The Bloodspawn

THE BLOODSPAWN

By Michael McBride

© 2004 Michael McBride. All rights reserved.

PART ONE

1989

I

Wednesday, November 10th

9 p.m.

The thin light of the waning moon filtered through the rolling fog. Snow swept down the front of the Rocky Mountains, the tiny crystals dancing atop the crisp, frigid breeze. Frost glittered on the tips of the pine needles that surrounded him along the winding, snow-dusted path, shedding more light than the early November night sky itself in the thick of the dense woods. Pines, spruces, and barren aspen were packed tightly together, their trunks nearly touching, branches bouncing gently, the flakes slowly piling atop one another on the ever-whitening foliage. It was a winter night in Colorado like most others this time of year: every inhalation bringing with it a stab of bitterly cold air that threatened to seize the chest; a plume of steam that dampened the face with every exhalation.

And then there was the silence…

It was the sound of absolute solitude; so quiet it almost stung the eardrums from the lack of audible noise. The wind, which gusted every so often, spoke with mute voice, his own footsteps muffled within the accumulating snow. Were it not for the sound of his own breathing within his head, he was sure he could have heard the snowflakes landing one atop the next, deafening amidst the stillness of the night. Every so often, he could feel the tip of Edgar’s tail swat at his left leg while the dog jogged dutifully in time beside him, never straying more than a few feet from the path, following his nose into the thick underbrush, hoping upon hope, that he might flush something from the thicket worth chasing. At least something that would allow him to give chase. A small bird would dart from beneath the snow-crusted twigs and disappear into the darkness beyond as though it had never existed, but a squirrel would taunt him mercilessly from one tree trunk before racing to the next, staying only a fogged breath ahead of the dog’s snorting nose.

They made this trek every night about this time, he and Edgar. He always put this off until the very last thing, right before bed, because he knew that one of these days he was actually going to find what he knew he was destined to. He wasn’t sure exactly what it was, but every fiber of his being, from his flesh straight through into the marrow of his bones, knew that he was indeed going to find something. It was his whole purpose for being here. Maybe it was some sort of misplaced sense of responsibility or some form of cosmic penance, but he knew with every ounce of surety that it was the reason he still drew life from the emptiness. Why else would God or fate—or whatever divine hand tugged at the strings of his marionette existence—have brought him to that house… on that night.

The path opened up slightly ahead, the thick wall of trees to either side peeled back from the line beaten through the coarse buffalo grass, signaling that they were nearly there. Stars sparkled overhead, but only momentarily, fading quickly as the clouds rolled in tufts of steam across the sky, spreading wave after wave of white crystals in their wake. But the blackness above was nothing compared to that which lurked behind the trees to either side. That darkness leeched the light from all around, wrenching it back into the shadows that ate it up mercilessly. It was a blackness that was almost tangible, as though it were a living entity that would rush from the underbrush and tear at his legs if he dared to step even an inch from the path. And he knew… within that darkness there was something else, something that he had seen, albeit only on that one occasion, but it had left a scar on his soul. And night after night, he passed through here, only inches from that darkness, whose icy breath he could feel in the hackles on the back of his neck, for no other reason than to show it that he was not afraid.

But he knew that the only person he was fooling was himself, and most days, he wasn’t even very good at that anymore.

Harry Denton had lived nearly all of his days within the shadow of the Rockies, having traded the smell of pine on frost for brine on pollution only long enough to complete his undergraduate studies between walls supposedly more hallowed by the ivy that crept up them. It had been four tediously long years. The speed of life in Colorado was much more relaxed and even-paced than the frantic pace with which Bostonians raced through their lives. They shot like lasers from one point to the next, slowing only long enough to make the effort not to allow your life to impede their own. He had felt like an outsider from the start, never getting the punchline of the joke, before finally resigning to the fact that he really wasn’t sure he wanted to.

It had been a triumphant day when he had returned to Colorado to enter medical school. He could remember vividly pulling the Chrysler over on the shoulder of the road and sitting atop its hood in the midst of a dust storm. Dirt and debris scratched at his face like sandpaper while he just stared at that bright green sign that stated everything so simply: “Welcome to Colorful Colorado.”

“It’s all right, Edgar,” Harry said, patting the yellow lab on the ribs with his gloved hand. But he knew the dog could feel it too.

The faint whistle of the wind drifted down the path from ahead of them; the formerly gently bending branches beginning to sway more violently. Still, they pressed forward. The snow, which had once fallen straight downward, was now coming at angles, forcing Harry to wince his eyes to shield them from the small shards of ice, tucking his chin to his chest and peering up from beneath his frozen brow. Edgar no longer darted between the path and the edge of the thicket, his mood no longer playful. He stayed even with Harry; his body maintaining a slim one-inch gap, constantly glancing up at his master, a timid whine creeping from his panting jaws every so often.

They were close now. Once they reached this point, Harry had to make a conscious decision each and every night: was he going to continue and traverse the last quarter mile or was he going to turn around and scurry back home? He knew that if he continued down the path, he was going to have to relive that night. But it wasn’t the fear of seeing the horror again, playing like a movie in his mind. Nothing as tame as that. No, it was the fear that tonight might be the night that he had been dreading, preparing for; the night where once again he found himself face to face with…

He stopped dead in his tracks.

Something was definitely wrong. He could feel it in the base of his spine; taste it on the howling wind.

His frozen breath frosted the stubble on his face as he stood at the end of the path. To either side the trees just seemed to fearfully stop, the path opening up into a sloping, snow-drenched meadow. The tips of the untended wild grasses danced atop the mat of white, the walls of snow blowing first one way, and then the next at the whimsical shifting of the wind.

Edgar whined beside him, pleading up to him with those large brown eyes.

Harry’s heart hammered in his chest, and he unconsciously wiped the runoff from beneath his frozen, brick-red nose with the back of his gloved hand. His eyes fixed intently straight ahead, his breath suddenly seizing within his aging chest. Slowly, his lips parted and his lower jaw dropped slack. He could hear his pulse in his temples, throbbing rhythmically with the gusting wind.

Harry looked down at Edgar, resting his open palm atop the dog’s head, a thin strand of his lightly graying bangs falling in front of his eye.

Nodding gently in unspoken communication with the retriever, he once again steadied his gaze straight ahead and took a long, deep breath, closing his eyes while it swirled coldly within his lungs. Calmly, he peeled open his eyes and allowed the air in his chest to creep past his pursed lips. He stared straight ahead.

The slope in front of him, leading down into that still meadow, was steep, with only a few saplings creeping from the cracking soil. This was generally as far as he came, just close enough so that he could see the house, just give a quick glance to verify that everything was as it should be, and then scamper home as quickly as his legs would take him. He was certain now that tonight would not be that easy.

A thin paved road ran from the foothills to the west toward the plains in the east, cutting through the valley at the base of the hill right in front of him. Just past the other side of the road, a small, white house sat amidst a cluster of trees that threatened to consume it, their branches wrapping the old wooden bungalow within their bare limbs. The decaying white paint peeled in layers from the pale wood beneath, betraying the years of abandonment that had begun its slow road to dissolution.

Biting the inside of his lip, Harry started with a lurch, forcing himself forward, his unblinking eyes still fixed on the house. Each breath came increasingly quickly, his chest shuddering, bordering on the verge of hyperventilation. Stumbling down the hill, he fought with his trembling legs, urging them onward with nothing more than the meek resolution of his feeble will, akin to an inmate’s final stroll down death row en route to his execution.

Thoughts came in jumbles, fragmenting within his reeling mind. He was unable to even begin to comprehend them. It was all that he could do to keep himself moving forward. If there were anybody else who could do this task, he would have more than willingly stepped aside and allowed them to do so. But this was his curse, his cross to bear… and his alone.

Stumbling up the shoulder of the road from the bottom of the hill, he gingerly planted that first step atop the asphalt, shuffling his feet slowly across the ice-covered surface. The wind raced down the road, shoving him with what felt like human hands from his right, trying mercilessly to knock him to the ground, to break him.

Harry eased from the street onto the stone walkway leading up to the covered front porch of the house and stared, unbelievingly, straight ahead, his breath catching in his tight lungs. Thick roots from the mighty maples encircling the dilapidated house jut forth from the frozen earth, protruding from the long, untended lawn like fingers. The walkway in front of him was layered with several inches of snow, uninterrupted as far as he could see to either side. Bare branches rattled atop the roof of the house, scraping like fingernails on a chalkboard from side to side, bending to the will of the wind.

Inching forward, he shuddered his way to the pair of wooden steps leading up to the porch. Grabbing hold of the thin, ratty railing tightly with both hands, he urged himself up the crumbling steps and onto warped wooden planks, bowing in attempt to pry their own rusted nails from the supports. The brass lockbox he had placed on the doorknob himself nearly two decades ago, rested on the porch between his feet, the solid metal loop that wrapped around the doorknob snapped right down the middle. He just stared down at it, fearing what he might see if he looked up.

Reaching down with trembling fingers, he gripped the useless piece of brass tightly in his right hand and shoved it deep into the outer pocket of his dark blue parka. His lower lip squirmed against his upper, fists clenching at his sides, pumping and releasing several times before wrapping themselves into one final knot. A shot of pain ripped through his mouth at the beckoning of the frozen teeth that ground fiercely atop one another, tearing a sliver from the inside of his lower lip in the process. His breath shot like a bull from his nose while he summoned his failing courage, and with one quick motion he lifted his head and stared directly through the open front door and into the darkened house.

His mind raced back to that night in 1972, the night that would forever change his life. It was still remarkably vivid in his mind; the smell of the heavily falling snow dampening the freshly shed aspen leaves still resonating in his senses. And more than anything, he could feel the full pangs of the terror, lashing out at him from deep within his chest, threatening to suck the air out of his lungs.

Professional life for Harry had begun with the most noble of intentions. Like his father before him, he had been drawn into the field of medicine, not by the promise of the largely bloated paychecks, but by the desire to help people. Trite though that may sound, in his case it had been true. There had been those wonderfully long summer days in the small mountain town where he had grown up, riding in the passenger seat next to his father, pipe jutting from his stone jaw, driving down those washboard-riddled country roads. At first, it had seemed like a never-ending series of house calls, but the older he got, and the more he began to understand the intricacies of the profession, the more he became completely in awe of his father. The man had dedicated his life to the betterment of those around him, taking payment in whatever form the patients were able to provide. Be it the tough and stringy meat from their mountain grazing herds of cattle or the often awkwardly designed hand-made garments that Harry had ended up wearing to school to considerable discomfiture. There was even a short period when he had been embarrassed by his father, by the fact that all he seemed to do was work, yet they still lived a mere notch above poverty in that trailer in the middle of the woods. But that had all changed in one single instant after he had witnessed his father climb through the shredded metal of a wicked traffic accident and pull a horribly mangled, blood-drenched man from the wreckage. The man’s eyes had rolled back beneath his crimson-soaked brow, his limp and swelling tongue parting his lips. He looked beyond dead; nothing more than a slab of meat that his father leaned over like a hungry scavenger. But there had been magic in his father’s hands. His old man had stopped the bleeding from the gusher beneath the man’s armpit and seemingly brought him back to life right there on that dirt crossroads in the middle of nowhere without the help of a dozen nurses and surgeons. It was at that precise moment that he knew there was nothing in the world he wanted more than to be just like his father.

He had raced through his undergraduate studies and graduated at the top of his class in medical school. It had been a rough road; sacrificing his personal life for the sake of his professional. First dates had been few and far between, and there had been only a handful of seconds. But it had never felt as though he had given anything up because his heart had always been in it, at least until he was off on his own.

It wasn’t until the end of his residency that he got to see the true face of modern medicine, the business of it. And it was enough to turn his stomach. Patients in need of treatment were being turned away because they couldn’t afford to pay. Others were being shipped across town, regardless of the consequences, to the community wards. He had been there at the start of what would become managed care, as doctors and their practices, hospitals, and patients alike were being bought and sold on the open market. Profits were being placed ahead of patient welfare.

The bottom line was filling the morgue.

After finishing his tenure in the emergency room, the thought of negotiating his private practice with the financial powers that be was more than he could stomach. His own father had been forced to close the doors of his practice, and managed care had, in all senses of the word, killed him. The now old man’s practice had crumbled in a matter of years and he sat alone in a folding chair in the wild grasses in front of the trailer staring off into the woods, while Harry’s mother had slowly died from abandonment in that desolate double-wide in the middle of nowhere.

Being a doctor was supposed to be noble. To be able to help give life, to save life, was a gift bordering on the divine. It was never meant to be a business; never meant to be proprietary.

And there he found a little loophole, without sacrificing his soul.

He had taken a post working for the state. They had been bowled over receiving an applicant with his credentials. Understandably, the best and the brightest were lured to the private sector by the calling of fame and fortune. Those that somehow couldn’t cut it were the hiring pool which the state had no choice but to fish from for the low paying jobs and the long hours they were forced to demand.

Harry became a field operative for the State of Colorado Medical Advisory Board. His first salary had been $18,500 in 1972, paltry even for the times, but it had been closer to the job his father had done decades before, and as close as he was going to come to truly helping people without forsaking the Colorado wilderness for some mosquito-infested grass hut on the snake-infested banks of the Amazon.

He followed up on the care of children within the system: in orphanages, foster homes, and recent adoptions, providing care when need be, but mainly ensuring that their health and physiological needs were being met by their state provisions. He treated inmates in prison on a rolling schedule, and helped to oversee worker’s compensation claims in some of the larger meat packing plants in the area. These were the dregs of society, the people that corporate medicine would rather see lying beside the road in a gutter full of blood than on one of their pristine, stainless steel tables being treated by one of their overpriced surgeons. These were Harry’s people.

It wasn’t his initial calling, but it was enough. He could wake up every morning and look himself in the eye. And he knew that he was helping people, especially those who actually needed it.

Then, one bitterly cold morning, on a day not so different from this one, everything had changed.

He could remember tossing the manila envelope with the case information onto the passenger seat of his tan Buick Century and sliding behind the wheel. Watching his breath form a frozen cloud in front of his eyes, staining the inside of the windshield, he had turned the key in the ignition several times before the car had finally come to life. The snow had just begun to spit lazily from the barely clouded sky at that point, just tiny flakes at first, and the wind looked bored, simply kicking them across the frozen roads. Everything from the lawns to the houses, to the faces of those that hurried along the sidewalk and the clouds swelling overhead, was the same bland shade of gray.

He had seen cases like this one a hundred times before. Sure, the details were always different—for the most part anyway—but this one had something that made it relatively unique.

He had turned off of the highway and onto the faded, pink-paved road. Heading back into the foothills, the road narrowed with every passing mile until it was barely wide enough for one car, let alone a second traveling from the opposite direction. Dense pine groves packed in against the road, broken intermittently by the small meadows that drew the deer from the forests for their luscious grasses and small bushes loaded with berries. What had once been a straightaway, had begun to wind and meander through the gently swelling hills, the snow finally beginning to stick to the road.

The encroaching foliage to either side of the road loomed overhead, blocking out much of the daylight that filtered through the increasingly dark clouds, shielding the car from the vicious wind that he could hear howling through the hills all around him. But still the snow fell through; the flakes increasing in size to the point that they almost looked like the corn flakes they used for movie snow in the days of black and white cinema.

It was a tranquil area, far from the scorched plains to the east from which new houses and apartment complexes sprung as if from the dirt itself. There was a sound there that reminded him of his days back home in the mountains. It was the sound of silence: the audible humming of the wind through the needles of the evergreens, the rustling of the thatch, and the tips of long blades of grass bouncing off one another. All of it muffled by the layer of fresh powder that gently piled atop it.

The road opened up into a large field, the wind freeing itself from the trees and buffeting the right side of the car, threatening to press it from the road into the white field. The heavy flakes hammered the side of his car, sounding like gravel in a windstorm. Steering into the wind, Harry slowed a little as he passed a small white house in the field to his left. Large, barren trees loomed in a ring around it, their branches seeming to grow straight into the shingled roof atop it. Bright red curtains were drawn tightly in each of the windows, and the wood beneath the chipping paint was beginning to show through. There was a small wooden placard in front of the house on the road.

“The Cavenaugh house,” he could remember saying aloud as he passed the small dwelling in the middle of the pasture before heading back into the mass of trees once again.

The road grew steep, and traction became much more treacherous. He wound in a tight spiral higher into the hills, the woods to either side growing darker and darker as the branches became so thick that no snow settled atop the festering, detritus-covered dirt beneath.

Ahead, just above the tops of the snow-dusted canopy, he could see the tall brick towers of the convent. Not only was the building old, but it looked old, like the castles of Europe. As he drew closer he could see that it appeared to be stained, like someone had poured a large cup of coffee over the dark rust colored bricks, allowing it to dry to a faded dark brown. The ambitious undergrowth had crept up the sides of the castle, crawling onto windowsills before covering the lower story glass and stopping about halfway up to the second story windows. Small round windows adorned the third floor just below the gabled roof, peering from behind the brick like small, darkened eyes.

He bent with the road to the right, opening into a dirt parking lot before disappearing back into the woods and heading into the mountains. There had been one other car in the lot, and it had been so buried beneath the snow that he had no clue as to the make and model. If it had moved any time in recent memory there should have been ridges in the snow-covered lot, but there were none. Killing the engine, he stuffed the envelope beneath his left arm and zipped his blue down jacket all the way up to his chin, covering his brown suit and red tie. Flipping up the collar, he threw open the door and stepped out into the snow.

The powder covered the tops of his shoes, the frozen slush beneath crunching under his footfalls. Quickening his pace, he headed for the front door, the stinging wind ripping at his already bright red nose and cheeks, his breath dampening the raised collar of his jacket and the zipper.

A row of evergreen hedges rimmed the front courtyard in a half circle, yellowing patches showing through in parts where the foliage had either been sheared too close or had just plain died. Within, large red slabs of rock were lined side by side; small, sharp weeds protruding through the gaps between them. The entire area was shielded beneath a black iron canopy that allowed the sun through in the summer, but was able to support the weight of the snow in the winter with its grated surface. Rose bushes lined the walk; the buds having long since vanished for the season. A long wooden bench ran the course of the right side of the area, all the way up to the large, solid oak double doors.

Harry grabbed the iron doorknocker and let it drop to the mahogany. He could hear it echo hollowly inside as he scanned the courtyard for any signs of life, but there wasn’t even a single window within his line of vision. He could hear the loud thud of the deadbolt being drawn back against the door, and the knob turning as the door opened inward.

A pleasant woman wearing the black and white habit of a nun stood in the entranceway, a puzzled look on her face. She forced a smile.

“May I help you?” she asked, her brow furrowing.

