Blood Summoned

by N. P. Martin

  “Fuck you, Ethan. They all deserved it.”

  “Maybe in your mind. Why’d Barbara Keane deserve it?”

  “Because she killed her fucking husband and kids, that’s why.”

  “She didn’t. You know she didn’t.”

  “Fourteen years ago I put that bitch away,” he said. “How would you know I framed her? Her ghost tell you or something?” He chuckled to himself again.

  I said nothing as I shook myself off and zipped up, then headed over to the grimy sink to wash my hands. Routman came to the next sink a second later, and I looked at him in the mirror. “I can’t believe I used to look up to you,” I said.

  Routman shook his hands off in the sink and snapped a paper towel from the dispenser, glaring at me as he used it to wipe his hands dry. “You of all people have no right to judge me, Ethan.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean? I don’t recall framing any innocent people.”

  “No,” he said, tossing the used towel in the waste bin. “You just run around like you’re Dirty fucking Harry, wasting anyone who gets in your way.” He stepped toward me. “You gonna waste me next, huh, Ethan? Like that kid, Troy? What happened to him? How’d he end up in pieces? Did you do that to him, Ethan? I mean, I’d read the report, if there was one.”

  “There’s a report,” I said. “It’s just above your pay grade. And I didn’t kill the kid.”

  “I wouldn’t care if you did. He killed three good cops. He deserved what he got.”

  “So you’re saying it’s okay for us to be judge, jury, and executioner now, is that it, Jim?”

  “Open your fucking eyes, Ethan. We already are. Someone always has to pay.”

  I could destroy him right now. It would be as easy as showing him my hand and the swirling tattoo ink that would appear there at my behest. Hypnotized by the ink, I could tell him to forget himself, to forget who he is, who his family is. By the time I was done, he wouldn’t even know what planet he was living on, and he would drift in a gray mind-fog for the rest of his life.

  But I did nothing, maybe because I knew deep down, he was right. Someone always did have to pay, even if that person was innocent. It was the way of the world and the way of the justice system. The scales always have to be balanced. Routman knew this on some intuitive level, as most cops do.

  He stared at me for another moment before walking to the door. When he got there, he turned to look at me again. “You stink of sex. You fucking that Jap partner of yours down in the basement now or something?”

  I didn’t respond, staring at him until he smiled and walked out the door. When he was gone, I looked at myself in the mirror for a moment, and then walked out the door behind him.

  6

  Hannah was already in the interview room with the pregnant girl when I walked in. The room was windowless and cramped; the walls painted a dull gray color. In the center of the room was a Formica table, with the girl sitting in a plastic chair on one side and Hannah sitting on the other, an empty chair beside her. In a recess in the soundproofed wall, a DC recorder was taping everything that was being said.

  “Detective Ethan Drake has entered the room at…3:16 a.m.,” Hannah said for the tape after checking her watch.

  I remained silent as I sat down next to her and stared across at the girl, who was younger than I expected, only seventeen or eighteen. She had long, golden-brown hair and large, dark blue eyes that expressed her fear and confusion. Though going by her dilated pupils, the drugs given to her by the doc were helping her to remain calm and quell the tide of emotions that would otherwise have reduced her to a total mess. Her pretty face was pale and drawn, and she had dark circles under her eyes like she hadn’t had any proper sleep in months. The look in her eyes was haunted like she had suffered deep trauma recently. She also looked to be at least seven or eight months pregnant.

  Occasionally, she would stare down at her swollen belly like there was some parasite or alien life form growing inside her—something she didn’t understand, had little to no connection with and only wanted rid of. She had my sympathy, though it remained to be seen if it was fully deserved. As always, I would reserve judgment until I heard her whole story. I was happy to sit in silence while Hannah led the interview.

  “Could you state your full name for the record?” Hannah asked the girl in a gentle but professional tone.

  “My name is Clare Jenkins,” the girl replied, her eyes staring emptily at the table.

  “Can you also state your age?”

  “I’m …eighteen.”

