The 13th

by John Everson

  “Wait,” came a familiar whisper. “I’ll go with you.”

  She turned to face David, whose eyes betrayed a glint of both concern…and fear.

  “I told you I’d come back for you.”

  “And I told Brenda the same thing. I couldn’t let you do this alone.”

  “Then let’s get it done.” She grinned and started to turn away. But David put a hand on her shoulder to stop her.

  “Wait,” he said. “Do you have a gun?”

  “I’m off duty,” she hissed and pulled away.

  “Great,” he mumbled, following her to the door. “Just great.”

  The stairs creaked as Christy stepped down them, and David took in a deep breath as he followed. Dead. They were dead meat here. The doc and his dominatrix butchered pregnant women down here…What the hell were a chick cop with no ammo and a college kid going to do to stop them? He waited for the screams to echo painfully through the narrow stairwell, but there was no sound. Just the labored breath of their fear.

  Christy reached the bottom first, and he grabbed her arm as she started forward. “Wait, they’ll see you.”

  She slowed but didn’t stop. Instead, she moved to the entryway and cautiously peered around the corner at the room beyond. David could see she was trying to flatten her body so as not to be seen, but in the end, it didn’t matter.

  “There’s no one down here,” she whispered.

  David slipped around her and stepped into the long basement room. The fluorescent lights overhead flickered occasionally, but outside of that, everything seemed quiet.

  And then a baby cried.

  Christy jumped. But the sound didn’t surprise David. He knew where it came from. He tapped her on the shoulder and nodded his head as he walked into the room and headed immediately toward the far end.

  She followed, and in seconds they were standing in front of four plastic crèches, each inhabited by a small infant. One of them, a child with long curly black hair, cried out again.

  “This is what they’re stealing from the mothers,” David said. “But what happens to the women after that…”

  Christy opened her mouth to say that they were probably just waiting for their babies upstairs and then remembered the handful of empty rooms they had seen. She closed her mouth. The babies were cute, and tiny and helpless. And Christy knew that the people who kept them here couldn’t be far away. David was peering through the glass at one of them, and making wide-mouthed smiles at the baby, who only stared back with enlarged blue eyes.

  “We can’t stay here.”

  He nodded. “Let’s find them.”

  They left the infants behind and crossed the long room, which led to a hallway at the other end. In between, they passed two empty hospital beds, and in his mind, David saw the ghosts of a woman with red spattering her middle, and Dr. Rockford holding crimson hands toward the sky.

  Christy paused at the entry to the hall, and put up a hand, motioning for David to stay behind. “You’re kidding, right?” he said, and followed her in.

  That’s when the lights went out.

  Ahead of them, a woman screamed. But somehow, the sound didn’t scare David like it once might have. He’d gotten used to it in this creepy hotel. What was making his skin crawl was the darkness. He reached out for Christy, and his hands only met air.

  “Christy,” he whispered.

  “Christy?”

  When the lights went out, Christy moved. Her training told her this wasn’t a power outage…this was a trap. And traps only sprung if you were around to get caught. So she darted forward to where she had seen a long wall, and when her shoulder slammed into it, she dropped to a crouch and squinted into the darkness.

  There was no light source down here, whatsoever. No windows to let in the faint illumination of the stars and moon, and the hall was disconnected from the main room where maybe, just maybe, a slight wisp of light might fade down from upstairs. Christy didn’t know if her eyes would ever adjust to make out anything.

  She heard the scream, and moved, heading toward it. Wherever the pain was, she would find the doctor, she knew. And where the doctor was, the answer to this whole mystery lay.

  With her hands she followed the rough texture of the stone wall. It was cold to the touch, and damp. She shivered as she felt her way down the corridor. The air moved around her, and her neck felt like a thousand spiderwebs were slipping by around her, a haze of clinging death hanging in the dark.

