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Roc was out to test his courage... or stupidity. Whichever, his curiosity was driving him nuts since he heard there was an old abandoned house at the end of the lane from where he lived. It had read "Foreclosed", then someone came along and posted "For Rent". Not long after that, yet another sign went over that one saying "For Sale". Again with "Price Slashed!"

By now the rain and sun had faded all the signs piled onto each other and the windows were starting to be vandalized and broken one by one. Once someone boarded the first floor windows, but after that the house was on its own. It was starting to get overgrown and in dire need of maintenance.

Roc just had to know what the deal was, but he didn't want to go alone. So he sat and waited for someone to show up with just as much curiosity as he had.

"Bro, you don't go in the front door," Roc snorted his usual laugh. "Huh, you climb in through one of the broken windows."

He ambled up the steps, looking down into the weathered slats. Roc swore he heard all manner of creatures rustling down underneath the porch. It was hard to tell what he was looking at through all the hair on his face. He looked up at Jolly.

"I brought a head lamp," Roc said, affixing it to his forehead and oddly over his hair so that it mashed it further up against his eyes. His view was permanently like that of a hunter through a duck blind to the point that he'd gotten used to it. "Help me rip off a slat and we'll climb through. It'll be just like playing Zork."

"If that floats your boat, bro," Roc said, offering Jolly a boost with his front legs at the ready. "Wave your hands out in front in case there's spider webs. Went down to my old man's basement once to get a sack of flour and I got a mouthful of webs. I had the creepy-crawlies even after a shower, bro."

Roc noticed storm clouds forming overhead and gave a grin.

"It's like it's law that that's supposed to happen. Pure poetry, bro. Do you believe in ghosts?"

"Bro, I like to think everything I do is done because I'm handsome," Roc replied with a grin. "I'm not sure there's ghosts, but I'd like to find out. More likely I think the only scary thing we'll find in here are wild animals and a few black widows."

Roc stood up on his hind legs and peered into the house with his headlamp turned on. He looked around and saw the whole house still had furniture, some draped in cloth and some not.

"Who leaves their stuff out like that and just ditches it?"

Roc moved his head slowly about the room. It didn't even look burglarized. Not a single thing looked ransacked, rummaged, or even turned over. He looked down to his feet.

"There aren't even animal tracks," he said. "Look, all that's leaving marks are our own hoof prints."

As he looked on, he could feel all four of his legs shaking. He wasn't doing that! Was he? He looked around. The floor beneath him was giving way and suddenly...

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah~!" Roc's voice fell down, down into a deep shaft.

As if on its own accord, the floor repaired itself, and fresh dust slid over his old prints on the carpets and wooden floor boards.

Roc opened up one eye, the lamp on his head had miraculously stayed on. There was very little to see, however. He looked to be in a box put together out of scrap metal and wood.

There was the sound of heavy clanking mixed with muffled, distant thunder. He felt the box being tugged by machinery, but he could tell from what direction nor by whom. It wasn't long until he was unceremoniously dumped into a hallway, the little door behind him shut tight and the sound drifted down again.

"That was the opposite of fun," Roc said to no one. "Where am I?"

It was a hallway somewhere upstairs, he figured, he could see a stairway going down at the end of the hall. Now he was afraid to even move without being swallowed up again.

"BRO!?? Are you still here!??" Roc shouted, hoping Jolly Roger would respond. He hadn't expected anyone else to stick around after a house has eaten you, but what if Jolly was in trouble, too?

"Wow," Roc's stubby ears pricked up as he heard the faint sounds of swearing in the distance. "I didn't know ghosts knew those words."

The rickety stairs seemed to be holding him as he took the first few tentative steps down. It must have been narrative that caused them to collapse into themselves to form a slide. Having watched enough Scooby-Doo, he had preemptively grabbed onto the railing.

"Haaa~!" he laughed in defiance - then the railing slipped down into a hidden slat.

It was Roc's turn to swear as he slid down backwards towards the first floor. He landed in a crumpled ball against the far wall. Below a lamp table he repositioned the light on his head.

"This place sucks, bro," he said to himself.

Roc heard thunder rolling loudly outside. Peering over the lamp stand, he had planned to look out the window, but it was so heavily draped that no trace of light made its way in. He took a tug at the drapes to move them aside.

The moment he did, a Phony skeleton rattled its teeth at him. He let out a yelp, punched it in the teeth, and closed the drapes over it again to run away. Then he realized something.

"Crap, I hope that wasn't the pirate dude," he frowned. "Wait, can you even turn into a skeleton like that so fast?"

He heard thumping down a flight of stairs somewhere in the room. Roc didn't know where his feet should go, so he stopped and froze in place.