Of Fever and Blood

by Cédric Sire

  “There’s more over there,” Leroy said, heading toward the back of the room.

  Indeed, a flight of stairs led to a closed door.

  “So far, I can’t see any evidence of a trap.”

  He flattened himself against the wall and put a hand on the doorknob.

  “But who knows. Stand back.”

  He waited until Vauvert and Nadal had taken cover behind the couch.

  He turned the knob.

  The door opened noiselessly. And what had been lying behind it assaulted their senses.

  A sickening stench poured out of the room.

  A beast growled.

  Two red eyes pierced the darkness.

  68

  On her hands and knees, the masked woman is still uttering nonsensical sounds.

  “Iosua! Orilu! Sisis! Uliro! Ausoi!”

  Her eyes burn in the dark.

  “Come! From the mountain of the farthest midnight!”

  In body, she’s in the basement, kneeling on the hard and dusty floor.

  But her mind has flown away.

  “Leave your dwellings and come!”

  The mask is no longer porcelain.

  The mirror of the souls has replaced it.

  It reveals a closed room with walls full of empty eyes. This is the place where she has built everything. It is about to be violated by those police officers she can see through the eyes of the gods.

  She has to know.

  She needs to prevent the irreparable.

  Around her the whispering of the dead has stopped.

  “You who bring disorder across the universe!”

  Now the gods are watching, curious.

  Their fangs bared, dripping with ghostly saliva, caught between two worlds.

  “Come!”

  69

  “Watch out!” Vauvert shouted as he stood up from behind the couch, both hands gripping his Smith & Wesson.

  The beast burst out of the darkness, opening its jaws wide and baring its fangs.

  Vauvert aimed at the space between the two red flames.

  He fired a single bullet.

  The deafening sound of the gunshot bounced off the walls.

  The beast was gone.

  Leroy, short of breath, peered into the darkness.

  There was no trace of the creature that had just leaped out at them.

  “Where… where did it go?”

  Vauvert took a step toward him, on full alert.

  “I’m beginning to think that those things aren’t real. Not in the sense that they’re real animals, anyway.”

  “I don’t understand,” Leroy said. “Back out there, those beasts took out an officer. They ate his face. We all saw it!”

  “Maybe their physical form is unsettled,” Vauvert ventured. “How the hell do I know? It’s the first time I’ve seen anything like this.” He covered his mouth and nose. “What’s that smell?” Leroy hesitantly stepped into the room and flipped the light switch, revealing a hallway with tile walls.

  The floor was covered with coagulated blood. It looked like the beast had been rolling in it.

  “These things, maybe they feed on blood? Like vampires?” Leroy suggested.

  Vauvert said nothing.

  Nadal, keeping his distance, started coughing.

  “My father used to work in a slaughterhouse in Laissac. That’s exactly what this place looks like, a fucking slaughterhouse. And that smell. Dear God.”

  “Yeah, carrion,” Vauvert said.

  He walked down the hallway and found another room. When he flipped the switch, neon lights flickered and then flooded the space with light.

  There was no furniture.

  There was only a small table, surrounded by three banged-up chairs.

  The walls were covered with pictures.

  There were dozens and dozens of them. There were old black-and-white photos, as well as digital prints on large sheets of paper. Some were pictures from glossy magazines.

  “Oh shit,” Nadal said.

  All of them were women.

  Vauvert walked over to one of the walls and studied the photos. He recognized those faces. Several of them, anyway. He had spent months pouring over them when he had put together the file on the Black Mountain Vampires. These smiling girls were those found in pieces in the Salavilles’ barn.

  Most disturbing was that he only recognized a fraction of the women on the walls.

  It was so obvious, Vauvert almost fainted.

  He tried to picture all of those dead girls with their faces ripped off. How many victims were there? Forty? Fifty? More?

  One wall, however, displayed just one picture. It was a framed painting of an austere woman.

  “Do you see that?” Leroy asked.

  Vauvert came closer. He recognized the painting.

  “Yeah.”

  “Is that some member of the Saint-Clair family?” Nadal asked.

  “No,” Vauvert said. “It’s the portrait of a Hungarian countess who also was a serial killer. We think that Judith Saint-Clair kidnapped all these girls because she’s imitating the work of that woman. Her name’s Elizabeth Bathory.”

  “Oh.” Nadal was pacing, unable to calm himself. “But why would she do something like that?”

  “To please the god of death,” Leroy said. “To ask him for his favors. Look.”

  He pointed at the floor. There was a large circle drawn in blood.

  And written in the center:

  He took measured steps around the circle, examining it.

  On the wall opposite Elizabeth Bathory’s portrait, there was a door. It was ajar.

  “The stench is coming from there,” Leroy said. “Cover me.”

  Prepared for anything, Vauvert raised his gun and pushed the door open with his foot.

  70

  The light in this room was off, but huge mirrors on the walls repeated reflections in every direction. When Vauvert and Leroy aimed their flashlights, the beams multiplied, seemingly into infinity.

  “Shit,” Vauvert said, dazzled.

  The beams created shapes and patterns, a three-dimensional pentagram at one moment, another geometrical form the next.