  “Do you have an address, Clare?”

  The girl frowned as if she was trying to remember, then gave an address somewhere in Brockton, a wealthy suburb in north Bedford. When asked if her parents knew she was here, she replied no. “I haven’t seen my parents in nearly a year.”

  She’d probably been on the system this whole time. Just another statistic; another person unable to be found. Until now, that is.

  “Would you like us to contact your parents?” Hannah asked.

  Clare didn’t answer right away, staring down at her swollen belly for a long moment before looking up. “I don’t want them to see me like this.”

  “That’s okay,” Hannah said, her Visage blending in with the wall behind her. “We don’t have to contact them yet, but I’m sure they’d like to know you’re alive. You’ve been missing for nearly a year.”

  Tears flooded the girl’s eyes and spilled down her cheeks as she turned her head away, and Hannah and I exchanged glances.

  “I need to tell you everything first,” Clare said. “You have to stop them before they—”

  “Before they what, Clare?” Hannah said. “Stop who?”

  “Her,” she said. “Gretchen…and her monsters.”

  Hannah looked at me briefly before asking Clare, “Who is Gretchen? Does she have a surname?”

  “Carmichael. Gretchen Carmichael. And she’s the Devil.”

  Hannah wrote the name down in her notebook, then looked back up at Clare. “Earlier when you came in, you mentioned you were part of a cult. Is this Gretchen woman the cult leader?”

  Clare nodded. “Yes.”

  “Did this woman abduct you, Clare?”

  “Her demons did.”

  “Her demons?”

  “Her devil spawn.”

  “What do you mean by that, Clare?”

  Clare fixed her large blue eyes on Hannah, almost looking through her. “It’s what’s in me,” she said, her face twisting up in disgust and dismay. “I’m carrying the Devil’s child.”

  There was a pregnant pause in the room before I broke my silence. “I think we need to go back to the beginning here,” I said. “You need to tell us everything, Clare. What happened when you were taken?”

  Sighing, Clare shifted in her seat as if the extra load she was carrying was causing her great discomfort. “This chair is killing me,” she said. “God, I just want this thing out of me, I want it out—” She looked on the verge of a panic attack until Hannah said she would get her a different chair, at which point Clare started breathing deeply in through her nose and out through her mouth.

  “How far along are you?” I asked her.

  “Three months,” she said, laughing slightly; laughter which soon turned to tears. “Three fucking months.”

  “But you look—”

  “Ready to drop? That’s cause I am. I told you, I have the Devil’s child in me.”

  “A demon did this to you?”

  She stared at me, maybe surprised that I would even suggest such a thing. “You could say that.”

  Hannah came back in with a cushioned leather chair, positioning it next to Clare and helping her into it, before sliding the other chair back against the wall. When she sat back down again, she said, “Better?”

  Clare nodded. “Thank you.”

  Hannah smiled. “No problem.”

  “So tell me, Clare,” I said. “Why has it taken you a year to escape the clutches of this cult? Wha
t was stopping you before?”

  Clare looked at me like she didn’t like my tone, as if I doubted her credibility. “Are you saying I’m lying about all this?” she asked, her eyes wide with indignation.

  “I’m just trying to establish the facts, Clare, that’s all.”

  “We want to help you, Clare,” Hannah said. “But to do that, we need to know everything. Do you understand?”

  Clare stared at us both for another moment before nodding. “I understand.”

  “Good,” Hannah said. “Tell us why you didn’t escape before now.”

  “Because,” she said. “When the cult takes you, they pump you full of drugs to make you compliant, and so they can prepare you for the ritual. They indoctrinate you every day with their beliefs, and there’s nothing you can do about it. You have to do as they say. It’s only after the ritual that they take you off the drugs because they want nothing harming the baby. But then they lock you up until the baby is born.”

  “So how did you escape?” I asked her. “It couldn’t have been easy, especially in your current condition.”

