by Scott Hale
“Ellen and Richard did, too. Trent said he remembered seeing Darlene tearing them out of the backyard.”
Linnéa raised an eyebrow. “What about Bethany?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“Didn’t you post a picture of it to all your plant buddies?”
“Just did—” he tapped the phone on his knee, “—but nothing yet.” He turned on his phone, checked the post. “Nothing.”
Linnéa didn’t want to say it, but it needed to be said. “I’m not sure this is help—”
“There’s a few things out there on it. It’s…”
He paused, stared at her. Eyes wide, mouth mouthing phantom words; like Richard Cross, he seemed to be asking her permission to keep speaking.
She didn’t say anything. She didn’t want him to hear the reluctance in her tone. It would devastate him.
“It’s hard because I don’t know what to call it or how to describe it. There’s nothing special about it, but… it’s like I said, Lin. It’s weird. I found a few discussions on a few websites about it, but they get shut down real quick. No one’s interested, or allowed to be interested.”
“If it’s a weed, I suppose I can’t blame them.”
“I don’t think it is.” He stood up, extended his hand for her to take. “Come inside. I want you to try something.”
“Okay,” she said, noticing the red stains on his fingertips. It looked like he had blood on his hands. All parents did in a way, didn’t they? She had to tell him about the dirt on the others, but he had to get this out of his system first. Saving their daughter couldn’t be a competition.
Linnéa let Stephen lead her into the house. Walking through it without her usual blinders on made her realize what’d happened to the place. Old clothes like breadcrumbs were scattered throughout every room. On every surface, dust was gathering dust; framed pictures of the family were nothing more than television static—favorite channels that, for the sake of their sanity, had to be tuned out. The police had found evidence in the form of a muddy work boot print in the bathroom, and now there were footprints all over the place, most of which ran in circles. The house smelled like a hangover, too; armpit sweat, oily hair, and the fumes of partially digested food. The home wasn’t a home anymore, but a hideout.
And day by day, it was stripped of little things—picture frames, towels, or coffee mugs; neither of them could remember moving or disposing of the items, but they didn’t much miss them. Wherever they were going, they were better off.
Stephen took her to the kitchen, and on the kitchen table, two clumps of red roots lay segregated by an empty paper towel roll. Both of them had been cut into. Small drops of vibrant liquid dotted the tabletop. They were the same color as the faded wash on her husband’s fingertips, and the meaty chunks underneath his nails.
“One on the left is from our garden,” he said. “One on the right is from Trent’s backyard.”
“Is that all of it?”
“All that we could find, yeah. It wasn’t growing out of anything, though. It wasn’t attached to any system. Came right out of the ground. Trent said the same for his.”
Linnéa approached the table and sniffed the air. Her nostrils tingled. Her eyes lost focus temporarily.
“I think someone put them there,” Stephen said.
There was a sour pocket underneath Linnéa’s tongue, as if she’d bit into a mouth-puckering piece of candy. She drowned it in spit and backed away from the table.
“It’s more than red, isn’t it?” Stephen took her place at the table and prodded the root from their garden. “Been trying to break it down to search for it better on the Internet. Sent a picture to Mom.”
Linnéa steadied her breathing. Before she knew it, she was back at the table again beside Stephen. It wasn’t the sight of the roots that was setting her on edge, but the liquid puddled around them. It had a power over her.
“Vermillion, that was her read on the roots’ shade. Woman can’t paint for shit, but at least knows her colors.”
Needing to change the subject, to break the hold the strange growths had on her, Linnéa said, “Stephen, I found something, too.”
His eyes dulled. His face went hard. He seemed to want to tell her to go ahead, to share what she knew, but the consideration wasn’t there, not like it’d used to be. It wasn’t a matter of competition. It was just that he’d finally brought something new to the table, and she didn’t even bother taking the time to try it out.
Stephen pressed on. “They’re not roots, either.”
“What are they?”
“Veins.” He nodded at them. “There’re no hairs, and the epidermis is all wrong. The structure…” He drew a sharp breath. “They’re veins. It’s like they were ripped out of something.”
Linnéa’s jaw dropped. “Are they human? Are they…?”
“We found them before Filipa went missing.” Stephen smiled. “Yeah, my mind went there, too.”
