Read Online Warden by Kevin Hardman - Free Book Online

had once held had long ago been knocked out. The door to the place was closed.
    “Hello?” Errol called out as they approached. In response, he thought he heard a distorted voice and a muffled knock.
    When he got close enough, he knocked on the door and called out another greeting.
    “Hello? Anybody home?” he asked.
    The door swung open as he rapped, and the stench of death and decay wafted out. They had thought the smell outside was bad, but the inside - being an enclosed area - was ten times worse.
    And despite the smell, despite what they had witnessed outside, they were still not fully prepared for what they saw when they stepped into the cabin’s interior.  The place was a charnel house; there were body parts in various stages of decay strewn all around. An arm here, a head there, a torso…blood and gore were all over the floor and walls. Flies and various insects buzzed incessantly, and one bloated carcass constantly writhed with maggots crawling underneath the skin. And this is just the first room , Errol thought.
    Gale placed a hand over her mouth, then ran outside and retched. Simultaneous with the sound of her stomach emptying its contents, Errol again heard a muffled cry, coming from what appeared to be an adjoining room.
    Gale was still outside, recovering, as he stepped into the next room - trying unsuccessfully to avoid stepping in blood - and saw something he was never likely to forget. The room was empty, save for a gigantic pot in the center. It was at least five feet high, about eight feet in diameter, and covered with a massive lid. The muffled sound was coming from inside the pot, and this time was accompanied by a slight knocking.
    The creak of a floorboard behind him made Errol jump. He spun, aiming the crossbow - and would have killed Gale had he pulled the trigger.
    “Easy,” she said, holding her hands up defensively.  “It’s just me.”
    Before he could respond, a sound - almost a whimpering - came from inside the pot again. Errol couldn’t make out words, but he was pretty sure that there was a human being inside. Anxious that it might be Tom, he set his crossbow down on the floor and tucked his wand through his belt.
    “Here,” he said, moving around to the other side of the pot.  “Help me get this lid off.”
    Now on opposite sides of the pot, he and Gale struggled to lift the lid for several minutes. Their efforts, however, were futile. Moreover, it sounded like the person inside the pot was starting to cry.
    “Let’s try something else,” Gale finally said in an exhausted tone.  “Let’s get on the same side and see if we can angle it just enough for whoever’s in there to get out.”
    Errol came around to Gale’s side, and together they pushed up on the lid. At first it seemed stuck, but then it slowly rose. As it cleared the top edge of the pot, they pushed it over to one side so that it tilted in towards the pot’s interior. It wasn’t completely off, but it was tilted enough that someone inside could probably squeeze out - provided they were of moderate girth.
    Unsurprisingly, the smell coming from inside the pot was worse than anything they had thus encountered.  They didn’t have to look inside to know that it was filled with body parts.
    “Help me!” a desperate voice wheezed from inside the pot, and a skinny hand came up over the edge.  Errol grabbed it and pulled, heedless of the smell (and the nauseous fluids coating it). As he pulled, he saw that the hand was attached to a scrawny little man with a scraggly beard and a crazy gleam in his eye. Moreover, he was indeed crying as he came out of the pot.
    “Thankyouthankyouthankyou!” the man shouted fervently, gripping Errol’s hand like a vise and trying to kiss it.
    Errol freed his hand with more than a little effort.  The little man then moved towards Gale, arms open in an apparent attempt to give her a hug. Errol, however, grabbed the man’s shirt, which was absolutely disgusting.
    “Don’t