  Leroy reached for the light switch. Nothing happened.

  “No bulb.” Vauvert pointed to an empty socket dangling at the end of bare wires.

  Narrowing his eyes, he tried to distinguish between the real and the reflections. Every movement of the flashlights caused him to doubt his judgment. But he did think that he counted seven mirrors on the four walls.

  And he made out a stone trough in the middle of the room.

  The image of a foul bathtub crossed his mind.

  There was no question about what was in it. The smell coming from it was the stench of carrion, of death. It was acrid, powerful and paralyzing, evoking everything that human beings had been programmed to flee from since the dawn of time. It was the smell of human corruption, the smell of total human destruction, no more and no less.

  The blood inscription on the wall declared:

  “How disgusting,” Leroy muttered.

  The beam of his flashlight swept over the coagulated surface, which looked almost black in places, and stirred up a swarm of flies.

  “Oh God almighty,” Nadal said, covering his mouth. He dashed out of the room, and they heard him vomit.

  Vauvert, too, covered his mouth as he approached the stone trough. The buzzing of the flies alone was making him nauseous.

  “How many gallons of blood in there, you think?”

  “Way too many,” Leroy said, wincing. “Holy fucking shit, Vauvert! Look over there!”

  He pointed to a pile against one of the walls. It took Vauvert a few seconds to figure out what it was. Only when he made out the bones of a human hand did he understand. Corpses. The bodies had been chopped apart and tossed in a heap in that spot, where putrefaction was slowly melding the thighs, arms, and twisted torsos into a muddle of flesh. A whirl of insects feasted on the remains. Vauvert could n
ot tell how many dismembered bodies there were. Maybe five or six. Maybe even more. Drawing closer, he could distinguish two figures still more or less intact. Nearby, there was a small mound of hair.

  His stomach in knots, Vauvert went to the back of the room to unearth the horrors that lay ahead.

  Here, one last body was hanging from a butcher’s hook. Both arms had been cut off.

  “God dammit. Will this ever end?”

  One of the walls caught his attention. It seemed to be covered with a sort of coarse tapestry.

  He aimed his flashlight.

  This was no tapestry. Not at all.

  Human faces, most of them yellowed and shriveled, filled the wall, from floor to ceiling. Some were still vaguely recognizable. Others were lost in decay.

  “We found her trophies.”

  That’s when he heard the growl.

  Then it was a hoarse howling, coming at them from all around.

  “What the fuck is that?” Leroy shouted.

  71

  Spread wide open on the table, Eva moans.

  Every fiber of her body is a source of agony.

  Yet she keeps moving her wrist, up, down.

  She is not thinking about anything but the motion in her right wrist.

  She is working the rope against the wooden edge, rubbing it up once, then down.

  She tells herself that the rope must be coming apart.

  Surely it’s coming apart.

  The woman, for her part, is crouched on the floor, absorbed in violent turmoil. Her eyes are rolled back. Saliva bubbling from the corners of her mouth.

  Her body convulses and shudders faster and faster as an inhuman growl rises from the depths of her chest. She twists her arms in impossible positions. They look almost like the limbs of animals.

  Eva sees that the woman’s mask has turned black, a reversed mirror. Panic stricken, she searches for the reflections of Vauvert and Leroy in the black depths. She finds them.

  The growling becomes a roar.

  72

  “The mirrors!”

  It took Vauvert a few seconds to realize that Leroy was talking to him.

  “What?”

  “Something’s moving inside the mirrors!” Leroy said again, pointing his flashlight at one of them.

  The mirror was not reflecting any light at all.

  And for a good reason: it had turned black. Its surface was tar-like and pulsating. The inhuman sound was coming from the depths of all seven mirrors in this room, and it was growing closer with each passing second.

  “Something is coming for us!” Vauvert yelled, terrified. “It’s crossing the mirrors! We have to block it!”

  Leroy raised his weapon and aimed at a mirror. Vauvert aimed at another mirror. They fired into the void.

  The glass exploded. Black shards flew in every direction, and blood gushed from the mirrors of darkness. The monstrous bellowing overwhelmed their ears.

  Instinctively, Leroy and Vauvert pressed their backs together and took aim at the other mirrors. Without thinking, they fired into each of the shifting black rectangles, smashing them one by one. And with every shot, with every shard, more blood surged.

  The ground began to shake.

  73

  The woman’s shrill howling rips into Eva’s eardrums. The witch is spinning and twisting on the floor now, nearly dislocating her limbs.

  Then, like a wounded beast, she stops.

  The wrinkles on her face have spread and deepened. Folds of skin hang from her exposed arms. The skin on her scrawny hands is translucent, the bones and green veins showing through. And her fingernails are growing. They make a screeching noise as she claws the floor. The howling becomes agony.

  Eva does not have much time.

  She has to free herself.

  Right now.

  She keeps tugging, up, down.

  A new energy throbs in her heart.

  She imagines her sister’s little hands on her wrist, invisible and yet here with her, helping her as much as a ghost can help a flesh-and-blood person. Hope grows with every move, enabling her to pull a bit harder with every jerk. One last time up. One last time down.