  “It wasn’t,” Clare said. “It was blind luck I got out at all. There was a power failure, and the electronic locks on the room doors opened because of it. I wasn’t the only one who tried to escape that night. It was chaos, pregnant girls running everywhere, security all over the place. Somehow, I made it through and got outside. I stole a car and made my escape. Drove right through the security gates in an SUV.” She smiled slightly at the madness of it.

  “I’m impressed,” I said. “You did well.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Did any of the other girls make it out at the same time?” Hannah asked.

  “I don’t know. I wasn’t thinking of anyone else.” She turned her head to the side, as if in shame.

  “It’s okay,” Hannah said. “You’ve nothing to be ashamed of. You’re helping those other girls by being here now.”

  Clare nodded, smiled slightly. “I hope so.”

  “How many other girls are there?” I asked.

  “Maybe a dozen with…child,” she said. “More than that again who are being groomed for the ritual. Some boys as well. There has to be at least one boy for the ritual.”

  “You keep mentioning this ritual,” I said. “What’s it entail?”

  Clare took a deep breath before continuing, looking down at her swollen belly for a second. “It’s called the Drencher Host Ritual, and they spend months preparing us for it,” she said.

  “In what way?” Hannah asked. “Do they make you do things? What things exactly?”

  I glanced over at Hannah then, something in her voice making me do so, only to see her demon Visage move closer to the table, a sure sign her demonic side had been awakened by the dark turn in the conversation. She seemed too interested in this ritual for her own good. I was also worried that Clare would see the Visage in the room, now that her eyes had been opened to the dark side, so to speak. But perhaps because of the drugs in her system, she didn’t seem to notice the dark, winged specter hovering behind Hannah, casting its shadow over her psyche. Hannah still seemed in control for now, but I made a mental note to keep a close eye on her.

  “They make us do bloody sacrificial rites over and over,” Clare said as if she was still there in her mind. “We use the blood of innocents, smearing it over a statue of the demon as we howl our praises to it over and over and over…calling the demon’s name.”

  “What’s the demon’s name, Clare?” Hannah asked, leaning forward on the table.

  “I—I can’t say it—”

  “Who is it, Clare?” Hannah’s voice rose in pitch as she leaned farther forward. “Say the name.”

  “Hannah,” I said, giving her a look, noticing a faint amber glow in her eyes. She stared at me for a second and then sat back in her seat.

  “It’s okay, Clare,” I said. “You’re safe here.”

  “Safe?” she said as if I was joking. “How can I be safe when they’re everywhere?”

  “Who?” I asked. “Who’s everywhere, Clare? The cult?”

  “The demon spawn,” she said. “The same demon spawn I have inside me right now.”

  “What happened at the ritual, Clare? Is that when you got pregnant?”

  She nodded. “Yes.”

  “Were you raped?”

  She nodded again. “In a way. But I let it happen. I wanted it to happen.”

  “That’s how the cult wanted you to feel,” I said. “That’s why they drugged you and brainwashed you. Whatever happened, it wasn’t your fault. None of this is your fault.”

  Wiping tears from her eyes, Clare stared at the table for a second, then said, “I remember everything. There was fourteen of us at the ritual—thirteen girls and one boy. Gretchen was there, telling us what to do. She stood behind an altar while we all formed a circle around her. Then the boy—I don’t know his name—he gets up onto the altar when Gretchen tells him to, and he lies down, naked. We’re all naked.” She stopped and swallowed as if she was trying to keep the bile down, then continued a moment later. “When Gretchen told us to, we all began to—to—” She stopped again, on the verge of breaking down completely. “I can’t—I can’t say it—”

  “Say what, Clare,” Hannah said in a quiet voice, her Visage still hanging over her. “What can’t you say?”

  “I—I—”

  “Tell us, Clare. What did you do? What did—”

  “We ate him!” Clare screamed. “We fucking ate him!”

  She clamped both her hands over her mouth as if she would be sick, but this wasn’t enough to stop herself, and she pulled her hands away from her mouth again as she vomited onto the floor between her legs, retching and crying at the same time.

