Henry woke up in his bed, as per usual upon returning from the other world. "I suddenly have a craving for barbecue," he said, but then he thought about what he'd just said. "Actually, I don't think I'll be eating barbecue for a while yet," he amended as he stood up and headed for his desk to file away the DIY manual fragment in his scrapbook. Then he headed out the door.

When he got to the living room, the radio was broadcasting again. "We have some 'hot' news to report…" the anchorwoman said, then laughed at her own dumb-ass comment. "Anyway… In a forest near Quiet Hill, the fried-crispy corpse of a 30-year-old male was discovered earlier today. The cops have ruled it as a homicide for some reason and are investigating." Henry began to wonder as he listened to the broadcast.

"Nah, it's gotta be a coincidence," he said, waving it off. "I'll bet orphanages burn down all the time in Quiet Hill."

"The numbers 17121 were reportedly printed on the man's body," the anchorwoman added.

"I stand corrected," Henry shrugged, and the broadcast continued.

"Due to the marks on the victim, the cops are investigating possible links to the Walter Donovan case one decade…wait a minute, I'm sorry, actually, it was ten years ago…"

Suddenly, there was a knock at the door. "Hark!" Henry said as he pointed to the ceiling. "There's somebody at the door!" After announcing the blatantly obvious, he went over to the door and smashed his face against it as he peered through the peephole. It was Frank Scanderlund, the very man he wanted to see.

"This is the superintendent!" Frank yelled. "Henry! I know you're in there! Come out with your wallet open!"

"Help me!" Henry yelled back, pounding against his side of the door. "There's something wrong with this room! You are so lowering my rent for this, Scanderlund!"

Frank didn't hear him. "Henry! Don't think you can get out of paying the rent!" he yelled again. Then he turned away from the door and, after shooting a paranoid glance back over his shoulder at the door, proceeded to manipulate something that made a metallic clinking noise. When he turned back around, he had keys in his hand and inserted the one he'd selected into the lock. After rattling the lock a few times, Scanderlund gave it up. "That's strange…" he said. "It's the right key." He seemed to take a moment to consider something. "Skinflint musta had the lock changed on me somehow," he muttered as he turned to face down the hallway. "Call the locksmith!" he then shouted.

"Call the locksmith!" a voice further down the hall repeated.

"Call the locksmith!" a voice even further down the hall continued the message, and so on. Then, Scanderlund looked back at the door.

"I coulda sworn I heard something in there," he said. "Yeah, that sound… It's the same one as back then." He paused for a moment, appearing to give the matter some thought. "Eh, must be termites," he shrugged and started back down the hall. It was then that Henry saw a seventeenth handprint had been added to the collection on the wall in the corridor. He dismissed it for the moment as he made his way to the bathroom.

When he got there, he saw the Hole had grown yet again. "Those termites are gonna eat me out of house and home!" he said as he took up his pipe. "Of course, in my situation, that might prove to be a good thing," he added as he crawled into the Hole.

--------------------

He had the yucky taste of mildew in his mouth when he woke up, and he saw the reason why when he opened his eyes. He was sprawled face-down on a damp concrete floor that had long since succumbed to the annoying fungal growth that was many a homeowner's bane. "Ptooey!" he spat, trying to get that awful taste out of his mouth as he stood up and looked around. He found himself now standing in a corridor with a perpetual curve to it, probably leading around in a circle. The only sound was that of the incessant dripping of water, which he attributed to lousy plumbing.

"Get me out of here!" Okay, yeah, there was that obnoxiously whiny voice crying for help, too. "Get me out…! Get me out of here…! Help…! Get me the hell out of here…!"

"YOU SHUTS DA HELL UP!" Henry yelled back at the top of his lungs, and then the only sound was that of the dripping water.

"Help! Help!" the voice continued after a moment's pause. "Get me out of here!" Henry immediately sought out the source of the noise to put an end to it post haste. He found it behind one of the many iron doors evenly spaced about the inner wall of the corridor. It was a balding fat guy who was about as damp as the floor with sweat.

"Whatcha in for?" Henry said, leaning up against the wall by the door as he looked in through the barred window. The man just wedged his face between the bars.

"He's…he's gonna kill me!" he rasped. "Walter's gonna kill me! He…he's gonna kill me!"

"Oh, death row, huh?" Henry said. "Well, wha'dya want me to do about it?" The man sighed.