  Until, with a sharp snap, the rope breaks.

  Her right arm is free.

  Nearby, the masked woman lies shriveled on the floor.

  74

  The last of the mirrors shattered in the concentrated fire.

  Except for the buzzing of the flies, the room was silent.

  Captain Nadal poked his head though the door.

  “Oh my God,” he whispered.

  Vauvert aimed his flashlight at the floor.

  The blood was not just gushing from the shards now. It was surging and spreading across the floor.

  “What the hell does that mean?” Leroy yelled.

  “Whatever it is, I think we set something off,” Vauvert said.

  The red puddle was spreading, slowly.

  The two men carefully backed toward the door.

  “Did you see anything… in the mirrors?”

  “What was I supposed to see? They were black.”

  “Eva,” Vauvert said. “I thought I saw her in that blackness.”

  He scanned the room with his flashlight. On the wall, the tapestry of silent, immobile faces stared at him, their eye sockets gaping and their mouths parted in silent grins.

  Suddenly, a wet sound rising from the trough startled them. They pointed their lights at the bloody surface.

  “We’ve got to get out!” Nadal pleaded.

  But Vauvert and Leroy were paralyzed, their eyes fixed on the coagulated content. A huge bubble was forming. It swelled and burst.

  “Hurry up, God dammit!” Nadal repeated.

  New bubbles appeared, as though the blood was starting to boil.

  The trough began to vibrate. Then it began to shake. The shaking gathered speed and force—until finally the trough cracked and gave way, sending its bloody contents to the floor.

  Vauvert and Leroy retreated as fast as they could.

  75

  “They broke the doors. The bastards broke the doors.”

  The woman has gotten to her knees. She’s bent over, and the form of her knobby spinal column shows through the thin material of her dress. Her wig has slid off her head, revealing a bald, blotchy skull.

  But when she looks at Eva, her eyes still burn like flames behind the porcelain mask, which is once again an immaculate white.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she says before coughing and spitting up blood. “The ceremony can be completed. The gods will have their last sacrifice. They found her. They showed her to me.”

  She rises to her feet. She stares at the wig in her hand and then pats it back on her head. It is askew.

  “Now, yes.”

  She breaks into a demented laughter.

  Somewhere in the darkness of the basement, in the walls and the floor, the whispering starts again. It grows and vibrates faster and faster.

  After pulling on the rope so long and so hard, Eva’s right arm is wracked with pain. But it is free. That is all that matters. Wincing, she twists to the side to reach her left arm.

  To her horror, she realizes that she can’t.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” her tormentor says.

  Eva does not answer.

  She tries to focus.

  The monstrous misshapen woman raises the scalpel above her head.

  She brings it down.

  Eva stops her with her free hand.

  The eyes, lit behind the mask, fill with surprise.

  And, for the first time, doubt.

  With all her might, Eva turns the blade around and pushes. Just as she pushed another blade into the chest of another monster. She is no longer a little girl. She knows where to strike. She knows that she has pierced the heart.

  The masked woman lets out a shriek.

  The handle of the scalpel is sticking out of her chest.

  When Eva pulls the blade from its sheath of
flesh and bone, a stream of blood spurts from the woman. She steps backward, hands pressed against her heart.

  Eva can see her fall to her knees, opening and closing her mouth but unable to emit a sound. Then, finally, she utters one word. “No.”

  Clutching the scalpel, Eva wriggles to her left side again and tries to reach the wrist that is tied down.

  The pain is excruciating.

  Still, she stretches her right arm until she reaches the wrist.

  She runs the edge of the blade against the rope and slips, slicing her arm. She moves it again. This time, the scalpel meets the rope, and Eva starts working it, not stopping for a second.

  “I forbid you,” the masked woman says, sputtering and getting back on her feet.

  She takes a step forward, then collapses.

  The rope’s last fibers give way.

  Eva whoops as her left wrist is freed.

  She manages to sit. A sharp pain shoots up her back, which has been immobilized for too long. But she doesn’t care. She slides her buttocks forward and bends her knees, trying to reach the ropes around her ankles.

  She cuts them off.

  Eva feels a wave of breathless euphoria rising in her. She is free. She really is free.

  From that moment, everything happens very quickly in a confused sequence. Dizziness overtakes her as she starts to move freely. And when she slides off the table, she discovers that she does not have the strength to stand. She falls to her knees in a puddle of blood—her blood—and the world spins in every direction. The humming coming from the walls rises, whirling inside her.

  The masked woman still has her hand over her heart. A trickle of blood drips from her mouth. The wig has fallen off again and lies on the floor next to her.

  “What do you think you’re doing?”

  Her chapped lips stretch into a smile of pure insanity, revealing yellow teeth.

  It is the same smile her father wore twenty-four years ago, when he watched his own daughter stab him.

  The woman crouches like a wounded animal getting ready to attack one last time.

  Lifting her eyes toward the staircase, Eva can see her sister waiting for her on the top step. Vision or reality, that is what she points toward as she crawls up the stairs on her hands and knees.