Flesh house

The savage faces carved into the fireplace stared cold-heartedly into the eyes of all those who walked into the room, striking fear into their hearts. The paintings around the walls laughed an infernal, loathsome laugh at the poor souls who wandered in unknowing, but never left.

The local people always talked about the old dilapidated house up on the hill that stank of acrid, burning flesh; a smell that had earned it the name, ‘Flesh house’.

People had lived there, once. A neighbour had found the family two weeks after they had all died, their charred remains sitting in the unmarked, writhing chairs. They weren’t the first.

The floor was flooded with chalk outlines, of the numerous people who had died, even the police, no-one left the house, they all burnt.
The garden with its own cemetery was unnervingly attractive to the local kids, who climbed the tall gates to retrieve footballs, or the bodies of friends, ripped to shreds by the hounds of hell who resided in the shadows of the trees around the house.

The last death had been ten years ago, some brave person had offered to give tours to the naïve tourists, the tour-guide and tourists, just another group of burnt bodies to add to the pile. The police didn’t go in to investigate anymore.

People often reported seeing a malevolent, repulsive face staring out of the upstairs windows, was it a twisted psychopath who enjoyed burning the bodies of people, or was it a spirit, waiting for freedom from the eternal hell of the house.

Once flowers had grown in the garden, once a Victorian family had lived there, it had started with their deaths, and it hadn’t stopped since.
Fifty-seven people had fallen victim to the house, how many more would die before the mystery was solved?