There was something wrong with Stephen’s smile. Linnéa hadn’t noticed it at first, but just now… Yeah, there was something on his tooth. She leaned, caught a glimpse of a red-capped canine past his pursued lips.
“Did you… eat them?” she asked, incredulously.
“I took a bite,” he said, as if chowing on some creature’s veins was an everyday thing for him. “I don’t—”
“Stephen!”
“—know what they came from, but they’re a hallucinogenic.”
“What?”
Stephen ignored her and took out his phone.
“What the hell?” Her neck and her cheeks grew hot. She went to push him, but stopped herself at the last second. “Steve, what the hell?”
“Read this.” He pressed the phone into her hand. “It’s a lot of bullshit, but it’s the only concrete thing I’ve been able to find on these vermillion veins so far.”
Black Occult Macabre. That was the name of the website. It was so minimalistic in design, it barely registered as existing. The background was pure black, the font a dim white that straddled the line between readable and repulsive. Centered at the top of the page, below a row of non-descript buttons, was a picture of the very same vermillion veins that lay bleeding on Linnéa’s kitchen table, albeit coming out of the stonework of a ruined keep. Below the image, there were words; and they read:
The Agony of After: Crime Scenes in Vermillion
By Connor Prendergast
On the eve of the 19th century, in seldom visited English countryside known then as Blackwood Marsh, two events occurred that have since been almost completely scrubbed from the annals of history. At first, there was a viral outbreak in the town of Parish that either killed or drove away the entire population living there. And then, a month later, in the mining village of Cairn, the same virus passed through, but not before driving several individuals living there into a murderous rampage that claimed over thirty lives.
Connected by proximity and the presence of a pestilence, Parish and Cairn’s fates were not decided by the disease that infested both the people and the land they lived upon, but by the house of horrors that loomed over them physically and financially for centuries.
The outbreak that ravaged Blackwood Marsh was preceded by the literal collapse of the Ashcroft estate in the area. In the stygian bowels of the ancient mansion, a foul growth emerged. Sentient and seeking subservience, It consumed the Ashcroft line and bent them to Its will, causing them to spread Its pulpy, palpable influence throughout Europe.
The sordid details of the Ashcroft line and their lineage of insanity can be found elsewhere on this website. For now, the focus will remain on the vermillion veins that sprouted forth from the carcass of their fouled family tree.
Like most things supernatural and of the Membrane, little is known about the vermillion veins. Oral accounts speak of their presence prior to the collapse of the Ashcroft estate, but it wasn’t until the growths were unearthed in Blackwood Marsh that their nefarious purpose became clear.
The vermillion veins are not roots, but self-aware structures that exist as part of some still unseen hive or mind. They are human-borne, propagating through the heinous deeds of a carefully selected few. Like parasites, the vermillion veins are indebted to their hosts, and their hosts are violence, and the violent individuals that sow it. They appear where traumatic events have taken place, as if to sop up the sorrow that stains the fabric of that point in reality.
However, recent evidence has suggested the vermillion veins are not being spread by their human conscripts as a means by which to see the writhing masses fed. Rather, it is that those who have sworn themselves to the vermillion veins are finding or creating traumatic tears in the human experience to coax forth the veins from the eldritch muscular that surrounds our world.
The vermillion veins are not thriving off our suffering, but using it as means by which to measure and mark various points on the Earth. The growths are crime scene chalk; and the empty space inside the outlines? Doorways, perhaps, for greater, more terrible things, waiting for the signal to come through. For ages, strange beasts have been crossing the threshold, carving their names and legacy into our folk tales and horror stories. It is not unreasonable to assume their journey and genesis was made all the easier by those fertile gateways.
If the vermillion veins are as dependent upon those who carry the seeds of their will as time would suggest, then who are these individuals who would see our lives unspooled? Amon Ashcroft, for one—the vein-riddled embodiment of the last head of the estate. His appearances are few and unconfirmable, and yet, if he still exists, like any sadistic master, it is likely he has slaves operating beneath him, carrying out his intent.
Random crimes and seemingly unconnected suspects have made it difficult to determine if there is an organized effort to spread the vermillion veins; however, several sources and documents have pointed to an unnamed cult. Whether they are the perpetrators of the crime, or simply scavengers, the scenes in which the vermillion veins are present have been known to take on an almost religious tone.
