THE VEHICLES were parked on the dirt road about half a mile from a majestic landscape of the placid Huntington’s Lakeview with its lush pine forest. Zinga gamut out with a binocular and saw the main lake-house below and at two smaller cabins ahead—there were three floatplanes near the dock with no trace of human activities.

“It looks pretty deserted, let’s go in, Mon.”

The vehicles stopped nearby and the armed Zinga got off the SUV…

“Don't go in yet, we check di place out in pairs—one Jamaican to one white boy, nobody strays!”

“Sorry, I am not all-white.”

The half Cherokee responded jokingly while he glanced at Reeves to denote that he too was a half-Hispanic.

Zinga retorted back at Bob, “then you shut the fuck up and you follow me—Busta, you stick with Jensen.”

Something on the spot pricked Reeves’ mind that there was no trust in this team; Li Chi might have instructed the Jamaican bodyguards to keep a short leash on him or may even have ordered something far worse—like dispelling his existence permanently and dumping his cutthroat body into the bottom of the lake…

He mistrusted the mission in California the moment of their arrival at the lake.

*

Zinga and True Bob sneaked up to the porch, passing a broken signboard—'CAPT HOWDY~ CHARTER A PLANE'—that hung on a single rusty chain attached to a ceiling hook. They both cautiously entered the front door of the lake-house.

The hallway has not been inhabited for eighteen years since the widespread of the Medusa; it was dark, dusty with low hanging cobwebs. Bob walked across and pulled the dirt-crusted curtain cloth to let the lights in—he heard Zinga exclaiming aloud in his mother-tongue before he spoke again to True Bob...

“Dis place is cursed with di dead—I am not staying in here!”

The implosion of the light inside the once darken house has stippled on a skeleton seated at the head of the dining table—it was positively a pre-Medusa male by the tattered clothing worn; and probably was the owner of the establishment—Capt. Howdy—the creatural sight freaked out Zinga and he stepped backwards.

True Bob opened the nearest bedroom door and found another skeletal figure on the bed. There was a dusty photo frame at the bedside, a wedding photo of a younger Mrs and Mr Capt. Howdy was taken in the '80s. The specious Zinga quickly paced out of the front door of the lake-house, fretfully propounding to the rest of the Rastafarians that they will be residing in the two nearby cabins.

**

Oil lamps and candles lighted up the kitchen later that evening—Bob was cooking some of the provender rations that they had brought along, mainly canned Mexican beans and heating some prebaked tortilla on a lighted portable stove. Reeves and Joe looked out of different windows, observing the four big-haired Jamaicans who had decided to stay in the smaller cabins. They were performing a voodoo ritual and Joe was very curious.

“What the fuck are they doing?”

True Bob laughed as he peeked from the kitchen window. “It is a cleansing ritual so that evil spirits will not harm them.”

“It is funny that those Jamaicans are hardcore killers but they freaked out the moment when they arrived here—where di balls, Mon?” Joe ridiculed like a true Wesleyan in the prison yard. Bob chuckled and responded back to him, “one's beliefs are powerful.”

“Hey Chief, you seem too like a man of nature with a miscellaneous of painted buffalo-butt beliefs—how come you have not freaked out yourself?” The secular Joe was laughing while he probed sarcastically to know more.

The half-Cherokee replied casually…

“These are good spirits in the house, they will not harm—and furthermore, they both died peacefully during the Medusa outbreak.”

They hear ghoulish laughter in the dark dining area, followed by Troy’s voice. “Guess who is joining us for dinner?” Troy switched a mini battery operated table lamp and now there were two skeletons on both ends of the table—the Mr. and Mrs...

Joe now freaked out, unnerving. “Why the fuck did you bring that one out?”

Moments later, at a table of six—with the four living and two dead—Joe blocked his face with his palm while he ate his food; Troy turned Mrs Howdy’s skull towards Joe and mimicked in a woman's voice.

“Joe dear, please pass me the bowl of beans.”

Joe was in choler, “this is fucking so un-cool Troy, why did you bring her out? I am losing my appetite here with her freaky teeth grinning at me.”

“Relax Joe, it is just bones—and by the way, they are our host, you be nice.” True Bob was in derision. The big Wesleyan guy was no different than the recreant Jamaicans. Joe was still unnerved by it…

“They are dead people, man, we should respect them—and tomorrow we should at least give them a decent burial, what say you, Reeves? You have been so quiet since we got here—say something, man—so we are gonna bury those bones in the morning, yeah?”

Reeves finally spoke up in dissent, pointing his fork at the skull nearest to him.

“No, let them stay...

“Since the Jamaicans are freaked out, this will play it to our advantage—those fuckers will bother us less as long that those skeletons are in here.”

He further warned them to watch out for each other’s back…

“I have a bad feeling that the Leach may have put a hit on me—and if that happens, you guys will be going down next.”

Everyone at the dining table looked back timorously at Reeves in silence.