Last One Standing, part 1

‘Shhh, little gate, don’t make a sound,’ cackles Jim in a wheezy breath as he creeps along. He breaks out into hushed giggles as he the gate, whispering to it like a truant child. ‘Though I why I’m bothering I don’t know, eh? There’s no one around for miles.’
In the darkness, Jim’s face stretches out into a wonky, toothy grin, his old skin creasing up like dry paper as he sees the house ahead of him.
‘Look at you. My word, you’re a sight for sore eyes,’
Walking along the broken path to the house, Jim mutters to himself as memories flood before his eyes, recoiling the times he spent there. Shinning a torch around the ground before him, he sighs heavily, seeing the damage that has ravaged the house over the years.
Against the dark night sky, the house is a wreck; deformed and misshapen, it looms above Jim sinisterly, like a crooked old tower from a dark fairy tale. On the top floor, part of the roof has collapsed, leaving the face of the house disfigured, the room inside exposed to the elements and wildlife. The soot-damaged windows have long since been smashed by vandals, and the outside brickwork is covered in various stages of graffiti, some faded with age, with newer logos and designs painted across it. The back garden around Jim is littered with old bits of rubbish and junk; old smashed bottles, crushed cans, plastic bags, there’s even half a shopping trolley, crumpled and rusted amongst the undergrowth of a hedge.
A car is heard on the street by the house, driving up from a distance. Stiffening at the noise, Jim points the torch down, shining the light away as he hides in the dark. As soon as the car passes, Jim moves. Knowing his way to the door, Jim cups his hand over the torch, dimming the light.
‘God, what a dump’ mumbles Jim.
With one hand on the door handle, Jim braces himself and pushes it sharply. The hinges give way with a crack, corroded from rust. With a smile, Jim creeps into the house, twirling the torch in his hands smugly.
‘Look at this. Old Larry’s house, open and inviting. I bet he’s rolling in his grave right now at the thought of it. Serves him right.’
Muttering darkly, Jim walks into the ruined house, creeping in through the shadows.
‘I know you’ve hidden the money somewhere round here, Larry. You watch and wait; I’ll find it, don’t you worry.’
Pointing the torch around, Jim scans the kitchen, seeing the burnt and charred remains of the room, the broken cupboards hanging off the wall on rusted hinges, waiting drearily for the day they finally fall to the ground. Shinning the torch over the empty cupboards, Jim turns around, kicking the junk away from the doorway.
‘Well, it ain’t in here, that’s for sure,’ said Jim with a giggle. ‘I bet you thought I’d never find out about it, huh Larry? Well I did. Desmond let it slip after he got locked up for burning this place down. I always did wonder why he turned against you, and now I know. I know all about you and your secret stash, oh yes. About how you’d been helping yourself to our takings, cutting out a fourth portion, storing it up for yourself like a squirrel. I know all about your stash, Larry, and I’m going to find it.’
Talking to himself in the empty wreck of the house, Jim makes his way slowly through the hallway, taking a quick peek into the living room as he passes. Seeing nothing but the burnt skeletal remains of a three-piece suite and the charred tatters of a pair of curtains, Jim turns towards the stairs.
‘If I remember rightly,’ said Jim slowly, shining the beam of light around the floor and walls, ‘You kept everything upstairs, in that room you customised, right? You’d hollow out sections of the walls, make a trick panel or two, and hide things there. That’s why the police never caught up with you; they were too busy searching behind paintings or inside old vases, like some old detective novel.’ Jim scoffs for a second as he climbs the stairs, wheezing slightly with the effort. ‘As if you were that stupid. You always did outsmart them, but you never thought about me, did you? I’ve worked you out, you sly dog.’
Smiling, Jim sneaks upstairs, his joints and bones creaking as much as the charred floorboards. His movements are slow as he climbs, unlike the days when he’d come and go without sound, blending into the shadows like smoke. Jim was too old to cope in a house that could change in a second, but he didn’t think about that. He only had thoughts for Larry’s secret stash and how he would spend it; lying on palm beaches with flowing blue tides; calling for waitresses in bikinis, handing him tall cool glasses of beer.
Reaching the landing, Jim stops, catching his breath. The small beam of light from his torch seems impossibly small as he shone it against the thick darkness of the ruined house.
‘This house is getting as old as me,’ wheezed Jim as pieces of rubble and soot shift and tumble through the cracks in the floorboards beneath his feet.
‘Oops,’ said Jim as a splinter of wood breaks off the remains of the banister at Jim’s touch, a warning of his fragile surroundings. ‘Easy now Jim... Don’t rush these things. You’ve waited a long time for this; you can afford to take your time.’
As Jim mutters, his free hand unconsciously reaches for the banister beside him. Whirling the torch around, Jim stops suddenly, doubling back to a patch of the wall in shock.
‘Unbelievable,’ he mutters.
In front of him is part of the landing wall, still with its original wallpaper. Despite being burnt around the edges and stained from smoke, the wall has survived all that has been thrown at it, only for a group of vandals to scrawl across it. Covered in spray paint and marker pen, even gouged into the plaster in parts, is a range of messages, most of them expletives or gang memorabilia, all of it in total disregard of the house that was once a home to someone. Staring at the mural in silence, Jim’s feelings of unease vanish.
