by R. D. Tarver
“Sounds like my brother. He sits in his room and blasts metal all day, every day. My mom says it’s warped his mind.”
The guidance counselor laughed a hearty laugh. “And what do you think?”
Jesse’s tone took on a somber note as he continued to speak about his brother. “I think that if he didn’t have his music, he might not be here.” Jesse felt his eyes begin to water. “He was in a bad motorcycle accident. It’s pretty much the reason my family moved out here.”
Agostino allowed the conversation to breathe for a moment before offering his assessment.
“I think the situation with your brother explains the appeal of certain musical genres to many young people. Those who feel abandoned by a society that they never felt like they belonged to in the first place.”
“Yeah, I can see that,” said Jesse. He fidgeted with a loose stitch on the Screaming for Vengeance patch above the left breast pocket of his jean jacket. “He’s always been different, but in a good way.”
“Heavy metal music in particular instills the listener with a sense of solidarity among those of us who are turned off by the banality of mainstream society. Your brother sounds like an interesting person.”
Jesse wiped his eyes on his sleeve. “Man, you sound a lot different than Principal Anderson,” he chuckled, narrowly avoiding choking on the rising lump in his throat. “She thinks me and my friends are Satanists.”
Agostino sat back in his chair and spoke with a sigh. “Let us just say that Principal Anderson and I have different pedagogies.” He leaned forward over the desk towards Jesse and lowered his voice. “But you should know that anything we discuss here will be held in the strictest confidence.”
Jesse nodded and thumbed through the manuscript Agostino had placed before him.
“You can hold on to that. See if it resonates with your musical interests.”
“Thanks, Mr. Agostino.”
“Please, call me Vincent. And you are welcome.”
“No offense, but it seems like high school guidance counselor might be punching a little bit beneath your weight class.”
Agostino smiled as he cleaned his glasses with his handkerchief. “This appointment provides certain advantages towards my ultimate research goals.”
“Macomb Springs High?” Jesse shook his head. “Must not be a lot of jobs out there for an ethnomusicologist, huh?”
“I am drawn to certain cultural phenomena occurring in this region of the country. This appointment allows access as a participant/observer of the community. Besides, one has to eat.”
“This whole town is a social experiment. Sometimes I feel like it’s tearing apart at the seams.”
“It must be a difficult time to be a young man of your interests.”
Jesse pondered the statement. He noticed a curious piece of sound equipment poking out from beneath the tweed overcoat that had been draped over a stack of boxes in the corner of the room.
“So what’s with all the gear?”
“I’m conducting an experiment for my —”
“For your research?” Jesse finished.
“Yes.” Agostino’s smile faded. “That is correct.”
“Not to pry, but why aren’t you studying at the university?”
Agostino looked to the ceiling as he toyed with his beard. “My adviser subscribes to an unorthodox approach to research design. I have been forced off the reservation, so to speak, in order to prove my worth.”
“Sounds harsh.”
“Harsh, but effective.” Agostino snapped to and opened a binder on his desk. “Now, enough about me. Since our time is almost up, I suppose I must ask—how are the grades coming along?”
“Better.” Jesse said, as he handed him a recent grade check summary.
“Good, I’m happy to be able to report that to Mrs. Lynn.” Agostino stood and ushered Jesse out of his office door.
“It’s Mrs. Reynolds actually. I kept my dad’s last name after they got divorced. Not sure why—he’s a total loser. I guess it was just easier.”
“My mistake.” Agostino clasped his hands together and bowed his head. “Jesse, these are indeed strange times. Please feel free to come to me with anything that might concern you.” Agostino peered over the rims of his glasses. “Anything at all.”
As Jesse left the guidance counselor’s office, he caught himself looking back over his shoulder, unsure of what to make of the strange shift in Agostino’s voice.
PART II
Interlude
Vincent stood next to his brother Henry’s bedside, watching the vital signs that flashed on the monitor for any change. Henry moaned as one of his father’s attendants, a hairless man with a strange blue-grey pallor, worked in silence to sew up the dark, bloody gash that ran from beneath his jaw up near his right eye.
A wet thud followed the scratching sound that grated in his ears from down the hall. Without looking, Vincent knew it to be the sound of another corpse being dragged over the shards of broken glass that covered the checkered parquet living room floor.
The monitor chimed an alert as Henry began to convulse, coughing up a mist of blood and phlegm that spattered across the attendant’s grey smock.
“Vincent,” his father called. “Perhaps you can distract your brother with one of his favorite stories from the Compendium transcripts while Rune completes his work?”
Vincent stepped into the hall and followed the sound of his father’s voice into the living room.