“Um, yes,” Harry said, unzipping his jacket and pulling out the manila envelope. “My name is Harry Denton. I’m with the state. As is our customary procedure, I’ve been sent out here to check on the group of children that were recently taken into your care.”

“Ah, yes,” she said, looking only slightly relieved. “Please come in.”

“Thank you,” Harry said, tapping the snow from his shoes on the side of the building before stepping inside.

The foyer was enormous. The ceiling had to have been nearly twenty feet high and arched right in the middle. Highly polished granite slabs formed the flooring, fit together intricately like pieces of a puzzle. Each footstep resonated through the castle as though he had slammed a door. A long hallway stretched to his right, tall wooden doors surrounded by hand crafted woodwork lining it as far as he could see. Portraits covered the stucco walls; gold-framed depictions of various visions of Christ. Chandeliers crafted to look like large candelabras hung from the ceiling every twenty feet, the lone bulb set in the middle casting a dim yellow light in a small circle on the floor beneath the low hanging lamps. The faint light and intriguing shadows gave the whole place a medieval look, as though he had just stepped back in time into sixteenth-century England.

“I’m Sister Catherine,” the woman said, offering a firm handshake, the tendons in her wrists bulging as she squeezed. “If you will please follow me, I will happily take you to the children.”

“Thank you.”

“I think you’ll find that all of their needs are being met satisfactorily,” the Sister stated dryly, as she led him down the hall. The look on her face betrayed her discomfort with the situation.

“I’m sure. It’s not that the state has any doubts as to the standards of care that you are able to provide. We’re just trying to attempt to make sure that no children, here or otherwise, fall through the cracks.”

She glanced back over her shoulder and nodded sullenly.

“This is quite a piece of real estate you have here,” Harry said, trying to fill the stagnant silence lingering in the heavy air.

“It was originally built in the late nineteenth century by William Ashton Cavenaugh, who grew up as a boy in the small house you passed on your way up here. He made his fortune in coal mined from these very hills. After his daughter fell ill from tuberculosis, he built this castle so that she could be closer to her treatment than the house they had built in downtown Colorado Springs.”

“Her treatment?”

“Of course, as I’m sure you know, doctor…”

“How did you know I was a doctor?” he interrupted.

“Who else would be qualified to inspect the well being of the children?” she said, stopping at the end of the long hall and smiling momentarily, before ascending the polished wooden stairs to the second level.

“You were saying?” Harry offered apologetically.

“Their treatment? In those days, the natural springs of this area were thought to have healing powers. People traveled from all parts of the world for the opportunity to soak their dying loved ones in the springs.”

“So where are the springs around here? I’m familiar with the ones down in Manitou, but I didn’t know that there were any closer than that.”

“There are two private springs about a mile from here,” she said. They rounded the corner and walked down the long second story hallway that looked just like the one below, but the walls had begun to cracks in spots, the plaster patches peeling back as they had tried to cover them on the slowly yellowing walls. “This place actually served as something of a hospital for those who could afford it. There was a full time staff that catered not only to the needs of Mr. Cavenaugh’s dying daughter, but to the degenerating condition of his health, as well.”

“He was sick, too?”

“He did not have tuberculosis, if that is what you are asking, but imagine, if you will, the torment of watching your lone child die slowly over a long period of time, and in an ugly and heart-breaking fashion. It was that from which he suffered.”

“So then, they would just load these people up and take them down to the springs every day so that they could get some sort of therapeutic treatment?”

“People handled sickness much differently in those days then they do now, doctor. Those suffering from tuberculosis were treated as though they had the plague. They were not transported out in the open for everyone to see. They were huddled beneath blankets and shuttled through the catacombs beneath this building, through the very mines that made the Cavenaugh fortune, right to the edge of the springs where the tunnels opened up in the side of a hill. There is quite an intricate system of tunnels that runs beneath this entire area, from here all the way to Manitou Springs to the south.”

“Impressive. So how is it that this land came into your possession?”

“It was willed to our order by Mr. Cavenaugh himself. After his daughter died, he faded very quickly. Having lost his wife during the birth of that child, we believe his loneliness and loss took their toll, and he willed the estate to the church, which designated it as the convent that you see today.”

Sister Catherine opened the furthest door on the right. Even the distilled sunlight from the clouded sky outside the large window in the room stung his eyes after wandering through the dimly lit halls. Tiny particles of dust floated on the thin rays of light in bright contrast to the somber colors of the barren stucco room. Four children, none of them more than a year old lay in small, hand-carved wooden cribs lined up one after the other against the back wall of the room, right beneath the line of large windows, ivy peeking up from the sills. A pair of nuns, dressed identically to Sister Catherine sat in heavy wooden chairs, intently watching the slumbering children.

The oily-looking hardwood floor creaked beneath Harry’s feet as he strode across the room, producing a stethoscope from the interior pocket of his jacket. He stopped at the first crib, the Sister barely steering her gaze from the child long enough to acknowledge his presence. She appeared lost in contemplation, the dull glimmer in her eyes and the crease in her brow betraying some sort of melancholy or sorrow. With a curt nod, he inserted the ends of the scope into his ears and leaned into the crib.

The small girl had deep black hair, barely a half an inch long, and bright red lips. There was a small brown ovular mole above her right eyebrow. A crisp white sheet and thinly knit yellow blanket covered the child’s body, tucking neatly beneath her armpits. Smiling at the sight of the innocent child, she mirrored his expression at whatever images danced through her head. Harry pulled down the blanket and warmed the end of the stethoscope with his hot breath in his cupped hand. Placing it first atop her heart, and then beneath each of her arms along her ribs, he listened intently as the child shifted in her sleep. Nodding to himself, he pulled the blanket down past her tiny toes and performed a visual inspection. She wore a small white cloth diaper, fastened with enormous metal pins right beneath her belly. There was a small plaster cast on her right leg, only her toenails visible through the roughly sealed opening. He rolled her onto her side and listened to her breathing from her back to either side of her spine before rolling her onto her back again and covering her up.

“Everything looks good here,” Harry said, turning back to Sister Catherine. “What’s her name?”

“We’ve decided to call her Madeline.”

“After the children’s book character?”

“Yes,” the Sister said, smiling momentarily.

Returning her smile, Harry made his way to the next crib, pulling down the blanket and beginning his inspection with the stethoscope. This child was a boy. He had light hair, nearly white, and brows so light they were transparent. He couldn’t have been more than three months old.

“Generally, my paperwork is quite specific as to the origin of the children within your care,” Harry said, without looking up. “But there’s nothing in my records to indicate how these children arrived with you.”

Sister Catherine shot a glance across the room to one of the other nuns, who slowly rose, and with the other Sister at her hip, slipped from the room and into the hallway, the heavy door closing with a hollow thud behind them.

Harry looked quizzically to Sister Catherine, who crept towards him. Tilting his head, he pulled the plugs from his ears and looked over at the Sister before sliding a few feet to the next crib.

“Due to the nature of their appearance here, and for their own future welfare, we have asked that the details be kept from all paperwork. It is a very sensitive situation, doctor.”

“How so?” Harry asked as he once again donned the stethoscope and began to inspect the third child, a slumbering dark-haired boy who nearly woke as he pulled down the blanket.

“What I tell you is for your benefit only, doctor, and is not to be shared with anyone outside of this room. I understand as a doctor that any information about your patients is to be kept beneath a veil of privacy. Am I correct?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Harry said. “I am here to make sure that these children are all right, and for no other reason than that. And, in order for me to treat them properly, any and all unusual circumstances need to be taken into account.”

“All right,” she said, lowering her voice and taking a step closer, her look nothing short of grave. “About two weeks ago, close to midnight on a Saturday night, a young woman—she couldn’t have been more than twenty years old—showed up here at the convent, banging on the door and screaming to be granted admittance. She had one child strapped across her back, two cradled in her left arm against her chest, and the fourth in a basket she carried in her right. She stood barefoot in the snow, her bright red feet chafed and cracking from the crusted snow.

“She kept looking over her shoulder as though she were being followed. Her cheeks were covered with tears; her nightgown torn; frayed and tattered. I ushered her into the dining room and sat her down at the table. After rousing a couple of the other Sisters, we set up the cribs for the children and poured a warm cup of tea for the woman, a pot of water for her to sink her feet into. Her hands trembled and her legs shook as she slowly began to talk… to tell us her story.”

Glancing at Sister Catherine, Harry could see her eyes glaze over, as she became lost in the past. Her lips appeared to tremble from the words. Moving on to the fourth child, he began his inspection as she continued.

“She lived on some sort of commune here in the foothills, some remnant from the sixties in the next valley over. She had been born and raised right there, had grown up wandering these very woods as a child. In all there had been five families living together, raising livestock, making their own clothing; it was a wonder no one had stumbled across them in these past ten years, with the city pushing its boundaries so far to the north.

“Her father was the head of the family unit, a minister of his own religion, something of a devotee to the occult. He believed that unlike the devil of Christianity, who dwells in hell,” she said, toying with her rosary, “that the fallen angel walked the earth in human guise.”

“You know, there is something of a Satanic following in Manitou Springs. Turns out the satanic bible was even written there by Anton LaVey before he moved to San Francisco to begin his church,” Harry said, turning to face her. From the look on her face, he could tell that had been far too much information for her, so he backed out a bit. “You’d be amazed what you learn in an emergency room. I had this guy come in with this big arc he had started to carve right beneath his lower intestines like he was trying to commit hara kiri. This guy said Satan told him to do it, but…”

She just stared coldly at him.

“Please,” Harry said, clearing his throat. “Continue…”

“This young girl told me that her father felt it to be his purpose to help create the spawn of this devil, not the whelp of Satan per se, but a physical perpetuation of the evil. Revelations speaks of the antichrist, doctor, are you familiar?"

“Somewhat…” he said aloud, hoping this wasn’t going to become a sermon. After all it was already beginning to get a little thick in there.

“The good book speaks of the child of Satan, the physical manifestation of the downcast archangel himself. Now this child is prophesied to bring about the end of the world—”

“You’ll have to excuse me,” Harry said, sliding the stethoscope back into the interior pocket of his coat. “This sounds really interesting, but I think you’ve just about lost me here. All four of these children appear to be the picture of good health. The cast you’ve made for that little girl looks a little ragged, but there are no signs of infection. That’s the job that I’ve come here to do.”

“Not a believer,” she said, glancing up at him before lowering her chin and shaking her head.

“I was raised a church going kid,” Harry said, zipping his jacket and producing a pen from the outer pocket and handing it to the sister with the paperwork from the envelope. “Please sign here and here…”

“Now, believe me,” Catherine said, scribbling on the forms. “I found her story quite fantastic as well, almost comical were it not for the fear in her eyes. The thought of a biological farm set up to breed the antichrist was something of a mockery. I was in the process of inspecting her arms for tracks or some other signs of drug use when I found the… cuts.”

Harry turned around and tucked the envelope beneath his armpit.

“What kind of cuts?”

“She had long… tears… in the flesh on her back, jagged rips through the skin. They were deep, but they were old. The edges had already clotted, but the striations of the muscles beneath were still visible within the wounds.”

“I’ve seen a lot of that kind of thing, kids falling out of trees, branches snagging their skin and—”

“In two set of four parallel lines?”

Harry began to gnaw on the inside of his lower lip, his brow furrowing.

“I was just about to continue examining her when she jumped up from the table and ran for the door. There was nothing that we could do to stop her. Before any of us were able to follow, she had disappeared into the woods.”

“I’ll go ahead and have social services look into this commune, if there are any other signs of abuse, I guarantee you that they will handle the situation very quickly and decisively. In the meantime, Sister, please continue to take good care of these children. If there is anything that you need from my office or me don’t hesitate to call. That’s why we’re here.”

The Sister stared down at the polished floor, her cross clutched tightly in her right hand, her lips moving as though she was speaking, but no sound came out.

“Good day, Sister,” Harry said, nodding as he slipped past her into the hallway and headed for the stairs.

The two other Sisters who had been in the room when he had arrived were standing right outside of the door, huddled in conversation. They both peered up at him from beneath their habits, glancing only momentarily before heading back into the children’s room.

“Doctor,” Sister Catherine said from behind him. “Please, allow me to see you out.”

“Thank you,” Harry said politely as the two walked in silence down the staircase at the end of the hallway and onto the main floor.

They stopped at the front door and Harry offered a parting handshake.

“Good luck with those children,” he said. “Believe me, I can imagine how difficult it is to have four children all at once. That’s why my department and social services are here. If there is anything that you need, any kind of help whatsoever, don’t hesitate to call.”

“Thank you,” she said, smiling curtly.

“I really mean that… here, take one of my cards,” he said pulling a crumpled card from his pocket.

“I appreciate your assistance, doctor, and your offer of help, but I believe we know what we need to do.”

“Well then, Sister,” he said stepping out the open front door and turning to face her. “It was a pleasure meeting you, and best of luck.”

She just nodded and closed the door, the latch sliding audibly into place behind the thick door.

Shaking his head and smirking to himself, Harry headed across the courtyard, stopping at the edge of the iron overhang to pull his collar up to his ears. The wind blew the immense snowflakes sideways in front of him.

He must have been in there longer than he had originally thought, as his footprints from earlier were already filled, just dimples in the quickly accumulating snow. The forest beyond the road straight ahead had grown almost pitch black as the sun had begun to set behind the white-capped Rockies to the west. Quickening his pace, he stopped in front of his snow-covered car and pulled his hand into his sleeve. With his forearm, he brushed the thick, wet snow from his front windshield before circling the vehicle and doing the same to all of the glass. The back windshield was covered in a thin layer of ice from the wind blowing straight against it, but he figured once the inside of the car warmed up that it would melt in no time.

Pulling the keys from his pocket, he opened the door and climbed into the car. His breath clouded the inside of the windshield as he thrust the key into the ignition and brought the car to life. A dark brown cloud poured from the exhaust pipe as he revved the engine several times before sliding the levers on the dashboard to start the heater. Slipping the car into reverse, the snow crumpled aloud beneath the car’s weight, sounding as though it was driving on Styrofoam. Backing around the other snow-mounded car in the lot, he eased forward, the tires slipping as they fought for traction on the buried dirt lot. Finally, they caught, and he headed out onto the main road.

The bright orange setting sun behind him stained the gray cloud cover an almost reddish color, amplifying through the layer of ice on his back windshield. Flipping the latch on the bottom of his rear view mirror, he pointed it upward to keep the glare from reflecting directly into his eyes. It was only a few moments, however, before the setting sun slipped behind the jagged peaks, and the sky was overwhelmed by darkness.

It was barely half past five, but it appeared as though it were closer to midnight. The only visible light was from the thin beams of his headlamps, which were completely congested from the enormous flakes that danced in front, threatening to block out the light.

The road was growing slicker with each passing second and he was forced to slow the car down to barely more than a crawl to keep the back end from fishtailing as it had been doing roughly every twenty yards. The road opened into the small straightaway in the middle of the meadow that he recognized from the journey in. The small house set off on the right side of the road caught his eye as there was dim light peering out at him from behind the drawn curtains, flickering light as though from candles.

Focusing back on the road, he tapped the brakes twice, quickly, testing the slickness of the road, wanting to know for sure exactly how his car was going to perform coming into the woods ahead. The last thing that he wanted to do was to wrap his car around some tree in the middle of nowhere in what had to be the worst snowstorm that they had seen yet this season, quite possibly in the last several years, as well.

He couldn’t have been going more than five miles and hour now, hardly rolling down the tractionless country road, but that wasn’t to say that he had more than just the smallest fraction of control over the spinning tires on the ice covered road. It seemed to move with a life of its own out from in front of him as he watched it, darting in and out of the blackened forest that had grown closer and closer to the road. Crusted snow had begun to thicken on the windshield wipers, leaving arcs of frozen water across his view as they scraped back and forth against the clouding windshield. He was going to have no choice but to get out of the car and clean them off if he were to have any chance of…

Two small yellow lights reflected his headlights back at him from the center of the road ahead as a large black shadow appeared directly in front of the car.

Harry tapped the brakes twice in rapid succession before finally pinning the pedal to the ground. The back end slipped out from behind the car as he yanked the wheel into the slide to try to correct it. Buffeting back and forth, the rear end on the right side finally clipped the trunk of a tree, sending the front of the car careening off the side of the road.

His arms straightened and his fists grew tight on the wheel. Closing his eyes, his teeth clenched tightly together, he waited for the loud thud as he either slammed into the animal that had wandered in his way, or into a tree. The muscles in his back tightened ferociously as the car came to a jerking stop.

Slowly, Harry opened his eyes, his bright white knuckles gently easing their grip from the wheel. He could barely see the front hood of the car through the snow-covered windshield, but could smell the cloud of smoke that he was sure billowed from beneath it. The engine had stalled, but the heater still blew, though little more than the warmed smoke from his motor.

Taking a deep breath, he placed his hand atop his jackhammering heart that he could feel clear through his down parka. He could hear his own breath escaping in rapid spurts. Reaching for the handle of the door, his trembling fingers fumbled with the metal latch for a moment before finally seizing hold, and throwing wide the door. Forcing his shaking legs from the confines of the vehicle, he stepped out into the thickly falling snow.

The white powder on the side of the road came nearly halfway up his shins, soaking through the bottom of his slacks and into his far-too-thin socks. Shuffling through the snow, he approached the front end, from where the enormous gray cloud poured from the engine, staining the storm-throttled sky an even deeper black. The front bumper appeared undamaged, as the car wasn’t even leaning against a tree. He was sure he must have hit one head on. There appeared to be nothing in front of him that had stopped the car, maybe, he had just gotten lucky and the car had stopped all by itself—

And then he noticed it.

A clump of red-stained fur caught beneath the corner of his bright green license plate. Very carefully, a pained wince wrenching his face, Harry knelt and looked beneath the car.

Two glazed brown eyes stared right back at him from beneath the vehicle. The nose of the animal was pressed into the ground; jagged shards of bone protruding from the compressed, blood-matted face. The front hooves were braced against the underside of the hood, bent backward behind the large stag’s antlers, which jutted straight up into the undercarriage of the vehicle. Fragments of the shattered antlers littered the crimson-spattered snow around the animal. Some sort of oil or engine fluid ran black down the antler from the hole it had popped in what he hoped was only the oil pan, and down onto the animal’s lifeless face.

“There was no thud,” he muttered quietly to himself as tears welled in the corners of his eyes.

Trying to force the image of the disfigured and blood drenched animal out of his mind, he trudged through the snow to the trunk of his car, popping it open with the keys he gripped tightly in his hand. Brushing aside a pair of blankets and the briefcase he never seemed to be able to remember to use, he yanked out the heavy metal jack and headed back towards the front of the car. He kicked the thick snow from a patch of earth behind the right front tire. He slid the unit beneath the car and looped the thin metal rod through the hole in the jack. It was a very slow process as he cranked the rod in circles, the jack creaking as it barely raised the car a paltry quarter of an inch at a time.