"You're kinda slow, aren't ya?" he said. "Maybe if I started YELLING IT AT THE TOP OF MY LUNGS! HOW'S THAT FOR YA, HUH!" Henry held his hand over his ear, trying to ease it of the pain from being bombarded by such a loud volume of noise. "Now get me the hell out of here!"

"WHAT!" Henry said. The fat guy just reached out the window and gestured at the doorknob. "Oh, okay," Henry said as he gripped the handle on the door. As was probably to be expected, the door wouldn't open. "Well, sucks to be you," Henry shrugged in resignation.

"Awww…!" the fat guy whined.

"Look on the bright side," Henry offered. "Even if we did get the door open, I doubt you'd be able to get out anyway."

"What's that supposed to mean!" the fat man demanded.

"Well, think about it," Henry said. "The way I see it, you'd probably get stuck in the door."

"Oh is that so!" the fat guy sneered. "Well, how do ya think I got in here to begin with!" Henry just shrugged.

"I'd think they built the place up around you," he said.

"Built the…!" the fat man spluttered. "Why don't you shut up and do something, already!"

"Right, just wait here," Henry said as he started off. "Don't go anywhere!" he taunted.

"Yeah, very funny!" the fat man snarled, but Henry paid no attention as he headed down the corridor. "Hey, wait! Come back!" the man yelled. "You can't just leave me in here!" He started to bawl hysterically in frustration.

"Quit blubbering!" Henry yelled. "I'll get you out, already!" And with that, he made his way down the corridor. He tried out the doors to the other cells as he went along, deciding it wouldn't hurt to explore and, in so doing, waste as much time as he could get away with in getting the guy out. He could just tell him he got lost, or something.

As he went along, he found a piece of paper with writing on it sitting on the floor.

Whoop dee doo! I finally got out of that cell. Instead of doing the smart thing and escaping from this hellhole, I decided to explore and run the risk getting caught and severely punished.

The scariest place was the 1st floor basement. There's a kitchen in the northeast, but that's not the scary part. The scary part is the door in the northwest, because it leads to…The Death Chamber! Dun, dun, dunnn! To get in there, you have to punch in the right numbers, because it's not enough to just press them. I don't know the numbers, and it was too dark to see the panel, but given the simplicity of the uniform arrangement for all numerical keypads, the latter shouldn't have been a problem to go by touch alone. Anyway, I didn't go in.

Henry, having started to pick up the habits of a packrat since starting through these wacky worlds, stuffed the note into his shirt and went about exploring the cells. Each cell was uniform in design – wedge shaped with a bed and toilet on one side and a desk and seat on the other, along with the door in the outer wall and a small porthole set high in the back. One cell had what looked like a noose hanging from the ceiling above the bed, and on the desk was a note.

Hasn't anyone around here ever heard of privacy?

That was it. Henry turned the page and found an interesting poem about dead men swinging in a tree and the various crimes for which they were hanged. Nothing all that great, but still, he decided to see if he couldn't put it to some music as he continued exploring the other cells. He decided on a tune with a reggae style.

"Dead men, dead men!

Swingin' in a tree, swingin' in a tree,

how many do you see?

Dead men, dead men!"

Well, now he had the tune stuck in his head, and for some reason he couldn't fathom, it reminded him of police car dash cam footage. Anyway, he'd have to put up with it as he went about his business.

Another cell had these weird flatworm-looking things inching their way along the floor and walls. He thought it would be fun to whack them with his pipe, but no matter how hard he concentrated, he just couldn't manage to lock onto them for some reason, so he left. Another cell had some red graffiti on the wall.

I'm being peeped at from the middle room.

A shadow suddenly fell upon the room, and Henry turned to look at the peephole. The strange shadow soon passed, but that wasn't nearly as strange as when he looked back at the graffiti, for it had changed.

Told ya.

Henry decided he'd just about had it for that floor and decided it was time to be on his way.

He passed through a set of double doors in the outer wall of the corridor and found himself in a room with normal architecture. That is to say, it was rectangular. There were doors set into the walls on either side and a Hole on the far wall. Next to the Hole was a note.

To get to the voyeur's rooms in the middle of this dump, you have to use the dump chutes in the cells. However, on the 1st and 2nd floors, the cells are all locked so the kiddies wouldn't discover them. Ain't we sneaky?