  The scream came again, and Christy tried to move faster…She didn’t know what she was going to do, but she had to do something to stop whatever they were doing to that woman. It sounded as if they were drawing her lungs out through her vagina…the horrible gurgling, wet sound she uttered with each scream made Christy’s skin crawl.

  Ahead she saw the faintest hint of red light through the blackness, and she moved toward it. She’d forgotten David with the urgency of the chase upon her, and didn’t think twice as she crept forward. The light grew stronger, and then she was at the opening to another room. In the shadow she could make out the archway of the space. She put her hands on the cold rock and tried to peer inside. She could just make out in the twisting crimson shadows two figures standing over the silvery glint of a table. Their hands moved over a figure on that table, and candles flickered and glowed in the space just beyond. A man’s voice called out the words “Astarte dumei e’ DesCrat!” and a woman’s voice quickly answered, “Ba’al we serve you.”

  Christy entered the room, creeping quietly toward the two figures, trying still to make out exactly what they were doing to the woman on the hospital bed before them. She recognized Dr. Rockford now, and her stomach only clenched tighter as she realized that there was no way the chief was going to believe her when she explained what she’d seen this man of science doing. Because right now, instead of injecting someone with drugs, or expeditiously slicing through the skin to excise or salvage an organ, the doctor was instead carving the woman. It wasn’t an operation, she saw, as she drew closer and closer to the operating circle. It was a flesh tattoo. Or more specifically a flesh scarification…or ritual evisceration. She couldn’t tell how deep Rockford was cutting with his scalpel, but he clearly had drawn a ring of blood around the perimeter of the woman’s distended belly. Bisecting the circle were an array of long, sharply cut lines, each bleeding tears of red down toward the center of the design. Her belly button.

  Again the woman screamed as Dr. Rockford bent forward, and Christy could be quiet no longer. She stood up to charge the doctor, and that’s when she felt the hands on her shoulders again. Only this time, they weren’t David’s hands. When she turned to see who had grabbed her, she found herself staring into a pair of eyes so red, they could have been hot coals in the grill of a Fourth of July barbecue.

  But she didn’t stare at them long. Because just as a toothy grin broke the darkness beneath those red eyes, something swung audibly in the air and came to a rest on the back of her skull.

  Christy came to rest on the dirty floor. And then her thoughts were as dark as the hallway she’d just left.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  David heard the second scream in the darkness and felt his skin crawl. “Christy!” he called desperately again, struggling to keep his voice just above a whisper. There was no answer.

  The air down here was cool, and wet, and it stuck in his throat like algae. He felt like he was drowning in the darkness. After calling Christy for the third time, he decided that standing still in the dark was not the best strategy. Sooner or later, the lights might come on, yes. But by then, he might be dead.

  So David began to inch his way along the wall to his left. He moved like a slug…slow and gentle…careful not to run into anything that might give away his position. Like Christy, he didn’t believe the lights had gone out accidentally.

  Which meant, of course, that they knew someone was in the asylum that shouldn’t be. Which meant they were looking for…him.

  David moved. The wall s
uddenly gave way to open air, and he almost fell as the rock he’d put pressure on disappeared. He gasped, but recovered quickly and stepped to the left, into another trail of empty darkness. He wondered if the world had seemed so cruel and filled with potential pain to Helen Keller. Every step of his feet brought a pain of tightly drawn breath to his lungs.

  The wall dropped away again, and he followed it, not knowing what else to do. He could get lost following corridors into darkness, but the other alternative was simply to crawl back up the stairs and slink back home. And he hadn’t come here to lose.

  The wall that slid roughly beneath his hands in the dark suddenly became smooth. David slid his hands along it, tracing the invisible surface until he came to something cold and metallic. And round.

  A doorknob.

  He had found a doorway to someplace else, and David didn’t hesitate to try to turn the knob.

  But it didn’t budge.

  As he twisted the knob, trying repeatedly to move it, something moved beyond the door. Someone was inside!

