blanketed the 2-story’s living walls in palpable silence. Only the peaked roof poked through into a deeply speckled indigo sky scribbled with black tree branches creeping around his renovated structure. Aside from the full Moon’s incandescent silk beaming down to the bottom dweller, the only Light sublimed from vertically rectangular windows, nostrils set into dew-kissed clapboards exhaling the warm yellow glow of inside lamps. The petrified wooden porch slats creaked as he stepped up to the front door resonating to the beat of low wave bass and high-pitched percolating chatter. He knocked on the vibrant wall and waited a drummer’s count. He noted the fresh carvings etched into the wooden railings and not yet weathered or worn by time. ‘SCUDDER’ had faded, but he would never forget that.

A 1; a 2; a 1-2-3-4.

The door swung open slowly wide, revealing Lordi, wearing nothing but a pair of wrinkled boxers, his wiry frame silhouetted against the bright inviting background. His flat stare slapped Jay in the face. Then the lanky leaf dangling on a door handle greeted him in a low monotone, “Whatt’s aHPP, duude?