The frame of the car groaned as the jack tipped slowly backwards, toward the undercarriage of the vehicle, but still it rose slowly, and with enormous effort. Sweat poked through his snow-drenched forehead, his bangs matting to it. He had to wipe them frequently from his eyes. Slowly it rose, the front right tire ever so gently climbing above the white groundcover. It was as if the jack was starting to wear itself in, and he was able to turn it faster and faster, spinning the rod like a baton in front of him until the bottom of the front tire was nearly half a foot off the ground.

With a little tap from his toe, he tested the stability of the jack. Nodding his satisfaction, he walked back around to the front of the car and knelt before the hood, bracing his foot against the left front tire. Gripping the stag by the antlers—and it had to be a five or six point rack—he tugged with all of his might, his face turning bright red as he fought with the lifeless corpse. His eyes felt as though they were going to pop right out of his head as he strained against the great weight, alternately yanking and then tugging, as the body finally gave just the slightest bit and slid a few inches. While the progress was at first promising, his next handful of efforts caused no appreciable change in the positioning of the beast as the antlers were lodged somewhere beneath the hood of the car.

Standing once again, he rubbed the ache in his lower back with his right hand and gasped to try and catch his breath. His lips tightened over his grinding teeth and frustration began to overwhelm him. The snow was falling faster than ever and accumulating at a rate he hadn’t seen since he was a small child with a sled and a smile full of holes. His fists tightened as he endured the onset of a monster headache, his frustration building with each inhalation until finally he couldn’t take it anymore!

“Damn it!” he shouted, channeling all of his frustrations into a swift kick that landed soundly on the front bumper.

The Buick made an audible groan, the jack rattling against the frozen ground upon which it was braced. There was a loud metallic scraping noise, as the hood suddenly lurched directly toward him.

Frantically throwing himself backward onto the ground, a puff of powder landing coldly on his face, he watched the car lean forward, before coming to a sudden and final halt. The hood dropped as the rod from the jack launched like a rocket from the side of the car, taking a chunk of bark from a tree before bouncing into the underbrush. The deer beneath the car made a sound like a large pop, before a swell of gasses bellowed forth from the body, a wave of blood spilling from the ripped back of the animal and rushing towards Harry like a putrid tidal wave. The warm fluid gushed over his outstretched feet and along his backside, drenching him in the momentary warmth as he leapt to his feet to free himself from the carnage.

Staring down at his blood-sapped clothing, he wiped his hands on the front of his pants before turning to look pleadingly into the sky. Shaking his head in dismay, he walked back around to the trunk, stepping over the fragmented parts of the jack that littered the side of the road. He pulled a blanket from the trunk and wrapped himself like a pupa.

Harry looked longingly down the road in both directions, hoping upon hope that there would be a pair of headlights coming his way through the densely packed trunks of the evergreens. Shivering, he shook his head and walked towards the side of the car, once again opening the driver’s side door and clambering in. Jamming the key into the ignition, he tried one last time to start the car, but it didn’t even make an attempt to turn over. The only sound it made was a faint click.

Throwing the door wide, he hung his feet out the door and stared out into the dark night, trying to figure out what in the hell he was going to do.

“Why me?” he muttered, climbing out of the car and tugging the blanket tightly over his shoulders.

Sighing, he plotted his next course of action. He was probably halfway between the convent and the highway, which meant he had a twenty-minute hike—at least—in either direction. With the snow coming down in sheets as it was, there was always the chance that the state patrol had closed the highway and he could stand out there clear until morning before they pushed a plow through and opened the road. That meant easily another hour walk to get back into town, especially in this weather. The only viable option was to head back toward the convent and play upon the mercies of the nuns. Either way, it sounded like it was going to be one tremendously long night.

Smiling to spite fate, he rubbed his eyes and began his trek back up the road to the convent. Keeping his head down so that the snow and wind wouldn’t freeze his face, he watched the virgin white powder as each footfall blasted a tuft of flakes into the air around his knees. The night was so quiet that he was certain he could hear the sound of the snowflakes landing on the tips of the needles of the pines all around him, their branches slowly bowing beneath the weight of the wet accumulation.

Harry could barely see five feet through the thickly falling snow as the storm clouds covered the sky, not a single star piercing the dense mat. Not even the halo of the moon produced any light as it had been enshrouded in black like the rest of the landscape.

In the darkness, each grove of trees looked identical to the last, and he wondered momentarily if it was possible that he was walking in circles. The hike he had estimated to be roughly twenty minutes had already taken close to a half an hour, the heavy snow slowing his movements as though he were trudging through molasses. His legs ached. His throat was parched. All he wanted to do was lie down and chase an ice-cold glass of water with a warm mug of coffee, followed by a serious nap. He could remember playing in the snow for what seemed like days straight as a child without any of the symptoms of the fatigue that now ravished him from the inside out. But couple that with the stress and strain of the current situation and he was just thankful that he hadn’t frozen up and laid down in the back of his car and prayed to make it through the night without freezing.

Phlegm worked into a knot in the back of his throat, freezing around the edges of his nose as it ran in lines towards his chapped lips. The edges of his ears burned as though singed, and his cheeks had passed the point of pinpricks.

Stopping momentarily, he squinted his eyes against the large flakes and stared down the road ahead. There was a thin light, like a flickering candle at two hundred yards, fading in and out through the swaying trees ahead of him. Tugging on the top edge of the blanket, he looped it up over his head like a cloak, and with a renewed sense of determination, strode through the eight inches of snow toward the light.

Harry’s eyes fixed intently on the small ball of light, his footsteps falling faster. Nearly to the point of jogging, he popped out of the cluster of trees and found himself in the wide meadow, the carpet of snow glimmering as though from some light of its own. The light he had been following originated from a dark cluster of trees right in the middle of the pasture, where he remembered the small house to have been.

The wind raged through the open field, tearing forcefully at the blanket atop him. He clung to the wet and frost-covered cloak; the soaked edges of it clapping like hands behind him. There were no trees to fight the rage of the gale in the middle of the field, which felt as though it was shredding his flesh with its icy breath.

The wind suddenly kicked up with a force unreckoned with. He had to lean into it to keep from being tossed onto his back. The ferocity of the wind ripping through the valley sounded like screaming… like the pained wails of an infant.

Harry stopped and cocked his head, placing his ear straight into the wind. It wasn’t the wind that had made that sound! It was separate, riding on the wind. And the screams of that child sounded like nothing he had ever heard before. His heart pounded in his chest and he could almost empathetically feel the pain in those screams.

Shedding the blanket, he ran towards the small white house, the frigid air slicing at his lungs from the inside, burning in his sinuses. His feet felt as though they each weighed a hundred pounds as he forced them to rise and fall through the thick, wet snow, the wind trying to force him backward.

As he rapidly approached, he could see shadows through the thin line of light between the closed shades of the window on the side of the house. A car buried in snow save for the windshield and scraped patches on either side window, sat in front of the house, its dark shape casting a long shadow out across where he assumed the road lurked below the snow.

The screams grew louder, pleading with him from across the field. He was almost to the point of physical exhaustion, but he had no choice but to press on as the screams cried to him, begging for mercy, for some sort of respite… until finally they were silenced, a loud thunk echoing through the night, hitting Harry like a slammed door.

He stopped, only twenty yards from the house, the bare tips of the branches of the trees encircling it scraping across the roof like fingers trying to peel back the shingles. He surveyed the field. The tire marks behind the car were still fresh as he could see them like dark lines across the shining white surface of the snow, tracing the course back into the wall of trees at the far side of the field. Muffled voices assaulted him on the bitter wind, shadows passing in front of the light in the window.

And then there was another wail, a hoarse cry like that of a newborn.

Harry raced towards the front porch, leaping through the snow and onto the wooden steps, ascending them as though on springs. His breath seized in his lungs, freezing like a mass of ice in his heavy chest, and he slid across the ice-covered porch. Weightless, he skated, his shoulder ramming into the front door, knocking it inward. Shards of woods blew into the air as the lock tore through the brittle wood of the trim. His feet caught on the edge of the tile in the entranceway and he careened forward, landing squarely on his chest, his breath exploding from him.

He looked up, pawing at the slick floor, fighting to regain his feet.

The room had taken on a red tinge from the handful of candles that flickered in the corners in front of the red velvet curtains. Three dark shapes loomed over him. He struggled to see in the light after coming in from the blinding darkness. Screams filled his ears from close by, ripping at his flesh.

With as much effort as he could muster, Harry hauled himself to his feet, his eyes scanning the room frantically, trying to focus. All of the furniture had been pushed back against the walls, exposing a square, patterned red carpet in the middle of the hardwood floor. There was a small wooden pedestal in the middle of the room, and what looked like a marble birdbath next to it. Atop the pedestal, a baby flopped on a swaddling cloth, his arms and legs fanning the air above him. A dark figure stood above the child, dipping an open palm into the contents of the birdbath, and then tracing a line on the forehead of the screaming child.

“Get out of here!” a female voice shrieked at him, a hand tightening around his upper arm.

Harry whirled, his right arm swinging with a closed fist at the body of whoever held him, striking the soft flesh of the midsection.

There was a hollow thud as his attacker hit the floor, damp breath gasping for air. Two other figures closed in upon him, their arms outstretched, reaching for him.

Lowering his shoulder, he lunged through the other two, knocking them to the ground. The birdbath toppled to the floor, its contents spilling across the polished surface. Steadying himself, he grabbed the child from the pedestal and brought him against his chest, zipping him up beneath his jacket.

“You have no idea what you’re doing!” one of the women cried as he whirled to face her.

On the left side of the room, beneath the light of the window that had guided him there, were three small lumps, bodies wrapped from head to toe beneath a thin white cloth. Bloodstains covered the bodies, growing in size with each passing second from the unseen wounds beneath. A tuft of dark hair protruded through the top of the cloth of the largest of the bodies.

His lower jaw fell and the contents of his stomach rose from his gut and into his chest, his thudding heart fit to burst.

One of the shapes appeared directly in front of him, this time moving very slowly and deliberately, arms straight at him, palms to the sky.

“Doctor,” the voice said, more calmly this time. “Please… just hand me the child.”

Her visage came into focus, the white of her habit in stark contrast to the blackness that swelled around them. Her eyes were awash with shadows. He watched her mouth move, trembling.

“This is a matter of spiritual importance,” she continued. “These children must be destroyed.”

Harry glanced back at the bodies that littered the couch, and pulled the child beneath his jacket even closer to his chest. It let out a pained wail.

“You murdered these children,” he gasped, slowly easing backward toward the door.

“They were the spawn of Satan,” Sister Catherine said evenly. “While they may have looked like nothing more than harmless children to you, doctor, these four contain limitless evil bound beneath human flesh.”

“You’ve lost your mind!”

“Like yourself, we were skeptical at first. We found the body of the mother who dropped them off ripped to shreds, her blood covering the ground in a hundred foot radius, her intestines run through the tops of the trees like a Christmas garland.”

“Stay back,” Harry said, glancing to either side as the other two sisters closed in on him. One of them held a long, thin knife in her closed fist.

“These four children are impervious to pain. When that little girl broke her ankle, she didn’t even shed a tear, she just continued walking on it even though her bones stuck out from the torn flesh.”

He could feel the cold air coming in from the door behind him, the wind howling from the blackened night.

“I heard them screaming—”

“As we placed holy water on their foreheads to baptize them… to try to save their eternal souls from damnation.”

Harry stepped out onto the icy porch, still fixed upon the three women who were nearly to the frame of the door now.

“If you take that child with you, his fate will be your responsibility. The evil he spreads will mean your damnation. Give back the child and save your own soul!”

Harry placed his right hand over the child’s exposed head, every muscle in his body tensing as he prepared for flight.

“There is no redemption in hell, doctor. Weigh your decision very carefully, for you have but one chance here.”

He stared down at the thin blond locks atop the child’s head that filtered through his open fingers. The blood in his veins hammered in his temples as her words echoed in his mind.

“You’re not going to kill this child!” he shouted, turning and sprinting across the porch.

He could hear their footsteps behind him landing on the wooden stoop as he leapt over the steps, the ground rising to meet him too quickly. He stumbled, losing his balance. Rolling onto his left side so as not to crush the child beneath his weight, he absorbed the brunt of the impact, his eyes closing in pain.

He heard footsteps on the steps coming down to the lawn.

Forcing his eyes open, he could see the shadow of a figure, kneeling just to the side of the small house, crouching like an animal ready to pounce.

Leaping to his feet, he staggered away from the house, waiting for his body to find its sense of equilibrium so that he could sprint toward the forest. Behind him, he could hear their anguished voices, calling after him, but there was no way he could even turn to look. He was fixed intently on the line of the trees ahead, and the salvation that lie within. If he could just get to those trees, he could disappear into the undergrowth and there was no way they were going to find him. He had grown up in woods just like these, playing hide and seek, hunting large game. It was his home field. If only he could just make it there…

The pleading voices behind him turned to screams, not shouting as though trying to be heard, but screams of terror.

There was no way he was going to turn around until he hit that wall of trees that grew closer with every second. His legs burned from the strain. He had used up the oxygen in his lungs long ago and was urging himself on with pure fear and determination. The snow burned his eyes, falling directly into the open lids, but he managed to keep them open.

Hurdling the first layers of sage, he leapt into the wall of branches, finally having the courage to glance back as he shoved through the sharp needles of the cluster of spruces.

There was no one in the field behind him, only the glimmering snow and the line of tracks that he had left. He could still hear the screams riding along the wind from the house, but there was only one shadowed figure, slowly easing up the steps and onto the front porch. It was large—inhumanly large—and not so much walking, as it was floating up onto the porch and into the house.

The screams intensified, filling the night like sirens, drowning out the whistling wind, before finally fading back into the silence of the night.

Harry watched the front of the house; unable to draw his gaze from it as the large shadow finally reappeared on the porch, standing motionless… staring directly at him.

Whirling, he threw his body through the endless masses of tangled branches. He tucked his head and raised his left arm in front of his face in an attempt to block the rows of razor sharp needles that ripped at the skin on his face, trying frantically to find his way back to the road.

Breaking through the last row of trees, he burst into the open, stumbling over the edge of the pavement, barely able to keep his balance as he staggered down the center of the road. He could no longer feel any part of his body, the pain had rubbed the nerves raw and he had reached the point where the body wanted to shut down. Every inch of flesh grew increasingly heavy, his inertia petering to nothing more than a limping lurch. His chest would allow no more oxygen to enter, the air within growing stagnant, his vision darkening.

His car appeared around the next bend, right on the side of the road as he had left it. He had been running for as long as he could, his brain on the verge of shutting down. Without even thinking, he pulled his hand off of the child’s head and shoved it into his pocket, producing the car keys. Stopping beside the door, he yanked it open, his body suddenly wanting to collapse into a heap. Jamming the key into the ignition, he cranked it, pinning his foot straight through the gas pedal and into the floorboard.

The engine roared to life immediately, and he threw it into gear, the back end sliding back and forth as the spinning wheels grabbed for traction. With a loud squeal and a sudden jolt the car rocketed forward, racing straight down the center of the road as he drove on nothing more than reflex, trying with all his might to just keep that car in the center of the road.

It wasn’t until that precise moment that the reality of the situation set in. There was no way that his vehicle should have started, let alone driven him out of those woods. He would have been lucky if the insurance company hadn’t totaled it. The undercarriage of the car had been shredded by the antlers from that buck, draining every ounce of fluid from the engine. There was no way he could have driven the car, yet here he was…

A flash of light caught his eye and he looked over in time to see a large stag standing motionless at the side of the road, the headlights reflecting in golden orbs from the wide eyes beneath the enormous rack of antlers. The buck watched the car as it raced by. By the time Harry looked up in the rearview mirror, the stag was gone, leaving nothing but the darkness from which he had just escaped.

The year had been 1972, but still the images were as clear as though it had just happened that morning, burning themselves into the backs of his eyelids so that they were all that he saw every time he closed his eyes. It was what woke him, covered in sweat, every night. It was the first thing he saw in the morning when he arose and the last images to cross his brain as he fell into sleep. And here he was, standing in the entranceway to hell as he had seventeen years prior, staring into the darkness of the house that resonated with all of his fears.

His responsibility.

The thin rays of moonlight that dripped through the thick, cloud-covered sky filtered into the room from the open door behind him. He stood in the entranceway, his hands trembling, reaching into the darkness in front of him. Slowly, Harry inched into the room, the hardwood floor squeaking beneath his damp boots.

As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he could make out the furniture stacked in piles at the left side of the room, the fabric slashed and torn, the filling pouring through the gaping holes. Plaster fragments, which had fallen in chunks from the walls, littered the floor, adding to the overwhelming stench of dust and stagnation. The red velvet curtains were shredded, hanging in strands from the thick wooden curtain rods above the boarded windows.

Vandals had completely had their way with the place. There was a pentagram drawn in red spray paint right in the center of the floor, the blood of some cat or other oblivious animal spilled in the center, dried and cracking. Initials and other random messages were spray painted across the walls: everything from “Class of ’86 Rules!” to “Praise Hail Satan.” A pile of smashed beer bottles sat in the corner, the brown glass sparkling in the dim light.

The molding around the door in front of him was ripped from the plaster. Stepping over the trim, careful of the nails the jutted upward, he entered the kitchen, the waning light barely following him from the living room. All of the appliances had left years prior, and there was nothing left to show that they had ever been there, save for the small pipes that protruded from the walls, and the cracks along the plaster where the countertops had been. The linoleum had been ripped up, exposing the bare plywood floor, which echoed loudly with his hollow footsteps. Cobwebs hung from one side of the room to the other, bouncing from the stir he created with his movements.

There were only a few sayings scrawled across the walls in here, but in the darkness, he could only tell that they were there, not what they said. The smell of dampened earth, a cross between ozone and brimstone crept up from the stairs at the back of the kitchen, leading down into the blackness of the cellar.

There was a small scratching sound, like fingernails trying to claw through wood, coming from the doorway to his right. He heart leapt up in his throat. He fought physically to make his shaking legs carry him through the doorway. Tears formed in the corners of his eyes and his head began to pound, throbbing as it bore the pressure of his now overwhelming fear. His breath came in short, loud bursts from his heavy chest.

Stepping carefully into the room, there was an almost sickening crunch beneath his boot, and then another as he slipped his whole body into the room. Something covered the floor, but in the darkness he couldn’t make it out. Crouching, he set his hand atop whatever it was that carpeted the floor, and recoiled suddenly in pain.