‘Some people have no respect.’ grumbles Jim angrily.
Staring at the wall in silence, Jim makes his mind up.
‘Well that settles it. If some half-cut young fool can run about this house without getting a scratch, then it can hold out for me.’
With a firm footed step Jim lets go of the banister, walking with purpose across the landing. Ignoring the creaking floorboards, Jim walks with purpose, remembering the way from his memories. As he enters a room, a huge grin stretches over his face.
‘Here we are,’ he whispers brightly.
Jim stops by the charred doorframe for a second, casting his eyes over the blackened, fire-damaged walls. He sees the crumbled, charred remains of the furniture and a pile of crushed beer cans, left after the vandals raided the house, claiming it as a perverse castle to do their own mischief in. A rotten pile of soiled blankets rests in one corner, discarded by some desperate squatter who once spent a night or two here.
Shining the torch around, looking over the exposed floorboards and beams, Jim’s eyes rest on the pile of crushed beer cans, rusted and grimy with age.
‘Wasters,’ muttered Jim bitterly. ‘Every last one of them. How dare they treat this place like some soiled cesspit? Still,’ he mused, resting the torch in a crack in the wall, shining it deliberately against the wall opposite him, ‘if they’d have known the treasures in here, they wouldn’t have been wasters for long, oh no.’
Eagerly, Jim walks across the room, ignoring the creaks and groans of the floorboards beneath him, unaware of them shifting as they try to hold his weight after so many years of disuse and neglect. Standing in his own makeshift spotlight, Jim knocks against the wall delicately.
‘And now, ladies and gentlemen,’ he giggles to himself, ‘tonight’s main event...’
Knocking against the wall, Jim hears a dull thud, first here, then there. He keeps knocking delicately until he hears something different; a lighter tone that signals a hollow space behind the wall rather than solid plaster.
‘There you are.’
Grinning, Jim stands in front of the light, his shadow disfiguring him into something monstrous. Sticking out his tongue, Jim gropes the wall, his fingers pushing against the plaster, searching for the catch. The seconds pass into minutes as he fumbles and prods, until something gives, causing a section of the wall beneath Jim’s hands to sink into the wall, revealing a slight depression.
‘Gotcha!’ whispers Jim.
Carefully, digging his grimy fingernails into the edges, Jim prises off the panel, throwing it to the side carelessly.
‘Always the same design, Larry. You never did learn.’
Regardless of fear, now that he had found his prize, Jim thrust his hand into the gap, searching around blindly for his bounty. Groping around, his face contorts in a varying range of snarls and grimaces until his hands find something. Pulling his hand out triumphantly, he staggers back, holding in his hand a wad of fibreglass that has managed to survive the scorching heat as the house burnt.
‘Damn it!’ cries Jim angrily.
Throwing the wad of fibres to the ground, Jim rubs his hand frantically against his trousers as the fibres stick to his skin, making it itch. Annoyed, Jim turns and storms across the room back to his torch.
‘This can’t be happening,’ mutters Jim in an angry blur, ‘it has to be here somewhere. Larry must have hidden it here, this was his room, his hideout; it makes perfect sense. There isn’t anywhere else he’d hide it.’
Ignoring the trembling beneath his feet, Jim goes back to the hole in the wall, leaning in close, shining the torch in as he tries to see. Straining with the effort, Jim can only see a small area inside the wall, and nowhere can he spot a glimpse of the secret stash.
‘Damn it!’ cries Jim again, after minutes of awkward searching and fumbling.
Reaching into the cavity, pushing his arm in as far as he can reach, Jim searches around for Larry’s secret stash. Regardless of the itching hives that break out across his hands, he pulls out more and more fibreglass, coughing as he throws it carelessly out of his way.
‘Come on, where are you?’ mutters Jim as he continues to search fruitlessly.
Storming off, kicking away the static wads of fibreglass around his ankles, Jim heads for the door, determined to carry on his search in another room.
As he storms over the floorboards, muttering curses under his breath, a loud crack is heard, followed by a chorus of cracks. A great ripping sound fills the room as the floor gives way beneath Jim, torn in two. For a split second, Jim hangs suspended in the air, before gravity takes hold of him.
There are no thoughts in Jim’s mind as he falls; there isn’t time for them. All he is aware of is the darkness pressing around him, and a stagnant gust of air as he flies past the wind, bringing up smells of damp earth and festering ash left to decay and rot.
A split second later, Jim falls, not knowing how far or deep he travels, unable to assess distance in the darkness; he could have been falling into the centre of the earth for all he knew, for all the fear that raged inside him. In reality, it barely lasts a second, but in instances of pure fright, time has no measurement; an instant can stretch into a lifetime. With a crunch, Jim falls through the rotten floorboards, before smashing through the floor in the hallway, landing in the cellar underneath the house. Barely conscious, Jim lies in a twisted heap in the forgotten cellar, his body cracking as the debris of the charred house fall on top of him. Like a house of cards when you pull a card from the lower deck, the house around Jim collapses, crumpling and sinking to the ground after him.
There is a high-pitched ringing in Jim’s ears, and dust in his eyes. Tasting blood and soot in his mouth, Jim passes out.