Anyway, you have to get to the 1st floor from one of the cells on the 3rd floor. I know how to do it, but it's a real pain in the ass. And the lights only work on the 3rd floor. It kinda makes me wonder how many building construction codes this place violates.

"I was right," Henry said, noting the part about kids, "they grew up to be juvenile delinquents. Why else would they be sent here?" After not receiving an answer to his question, he just stuffed the note into his pocket for reference and went on his way.

He attempted to pass through one of the side doors, but found it to be locked, so he passed through the ones directly opposite and, after beating down a few Stick Ninja, descended a spiral ramp. On the way, he came across a big, honkin' horse pill lying on the ground. Henry picked it up and noted it to be a large Tylenol tablet. "This is exactly what I need!" he said as he pocketed the find before continuing his journey downward.

When he passed through the door at the bottom, he found himself in a large room with a huge waterwheel in the center. "No wonder the lights only work on one floor," Henry said. "Equipment thiscrappy would be prone to brownouts." He continued to wander aimlessly about the room until he came across a rusty sign.

To turn on the lights on the 3rd floor cells, turn this waterwheel. In case you're dense as lead, just remember that the water must flow in the direction of the waterwheel. But first, you gotta open the sluice gate on the roof.

Henry pondered that message for a moment. "What's a sluice?" he wondered aloud. He just shrugged and took the key by the sign. Then, deciding the sign would look good in his scrapbook, he yanked it from its signpost and stuffed it into his pocket.

Unfortunately, the noise produced by this act woke up a nearby swarm of Nail Bats, and we all know how irritable they are when woken up. They immediately proceeded to swarm around Henry at insane speeds, looking like electrons in orbit around a nucleus, which was played by Henry as he swung his pipe around at equally insane speeds in a repeatedly failed attempt to smack the Nail Bats away.

After a moment of this swarming and thrashing around, the Nail Bats broke off their air strike and hovered together just beyond the reach of Henry's pipe where they just watched him, as if in silent mockery of how he was so utterly oblivious that he didn't even notice their absence as he continued his speed-swinging frenzy. After a moment of watching the results of their handiwork, the Nail Bats converged once again on Henry and continued to annoy him by playing the electrons to his nucleus.

After another moment of these shenanigans, Henry finally ran out of breath and stopped swinging to gasp for much-needed air while the Nail Bats continued swarming. Then, realizing after a moment that they'd worn him out, the Nail Bats retreated back to wherever it was that they came from because, let's face it – harassing someone's no fun unless they give you a negative reaction. Of course, this went completely over Henry's head. "Hah! Guess I showed you!" he gloated as he went on his way. But before heading back upstairs, he decided to see what was beyond that door for the sake of being thorough.

The first thing he saw when he passed through the door was the generator. How that waterwheel was supposed to get this thing up to enough RPMs to provide this place with power was beyond him, and not just because he had no clue as to how the principles of electricity and conduction and stuff were supposed to work. He passed around the generator and took note of just how large the room was. At the far (and by far, I mean far) end, there was a door with those crop circles on it. And this door was quite large. "Wow!" he said, tilting his head back to look up at it. "It's huge! It's massive! It's downright unnecessary." He tried to reach the doorknob, but he was just too short. He decided it was just as well, for he didn't really feel like seeing what would necessitate a door of such a size. Odds were that it would step on him and leave a vaguely human-shaped smoosh print. That thought didn't particularly appeal to him, so he left and headed back upstairs, where he put his newly acquired key to use on the locked doors he'd tried earlier.

He found himself standing outside the building on a metal walkway spiraling around the outside wall. Henry followed it up to the second level and decided to search the whole place in hopes of finding something with which he might be able to maim or otherwise inflict bodily harm on any more of the stupid-looking thingies he might come across. Unfortunately, all he found were more stupid-looking thingies in the form of large, mushroom-like objects that did little more than annoy him by just standing there, impeding his progress and making yucky noises as they swayed back and forth. He noted that all of them had faces with various comical expressions drawn in marker on their rounded caps. "What the hell are these things…?" he wondered, prodding one of the Mushroom Heads with his pipe. It burst at the slightest touch, scattering a fine dust in the air that tickled Henry's nose and stung his eyes. "Argh! Pepper spray!" he yelled as he then began to sneeze uncontrollably.