His left hand trembling, he pulled a handful of small, sharp stickers from his palm. They felt like needles from a cactus or like the stingers from…

Harry’s jaw dropped and he knelt once again, very carefully pulling a credit card from his wallet and dragging it slowly across the floor, producing a handful of the hollowed out exoskeletons of… bees. Every inch of the floor, from the entranceway through the open closet was covered with a half-inch layer of dead bees. Turning, he scanned the kitchen, but there wasn’t a single carcass on the floor in there, yet this room was carpeted without a single gap.

In the open closet, he could see a large glass bottle containing a dark fluid on the top shelf, a cork wedged halfway down the long neck of the jug. But there was absolutely nothing else in the room: no furniture, no shredded curtains or debris, just the bees.

Rising, he turned to face the kitchen, just as the dark shape of a man walked straight through the kitchen in front of him and into the living room.

Harry’s heart felt as though it was going to burst and he fought to breathe through the onset of panic. Every muscle in his body seized at the exact same moment, twisting him from the inside out, tying knots in his back and neck. His fingernails drew blood in the middle of his palms from his tightly clenched fists. It took every iota of his courage to shuffle his feet into the kitchen so that he could peer around the corner and into the living room.

The shape stood in the open doorway, silhouetted against the falling snow beyond, his back to Harry. Long, matted hair framed the head and extraordinarily broad shoulders. Long fabric, almost like that of a trenchcoat, fell from the shoulders to an inch above the floor, the edges flapping like a cape from the wind. His hands were open at his sides; the long, thin fingers writhing like worms.

“I’ve seen you before,” Harry sputtered through his bone-dry mouth. “That night…”

The figure slowly turned, his face drenched in the thick shadows. His hair tossed from the whipping wind that screamed through the valley. He stood motionless for what seemed an eternity, and though Harry could not see the man’s eyes, he could feel their stare crawling on his skin.

Slowly, the man inched towards Harry. He seemed to glide across the floor. There was no sound from his footfall on the hardwood. Stopping a mere foot from Harry, he cocked his head and slowly extended his arm, taking Harry’s trembling hand within his own.

Harry could taste the man’s foul, pungent breath, could feel its heat on his face as the man positively towered over him. The man’s skin felt like parchment, dry and stretched taut across his bulging, knobby bones. His blood boiled like fire. It felt as though Harry’s hand was being held directly above a campfire.

Raising Harry’s hand up past shoulder level, the man leaned forward and kissed it, right in the center of the palm.

Harry dropped to his knees in pain; his face clenching tightly as tears spurted from his squinting eyes. His teeth bared as he fought back a scream. Gripping his left hand tightly in his right, he breathed as though going into labor, struggling to climb to his feet without using his hands.

The man was already through the entranceway and descending the stairs at the edge of the porch.

Crawling on the floor, using his right elbow to propel himself, Harry got to the front door and used the wall for leverage to get to his feet. Breathing heavily, his hand curled into a ball against his chest, he shuffled onto the porch, fighting back the swell of unconsciousness that tried to rip free from within, pain and shock threatening to sweep him beneath the dark swell of blackness.

The man glided across the white field, the snow swirling around him like a cyclone, heading for the edge of the trees.

“Hey!” Harry shouted through his tightly clenched teeth, but the man didn’t even turn around as he entered the wall of evergreens, disappearing behind the mass of needles.

Harry fell to his knees on the porch, the searing pain in his hand more than he could bear. Toppling onto his side, Harry’s last conscious image was of the row of foliage where the man had disappeared. A large stag with an enormous rack of antlers walked through the open field, standing at the edge of the tree line, turning to stare directly at him, its gaze lingering. Its eyes glowed beneath the thin moonlight.

Darkness rose from the depths of his soul and swept Harry beneath a black wave, the snow falling damply atop his unmoving body.

home • order • blackest death • authors • community • contact • submissions • auctions • message board • live chat

mail list • customer service • bargain bin • free fiction

THE BLOODSPAWN

Michael McBride

© 2004 Michael McBride. All rights reserved.

PART TWO

II

Thursday, November 11th

3:10 p.m.

Matthew Parker climbed down the two tall stairs of the long yellow school bus and stepped into the nearly foot-deep snow on the shoulder of the road. The flashing red lights from the stop sign on the side of the bus blinked across the white sheet of groundcover in front of him. He could hear the heavy thud of footsteps from behind him, thundering down the stairs of the bus as he quickly began to walk up the steep culdesac, shifting his heavy blue backpack onto his right shoulder, tugging the sleeve of his jacket back over his wrist.

He turned the black cap with the Atlanta Falcons logo atop his head around, tipping his chin so that the brim shielded his eyes from the enormous flakes of snow that fell straight down. The back of his dark blonde hair was long, falling just over his shoulders in front, his hazel eyes peering up from beneath the lowered brim.

Muffled voices chatted in excited whispers behind him, causing him to quicken his pace, walking faster to create some sort of separation. There was a whistling in his right ear as an object flew only inches from his head, landing in the snow in front of him and bouncing up the street. Before he knew what it was, there was another, coming straight over his head and landing in the street, bouncing into the air before disappearing beneath the slush. This time he got a good look at it.

It was a rock.

His teeth tattered the inside of his lip as his ire rose, his legs threatening to go limp. Shoving his trembling hands into his pockets, he stared straight ahead at the end of the culdesac, eyeing the gap between the houses at the end, where he would slip through onto the street beyond. It was another good half-mile walk to his house, as he rode a bus on a route that was not his own. The constant bullying and torment of the other kids on his bus had made the twenty minute ride so insufferable that he had been forced to find an alternate way to get to school. Sure, at seventeen he was of legal age to drive, but in order to do that, he needed to have permission to drive to school, but that was a concession his parents were unwilling to make since he had been caught skipping class.

Another rock tagged him squarely in the back, echoing through the street as it hammered the books in the pack.

“Don’t turn around,” he whispered to himself beneath his breath.

“Come on, faggot!” a voice shouted from behind him. “What are you going to do about it?”

Keeping his head down, he walked as fast as his legs would take him to the side of a tan two-story, trudging through the thick snow on the lawn to the short, twin-rail fence at the back of the yard. Scaling it, another rock nailed him in the left shoulder, knocking him face first into snow-covered buffalo grass of the field behind the house. His shoulder stung as though his scapula had cracked, and he was forced to use just his right arm to scramble to his feet. He brushed the cold mat of ice from his face and hurried on, consciously trying to keep himself from running.

Another rock zinged past his right hip, skipping off the asphalt beneath the accumulation in front of him at the end of the barren, dead-end street. Ahead, there was a deserted intersection. To the left, the steep hill that led up to his house, to the right the large grass field behind the elementary school. Once he made that turn, there was really no reason for them to follow him any longer.

Their names were John Allen and Devin Larkin, and he knew that they both lived in the block to the right, just across from the field. They had played soccer and basketball together growing up, but apparently Matt was the only one that remembered. They had never been close friends or anything like that, but had always gotten along well enough, at least until the start of last school year, Matt’s junior year.

It had all started one day, a warm and dry September morning early in the school year. Matt had met his best friend, Scott Ramsey, at the bus stop, which he could remember surprised him considering Scott lived close to a mile away and rode a different bus. They had decided that it was far too nice of a day to spend it in school, and had opted instead to go over to Scott’s dad’s townhouse, as they knew that he would be at work all day.

Scott’s parents had divorced years earlier, and he lived with his mom the majority of the time, but he still carried a key to his dad’s place. After spending the better part of the morning hanging out at Safeway, eating chocolate-covered peanuts and sour balls from the bulk bins, they had walked down to the taco place to play some video games in the lobby before heading up to Scott’s dad’s condo.

They hadn’t even been there that long. He couldn’t remember what they had been watching on TV at the time, but they were only halfway into it, sitting back on the couch smoking cigars and swilling some of his dad’s bourbon, when they heard the key hit the lock. Instinctively, they ran, darting through his father’s bedroom and into the bathroom, crouching in the bottom of the shower stall, the opaque glass door closed tightly. Holding their breath, they could hear the front door swing inward.

“I know you’re in here!” his dad shouted, slamming the door behind him. “Get out here right now!”

Matt and Scott stared helplessly at one another, holding their breath tightly for fear of the slightest noise betraying them. Both of their faces had faded to a pale white, their hearts hammering in their ears.

They could hear the heavy padding of footsteps marching all around the townhouse, and the silencing of the television with a click.

“We’re as good as caught,” Matt whispered. “We should just get out.”

“Not yet,” Scott whispered back, his eyes wide.

It was then that the door to the shower stall flung back, slamming loudly against the wall. Its hinges nearly snapped. A large hand reached right past Matt and grabbed Scott by the front of the shirt, heaving him into the air. Matt dare not even look up.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Scott’s dad bellowed, dragging him out of the bathroom.

Matt slowly rose from the floor of the ivory-tiled shower and stepped into the bathroom, crossing the floor at a snail’s pace, following the sounds of their voices. He could hear the words, but there was no comprehension within his head. He began to slip into what he liked to call his “quiet place,” deep within his head. It was a world where he could live out his existence without the stress that always seemed to track him down wherever he went. Granted, he brought a large chunk of trouble upon himself through either stupid or thoughtless actions, but there had been so much in his life outside of his direct control that he had found the place early on in his childhood.

A loud banging at the door shocked him out of his trance, his shoulders jumping as he heard his mother’s voice outside of the door.

“Matthew Thomas Parker!” she shouted. He could see the expression on her face even though they were separated by solid oak. He had seen it far too many times in recent memory, her lips curled tightly over her front teeth, her blue eyes wild and furious. “Come out here right now!”

He could hear the front door open as he rounded the corner from the bedroom and into the living room. The muffled voices of his mom talking with Scott’s father filled his ears. He stood out in the open now, watching, horrified, as the two spoke, glancing over their shoulders at he and Scott.

Matt never even turned to look at Scott, as he knew exactly what Scott was thinking.

The conference over, Matt’s mom swept across the room and ushered him through the front door by the shoulder of his shirt, dragging him down the front steps and to her car. Climbing into the gold minivan, he stared straight through the side window from the passenger seat as the onslaught of yelling commenced.

He’d been caught, what more could he say. The situation seemed fairly self-explanatory. He’d skipped school and gotten busted, end of story. But still, his mother demanded an explanation. Matt knew full well that anything he said would be completely unacceptable as his mom had been forced to leave her classes unattended at school to come and track him down.

So he just sat there silently, staring at the passing trees as they drove onto the Air Force Academy grounds, where his public high school was located. They had parked right in front of the school and she had dragged him through the front doors to the attendance office. Throwing wide the door and leading him to the high counter where an older woman with graying hair and thin-rimmed glasses looked down on him from up high.

“Busted,” the woman said, smirking.

Matt just shook his head, suppressing the urge to either sock her in the nose or give her the finger.

The door swung open behind them, and Matt turned to look as his mother checked him in. Scott’s dad ushered Scott through the door, and stepped into line behind Matt’s mother. Matt just looked at Scott, who shrugged his shoulders.

“Go to class,” Matt’s mom said, walking out the door of the office. “We’ll decide your punishment when you get home.”

Matt walked out into the hall and waited as Scott’s dad had to make his closing comments as well before ordering him off to class.

The two walked silently towards the cafeteria as the bell was about to ring to end fifth period, and it was going to be time for their lunch anyway. Walking into the large room, the sun from the wall of glass burned into their eyes. They sat at one of the tables and waited for the room to fill up.

Neither felt particularly hungry, as they had spent the morning beefing up on junk food. Besides, they had blown their lunch money on the video games and cigars.

The bell rang. Matt sighed loudly, knowing he might as well just try to enjoy the rest of the school day and make it last as long as possible since he was going to have a very long night once he got home. Kids filled the halls from every direction, many with books beneath their arms as they shuffled off to their next class, having a different lunch hour, while others carried in brown paper sacks or headed toward the line for the food bar.

That was when his life had irrevocably changed. When his everyday life had turned to an inexhaustible hell.

And it had all begun so simply.

Friends had crowded around them, sitting down at the table beside them or hovering over the table to either side.

“What happened to you guys?” Brian had asked.

“Got caught ditching school,” Scott answered.

“Whoa, dude. What happened?”

They had regaled the group around them with the stories of their morning of decadence right up to the point where they were finally apprehended, hiding on the floor of the shower.

Over the course of the following week, the story had played off many lips. “Did you hear Matt and Scott got caught skipping school?” turned into “Did you hear Matt and Scott got caught in the shower together?”

Matt could remember the first time he had heard that particular variation. He had been hiding out in the bathroom in the middle of class, taking his time on a bathroom break. He had been sitting on top of one of the sinks, waiting just a few more minutes before heading back to class to avoid the teacher having a fit. Jim Yates had walked in and faced one of the urinals.

“So I hear you got caught,” he said, zipping down his zipper.

“Yeah,” Matt said, consciously looking the other direction.

Finishing his business, Jim zipped back up his zipper and walked right past Matt.

“Fucking faggot,” he said, spitting on Matt’s leg.

The whole thing had come as such a shock; there was no way that he could have ever really been prepared for that to happen. He just sat there, staring at the damp, dark blue patch on his jeans. The world spun around him.

From there, each day had gotten progressively worse. He would walk down the halls between classes being shoved from all sides by passersby, as they would whisper about him… and those were the kind ones. There were others who would shove him, trip him, knock his books from his arms, staring down at him, calling him a “fucking faggot.” It got to the point where he was no longer able to make eye contact with anyone, staring down at his feet wherever he went. Slouching down in his seat in class to avoid the stares, so as not to see their lips moving as they berated him, quite often in front of the whole class.

It was to the point where he couldn’t get any girls at his own school to talk to him, let alone go out on a date. He had actually even had a girlfriend at the time, Tricia, but she dumped him because all of the stress was starting to get to her. Get to her?!

Matt began walking to class around the outside of the building, even through the snow, so as to encounter as few people as possible. The parking lot monitors cut him some slack, most likely because he had become so meek and pathetic looking, allowing him to sit out in the parking lots smoking between periods.

And the torment didn’t stay at school. People called his house, day and night, waiting for him to answer, and then shouting “Faggot!” into the phone, or just calling to verbally berate him. It followed him home on the bus. Kids he had known all of his life throwing trash at him, yanking the back of his hair, and his personal favorite, the chant of “Faggot! Faggot!”

That was why he had begun waking up half an hour earlier to walk to the next bus route. But they were all the same, as was evidenced by this afternoon’s rock episode.

Life had become insufferable. There was no joy to be found in even the most remote corner of his existence. He lived to sleep, knowing that was the only time when the torment stopped, and fearing every day that he would wake up to find that nothing had changed, as he did every morning.

He couldn’t comprehend how it had gotten to this point. What could he have done differently?

And that had been more than a year ago.

Every day was better than the next.

There was a sudden, sharp stinging in the back of his head. Matt felt his body become weightless, tumbling forward towards the ground. Red flashed behind his closed eyelids as he slammed into the curb at the base of his hill. His right hand trembling, he opened his eyes and dabbed at the immediate swelling beneath his left eye. It was already puffy and resonated with pain from his cheekbone through his nose. He could feel his eye slowly closing, the swelling pressing the lids together.

He rubbed the back of his head, from where the rock had struck him right at the base of his skull. His hair was matted damply together. Patting at it, he pulled his hand around to where he could see it, staring at the crimson fluid that covered his fingertips.

This time, he did look back over his shoulder. John and Devin were standing side by side laughing riotously. Devin made a fake falling down gesture, and the two laughed even harder, if that were even possible.

Matt just stared at them, his jaw falling slack.

“What are you going to do about it, Faggot?” John shouted, throwing his arms out to his sides.

Slowly closing his eyes, Matt turned and began his trek up the steep hill to his house, hoping that they weren’t going to follow him any further. There was something like this every day, maybe not to this extreme, but the emotional havoc had taken its toll. His whole body seemed to function in slow motion, his breathing slow and deliberate, his mind only capable of normal functioning when he was alone in his room, away from the judgmental stares and taunts.

The laughter faded behind him, but there would always be tomorrow and the day after that…

Glancing to his right, he crossed the snow-blown street at the top of the hill and turned down his culdesac. Large, rounded pines lined the sides of the street, the houses hidden from the road behind them. He walked right down the middle of the road. The majority of the houses on the street were owned by older retirees, a well-rounded mixture of those who spent their springs tending to their immaculate gardens surrounded by electric fences to keep the deer out, and those who peered out from behind barely-drawn drapes, watching the world deteriorate around them. Unfortunately, neither type particularly cared for him, the long-haired representation of the irresponsibility of an undisciplined youth. Sure, he got along with his next door neighbors, his retired pediatrician and a nice young family with two kids in elementary school. But the rest merely stared down their noses at him, shuffling back into their houses and slamming the door, somehow amplifying the sound of the engaging deadbolt to let him know where he stood.

Turning left into his driveway at the end of the circle, he made the first tracks in the pristine snow that had accumulated since they had all left in the morning. His mother taught social studies at the junior high level, his father an engineer for a large computer magnate based out of California. He could remember asking his father what exactly he did for a living, but the technical jargon had twisted his little mind into a knot, and he didn’t want to let on that he didn’t understand. All he knew was his old man seemed to like the job less and less with each passing year. His mother, on the other hand, seemed to enjoy her job most of the time. She was one of those who chose to teach, who felt as though she could make a difference in the lives of those who entered her classroom.

His father, Greg Parker, was a very analytical man. His mind functioned in logical rhythms, taking him from point A to point B to point C, diagramming itself on a small chalkboard in his brain. He was highly driven, and had an overdeveloped sense of accountability, assuming responsibility for everything around him, regardless of whether or not he had any control over the situation at all. A poster boy for a bygone age, he was a short-haired hunter, full-time provider, and preached education as the cure to the ails of society. Dinner was on the table when he came home at night, and then he went straight up to the computer room to check on his stocks.

His mother was more nurturing, more emotional. Like his father, she recalled an older era, tending to the house as though it was her sole mission, but at the same time a modern woman, working full-time trying to exert her influence on the world.

But neither of them were home right now, nor would they be for quite a while.

Flipping up the small plastic cover on the keypad mounted on the side of the garage door, he typed in his four-digit code and the garage opened right up for him. Ducking his head, he slipped under the rising door and crossed the empty garage to the door leading into the house. He stepped up onto the sole step leading into the family room and pressed the button on the opener, closing the door behind him, and stepped into the house.

Striding across the family room, he scaled the stairs and turned into the foyer, taking another right, cruising up the stairs, and into his bedroom to the right. Grabbing a piece of paper from inside the desk in his room, he scrawled a quick note:

Mom-

Studying. Don’t disturb.

-Matt.