  “Hello,” he hissed. “Is someone there?”

  A thud.

  “Hello?”

  “Open the door,” a voice demanded. A man’s voice, tired and lost. “Open it, hurry.”

  “I can’t,” David said truthfully. “It’s locked and I don’t have a key.”

  “Then get the hell away before they throw you in here…and come back when you have the key,” the voice concluded. David had the impression of a vocal cord twisted around a fence post.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  “Just fuckin’ go!” the voice inside demanded.

  David tried the knob again, but it didn’t budge. Shaking his head, he moved past it, but in seconds came up against a stone wall. Dead end.

  Okay, he thought, Christy hadn’t come this way. He began to head back the way he had come, when without warning, the lights came back on. Blinded at first, he dropped to a crouch against the wall, and shaded his eyes with his palms.

  As the stars fell away and he could make out his surroundings, David realized that he was in a short, stubby hallway. The room he’d just tried to enter was the only thing here. But ahead, in the corridor he and Christy had been walking down, he could see that it continued. He began to head that way, assuming that she had simply gone forward when he had turned left. But then he heard voices and froze.

  “I knew she was trouble the first time she came in here,” a woman’s voice declared. “Fuckin’ cops.”

  And then a man: “Not trouble at all,” he said. “Opportunity. The time for trouble is over. Tomorrow, we will use all of our resources.”

  The corridor in front of David suddenly was filled with the owners of the voices. Dr. Rockford. Nurse Amelia. And dangling between their arms, blonde hair trailing along the rock floor, Christy. Officer Christy Sorensen.

  So much for cop training.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” David mumbled to himself.

  After they passed, David slipped down the corridor and turned in the direction they’d come from. In moments he found the room that Christy had seen, or not seen, in the dark. It was a small room, and smelled of iron. The floor was speckled in dots of rust, and the walls looked painted in crimson. As David looked, he swore he could see the paint crawl.

  Shit, he realized. That’s not paint.

  That’s blood.

  The room smelled in a way David couldn’t define. It reminded him of mortality. Of life and hurt and earth and loss. As he watched it move and shift on the wall, his throat clenched. Someone had died in here. Deep in the darkness, someone had screamed and begged for mercy, and instead…her blood now flowed in slow, sluggish rivulets down the walls.

  He didn’t want to see what the body that had been left behind looked like. And his quick survey of the room didn’t reveal it. David backed away before he was forced to process the source of the blood.

  He backed away until the wall pressed against his back, and this time, he headed back toward the main room of the basement without caution. He wanted out, and out now. When the baby cried, he didn’t even slow. Deep inside him his conscience cried out, “I’m sorry little guy,” but David’s feet were already on the stairs. This time, he didn’t listen to see if they creaked. He vaulted up them, and turned the handle on the door at the top without worrying about whether someone was there.

  As it happened, they weren’t. And David didn’t stop to see where they might have gone. He bolted straight to the back hallway, where he knew a safe exit was. He didn’t believe that anyone who stayed within these walls would have the free will to leave for long, and he sorely wanted to leave. When he came back the next time, he’d rescue Brenda from her drugged stupor, he swore. And he’d find Christy.

  But he clearly couldn’t accomplish either rescue on his own. He needed help, and he needed to be free to get it.

  So he pushed his way out the back door and ran, not looking back.

  Behind him, the Castle Point Asylum watched in silence. And waited for his return.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  The Innovative Industries truck pulled into the circle drive at Castle Point Asylum at its usual time on a Wednesday. Late. After dark. Near midnight.

  Greg Sackobit parked the truck and stifled a yawn. He’d been cranking the tunes from WCIG—your goth connection—for the last half hour…but at midnight (plus or minus fourteen minutes) it was hard to stay focused on anything for very long, even the repetitive heaven of Ministry’s “Everyday is Halloween.” He stepped up the stone walkway to the door of the classic old asylum and reached up to ring the bell, but the door was already open before he could complete the action.