Then, he suddenly felt something heavy fall on top of his head. When he reached up to lift it off, he felt it was slimy and pulsing in his hand. He looked at it and noted it to be a large, bluish, slug-like creature reminiscent of a small Graboid. "Eaygh!" he screamed, flinging the Graboidite into the air as he tossed his hands up in panic and charged through the group of Mushroom Heads. They all exploded in his wake, coating him with their evil powder of histamine irritancy, which caused his skin to itch. He scratched so furiously that he ended up depleting his own lifebar by about half. "Damned accursed powder from Hell!" he yelled as he went about exploring the rest of that level.

One of the cells he noticed was filled with bottles. He had initially been thrilled and immediately flung the door open to charge inside, but his hopes for getting any alcohol were soon crushed upon finding nothing fermented in the bottles. Another cell had nothing but laundry hanging out to dry, and a note hanging on the wall.

Dammit! I pissed myself! Maybe nobody will notice the obscene yellow stain as long as it's dry.

WTF! A shadow! I think somebody saw me! AND I'M NOT IN MY CLOTHES!

Henry vaguely wondered if the inmate responsible for this one didn't belong in a psychiatric ward instead of this prison as he made his way out to continue exploring.

There was one other cell that would open on that floor, and inside, there was an open notebook on the desk.

I've been keeping tabs on the voyeur's room peephole, and sometimes he's there. I can tell, 'cuz I see a shadow move or hear his footsteps. I gots da madd deduction skillz, yo.

That was all there was for that floor, so Henry made his way back out to the hall with his Whiffy-smacking pipe of doom held ready in case any more Mushroom Heads should dare try to impede his progress. Unfortunately, he had dismissed the Graboidites as inconsequential until he absently stepped on one, which somehow sent pain penetrating through the sole of his boot and shooting up into his foot as the slug-like creature splattered in a mess of strawberry jam on the floor. This pissed Henry off immensely, so he made sure to swat down and crush underfoot every Graboidite he came across. Somehow, it didn't hurt when he stomped on them, which was essentially the same as just stepping on them. He decided not to think about it too hard as he went on his way.

He decided to forego the third floor for the moment and headed back to the Hole on the first floor, for he was pretty roughed up (thanks to himself) and needed to go back for a quick pick-me-up. Or pick-him-up, or whatever…

--------------------

Upon waking, Henry got out of bed and headed out for the main room, where he noticed the TV was broadcasting static. "Uh-oh," he said. "I hope this doesn't have anything to do with that unlabeled video I watched a week ago… Or that phone call I got immediately afterward…" Perturbed, he turned away and noticed another note had been slid beneath his door, which he took up and read.

I'm freakin' out, man! I've been through a lot of crap in my life, but I've never been this scared before. Not since that time I was forced to watch Teletubbies.

In case something happens to me (as in, I DIE!) I've decided to write down what I've learned for whoever you are that's living in the apartment now, ya poor sap!

I've been investigating a mass murder that took place seven years ago in which ten people were killed in ten days. That's an average of one per day, in case you're wondering. They were killed in a variety of rather unimaginative ways, but one thing they had in common was that each corpse had the following numbers, in order of their deaths, printed on them:

01121, 02121, 03121, 04121, 05121, 06121, 07121, 08121, 09121, 10121… The name of their killer… it was printed (handwritten, actually) as well…

His name was…Walter Donovan.

April 4

After reading through the information, he went to his bedroom and filed it and the notes and sign from the prison away in his scrapbook. He then went back out to get a Nutra-Health Drink, but he suddenly noticed he wasn't all scratched up anymore. "I wonder how that happened?" he said, and with a shrug, he made his way over to his door and looked through the peephole.

Immediately, he saw Irene suddenly dash into view. She was moving all about and flailing her arms erratically. Henry figured she was either shooing a bee or trying to come up with a new dance routine for that party she was going to. Then, in an attempt to flee, Irene ended up running into the wall across from the door, which she stuck to for a good three seconds before she slowly started to tilt back, remaining perfectly rigid as she fell to the floor. Henry just laughed. "Normally, I have to pay for entertainment like this!" he chuckled as he made his way back to the Hole in his bathroom.

Hell Count: 5
Total Hell Count: 36

A/N: Why Graboids? Well, because Tremers sounds like Tremors. But I'm sure you already drew that connection. At least, you should've…