“Are you sure it is safe?”
“The sun will be up in less than an hour. All the references of this species indicate explicit nocturnal activity. Thanks to you and your brother’s valiant efforts, I think we can rest easy for now.” He wiped a trail of blood from his forehead with his handkerchief. “How many did you count?”
“Seven—including the big one with the sagittal fin.”
“Very good,” his father nodded as he counted the bodies. “The murk queen always hatches an even-numbered brood. I cannot say how they managed to track us all the way from Scape Ore, but hopefully that will be the last of their ilk that we see for some time.”
“Does this mean we have to move again?”
“See to your brother. I’ll finish cleaning up this mess,” his father sighed. “Though we’re bound to never get the smell out. A pity too. I was rather fond of the decor.”
His father stood in front of an ornate marble fireplace fanning his handkerchief in front of his nose. Several bloody corpses were piled up near its opening. The glint of the flames reflected off the shattered glass windowpanes whose sheer drapes wavered freely in the early morning air.
An acrid stench rose from the desiccated reptilian forms as they hit the flames, sending out plumes of greenish-grey smoke through the open windows.
The fishy stink from the South Carolina swamplands followed Vincent down the hall, burning the back of his throat.
He opened the trapdoor that led to the staircase beneath the kitchen. After being granted security access via the optical scanner, he opened the heavy blast door and entered the vault. He scanned through the contents of the dusty repository, filled with all manner of artifacts, weaponry, and his father’s extensive collection of early jazz 45s, until he came upon the bookshelf filled with ancient tomes.
He ran his open palm along the spines of the occult volumes until he came upon the familiar shape of the well-worn Compendium. As he held the book, he recalled the fond memories of his father reading from the great book when he and his brother were children. It was a different time, when life was simple—before he was burdened with the truth about the family business.
He ran up the stairs with the book and returned to Henry’s bedside. The laconic attendant offered a polite bow as he left the room.
Vincent took a seat next to his brother’s bed. “In another time we would all have been burned at the stake,” he said as he arrived at one of his brother’s favorite entries and began to read aloud.
✠ ✠ ✠
Elizabeth huddled beneath the floorboards in the fruit cellar with the twins on either side. She cupped her hands over their little mouths as the shouting grew louder from outside.
A scream erupted from the back of the house, followed by the sounds of footsteps overhead. She knew without being able to see that it was her mother’s stilted gait, heavy with child, moving slowly across the kitchen floor towards the front door.
“Charles!” her mother screamed a second time.
Father must be trying to reason with the vestrymen, Elizabeth thought to herself.
The vestrymen had gathered after sunset in the town square, just as the swelling Blood Moon emerged from the horizon. The rest of the townsfolk eventually followed suit, their stern, grey faces cast from the same frowning mold of bitter judgment, and something more sinister.
Once they arrived, Elizabeth’s mother had called for her to fetch the twins. “Stay put until you hear different, girl.” Her mother had spoken the words as she put the floorboards back in place to conceal the narrow crawl space.
The ground beneath the house was cool and damp, and smelled of mildew and stale earth. The boys whimpered, fighting for air as Elizabeth’s hands clamped down over their wet, sniffling faces. One of the twins broke free from her vice-like grip, breaking her concentration as she strained to hear her father’s voice as he addressed the gathering throng.
“Benjamin, settle this instant,” Elizabeth whispered. She picked up the small child and held him in her lap.
“You smell of cow droppings—I cannot breathe,” squeaked the small voice. He held his nose between his two fingers and inhaled through his open mouth.
“Be with your brother in silence before I pluck the very nose from your face.” She sat Benjamin next to his brother, Thomas, as she continued. “Then you’ll’ve no reason to complain.”
The twins clutched each other, trembling beneath Elizabeth’s roughspun dress.
The movement of her mother’s frantic pacing stirred up clouds of dust that fell between the narrow gaps in the floorboards, illuminated by the warm candlelight above.
Elizabeth tried to reassure the twins.
“Quiet, now. This is the best hiding spot within the whole of the farm. We will win the game if you are not to give us away.”
“I don’t want to play this game anymore,” said Benjamin.
“Thomas, you want to play with me, don’t you?” Elizabeth asked. “We’re sure to win because the others will never find us down here.”
Thomas nodded at his sister, giving Benjamin pause to rethink his proclamation.
“There’s a good boy. See how much fun we are having? Poor ol’ Benjamin is going to miss out on the very best game we have ever played, is he not?”
“I have to make water,” Benjamin said.
“Then go in the corner, but stay close and keep quiet.”