Tearing a small piece of tape from the dispenser, he stuck it to the outside of his bedroom door and closed it, locking it from the inside. He tossed his backpack onto the bottom level of his unmade bunk bed. Grabbing onto the rail of the top bunk, he climbed up the side and knelt atop the mattress. Looking at the ceiling, he reached up with both hands and pressed up on the small square opening into the attic, sliding back the small white square of drywall, and ducking his head under the hole. Standing up, he braced his elbows on the wooden rafters and climbed up, sliding the cover back over the hole.

Small lines of light filtered into the dusty attic from the seams around the vents through the roof, allowing him just enough visibility to find the box of matches he kept right next to the entrance. Sliding back the top of the box, he pulled out one of the light-anywhere matches, striking it with the tip of his thumbnail. It flared brightly, and he touched the flame to the wicks of the numerous candles melted into their holders in all four corners of the room. He blew out the match just as the searing heat of the fire hit his fingertips. A small corner of the attic had been unprofessionally finished. This had been his project over the last summer as he had all sorts of time to work with, what with having no friends or a girlfriend and all.

He had dragged the pieces of plywood up there, one at a time, laying them over the ceiling joists. Using old orange- and brown-striped paneling, he paneled the angled ceiling and blocked off a portion of the crawlspace from the rest of the house, making it his own private little room. He had found some foam padding and laid it beneath patchwork remnants of carpet. There was even a small lawn chair in either corner of the room, and a beanbag in the middle. Every available inch of the walls had been covered with posters and pictures cut from magazines of all of his favorite bands, and, of course, the obligatory pictures of bikini-clad women finding some way to get themselves wet. In the center of the room, right next to the bright blue beanbag, was a small stack of hardbound books, tattered strips of paper protruding from a hundred different locations within each tome.

Grabbing the closest candle, he carried it with him as he crawled beneath the low lying ceiling to the beanbag, setting it down right next to him on the white shag carpet and grabbing the book from the top of the stack. He stared down at the cover of the book; the black leather cover embossed in gold with a pentagram over the face of a bull. The corners of the cover were bent back, exposing the cardboard beneath, and the pages were yellowed, reeking of age. The title had faded from the cover and the embossing peeled readily back.

It still had the original press date of 1968 stamped inside the front cover. All of the type was so tiny that he had to strain beside the candlelight to read it. There were old pictures every twenty pages or so, depicting the numerous faces of evil and the acts and rituals involved with those rites. Finding the latest of the numerous bookmarks dangling from the spine, he opened the book and held it close to his face.

It had been a natural progression for him. Even before his life had begun to fall to shambles around him, he hadn’t been completely sold on his parents’ religion. He had far too many questions that no one could seem to answer without justifying it with the word “faith.” He envied those people who could just buy into the whole thing without doubts. The kind of people who stood around their piano as a family at the end of the night singing praise to Jesus, the kind of people who walked the neighborhood caroling every Christmas. The kind of people who always wore a smile on their faces, their glimmering eyes betraying the innocence captured within. But there was no way that he could be one of those people, the blissfully happy, either unaware of the pain in their lives, or able to rationalize it as the will of God.

When his ostracision had first begun, he had begged God to help him. He had spent hours every night praying for an end to the ceaseless torment, but whether his pleas had fallen on deaf ears or the maker had chosen not to respond was unimportant. It was the fact that things only got worse. After months of crying out for help and receiving none, he had been forced to seek another option.

At first, it had been little more than mere curiosity. He drew pictures of a horned monstrosity on his papers during class, and that alone had a small, yet noticeable effect. The weaker of his tormentors, those who hadn’t really yet committed to making it their life’s work to abuse him, backed off nicely, almost fearing him a little. It was such a positive start that rather than hiding out behind the school during lunch time, he had begun going to the library, beginning to read up on the occult. It was only a matter of days before he worked through the small handful of politically correct books at the school, and had to start going to the public library whenever he got a chance.

The thought of hell no longer scared him. The way he saw it, nothing could possibly be worse than the life he currently led. He learned to hate, learned the power of the darkness, solely out of spite. It was all that he had. The thought that in some way—whether it be today or years down the road—he was going to make each and every one of those sons of bitches who made his life intolerable pay, was the only thing that kept him going. Were it not for his highly developed sense of revenge, he would have committed suicide long ago. It certainly would have saved him a lot of grief.

But for the same reason that he couldn’t blindly buy into the existence of a God, he hadn’t been able to swallow the Christian concept of a devil either. There was no denying the existence of evil; that was evidenced in everyday life. Nor was there denying the presence of good, as it seemed to surround everyone he knew in some form or fashion… everyone except him. It wasn’t until he had come across this particular book that things had started to make some semblance of sense.

Within the heavy, yellowing pages of the tome was what he considered to be the recipe for his own salvation. He had given up on trying to fit in with his classmates again, as over the last year it had become apparent that there was nothing he could do to accomplish that. Nothing he could think of had worked. Every guy seemed to want to pound him mercilessly to show their manhood and superiority in front of their buddies, and every girl shied away from him as though he were some sort of leper.

He clung tightly to the idea of at least assimilating himself back into everyday life, and while being blocked at every juncture, he had figured that at least he had one friend: Scott. Surely that would be enough to get him through the last year of his high school tenure. At least he had thought that until last week.

For some reason that he couldn’t seem to grasp, Scott had been forgiven his part in the whole shower story. He had been hounded, just like Matt for a couple of months, but it had just seemed to stop for him one day, as if everyone else at school had gotten together and decided that he was off the hook. Though they had been best friends most of their lives, they had different identities at school. Matt was shuffled from one class to the next with the exact same thirty people. As part of the “talented and gifted” program, he was segregated from the rest of the student body. He was already cordoned off with the other freaks and brainiacs, making it increasingly easy to loathe him from the start. The main problem was that he had never really fit in there either. While he sat in the back of the class daydreaming about getting laid, the rest of his classmates competed to see who could memorize pi to the furthest decimal. They battled for scholarships on a daily basis, dueling with their perfect grade point averages, daring one another to mess up. It was an early encapsulation of corporate executive life, day in and day out, yet even they had to jump on the bandwagon, whispering “faggot” under their breaths, as none of them had the physical prowess to support their accusations.

Scott, on the other hand, had classes with nearly every other kid in the school. He took grade appropriate classes and regular electives. Granted, Scott was more of an outgoing, get along type guy, but there was no reason for them to have let him off the hook, and singled Matt out. It had been a lot easier when it had been the two of them banished together.

It was easy for Matt to understand how Scott really didn’t fight to come to his rescue, to change what all of the others thought of him. Knowing what it was like in his everyday life, if he found a way out of this tormented existence, he wouldn’t risk going back either. And he had been fine with the arrangement that they had; Scott just kind of ignored him in the presence of his other friends, Matt’s former friends, but would still hang out with him outside of school. At least until today.

Instead of going to Calculus second period, Matt had decided to slip out the side door and just sit there beneath the overhang watching the snowflakes accumulating on the rooftops across the street. The parking lot monitors never turned him in, as they figured if the attendance office wasn’t smart enough to catch him, then he deserved to get away with it. He had just lit his cigarette when he heard someone press the handle of the door. Scrambling to his feet, he ducked around the corner, leaning against the small column of gray bricks that separated the recessed entryway from the long, ground level windows of the library.

Taking one last quick drag off of his cigarette, he dropped it into the snow, holding the smoke in his chest until it grew stale. He could hear their voices distinctly, recognizing each one of them as though it were his own. There was the snapping and clicking of lighters as all three of them lit up at once, obviously having the same idea.

“So what’s up with you talking to fagboy?” Jeremy asked, his lips pressed tightly around the filter of the smoke. The large, fluffy flakes were skewered atop his spiked brown hair. He always wore a black leather jacket and faded Levi’s; black converse “Chuck’s” duct-taped together, his shoes of choice.

“Whatever, dude,” Scott said, exhaling loudly. “I’ve known him since I was seven years old. What does it matter to you if I say ‘hey’ to him?”

“Nothing… if you want to be a freaking queer like that little worm,” Shane popped off, laughing so hard his smoke poured through his nostrils. He was the party guy, the one who kept the beer bong in his car. His eyes were always bloodshot, and he had a permanent little grin, the corners of his lips turned upwards, regardless of the situation. The grease monkey of the crew, he always wore a red, oil-spotted STP hat turned backwards and a flannel shirt, rolled at the cuffs.

“Why don’t you guys give him a break?” Scott said, shaking his head.

“Don’t tell me he’s turned you to the dark side,” Jeremy said, finishing with his Darth Vader breathing impression.

“Whatever, man. You know as well as I do that he’s not gay. He’s just got more than his share of problems right now.”

“Like being a queer,” Shane said, laughing.

“I think it’s about time you just gave it a rest.”

“Or maybe you’re just turning into one of them like him.”

“Maybe we should just kick your ass right here and now,” Jeremy said, stepping up and blowing smoke right into Scott’s face.

“So the dude’s gay,” Scott said, backing down. “So what?”

Matt’s teeth began to grind, tearing at the soft tissue on the inside of his cheeks. His fists clenched at his sides and he wanted nothing more than to whirl around the corner and start swinging.

“No, he’s a fucking faggot and I want to hear you say it,” Jeremy said.

“What’s that going to accomplish? You got a thing for semantics?”

“Only faggots use words like semantics. Say it or I’ll figure you’re queer too.”

“Okay fine,” Scott said, dropping his smoke to the concrete and stamping it beneath his black high tops. “He’s a fucking faggot.”

“There,” Shane said, throwing his arm over Scott’s shoulder. “Doesn’t that feel better?”

Scott just shook his head and shrugged. He opened the door and went back into the building on his way to class.

“I think the time has come to settle this thing once and for all,” Shane said.

“I think you’re right.”

“Perhaps an encounter is warranted.”

“Scott will never agree to it.”

“If we set it up as some sort of reconciliation party, I’m sure he’ll go along with it.”

“Reconciliation party?”

“Yeah, we meet somewhere, talk for a few minutes and then beat the stuffing out of him.”

“Show him what we think of faggots in our school. You know what I’m saying?”

“I hear you. What say we make it happen?”

“Done deal. When?”

“No time like the present. Let’s set it up for tomorrow night.”

There was a pause and Matt could hear them high five each other from around the corner.

“This is going to be too fun,” Shane said, opening the door. “Should I bring my video camera?”

“That would be sweet,” Jeremy said, his voice disappearing behind the closing door.

A tear crept from the corner of Matt’s eye as he sat there in the darkened attic.

A burst of cold air blasted him from the gap around the vent above. He set the book face-down in his lap and closed his eyes, rehearsing the passage he had just read. The cold wind grew and intensified around him, swirling through the dank air. It took on a life of its own. One by one the flames atop the candles blew out, the wind racing faster and faster, whistling in the blackened confines of the attic. Still he pinched his eyelids closed tightly, the howling wind metamorphosing with each lap around the attic. The whistling changed from a high-pitched whir that made the wooden supports around him creak noisily, into something more resembling human voices, tortured and twisting as they finally came to rest in different corners of the room, the unseen figures hiding in the darkness.

He could feel them all around him, crouching in the pitch black, their eyes fixed intently on him. His fingers trembled with anticipation and his heart pounded so loudly in his chest that it was all that he could hear, until the sound of footsteps, creeping along the plywood floor aroused him from his trance.

Thrusting his eyelids back, he pawed at the floor, frantically trying to find his matches so that he could re-light the candles and get even the slightest glimpse of what he had been waiting for so long to see. He could feel them, there in the darkness with him; their aging brimstone-soaked breath heavy on the hackles on his neck. Fear welled in his heaving chest. There was the slightest moment of doubt, one fleeting instant where he wondered if what he was about to do was the right thing. It wasn’t like he was selling his soul. That archaic concept was almost amusing. If it had been as easy as signing his name in blood on the dotted line of some contract, he would have done that long ago and lived his life out like a rock star. But as no one had come to his door, offering his or her legal representation in contractual matters, he was going to have to do it the hard way.

The box of matches rattled as his fingertips glanced off of it, before he finally gripped the box tightly in his fist and raised it in front of him, sliding back the cover and producing one of the wooden sticks. Pressing the tip of his thumbnail onto the surface, he prepared to snap the white tip, when suddenly, a bright yellow flame burst to life before his very eyes.

The candle on the floor in front of him sat burning right next to the black leather-bound book, the flame crackling, bouncing higher and higher until it was as long as the candlestick itself. Voices from the corners of the attic filled his ears, whispering words that he couldn’t understand, their speech rhythmic. They repeated the same indecipherable phrase over and over. His eyes scanned the darkened sanctuaries of shadows around him, hoping for the slightest glimpse of the creatures that lurked within, but all he could see was the thick, ever darkening blackness that pulsated from the walls toward the center of the room.

He could feel the presence of many different entities, could hear their weight shifting on the plywood beneath the thick carpet pad.

The temperature in the room suddenly began to drop, and there was a loud crack that Matt felt as much as he heard. The bridge of his nose began to throb, his eyes watering mercilessly. A thin stream of warm, red fluid spilled from his right nostril, racing over his upper lip and dropping onto the cover of the book in front of him.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Like a dripping faucet, the blood splashed one drop at a time onto the black leather. The yellow light from the candle snapped from one side to the other before fading to a dark shade of crimson, washing the walls with the deep red. The shadows began to writhe in ecstasy.

The pooling blood atop the cover slowly began to expand, the running liquid swirling until it matched the shape of the pentagram, hiding the gold embossing beneath the blood. Unable to rip his eyes from it, Matt cocked his head and allowed his jaw to fall slack.

“Help me,” he whispered, shining tears welling in the corners of his eyes. “Please.”

“What is it that you want?” a thin, cracking voice said from somewhere in the bleeding darkness around him.

Matt’s heart stopped in his chest for a moment and he had to force his lungs to start to breathe once again. The hairs on the backs of his arms and neck stood tall, aching dully. Whetting his lips, his tongue smacked dryly. He peered into every shadow, hoping for a glimpse of whomever, or whatever, had spoken.

“I need your help,” he said quietly, staring down at his trembling hands as he attempted to steady them on his knees.

There was no answer, only the sound of the rustling of bodies across the carpeted floor and along the hollow paneled walls.

“I want them to feel what I feel,” Matt started, the quiver in his voice vanishing as elaborated. “I want them to feel the hell they have put me through. I want them to know what it’s like to wake up every morning wishing that you hadn’t. I want them to… I want them to…”

“To what?” the voice said, the heat from the creature’s breath right in his ear.

“I want them all to die.”

The darkness around him began to press in closer, smothering the light of the flame. There was the scratching of nails on the paneling and the wind kicked up in the crawlspace once again. Warm bodies brushed up against him, racing from one side of the enclosure to the other. Batting his eyes, he struggled to see anything in the darkness.

Fingernails tore at his clothing, scraping the flesh beneath. Unseen hands grabbed at his face, tugged at his hair. The room filled with swirling bodies, buffeting him from side to side as they raced the room in circles, over and over until…

Everything stopped at once. The flame from the candle sprung back out of the wick. The shadows retreated to the corners.

Matt wiped his upper lip with the back of his hand. There was no streak of blood across his flesh. He stared down at the cover of the book, but there was no blood on it either.

Had he just dreamed up the whole thing? Was it all just some flight of fancy?

Shaking his head, Matt grabbed the book and tossed it against the wall. Hitting the base of the paneling, it slid beneath and into the pink insulation. He stared into his lap for a moment before finally snapping out of his trance with a long sigh and a chuckle.

Grabbing the lip of the drywall to his left, he blew out the candle and started to open the trap door to his bedroom below.

The shadows came at him with a fury and incomprehensible speed, peeling back his flesh as though it were paper mache. His back arched as he buckled in half, his head slamming onto the ground behind him. Frigid air forced its way down his opened mouth, silencing the screams that welled within. Bucking back and forth, his neck made of rubber, his eyes rolled backward into his head and his arms hung limply at his sides. Finally, his whole body collapsed to the floor with a thud, the air seeping from his lungs like a leaking balloon.

He lay there for what must have been hours, his mind functioning only in fragmented spurts. A wave of warmth washed through his body from the inside out, resonating at the tips of his fingers and toes. His body felt as though it weighed a thousand pounds. It took considerable effort to rise to a seated position.

He sat there, a line of saliva running from the corner of his mouth, falling with a small splat onto his jeans.

There were a thousand voices in his head now, some whispering, some screaming, all of them fighting to be heard. Placing his hands on his ears, Matt tried to settle them, to regain some semblance of order in his shattered mind. A warm sensation pulsed through his veins, electric, throbbing from deep within the core of his being. It rose through his veins, his muscles burning beneath the skin.

His shaking hands tugged at the cover to the crawlspace, sliding it back. Leaning over the hole, he fell through, landing in a heap on the mattress of the top bunk bed. Rolling onto his side, he could feel every muscle in his body as they swelled, pressing against the suit of flesh that was suddenly far too tight. His lids pinched tightly shut as his eyeballs threatened to pop out of his head from the pressure. His brains swelled against his skull to the point that he feared that gray matter would begin to seep out of his ears.

Pressing his hands tightly against the sides of his head, he bared his teeth against the pain. Flopping from one side to the other, he battled against the intense, searing fire that pumped through his bloodstream. Even the thin air in the room was torturous against his sensitive nerve endings. Tears streamed from his clenched eyes. The voices chattered louder and louder, grinding out his own thoughts within his mind, until all at once… everything stopped.

Slowly, Matt rolled back his eyelids and stared into the dark room. The clock atop the shelf next to his bed burned bright red. 2:35 a.m. His brow creased as he worked the quick math. He had been in the attic for nearly eleven hours, the time passing as though it had been a mere twenty minutes. Pangs of hunger roared in his stomach as he sat up and dangled his feet over the edge of the bed.

He could sense the presence of the voices in his head, hiding deep in the recesses of his mind, thundering from one invisible corner to the next. They were quiet all right, but the pressure was still there, burrowing into his cranial tissue. There was an overwhelming sense of warmth, as though from an unseen sun, covering every inch of his body.

His heartbeat slowly returned to normal and he rolled onto his stomach, dropping his feet onto the bottom bunk and hopping down to the floor. Pulling back the curtains, he stared out into the night. The cloud-drenched sky appeared a deep gray, muffling the thin glow of the moon. The snow still fell with enormous flakes, burying the row of pines that lined the back yard. Through the small walkway between them, he could see the trampoline hidden beneath close to a foot of powder. There was something else out there as well.

A long shadow crossed the pristine plain of snow on the lawn. It moved slowly, creeping across the grass until it was out in the open. A large buck stepped into the gap. Turning, it appeared to stare straight up into his bedroom window, its glowing eyes reflecting a bright gold from the vaporous light above. It just stared at him, motionless for a moment, its huge five-point rack silhouetted like matching dead trees against the white-capped hedges.