  Amelia was there in her white nurse smock…but he noticed that it was buttoned up wrong, leaving an open lip to expose her navel. And near her ribs, the outfit was smeared with something red, as if a patient had grabbed and pulled at her with bloody hands.

  Greg ignored the evidence. He’d been to plenty of bizarre places to pick up what he needed, and a little blood was certainly not a deterrent. Maybe she’d just finished a procedure to fill one of those vials he’d come for. Innovative Industries couldn’t continue its under-the-counter research into gene cloning and limb replacement growth without the embryo stems he gathered here. Maybe it was bloody business. He didn’t know, and didn’t really care.

  “Hey, Amelia.” He grinned. “Got a dose for me?”

  She didn’t even smile at his playfulness. She motioned him inside and then almost ran down the hallway into the shadows to retrieve what he needed. Greg knew the asylum lived off the money his pickups brought in to them, so he didn’t even question whether the material she handed him a minute later was what they needed. Innovative Industries paid good money for these stem cells, and had the ability to shut down Dr. Rockford’s operation in a heartbeat if he crossed them.

  As he took the box from Amelia, the devil himself loomed up behind her.

  “Hey, Greg,” the doctor said. “Tell Monty that this one is it. After tomorrow night, I don’t think I’ll have any other material for him. So please tell him…good luck. And use it wisely.”

  “What about next Wednesday?” Greg asked.

  “I’ll let you know if I have anything,” Rockford said from the shadows, as Amelia already began to close the door.

  “But don’t count on it,” his voice finished, as the door joined with the frame in a definitive click.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  The Castle Point police station looked quiet in the morning, David thought, as he pedaled down Main and turned to park his bike outside its white frame walls.

  He walked down the sidewalk with far more confidence than he wished he had; confidence built from having been here before, and knowing the ins and outs of the local cop shop was not exactly what David had in his mind as a life goal. Nevertheless, he knew this place, and he stepped inside and pushed through the glass doors hoping to find Christy there ahead of him. But when he looked out at the floor and saw h
er desk empty, he knew he had to continue with his plan.

  The detective he’d dealt with briefly yesterday came up to him as he stood in the foyer staring around.

  “Hey,” Captain Ryan said, smiling widely at David. “What can I help you with today?”

  “I’d like to report a kidnapping,” David said.

  “Who?” the cop said, hair falling across his face in a faint halo of silver.

  “One of your own,” David said, waiting for the glint of interest in the cop’s eye. It didn’t come.

  “And who’s that?” Captain Ryan said. His voice sounded terminally bored.

  “Detective Christy Sorensen.”

  “Hmmm. What makes you think that she’s disappeared?” Ryan said.

  “Because I was there when they took her,” David said.

  “Where is that, and who’s ‘they’?” Ryan asked, looking slightly interested now.

  “The people at the asylum,” David said.

  “I see,” Ryan coaxed. “The folks at the funny farm came and took one of our officers right off the street, did they? Was she directing traffic at the time?” There was no mistaking the sound of scorn in the older officer’s voice.

  “No, they didn’t come to get her. We were at the asylum last night,” David clarified. “I saw them carry her away in their arms, limp as a rag. I think she was unconscious, and they were probably taking her to one of their rooms.”

  “What makes you think that they locked her up? Couldn’t they have been helping her, and she’s back at home right now?”

  “Why don’t you call her and find out?”

  Ryan raised an eyebrow at that, pausing. Then he reached for the phone on his desk. “I’ll do that,” he said. He hit the speed dial for Christy’s house, and didn’t take his eyes off David as the phone continued to ring in his ear. Nobody picked up. After ten rings, he put it back on its receiver.

  “She may have gone out for a run,” he said.

  “Officer, I was there. I saw them carry her away last night, and it wasn’t because she fainted or something. Two minutes before that, she’d been just fine. I was talking to her.”