  As Hannah cocked her head to one side and looked on almost dispassionately, I got up and went to Clare, holding her long hair back as she continued retching. When she was done, she slapped my hands away and told me to get the fuck off her, which I did, stepping back, my hands in the air. “It’s okay,” I said.

  “It’s fucking not okay,” she shouted. “It’s not! It’s not okay! It’s—” She halted and grimaced, grabbing her belly as if she was in great pain.

  That’s when Hannah got up, going to Clare and taking hold of her hand, telling her to breathe, that it would be alright. “Good girl,” Hannah said. “Just breathe, that’s it.”

  “I’ll get her some water,” I said, leaving the room at that point to go outside, pausing in the hallway for a second to take a breath myself.

  I’d seen and heard a lot of bad shit in my time, but Clare’s testimony horrified me in a way that nothing else ever had. I was disgusted and angry that a formerly pure soul like Clare had to go through such a sickening ordeal. What if it was Callie? What if she had grown up only to have something terrible like that happen to her? At this, I had to remind myself that something terrible did happen to Callie.

  Jesus, sometimes it gets too much to bear. The ceaseless horror. The depressing darkness. When will it ever end? I thought as I moved down the hallway toward the water dispenser, knowing that for me, it would never end. Not until I was dead, and even then, there was always Hell, wasn’t there?

  I went back inside the interview room to find that Clare had calmed down, though she still appeared to be in some pain. “She’s having contractions,” Hannah said.

  “Maybe we should end the interview and take you to a hospital,” I said as I handed her the cup of water.

  “No,” Clare said. “Not yet. I want to finish telling you everything. I want you to stop these people, even though I’m not even sure they can be stopped.”

  “We’ll see about that,” I said looking down at the vomit on the floor. “I’ll get a mop.”

  “Leave it,” Clare said. “It’s fine. Let’s just get this over with.”

  “If you’re sure,” Hannah said, sitting back down in her chair again, her demonic urges in check once more it seemed.

  Clare nodded after drinki
ng some water I gave her. “I am.”

  “Okay,” I said, sitting back down. “Before we broke off, you said you…ate this boy on the altar. Can you explain that?”

  She took another moment to compose herself, as though preparing herself for the horror that was about to come spilling out of her mouth.

  “The boy willingly offers himself up for sacrifice,” she began. “He is to be the host for the demon’s agent. For that to happen, the girls have to feast on his flesh, as Gretchen put it. We all had to eat the lower half of his body while he was still alive and conscious. And we did. We used our teeth and fingernails to pull off bits of him. The boy didn’t scream as one of the girl’s bit off his big toe with her buck teeth. He didn’t scream when another girl pulled the tendons from his legs like gummy worms. And he didn’t scream when I bit the head of his penis off and swallowed it down. He bit his own tongue off so he couldn’t make any sounds as we all calmly and methodically ate every piece of him below his ribcage, pinching off his arteries so he didn’t bleed to death.”

  When she stopped talking, she looked across at us, looking for the horror and disgust in our faces, looking for the judgment, the condemnation that came from the fact that she could do something so vile to another human being. But she saw none of those things. What she saw instead was two cops staring back at her with non-judgmental, passive expressions on their faces, which perhaps horrified her further, that we could sit there and listen to such things being said without wanting to hit her or be violently sick.

  “I’m sorry you had to go through that,” Hannah said after a long pause. “What happened next?”

  Clare snorted and shook her head a little at our apparent lack of shock, but continued anyway. “I don’t know how, but the boy survived the first part of the ritual. He was there on the altar, half his body gone, digesting in our bellies as Gretchen looked on with a satisfied smile on her face. A few of the girls vomited up most of what they’d eaten, but the rest of us somehow kept it all down. Understand, we were all still drugged up, and after so many months of relentless preparation, our minds weren’t our own. We took pleasure in what we did, for fuck’s sake—” She paused to shake her head. “It all seemed so…normal, as sickening as that sounds.”