His eyes locked on those of the stag and he felt himself drawn into the deep gaze of the animal. The world around him ceased to exist, at least for the moment. A sense of comfort, of understanding, washed over him as his own voice joined the others within his brain, no longer dominant. His mind was empty of conscious thought. The only sound was the muffled whisperings of all of the voices at once, calling to him from the depths of his skull.

Turning back into the night, the stag bounded over the fence and into the field behind his house, disappearing into the masses of scrub oak.

Matt could still feel the animal, though, out there in the frigid darkness, calling to him from out of the blackened night.

Nodding to himself, Matt turned and walked through his bedroom, opening the door and stepping into the hallway. A note that had been attached to his door fell onto the rust-colored carpet. Picking it up, he just stared at it for a moment, the words just jumbles of letters, his mind unable to decipher the writings on it. Dropping it back to the floor, he walked down the hallway and down the stairs onto the main level. The rubber soles of his shoes squeaked on the tile floor as he passed the kitchen and stumbled down the next flight of carpeted stairs into the darkened family room.

The deep black shapes of the large, fluffy couches crouched in the center of the room. He had to dodge them to get to the garage door. Throwing it back hard enough to bang against the wall, he gripped the side of the door for a moment before stepping down into the garage.

There wasn’t a conscious thought in his head. He was working purely on instinct now. Whatever had been in there—call it a soul or a mind or whatever you like—was no longer there. He was a hollow shell, unthinking, unfeeling, skulking through the pitch black within the garage. Sliding past the Bronco and into the third garage, he walked straight to the tall, wooden cabinet next to the workbench. Reaching toward the high shelf above the table, he fumbled past a can of WD- 40, grabbing a small stack of keys on thin rings. Holding the mass of keys in his right hand, he dropped them onto the floor one by one until he found the small set of two identical keys that he wanted, gripping them tightly between his thumb and forefinger and shoving them into the lock on the closet door. With a click, he popped the lock, looped it through the holes, and tossed it onto the concrete floor.

Opening the hollow wooden door, he reached within, his right hand grasping the well-oiled steel of the barrel of his shotgun. Bringing it to his body, he cradled it beneath his left arm and walked to the back of the garage to another row of closets. Opening the middle one, he pulled out a small metal box. Taking it back to the workbench, he shoved aside the clutter of tools and set it down. Throwing back the lid, he reached inside and pulled out a small rectangular, gray cardboard box. Tearing back the flaps, he pulled out three bright red shotgun shells and headed back towards the inside door.

He slipped the first two shells into the bottom of the shotgun, and then pressed the small lever beside the trigger guard, and shucked one into the chamber. He crammed the third shell into the gun. Opening the door into the house, he walked straight through the doorway and into the family room, oblivious to the fact that he hadn’t even closed the door.

Up the stairs he bounded, two at a time, stopping at the top of the stairs to glance out the sliding glass door in the kitchen to the left. But there was nothing out there… nothing but the snow.

Whirling, he crossed the foyer, turning onto the stairs and bounding up them. The floorboards creaked loudly beneath the plush carpeting. He passed the bathroom, turning down the long hall that led back to his mother and father’s bedroom. He slowed his pace, watching his shadow as it appeared on the bedroom door in front of him. Reaching out, he pushed the door inward. The hinges made a slight whine as he brushed past, standing at the base of the king-sized bed.

There was no Matt inside of his head now. There was nothing resembling conscious thought. His body was a vessel, coursing with the evil that enveloped every living tissue within. Matt was merely the smallest of the voices in the back of his mind, drowned out by all of the others that now swelled in unison, crying for blood.

This was not what he wanted… not what he wanted at all.

His body leapt up onto the bed with both feet, the mattress bouncing beneath him. He raised the stock to his shoulder and fired twice. Brilliant flashes of light pulsated in the darkened room, one, and then another, the deafening report echoing explosively, resonating deep within his brain.

Hopping down off the bed, he could feel warm fluids running down his face, the bare skin of his arms. He smiled, the coppery blood dripping over his lips and onto his exposed teeth. Bounding down the hall, he turned into the bathroom, resting the gun beside the opened door. He kicked his shoes against the far wall of the bathroom, his eyes rolling back into his skull. Yanking his shirt over his head, he tossed it onto the floor with a wet slap and began to hop out of his jeans, allowing them to lie in a pile in the middle of the carpeted floor.

He cranked the knobs on the faucet and the water burst from the showerhead, splattering against the back wall. Shedding his underwear and socks, he hopped into the hot stream of water and began to rinse the thick, red fluids from his body. A small tear appeared for an instant in the corner of his right eye, the hot water washing that tear, and whatever else was left of Matt within that body, down the drain.

home • order • blackest death • authors • community • contact • submissions • auctions • message board • live chat

mail list • customer service • bargain bin • free fiction

THE BLOODSPAWN

Michael McBride

© 2004 Michael McBride. All rights reserved.

PART THREE

III

Friday, November 12th

6:20 am

Matt pulled a long sleeved black shirt over his head, forcing his arms all the way through the cuffs. There was a large green lizard, a basilisk, on the center of his shirt. It had a sail-like green casque on its head, back, and tail; a bright red eye set in the center of its face. Grabbing his well-worn Falcons cap from where it hung on the post of his bed, he slipped it over his damp hair, turning it backwards and bending the rim just how he liked it.

Turning, he stepped out into the hallway, passing the room where his parents still lay lifeless in their bed, their warm fluids cooling as they soaked into the mussed covers. There was no expression on his vacant face, his eyes fixed directly ahead, unblinking. Shuffling along the hall, he eased down the stairs into the entranceway. He stopped at the front door, opening the closet just to the right and pulling a jacket off of the rack, his backpack from the floor. Closing the door, he slid back the deadbolt and opened the front door, stepping out beneath the overhang onto the gray slate-tiled front porch.

The sun rose behind the thick storm clouds, the snow falling even more heavily than it had been for the last twenty-four hours. The snowplows had been out working all through the night, shoving the amassed accumulation from the roads into high piles at either curb, coating the scraped layer of ice with a thin dusting of sand and gravel. Falling flakes swirled and danced off of the warming roads, a thin layer of fog hanging just beneath the amber glow of the street lamps.

There was only the vaguest outline of the mountains straight ahead of him against the slowly lighting sky as he walked down the front stairs and onto the driveway. The flakes battered his face, slamming coldly against his exposed skin, freezing there momentarily before turning to liquid on his fiery-hot flesh.

He turned right and walked straight down the street toward his bus stop, not the stop he had been using for the last two months, but the one closest to his house, just at the end of the culdesac.

He could see them, standing there on the sidewalk, the shapes of their bodies just darkened silhouettes beneath the early morning sky. As he drew near, he could hear their muffled voices trail off as they all turned to watch him approach. Shouldering right up to them, he stared off towards the hill to his left, the rumbling sound of the bus’s engine echoing up from the valley below. They began to talk again, whether directly to him or to each other he couldn’t tell. Their words just floated up above him into the thin air.

The yellow top of the bus appeared, cresting the hill, a cloud of exhaust swarming from behind and then engulfing them as it rolled to a grinding halt. The stop sign behind the door on the side of the bus swung out with the squeak, the two red, circular lights flashing as the door popped inward.

Matt clambered right up the steps and past the driver who stared at him momentarily, trying to place his face. He sat down in the first seat to his left, tossing his backpack beside him on the green vinyl. He stared straight ahead, watching the others as they passed him, looking directly into his face, his hollow eyes appearing to see right through them.

Slowly, the bus began to inch forward, fighting for traction on the icy road, before finally gripping and heading east, turning right down the enormous hill that led out of his neighborhood. There were still two more stops to be made before finally heading off to the school. Matt had receded back into his mind, allowing everything that went on around him to fade into a mere scene that rolled in front of his eyes like a movie, involving him so little that he barely noticed the rest of the world around him.

Each person to board the bus stared scrutinizingly at him before passing to find a seat. He could hear the voices growing louder and louder, the driver turning up the volume on the radio in an effort to drown them out. Small wads of paper nailed him in the back of the head, bouncing off and falling innocuously to the floor. He didn’t even feel them. He just stared straight ahead through the large front windshield of the bus, watching as the large flakes of snow swirled in front of the large yellow mass of metal that rocketed across the frozen roads. A thin smile traced the course of his lips, his eyes narrowing to slits.

Today was going to be a good day.

The ride passed in the blink of an eye, and before he knew it, they had crossed the Air Force Academy and were pulling up in the large parking lot behind the gray brick school. The door opened with a pop and a whine. The driver settled back in the seat and stared out the side window at the other drivers who stood outside of the busses, swilling steaming mugs of coffee in a small circle as they prepared for the return trip back to the school district staging grounds east of town.

All of the students clambered off the bus, passing Matt as he just sat there, still staring through the now frosted glass. A handful of bookbags slammed against the back of his head, resonating through his skull, but it didn’t faze him in the slightest. His smile widened as he slowly rose, passing the driver who didn’t even look up. Easing down the stairs, he stepped out into the snow. The wind ripped at him from around the bus, whistling between the buildings as he crossed the ice-covered parking lot and headed toward the main doors of the school.

Hundreds of other kids shoved past him, hurriedly stumbling to their lockers to situate themselves before the first class of the day. Matt just walked straight ahead, the grin etched crisply across his jaw. He could hear the voices of those who passed, taunting him, ridiculing him. The voices came from faces that he knew, as well as from those he didn’t, but the words didn’t even permeate the inner sanctum of his brain. He was impervious to anything they said to him, just turning to glance at them, a blank stare and a twisting smile his only retort.

The white-tiled floors were slick with brown, slushy footprints. Traction was tedious, but he just pressed on, walking slowly through the dimly-lit halls toward his locker, making eye contact with everyone and no one at the same time.

He was liberated. Not only could he not hear the words as they were thrown at him from every direction, but he no longer cared. He was of singular focus. Nothing mattered at all. His gaze just crossed them and he willingly accepted the fact that each and every one of these people was going to die. Many of them by his hand. They could snarl and shout and shove all they liked, but it no longer got beneath his skin. The words just bounced off as he entertained the mental visions of their demise, their bodies lying broken and bleeding in the blackness of his mind.

And it all starts today.

His smile widened at that thought. He popped open his locker and shoved his backpack inside, not even bothering to pull anything out or to grab any books. He just slammed the chipping, blue-painted door of the locker closed and headed down the hallway toward the courtyard. Pressing the lever on the door, he walked out onto the cement patio enclosed between the four separate buildings of the school. A cluster of students lingered in the center by a large metal trashcan, smoking and playing hackey sack. Killing time before the first bell that signaled the start of the day. He pressed past vacuous faces as they hurried to their classes; books tucked beneath their arms and cradled to their chests; heads down to keep the swirling snow out of their eyes.

Matt passed them all without even noticing as he crossed the courtyard, past the one lone deciduous tree that grew from a small patch of dirt in the middle of the concrete, and entered the building at the far end. Bounding down the staircase, he took the first right down a long, darkened hallway, heading straight for the door at the far end. He could see them through the thin, rectangular windows in the doors, huddled off to the side, a cloud of smoke lingering around them in the small cement cove, out of the wind and snow.

His heart began to pound in anticipation, his pulse thudding in his ears. Widening almost painfully for a moment, he forced his smile to fade and gripped the metal bar on the door. Shoving it with a clank, he opened the door and stepped out into the swirling wind.

They all turned to stare at him at once. By the surprised looks on their faces as they either tucked their cigarettes behind their backs or tossed them off into the snow, they hadn’t even seen him coming. There were five of them out there, just as he knew there would be. Scott leaned against the wall to his left; finally exhaling the drag that surprise had lodged in his lungs. Shane Corso was to his left, his wide eyes slowly narrowing. He pulled another smoke from his pack to replace the one he had thrown behind the building.

Jeremy Willis hovered straight ahead of him, looking him up and down. He produced the cigarette he had been hiding behind his back, cocking his head and clenching his jaw. Brian James and Tim Williams leaned against the wall to Matt’s right in their almost identical, matching black leather jackets, both wearing a look of surprise.

“Well, well,” Shane said, stepping forward and standing nose to nose with Matt. “If it isn’t the king faggot himself. What are you doing out here, butt pirate? I thought you knew better than to come out here where we straight guys hang. Shouldn’t you be in the bathroom watching guys peeing or something?”

Matt just looked at him and smiled. In his mind, he could see Shane’s battered body. Blood stained his dark blonde hair, matting it to his dented forehead. His tongue hung limply over the edge of his mouth, his jaggedly broken teeth punching through it as it swelled with the red fluid that ran down his chin and into the collar of his shirt. He could see his own hand, slicing at the flesh on Shane’s face as he grabbed hold of the lip of skin and started to peel…

“Come on guys,” Scott said, interrupting his thoughts.

“You standing up for Liberace here,” Shane said, preparing to step even further forward to bump Matt in the chest with his own. “Just because you…”

He stopped mid-sentence as Jeremy grabbed him by the arm. Shane whirled and fired him a look, and with a slight nod, turned back to Matt with a smirk.

“You know,” Shane said, taking a step back and throwing his arms out to his sides. “This has gotten a little out of hand. We all used to be friends here. Maybe we should, you know…”

“Let bygones be bygones,” Jeremy added, stamping the yellowed butt of his smoke beneath his heel. “I’d say it’s been long enough.”

“What are you talking about?” Brian interrupted. “Dude’s a pillow bit—”

Shane shot him an icy glare, and his words dropped. He just stared down at his snow-covered hightops.

“Jeremy’s right,” Shane said, a forced, toothy grin crossing his face beneath his lowered brow. “It’s been long enough.”

“Can I talk to you guys?” Scott asked quietly. He stared suspiciously at them, a puzzled look etched into his face.

“Don’t sweat it, Scott,” Shane said, his attempt at a pleasant, reassuring glance looking more like the wild-eyed stare of the deranged.

“What we need,” Jeremy said, stepping up, “is someplace private, where we can all just sit down and talk this through. I think enough time has passed that we should all just be able to put this behind us and move on.”

He gave Shane a quick glance, and the two smiled in unison.

“Really?” Scott said, carefully studying them, attempting to verify their intent.

“Oh, yeah,” Shane said, nodding. “After all, we’re going to graduate soon and then all go our separate ways. Why not make the last six months as easy on all of us as possible, and why not try to have some fun in the process?”

“Sounds good,” Matt said, his eyes thinned to slivers, his grin unflinching. “Let’s meet today, get this thing settled once and for all.”

Immensely pleased with themselves, Shane and Jeremy beamed. Tim and Brian looked at each other, definitely out of the loop on this one, but they were willing to go along with whatever, so they just leaned back against the wall and lit up another smoke.

The first bell rang painfully above their heads, echoing around them in the small cement cove. Tim and Brian turned and walked around the corner, heading around the buildings on their way to class so that they could finish their smokes along the way.

“How about we meet at Solstice around eight,” Matt said, staring through Shane and Jeremy, one at a time.

“That old abandoned house out by the convent? Sounds like a great place to meet,” Shane said, turning to Jeremy. “Sound good to you?”

“Perfect,” Jeremy said, his grin widening. He nodded slowly. “Perfect.”

“Eight o’clock then,” Matt said, whirling and opening the door.

He could see Scott’s reflection in the window in the middle of the door, staring quizzically at the other two.

Walking back down the hall, Matt shouldered through the clusters of students lazily lingering outside of their classrooms trying to take advantage of the last three minutes remaining before the start of the school day. Matt just walked by, refusing to acknowledge their presence with a single glance as he turned and ascended the staircase, bursting through the door into the courtyard. He walked straight through the thinning herds of students. There were only a couple of long-haired hoods in the smoking circle, finishing off the last of their butt as they lamented the start of yet another punitive school day.

Yanking open the door at the end of the yard, he walked straight to his locker and opened it, producing his backpack from within. Slinging it over his shoulder, he strutted straight toward the front doors of the building, tugging the zipper on his black leather jacket down. He turned backward into the door, pressing the bar with his rear end to open it.

“Where do you think you’re going, Mr. Parker?” the principal said, rounding the corner and staring at Matt, his hand on his hip.

Matt shook his head and popped the door open with a thrust of his hips. He placed three fingers above his right brow and saluted as he ducked out the front door and into the blowing snow, the wind threatening to rip his cap straight off of his head.

“Matthew Parker,” the principal snapped, following him out the door, his graying hair blowing straight up in the wind, the snow sticking to his thick gray mustache. “You get back here right now!”

Matt kept on walking, straight through the small, half-circle parking lot in front of the school reserved for the administration’s parking. He stepped up onto the snow-covered sidewalk and strode directly toward the long wall of evergreens close to a hundred yards dead ahead.

“I’m going to have to call your parents!” the principal raged after him into the storm.

Matt smiled and shook his head before bounding off the sidewalk and into the thick, uneven buffalo grass buried beneath six inches of snow, which covered his shoes and the bottoms of his jeans. Finding a small break in the line of foliage, he slipped past the sharp needles and onto a thin path that wound through the foothills, rising and falling as it made its way through Woodmen Valley.

He was getting to know this path like the back of his hand. Whenever things started to get really tough at school, to the point where he could no longer bear the thought of another second within those pale white walls, he just wrote a letter of excuse from his mother and split. He had learned to duplicate her handwriting faultlessly, and those letters had gotten him out of many days, especially recently. And as he had no car and was in the middle of the Air Force Academy, he had been forced to learn his own route home.

The woods were thick, pines and other evergreens pressing against one another, darkening the floor beneath, save for the small gaps of light that filtered through the canopy where the skeletal aspens broke the thick green of the walls of needles. The Rocky Mountains loomed over the tips of the trees directly to the right, the winding path heading straight up a steep, muddy slope.

He recognized this spot. His first time walking this route he had tripped and fallen straight down the hill, the books in his backpack jamming into his ribs from behind as he landed in a twisted pile of humanity at the bottom. Learning from the experience, he had figured out a pattern to the tree trunks, allowing him to brace his feet on one to leap to the other.

Reaching the crest of the hill, he stared down into the small valley below. There was a stream in the very bottom; the surface all but frozen solid, hiding the thin line of water trickling beneath. He was halfway there now; just one more large hill to surpass and he would be there, in the next valley beyond. It was this spot where the Air Force property met with the private landowners beyond. Cadets used this path to slip off of the Academy at night when they couldn’t secure passes, showing up at high school parties and hitting on everything in a skirt. At first it was more than annoying, these older guys showing up from out of nowhere and stealing their dates and what not. But he could understand the allure. An older, college aged, brawny-type guy had to be awfully appealing to a sixteen or seventeen year old girl whose other options consisted of a bunch of scrawny high school kids who drank Keystone straight from the tap, smoking pot from a crumpled tin can. But he hated them. Half of the girls in his school were wearing engagement rings their senior year, most of them destined for heartbreak after they graduated and found out that their rings were nothing more than a tool used by horny Cadets to get what they wanted.