“Mother says not to make water in the house,” Thomas whispered.
“It’s all right, Thomas, mother won’t know so long as we promise not to tell. Can you do that?”
“I promise.”
“That’s a good boy.”
The front door slammed shut.
The sound of her parents’ shouting was muffled by the grating of the heavy oak farm table as it slid across the floor towards the front door.
The murmur of voices from outside grew closer to the house.
A lone voice rose above the din.
“Charles Edward Winfield! Produce the girl and save the rest of your lot from certain destruction.”
“She’s not what you think, McGregor,” her father replied. “You’ll not harm a child of mine while I still draw breath.” His voice sounded fearful despite the strength of his words.
Elizabeth cringed at the mention of the Reverend Stern McGregor. She paired the voice with the image she held in her mind’s eye of the minister’s birdlike features as his voice bellowed from the crowd.
“Who are you to doubt the convictions of honest Christians, whose almighty God has revealed the devil’s concubine in our midst?”
“She is no consort of Satan!” her father shouted. “You have abandoned reason in favor of this fashionable hysteria that sweeps the land.”
The crowd jeered in response.
“We stand resolute in the righteous judgment as decreed by our creator!” McGregor shouted.
“If you intend to harm my family, you will first need to step over my corpse—almighty God or no.”
After a short pause, the Reverend McGregor called back. “Very well, Charles. Know that you wear the blood of your progeny on your own two hands.” His speech quieted as he finished. “And may the Lord God have mercy on your house.”
A cold sweat began to trickle down Elizabeth’s back as she realized she was holding her breath. She could hear the terror in her mother’s voice as she begged to her father.
“She’s just a girl, Charles—our girl. You cannot give her over.”
Elizabeth heard a loud crash against the side of the house followed by the sound of breaking glass. The smell of burning whale oil filled the cellar as the flames began to climb the walls.
The twins shrieked in unison.
She crawled on her stomach beneath her parent’s bedroom, and kicked at a loose board. She eventually forced a small opening and called back to the twins.
“Come with me, I’ve found a better hiding place.”
She sped the twins through the pasture towards the old barn, nearly lifting them off the ground in the process. At her back, a procession of torchbearers circled the house. Bright orange flames rose from the roof of her familial home, sending up a black column of smoke that disappeared into the night sky.
Inside the barn, the horses were startled by the rising commotion. Elizabeth tucked the twins up into the hayloft and threw the bolt across the barn doors from the inside. Satisfied that the twins were safe, she climbed out through one of lesser entrances along the side wall and ran back out into the night.
The air was thick with stinging smoke that stifled her vision as her eyes began to draw tears. She took one last look at the flames just as another torch was thrown into her parents’ bedroom towards the back of the house.
Elizabeth ran until she made it to the pump house. Once inside, she lowered herself down into the well, all the way to the bottom until she was standing waist deep in the freezing cold water. She squeezed through the narrow fissure in the limestone casing that opened to reveal the underground stream that fed the well.
Her father had always claimed the aquifer that sourced the well was located in the caves that ran along the river Ipswich before it emptied into the sea. Beyond the river lay the primeval expanse of the Eastern Woods. Once there, it was a day’s walk to the adjacent township of Wenham where her cousin Margaret lived. Margaret was worldly and wise, and was married to a prominent landowner. She would know how to sort through this mare’s nest.
After what felt like hours of crawling through the narrow portal, she climbed up through an ascending passage that eventually formed into a shallow cavern opening along the bank of the river. Exhausted, she collapsed on the cold stone ground, gazing upon the frothy grey waters of the river Ipswich that tumbled forth to deliver its gift into the frigid Atlantic.
She sat huddled on the floor of the cave, rocking back and forth and wringing out her dress in an effort to get warm. She hummed a familiar tune to calm herself, occasionally breaking out into song. The sweet melody echoed off the walls of the cave, barely audible above the churning river.
Elizabeth fell silent as she heard the bellow of distant horns. She panicked, thinking it the pursuant call of the constabulary who often used hunting horns to announce their presence to one another when patrolling the dense forest.
A sliver of moonlight guided her out of the cavern and into the craggy hillside that overlooked the seashore to the east.
The rumbling of thunder resounded in the distance as Elizabeth emerged once more into the night. The orange-red glow o
f the Blood Moon allowed her to easily find her footing and head up to higher ground. The bellow of the hunting horns mixed with the approaching thunder, further masking their origin.
Using the position of the moon as her guide, she pointed herself towards the direction of town and climbed a tall tree to gain a vantage point. To the west, the burning of the farmhouse provided a beacon by which to get her bearings.