Standing atop the jagged formation of rocks on the summit of the hill, Matt stared down into Woodmen Valley. The wind hummed from the mountains above, the snow blowing straight to his left as it raced down the slope. A white, sparkling layer of snow covered the pastures below, the road invisible in the middle. Off to his left, a small cluster of houses sat in the middle of the woods atop the hill, enormous piles of dirt every quarter mile or so as developers dug holes for foundations. Before long, the whole valley would be full of houses.

At the bottom of the hill, cradled beneath a cluster of trees, an abandoned white house beckoned to him. It was the house that they called “Solstice.” He wasn’t sure who named the house or why, but he speculated that it was the most menacing name some drunken buffoon could come up with on short notice, the only word he knew having to do with witchcraft. The house was said to be filled with evil. Rumors had it a family was hacked to pieces in there, and tunnels ran from the basement all the way to Manitou Springs. Devil worshippers supposedly used those tunnels to drag their sacrifices to and from the convent, which served as their base of operations for the evil they wrought.

All of those stories amused Matt, as the convent had been purchased by private investors and remodeled. It was now a nursing home, and the furthest thing from evil that he had ever seen. Granted, death was surely no stranger to the old castle, but more in a housekeeper-type role than as the sickle-wielding stalker of darkness.

Matt bounded down the hill, hitting the meadow at a dead sprint.

The muscles in his legs ached from dragging his heavy feet through the thick snow. He hadn’t slept at all since the night before last. He was growing increasingly weary, physically, with each passing second, yet his flesh tingled with anticipation. His heart pounded and his mind raced, already beginning to plan the night that he had waited his entire life for, the night where he would fulfill what he hoped was his destiny.

Standing in front of the house, he stared at the cracking paint on the exposed wood. One of the windows on the front of the house had been broken and boarded up, but all of the others were still in working order. There was a brand new lock box on the front door, making it impossible to turn the knob, but that really didn’t matter, as he and all of his friends knew how to get in anyway.

There was something about the house, almost a life energy, drawing its pulse from the land around it. It resonated darkness. The air about it always seemed a few degrees cooler, the wind not daring to touch its crumbling exterior. There was something inside of it, something that made his hands tremble and his heart begin to pound every time he got near to it.

He was filled with a brimming sense of longing. All he wanted to do was get in there and set things up the way he wanted them... and then bring on the night. There was someone, something behind the walls, waiting for him, watching him, or perhaps it was the house itself. Either way, he knew that there was something else around him, wishing for the darkness to fall.

The whole house emanated evil. It was a coppery taste on the tongue, a stagnant smell in the senses, a cold, yet fiery sensation that raised the hackles on the arms and caused the head to ache.

He was home.

Wandering around the left side of the house, he kicked at the snow drifted up against the bowing wood, clearing a path to find the small cellar window. Kneeling, he scraped at the ice surrounding the framed glass until he was able to pry up the window. Lowering himself to his belly, he slipped beneath the glass and into the pitch-black basement. He grabbed onto the sill of the window and lowered himself to the dirt floor.

Thin lines of water ran down the cement walls onto the dampened earth floor. Drops of water echoed through the empty room as they fell from the cracked floorboards into the puddles eroded into the ground. It smelled like a combination of wet moss and mildew, the dust lingering only long enough to form the cobwebs that swayed gently overhead from the ceiling.

There was an ancient furnace next to a small hot water heater at the base of the stairs ahead. Neither had seen a spark of electricity in more than two decades the way he saw it, and somehow were coated with the dirt from the floor around them. A small circle of black beckoned to him from behind the furnace. It was a small tunnel, rumored to be the one that led straight across town beneath the city. Once, he had crawled inside and shimmied his way about five feet before being overwhelmed by the nearly paralyzing swell of claustrophobia and had been forced to hastily retreat. He always meant to bring a flashlight along, but until today, none of the stops here had really ever been planned.

Over the course of the last year he had spent a lot of time here, making it almost like a home away from home. No one ever bothered him here, leaving him to sit on the floor and read as much as he wanted, but his favorite past time was just studying the house. Every nook and cranny told a different story, every faded bit of graffiti dating itself. He often tried to picture exactly what was going on at the time of the writings, but every time he did, it was something different.

Feeling along the wall with his right hand, Matt eased toward the stairs leading up to the floor above. His footfalls echoed hollowly in the dingy room, the steps creaking, threatening to crack into splinters beneath his weight.

A thin ray of light blinded him from beneath the door to the kitchen as he ascended. Shoving open the door, he stood in the empty room. Piles of plaster lined the baseboards from where they had fallen in chunks from the walls. The wooden joists inside the walls peeked through every few feet, the frayed wiring visible within the recesses of the aging walls. Something moved within tattered gaps, something alive, scurrying through the piles of dust and debris. No one had ever seen them, anything living at all within this house, but they were always there, scraping at the inside of the drywall, powdering its chalky surface.

Most of the linoleum had been peeled back and scattered throughout the house in small flaps, the plywood floor dusty and dirt-crusted where it had once been. Every footstep banged loudly, echoing back at him from the cellar below. The door to the refrigerator lay on its side, leaned up against the wall, but the rest of the unit was nowhere in sight. The cabinets had all been ripped off of the walls and nothing but a long u-shaped, rusted pipe protruding from the wall betrayed the fact that there had ever been running water. Spray-painted words covered the walls, and Matt was sure that by now he knew what all of them said by heart, so he no longer needed to read them.

Stepping through the kitchen, he stood at the entranceway to the bedroom to the left. Everyone called this the “bee room,” as every inch of floor was covered with a half-inch thick layer of dead bees. He preferred the term “dead room.” It amused him, at least.

Without raising his feet, he shuffled into the room, moving the bees in growing piles in front of his wet shoes, careful not to crunch even a single body. Whatever had caused them to die, and in that fashion, the last thing that he wanted to do was to ruin the perfection of it. He cleared a small circle in the center of the room and sat down, Indian style, right in the center. Pulling his backpack from over his shoulder, he set it in his lap and unzipped it. Carefully, he excised each item from the bag, one by one, lining them up side by side as he inspected them, preparing to set everything up just the way that he imagined it for the night.

Producing a large, sharp, black-handled kitchen knife, he watched the light shine from the finely-honed blade. He brought it in front of his face, his own reflection staring back at him. He laid it on the floor, perfectly perpendicular to his lap, and reached back into the bag. Pulling out a bundle of steak knives bound together with rubber bands, he separated them and set them side by side with the first knife. There was a large wooden mallet, a meat tenderizer, its hitting surfaces covered with jagged metal caps.

There was a pair of handheld garden shears, the blackened cutting surface practiced and razor sharp. And finally, at the right end of the display, he laid his father’s hunting knife. The handle was crafted out of bone. There was a small picture of an elk whittled into the core, the long blade slightly arched, the back edge serrated with a jagged, ripping edge. It had been handed down through his family for generations, rumored to have been crafted by his great, great grandfather who had been a trapper and skin trader while the country had expanded west. He held it in his hand, turning it over and over, balancing its weight in the center of his palm. A crooked smile raced across his chapped lips.

Nodding to himself, Matt climbed onto his knees and slid the line of steak knives beneath the bees right in front of him, burying the blades beneath a thin layer of exoskeletons. Even though the bees had been dead for quite some time, as evidenced by the complete lack of innards within their hollow, crunchy corpses, their stingers were still fully intact and functional. They broke off painfully in the backs of his hands while he covered the knives.

Pulling the rows of stingers from the reddening flesh on his hands, he dropped them to the floor and clambered back to his feet. He bundled up the rest of his tools and cradled them beneath his arm. Turning, he traced his footsteps back out of the room and into the kitchen.

On the far wall, there was a large hole in the drywall, exposing the wooden support beams halfway up from the floor. Reaching inside, he deposited the shears within, steadying them in place with the frayed electrical wiring. Smacking the wall to make sure the shears stayed where he had placed them, he whirled and descended into the basement once again.

The wooden tenderizing mallet wedged perfectly between the handrail on the stairs and the wall, pinning there so that it wouldn’t fall, but at the same time it would be relatively easy to just grab it and begin hammering. He placed the black-handled knife atop the hot water heater amidst the thick dust and spider webs. Inching across the blackened room, he turned the bone-handled knife over and over in his hands as he pondered the best location. This spot had to be just perfect, as he knew deep within that this knife was destined for something special. It had to be in the right place at the right time for its use, and if it wasn’t, the whole thing could fall apart.

There was something calling to him from the pitch black of the back of the room. The darkness moved and writhed as though with a life of its own, drawing him toward its rhythmic enchantment. It called to him without words, urging him forward like the call of a siren, tugging him heedlessly into the blackened abyss, beckoning to him.

The back right corner of the room was completely shrouded by darkness. Not even a single ray of light penetrated the perfect black. He walked straight into it, closing his eyes as they wouldn’t serve him in the slightest. Holding the blade in his open palms, he pressed into the darkness, waiting for inspiration to strike.

The overwhelming smell of dampness, like the stagnant, moss-covered surface of a warm water slough in the middle of winter, accosted his nostrils. Further and further he pressed, the air around him growing colder with each subsequent footstep. Surely, he should have run face first into the wall by now…

Suddenly, he could hear it. The sound was very faint, but his gut told him that it had been there the whole time. A thin, wispy rasping sound crept out of the shadows right in front of him.

Opening his eyes, he stared as hard as he could into the darkness, but there was nothing to be seen. His legs moved with a will of their own, inching into the corner, before finally stopping.

The sound was louder now, right in front of him, the warm, heavy breath of the breather right on his face, the heat dampening his forehead. It was a metallic-sulfur smell, like the scent of the insides of an animal as they spill past the bowels from where it had been gutted; the first, pungent burst of aroma that blasts from the formerly sealed innards. It was that smell that was falling heavily on his face from the damp breath right in front of him.

Slowly, he held the knife in his hands even higher, and felt another hand, the skin scratchy like parchment and dried out like leather, grab the handle of the blade. The hand rested there momentarily, the sharp, thick hairs on the back of the knuckles poking into the flesh of Matt’s palms.

His breath caught in his chest. The hand quickly ripped the blade from him and tossed it through the air, right past his ear, whistling through the darkness. It landed with a loud thunk, the tip of the blade stabbing into the wall somewhere behind him in the darkened basement. He began to whirl to see where it had struck, but the hand pressed gently against the side of his face, keeping his jaw from turning. Allowing the hand to steady him, Matt just stared directly into the darkness.

“It will be there when it is needed,” a deep, guttural voice said from right in front of him. That disemboweled animal scent was overwhelming now. He tasted it on his lips as much as smelled it within his nose.

Then, the hand fell from his face, swallowed up by the darkness surrounding him. The rasping was still audible, but only barely, having merged back into the very walls of the cellar, scraping like a rake across cement. He could feel the presence with him, there in the room, but could no longer tell where it was; he just had to trust that it was all going to work out like he had planned.

Nodding to himself, he backed out of the shadows and into the center of the room, where he turned and headed up the stairs. There was only one more thing to do, and then it was down to the waiting game. Bounding up the stairs from the cellar, he breezed through the kitchen and into the main living room, stopping right at the front door.

He twisted the deadbolt, but it just spun limply, unable to either engage of disengage as it rested uselessly in the hardwood door. Turning, he surveyed the room, looking for anything he could use to pry at the seal, to wrench the door out of the frame. But there was nothing. The room was completely empty except for the broken bottles and crushed cans, and the ever-increasing piles of dust and cobwebs that stretched across the hollow room like fingers, grabbing at whatever came their way.

Kneeling, he reached into the corner and grabbed a bottle cap from its home amidst the dust. Shoving the edge beneath the rounded top of the pin that held the door within the hinges, he pried it up, a quarter of an inch at a time until the pin popped right out, falling to the ground and bouncing off of the wooden floor. He repeated that process, pulling the pins from the other two hinges and allowing them to bounce onto the ground as well.

Placing the toe of his shoe beneath the base of the door, he grabbed the side, pressing his fingernails into the hard grain, and tugged at it, backing the door out of the hinges barely an eighth of an inch with each groaning effort. He yanked and yanked, his face turning bright red, his hair dampening with sweat, until he finally pulled the now useless slab of wood out of the doorway. There was a loud crack as the wooden doorway snapped by the latch, and the door fell suddenly and quickly inward, the hinges tearing at the flesh of his forearm as the heavy door rocketed toward the ground, slamming like the stomping foot of a giant. Clouds of dust billowed on gusting plumes, filling the air around him, drying out his lungs and forcing him to cough.

Dabbing at the three stripes of blood just above his right wrist, he stepped out of the main room and onto the front porch, inhaling in delight as the cold, clean air fought back the dust that rattled within his chest. Allowing his lungs to expand and contract with great exaggeration, he crossed the porch and sat down on the snow-blanketed top step. The flakes fell through the holes in the overhang above him, accumulating in small patches on the ice-coated wooden planks. Closing his eyes, he allowed the crisp air to cool his sweating body, chilling him in its freezing embrace.

He had lost track of time. The sun had long since set, not even the most vague residue of its orange glow above the rocky peaks to the west. Snow burst in sheets from the cloud cover, which choked out even the brightest of stars from the night sky. His breath clung in the air in front of him, steadying itself against his skin before being ripped from him by the gusting wind, carrying it to the east toward the dim glow of the city lights beyond the dense forest. The road was invisible in front of him; the whole area glimmering like water as the wind blew the powder in waves across the ground.

Matt smiled, allowing his head to loll back on his shoulders, the brim of his hat resting on his back. A cool sense of serenity surrounded him, the air chilling the heated blood within his veins. His heart slowed to an almost mechanical pace, his breath leveling within his chest. Closing his eyes momentarily, he allowed the snowflakes to land atop his closed lids, alighting pleasurably on the sensitive surface of the skin.

It was time.

He could feel it within his entire body, like some sort of vibrating alarm clock, triggering all of his nerves at once. Rising, he stood on the top step of the porch for barely a moment before the twin beams of light shot into the field in front of him from the line of trees. The racing of the car engine was audible over the sound of the swirling wind.

Backing slowly across the ice-slickened porch, Matt inched into the entranceway, bracing his right hand against the frame of the door, watching as the black, spray painted Maverick slid to a skidding halt on the front lawn of the house. Another car pulled in beside it: a relatively new blue Escort. The doors opened in unison.

Three figures, darkened by the night, climbed from the Maverick, their silhouetted forms shifting as the waves of blowing snow slammed them from the west. Two more climbed out of the Escort and joined in with their companions, who made their way across the lawn and onto the steps of the porch, creaking loudly, threatening to snap beneath their weight as they ascended two by two.

Matt’s fingers fidgeted against the doorway as they drew closer, his eyes narrowing. The corners of his lips curled upward in anticipatory delight. His left toe tapped on the wooden floor, faster and faster until, finally, they were only a foot from him in the open doorway.

“Hey, Matt,” Scott said from the middle of the cluster of flesh, his voice the only thing distinguishing him from the hydra of humanity in the doorway.

“Please,” Matt said, gesturing inward with his arm. “Come in. Let’s get this show underway.”

Jeremy and Shane brushed past him first, their faces heavily grained with concentration. Scott followed on their heels, Tim and Brian filing through last, their heads on swivels as they scanned every inch of the room.

“You guys been here before?” Matt asked, nodding to Tim and Brian.

“Naw,” Brian said, still scanning the walls. “This is quite intense though.”

“No shit,” Tim said, echoing the sentiment as he stared, wide-eyed, at every inch of the tattooed walls and rotting wood.

“So,” Matt said, walking around Shane and Jeremy, and positioning himself just in front of the opening to the kitchen. “Why don’t you just go ahead and say what you have to say?”

“All right,” Jeremy said, glancing quickly at Shane before turning back to Matt. “I think you know how we all feel about faggots.”

“Don’t like them one bit,” Tim said, focusing back on the situation at hand.

“Thanks,” Jeremy said, shoving Tim back toward the front door. “That was meant to be rhetorical, dumb ass. Just shut your mouth and nod, okay? Think you can do that?”

Tim just glared and turned to inspect the room behind him.

“Where was I?” Jeremy said, turning to Shane.

“The test.”

“Ah, yes. I remember now. I think you must know how we feel about faggots, Matt, so that’s why we’ve asked you here tonight. We’re going to give you the opportunity to prove that we’re wrong, and get yourself off the hook.”

“And how am I supposed to do that?” Matt asked, retreating into the kitchen, feeling along the wall with his hand for the hole in the wall where he had stashed the shears.

“Obviously,” Shane said, stepping up, “We can’t just ask you. You could lie. So we researched the subject extensively, taking all factors into account, and we devised a test.”

“What are you guys talking about?” Scott interrupted.

Shane held up his hand to silence Scott.

“It is a test that will determine conclusively once and for all if you are, indeed, a butt pirate.”

Jeremy snickered.

“What are you guys doing?” Scott blurted, shoving past Jeremy to where Shane stood, right at the edge of the kitchen.

“Sit down, snapper,” Shane said, shoving Scott in the center of the chest.

Scott grabbed him by the shoulder and turned him around so that they faced one another.

“You said this was going to be straight up,” Scott said through his clenched teeth. “You said we were just going to talk this through and everything was going to be like it was before. You never mentioned anything about a test and you know it.”

“Jeremy?” Shane said, nodding his head towards Scott.

Jeremy grabbed Scott from behind, slipping his arms beneath Scott’s armpits and yanking him to the floor, pinning him face first to the dust-crusted floor, his weight atop Scott’s back.

“Get off me!” Scott shouted, wriggling like a fish beneath Jeremy, who just laughed.

“Now,” Shane said, looking directly at Matt from beneath his lowered brow. His eyes had narrowed to slits, his mouth widening to a sadistic smile. “Back to the test.”

“Go ahead,” Matt said, his eyes locking on Shane’s as he crept backwards, his fingers fidgeting in anticipation at the edge of the hole in the wall.

“Through our intensive research,” Shane uttered, advancing further, “we determined that faggots have certain genetic tendencies that we normal folk don’t. For example, a normal guy wouldn’t take it in the ass. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Shall I continue?”

Matt glanced to either side of Shane as Brian and Tim fell in beside him, their faces nearly ripped in half by the monkey-like grins that wrenched their faces. Scott still shouted from beneath Jeremy, who stared up into the kitchen, pumping one fist in the air.

“Please,” Matt whispered, his eyes twinkling. His fingertips rested atop the handles of the shears.

“Turns out that fags have a lower tolerance to pain, as well. Bet you didn’t know that?”

Matt shook his head.

“That’s because you haven’t done the research like we have.”

“Obviously, I’m not as taken with the subject as you,” Matt stated smugly, smirking.

Shane’s clenched fist slammed right into the bridge of Matt’s nose, his head snapping sharply backward.

“Turns out faggots also bleed more profusely than we normal folk,” Shane continued, wiping the blood from the row of knuckles along his right hand onto his jeans.

Matt looked down at the dust-coated floor as the large droplets of blood from his nose dropped onto the floor, splashing like raindrops as they puddled. The tears welled in his eyes from the intense, searing pain in the bridge of his nose. His eyelids batted uncontrollably to press out the salty tears so that he could get a good look at Shane, the soft, exposed flesh of his neck tantalizingly bared above the collar of his jacket.

“Dude,” Shane said, turning to the others. “He’s crying. Look at that! He’s crying! Oh, man, that does it. You fail! You are definitely the number one, king faggot.”

Matt’s reached back up to the wall, his fingers fumbling to find the shears once again.

Tim’s fist slammed into the side of Matt’s jaw, just as he had found the shears, knocking them from his hand. They tumbled down the inside of the wall, landing with a thud against the baseboards. Whatever lived inside scurried away from the sharp edges.

Whirling, Matt grabbed at his suddenly throbbing jaw just as Brian slammed into him, clearing him off of the floor and slamming him into the wall, which caved in from the pressure. Dust filled the air and the shattered drywall crumbled in chunks to the floor. His hat fell from his head as Matt tumbled to the ground, slumping over the chalky mess of wall. Batting his eyes, Matt rolled forward onto his hands and knees, crawling painfully across the floor of the kitchen toward the bedroom.

“Don’t screw me out of my turn,” he heard Jeremy shout, scrambling off of Scott and racing at him in the dark kitchen.

One after another, they kicked him, their hard feet slamming into his exposed ribs and stomach. Yet stoill, he crawled across the floor. Blood burst in spurts from his mouth each time one of the blows knocked the air from his lungs, his broken and jagged ribs tearing at the thin, tissue paper-like membranes of his lungs.

Matt’s eyes fixed on the small clearing in the center of the carpeting of bees that he had made earlier, focusing on the handful of small lumps that lined the edge, knowing that salvation was buried beneath.

The stingers lanced into the flesh on his hands as he scooted further into the room, kicking feet hammering into him from all sides. The pain resonated from every available inch of flesh, tearing like lightening bolts through the tissue beneath, forcing Matt to retreat into his mind while his body began the initial steps toward shut down. His vision began to narrow, tunneling to the point where all he could see were the small lumps beneath the gold and black carcasses. His whole body grew warm, the pain fading to dull pressure, every vessel pumping blood that felt as though it were boiling.

Reaching out, Matt placed his fingers right atop the handles of the knives, the blades catching the slight glare from the window. His heart leapt in his chest. Forcing a smile, the blood spilling in lines over his swelling lips, his head lolling as though he were drunk, Matt chuckled in preparation of sliding his hand around the handle.

Suddenly, he was jerked up from the floor, the blade falling away from his hand as his trembling fingers reached frantically for it. There was pressure across his chest, his collapsed ribcage coming through his skin, the white, fragmented ends jutting forth like small volcanoes, blood flowing in streams from them like lava.

“Back the fuck off!” Scott shouted as he dragged Matt backward through the kitchen and into the main room. “This is bullshit and you all know it!”

“You’re one of them, aren’t you?” Shane shouted, his chin jutting forth. “Only one way to find out…”

“Give it a rest,” Jeremy said, resting his hand on Shane’s shoulder. “We accomplished what we needed to tonight. Just let them go.”

“No fucking way, man!” Shane shouted, his eyes afire. “There’s no way that they’re leaving until I say so.”

Shaking off Jeremy’s arm, he stormed toward the front door. Scott and Matt were already down the steps at the end of the porch, and crossing the snow-blanketed lawn to the Escort. Yanking his keys from his pocket, Scott opened the passenger door, and lowered Matt onto the seat, lifting his legs onto the floorboard. Slamming the door, he raced around to the passenger side, throwing wide the door and climbing in. Jamming the key into the ignition, the engine roared to life and Scott slammed the stick into reverse. The tires slid from side to side as they fought for traction before finally catching. With a lurch, the car launched into reverse, sliding across the road. Shoving the gear into drive, the tires screamed as they wore through the ice to the asphalt below.

“Toss me your keys!” Shane shouted, sprinting toward the Maverick.

Jeremy just stared at him.

“Now!” Shane screamed, glaring back as he yanked ferociously on the door handle.

“Dude…” Jeremy mumbled.

“Now! Goddamn it! Now!”

Jeremy fished the keys out of the front pocket of his jeans and tossed them to Shane, who immediately hopped into the car and revved the engine, just as the Escort finally began to move forward on the slick road.

The Maverick’s headlights burst to life, illuminating the front of the house in two large circles. The car soared backward, fishtailing from side to side before locking into drive and tearing down the icy road after the Escort.

“Are you all right?” Scott asked, focused intently on the thin lines of light that barely permeated the densely falling snow.

Matt just groaned. A swell of blood washed over his swollen lower lip, falling onto his already soaked shirt. The trees to either side of the road fell past like two darkened walls, racing straight at them as the road bent and twisted through the sloping hills. The Maverick soared up behind them, hanging right on their bumper moments after they passed though the field and into the forest.

“Jesus,” Scott whispered, his breath only barely able to slip from his tightening lungs. His heart pounded loudly inside his ears from his hammering temples, his fingers trembling on the wheel. He tried with all his might to see enough of the road in front of him to keep from sliding off into the trees.

There was nothing visible of the road other than the barely noticeable tracks from where they had driven in, now already filling in with fresh snow. Enormous flakes filled the lights, racing at them like stars in the night sky moving through hyperspace. All Scott could do was just watch the far reaches of the lights and hope he would be able to turn the car in time.

The lights from the Maverick filled the rear view mirrors, the brights shining painfully in Scott’s eyes as the car swerved from side to side behind them, hoping to gain the advantage on one of the curves.

Something leapt out into the road in front of them. A large, dark shape, nearly the size of the car, bounded into the middle of the road. It stood there, frozen, its circular eyes glowing gold, reflecting the headlights.

“Shit!” Scott gasped, his teeth clenching. He tapped the brakes repeatedly, hoping to gain enough traction to stop the car.

The front end kicked to the right with a jolt, the Maverick nailing the back left portion of the rear bumper.

A scream froze in Scott’s lungs; the air growing stagnant. He fought with the wheel, trying to turn into the skid which was gaining momentum with each passing second. The road disappeared in front of them, replaced by the line of trees that had once been to their side. His arms locked straight out in front of him and his clenched fists clung to the steering wheel for dear life. The tires began to skip off the road as they were now traveling sideways, bouncing toward the shoulder of the road.

Scott could see the Maverick now; sliding from side to side, racing directly at them, only a few feet from a head on collision. There was a flash of lights as the passenger side tires caught the lip of the shoulder, and the sudden feeling of weightlessness. The Escort went airborne, flipping, tires rising to the night sky.

Darkened bushes and snow-mounded grass filled their view, tumbling like a barrel, until they appeared to be falling straight down from the sky. Forcing his eyelids shut, Scott threw his arms up in front of his face just as the side of the car slammed into the wall of trees, tearing through the brittle, age-old trunks as though they were made of mere plywood. The sound of shattering wood and shredding metal filled the night, echoing within the shell of the car as it ripped through the first line of trees and into the second. The car windows imploded, showering Scott and Matt with tiny balls of glass, which bounced all over their bodies before being tossed from the rolling vehicle.

Their wheels landed on the ground once again, the rubber tires bouncing with the impact against the frozen earth, catapulting them back into their flip with even more momentum. The cloud-strangled sky flashed by, over and over, the car rolling through the underbrush as though it didn’t exist. Scrub oak and sage were ripped from the ground by the roots, catching in the warped undercarriage before being tossed straight up in the air.

The roof of the car crumpled visibly each time the car bounced upon it. The shrubbery opened into a large field, an enormous snow-filled circle right in the middle of the forest. A thin stream, frozen for the season, and buried beneath the even white mat of snow, grabbed at the tires, catching them. The car launched straight into the air one final time before coming to a halt on the roof, right in the middle of the field.

Scott opened his eyes, frantically scanning the area. He could barely see out of the car as the roof had been lowered nearly to the level of the bottom of the windows. The masses of snow rapidly melted away from the car as it vented heat in all directions, thick black smoke pouring from the engine, the hood buried beneath the snow some ten yards away.

Tugging at the buckle of his seat belt, Scott finally snapped it. The belt disengaged and he slumped down on his shoulders, trying to pull his legs down from beneath the crumpled dashboard. He began to hyperventilate, his eyeballs rolling back into his skull as he fought with everything that he could muster to keep them fixed on the shimmering snow outside the thin crack where the window had been.

From the corner of his eye, he could see Matt, dangling upside down from his restraining harness. The backs of his hands lay limply on the roof of the car, his mouth hanging slack. Blood flowed through his nostrils and over the tip of his rose, dripping like a leaking faucet between his hands. His eyes were closed, and his tongue was pressed out of his mouth just enough to give him the appearance of being dead, but his chest rose and fell just enough to give him away.

“Matt?” Scott sputtered, using the steering wheel as leverage to tug his legs from the pedals and roll into a ball. “Are you… ugh, all right?”

The only response was a thin, wheezing sound that bubbled up through his blood-lodged mouth.

“I’ll get you out of here,” Scott shouted, grabbing Matt by the chin and shaking it a little, trying to snap him back to consciousness.

Somehow, in those cramped quarters, Scott managed to turn himself around, lying flat on his stomach on the roof of the car. Turning his head sideways, he pressed it through the crumpled window, the tattered metal snagging at his jacket. He slipped his arms through, just past his head, trying to grab onto something out there, anything he could use for leverage to pull himself free of the wreckage.

There was a loud cracking sound. It emanated from right beneath him and seemed to spread in all directions like an earthquake. The roof of the car sunk into the ground a good half inch.

His breath caught in his chest, Scott tried to wriggle very slowly, the whole time staring at the carpet of snow at the edge of the meadow, watching as it moved a little bit with each exertion.

Footsteps tore through the underbrush to his left, but he couldn’t move his head to see who was coming. His shoulders were out of the vehicle now, and if he could just find something to grab onto, he could pull his entire body free.

“Stop struggling!” a voice shouted, a light crunching sound echoing through the field as the man raced across the snow-crusted field.

Cold, gloved hands grabbed Scott’s wrists, pinching tightly. The man, awash in darkness, pulled him from the wreckage. His shoes caught on the crumpled window, but the man gave him one final tug, sliding him out and into the snow.

“In the car…” Scott wheezed, “…my friend.”

The man, his black shadow silhouetted against the darkened sky, walked carefully around to the other side of the car, slowly approaching the passenger side door. Scott pushed himself up onto all fours and began to breathe heavily, fighting for the strength to clamber to his feet. Stumbling, he shook the cobwebs from his head, wandering around the hood of the car to where the man knelt by the crumpled window.

“Get back!” the man shouted, startled by Scott’s approach.

The ground beneath them gave with a loud crack, falling uneasily beneath their feet.

Scott fell to his knees, scrambling to the side of the car where the man worked desperately to pry Matt from within.

“You need to get away from here!” the man yelled, shoving Scott in the middle of his chest, knocking him onto his back atop the snow, which slid beneath the collar of his jacket, packing against the back of his neck. “The weight is too much… any change in pressure and the whole thing is going to give.”

“What?” Scott said, scooting beside the man and reaching his hand into the vehicle to disengage the latch on the seat belt.

The man grabbed him by the jacket and pulled him closer so that their faces were only inches apart. He was older, perhaps in his forties, his hair only slightly graying. His eyes were wide and wild, unblinking. Fear wore through his face, his hands trembling as he clutched Scott’s jacket.

“Below us…” the man said, pausing momentarily to catch his breath. “We’re on a lake.”

There was another crack and the ground gave another quarter inch.

Scott’s eyes locked on the man’s, a sudden sense of awareness washing over him. Determination rose in his veins. He broke free of the man’s grip and lay on his belly, reaching up into the car. Sliding further, he craned his head sideways, slipping it into the car. Reaching up with his left arm, he unfastened the seat belt. Matt fell straight down on him, pinning him against the roof of the car beneath his weight.

The ground beneath them cracked again, this time fragmenting beneath the weight of the car. Scott wrenched his back trying to move out from beneath Matt in an attempt to regain the use of his arms. Through the crack in the metal where the driver’s side window had been, Scott could see the frigid, black waters rising over the roof of the car, spilling directly toward him.

The sound of a barking dog filled the night.

Scott felt pressure on his ankles, yanking him backward out of the car. Matt fell off of him, landing on his side with a splash into the rapidly rising water, his body lying limply with the black fluid swelling around him.

Scott’s grabbed at Matt, trying to latch onto anything. Finally, his fingers slipped through the belt loop of his jeans, closing tightly around the thin, denim strap.

The man still had him by the legs and was pulling him backward, out of the car, the metal from the car digging painfully into his lower back. The freezing water soaked through the arms of his jacket, rising nearly to his face as the car slipped further beneath the surface of the ice.

The flashing lights on the dashboard reflected from flat surface of the water, filling the interior of the car with light, but only for a moment as the circuits shorted out with a crackle, leaving them in complete darkness. The tugging on his legs was growing more frantic with each passing second and it was all Scott could do to cling to Matt’s pants.

The water nipped at his chin now, biting through the exposed flesh and into the solid bone beneath. Craning his neck back, he spat furiously as the water rose up over his lips, threatening to fill his lungs.

Fighting for every inhalation, he coughed out a thin spray of water, yanking as hard as he possibly could on Matt’s jeans, knowing that if they weren’t both out of there really soon that it was going to be all over.

Taking one last, enormous breath, Scott staved off panic a moment longer while the water rose past his nostrils. The ice-cold water stung his lower eyelid, forcing his to close his eyes. The last thing he could see burned into the back of his mind: it was Matt, his head slumped forward into his lap, the water only inches from swallowing him.

Scott felt enormous pressure on his ankles, this time ripping him backwards, the metal from the crumpled window shredding through his jacket and into his skin as he careened backward, his head slamming on the metal rim of the window. He barely held onto Matt’s jeans by one outstretched finger, which stung painfully, threatening to pop clean out of the socket.

The water stung his eyes and he could barely see anything in the dark, frozen water, only the vague outline of Matt’s unconscious body, and the hole from the window beyond. Leaning his head to the side, he slipped through the opening of the window, his eyes fixed intently on Matt who slowly moved toward the doorway along with him.

The water rose with each passing second, nearly past the center of the steering wheel, splashing across the bottom of Matt’s chin.

Scott could feel the man’s hands shuffling for a new grip, preparing for another tug. The water stung his flesh. His head began to throb, and it was all he could do to concentrate on holding onto Matt while the freezing water attempted to shut his body down.

The tug came as he had expected, yanking him backward through the water. Everything moved in slow motion. He could feel the belt loop on Matt’s pants snap even before he saw it, falling rapidly away from his stretching fingers as he was yanked through the rising water. Matt’s body slumped further into the depths, covering his face as it now filled the car.

Scott watched in horror, helpless. Matt began to thrash frantically, his eyes popping wide open in terror. His mouth parted to scream, only to be filled with the slushy water. Closing his mouth as quickly as he could, his eyes darted all about the inside of the vehicle, finally latching on Scott’s as he was yanked through the window and out onto the crumbling ice.

Scott gave one last glance through the crumpled window. He could see Matt reaching for him, his hands trembling, his eyes so wide that it looked as though they might roll out. He was calling to him, his mouth moving as it formed words he couldn’t understand.

And then the car was gone.

The tires were the last to sink beneath the flaccid, barely bubbling black surface, leaving only the lightest stir in the water.

Scott lunged, trying to dive beneath the frozen lake, but the man yanked him one final time by the legs, pulling him away from the slowly expanding hole in the ice.

He buried in the snow, tears bursting from the corners of his eyes and screamed into the frozen ground. The image of his drowning friend, pleading with him for help in the dark waters, forever burned into the scars in his mind.

home • order • blackest death • authors • community • contact • submissions • auctions • message board • live chat

mail list • customer service • bargain bin • free fiction

THE BLOODSPAWN

Michael McBride

© 2004 Michael McBride. All rights reserved.

PART FOUR

PRESENT DAY

IV

Sunday, November 13th

5 a.m.

Scott stared at the ceiling, watching the last of the dim moonlight slipping through between the horizontal blinds, filtering through the blue valance, making thin lines of yellow light across the gently spinning ceiling fan. He glanced at the clock for the thousandth time.

5:02.

Two minutes had passed since the last time he had looked, each of them feeling like an hour. Flopping over, he pulled the pillow over his head, grimacing against the headache that stung through his skull, resonating like a gong within his brain. A dull ache throbbed at the base of his spine, the tight muscles burning and cramping as he rolled over once again, this time into a ball.

“One week,” he said aloud, wincing as a solid ache crumpled his stomach.

He hadn’t slept a wink last night. He’d barely slept at all in the last month for that matter. The project he had started at work—meant to be his coup de grace, the peacock feather in his professional cap—seemed as though it would never be anything remotely resembling on schedule.

He had inherited his father’s construction company, Premier Construction, when he was twenty-two, fresh out of college. He had never intended to get into his father’s business, especially after securing a degree in psychology. His plan was to finish his masters, which he had only barely begun, and then follow through with a doctorate, becoming a full-fledged psychiatrist. But things changed in a hurry.

It had been Thanksgiving break, 1994. The four-day vacation had begun on Thursday. The drive down from the University of Colorado medical School in Denver had been tedious at best. The traffic had been stop and go from the time he merged onto the highway clear south to Monument; the drive which should have taken no more than an hour and fifteen minutes taking just over two. He had stopped by his mother’s house first. The plan was to catch lunch with mom and then dinner with dad, just as he had each of the prior ten years since their divorce. But when he had arrived at his mom’s house, he knew that something was wrong.

His sister’s car was nowhere to be seen, and she lived there, always parking right in front of the house beneath the overhanging branches of the lone pine that pushed up the sidewalk. He could vividly remember walking up to the door, crossing the ice-spotted walkway. He’d clambered up the steps to the front porch, the whole while cradling the warm tray of rolls he had picked up to go with the meal.

It was that awkward stage where he didn’t know whether to just open the door as he had while he had lived there four years prior, or to ring the doorbell out of respect since he no longer did. He’d paused on the porch, the snow falling lightly from the gray sky, swirling in the confines of the overhung porch. The door had opened inwards before he had resolved the debate, his stepfather, Ray, standing in the doorway, looking morose.