Eastern Europe, 1931: an abandoned convent was discovered to have been the killing grounds for a prolific serial killer who kidnapped tourists. No ties were made between the serial killer and the rumored cult, but vermillion veins were discovered at the crime scene several weeks after it had already been examined by the authorities, as if a group had arrived later and gave rise to them there. The veins, in combination with the candles, incense, carvings, and incomprehensible scrawling, was said to have mirrored mementos left upon headstones.
Central Africa, 1967: the Onai tribe’s village was consumed, in a similar manner, by the vermillion pestilence that afflicted Parish and Cairn; that is, people were overwhelmed with madness and a distinct dissociation of the self; and the very land became infected, rotting all that it touched. Catholic missionaries in the area were sent to the village with medicine and religion—the most potent of anesthetics—to assist. When they arrived, they found that the matriarchal society had been overtaken by a mysterious man dressed in black. Both the missionaries and the tribe were never heard from again, though they were occasionally seen by acquaintances in the neighboring cities, and that they were wearing robes bearing a strange symbol: an eye wreathed in tentacles.
United States, 1992: A freshman at Springwood High opened fire on a psychology class, killing all twenty students, the teacher, and his aide. The shooter, having bought himself time with bomb threats, then preceded to arrange the slain into crude, geometric shapes. When police finally entered the building and discovered the classroom, ‘strange, bright red flowers’ were seen growing out of the victims’ chests. Taken before successfully committing suicide, the Springwood Shooter now serves out the rest of his days in a long-term psychiatric hospital, where he has convinced the staff there to allow him to maintain his own personal garden. Reports state that, in the right light, under the right circumstances, the shooter’s eyes are said to have flecks of red in them, and that occasionally, root-shaped things are said to move beneath his skin. He is currently engaged to a groupie who’s been writing him letters for the last twenty years. Five years ago, she created a social media group in his honor. Fifteen strong, they go by the name “The Disciples.”
The aforementioned three are but drops in the vermillion wave that threatens to wash away life on this planet. Like many movements, though, the narrative has changed in regards to the vermillion veins. As was discussed earlier, the growths may not be thriving off of torturous moments, but rooting themselves in them and unlocking their potentials—splitting, perhaps, their agonized atoms.
Lately, dead or disembodied vermillion veins have been found at crime scenes. Rather than being drawn forth, they are being harvested and left like offerings at our altars of death. There are several theories as to why this may be the case.
The vermillion veins have become commercialized in the realms of the cult-like behavior. Individuals unaware of their impact or power are digging them up and repurposing them for their own rituals.
The vermillion veins and the hive or mind to which they are connected are dying. The growths have lost their hold over this world and they are unable sustain themselves any longer. As it does with all things, entropy has found a way to combat that which we could not.
Or the vermillion veins are continuing to be used as markers, but rather than marking weak points between here and the Membrane, they are being used as indicators for very real, very natural, earthbound beings. Returning to the religious symbolism, it is not impossible to see the vermillion veins as the lambs’ blood the Israelites painted upon their doors to spare their firstborn. However, if this is the case, it begs the question: Is someone being spared, or sought out?
Linnéa looked up from the cell phone at Stephen and, laughing in disbelief, said, “This is… Steve. This is bullshit. Come on.”
“What did you find?” he asked, every cuss word and insult in the corners of his mouth.
“I…” She sighed, had a look at the site again. Really? No, she couldn’t entertain this, not even if it paid her to. “I looked up all the parents. They’ve all been taken to court for abusing their kids.”
“Well, there you go.” Stephen took the phone out of her hand. “Listen, Lin, I don’t buy the spooky monster crap, either. It’s B-movie bullshit. What did the others do?”
Linnéa strained her mind to recall the details. “Ellen for child neglect… Bethany had child endangerment. And Trent… his was for child abuse.”
“Then there’s us,” Stephen said.
“Yeah.”
“Four kids are missing from four families that’d had run-ins with the law back in the day.” He jammed his finger into the cell phone’s screen. “What if we’ve been marked?” He nodded at the vermillion veins. “Those things were fresh, but they hadn’t laid roots. They were placed at our houses. All of them, I bet. Not saying it’s monsters. I’m not. Just crazy sons of bitches.”
Linnéa’s stomach turned. “What about this guy? This Connor guy? You said this is all you can find on the veins.”
“He’s local,” Stephen said.
“Shut up.”
“He is. He’s from here.”
“How do you know?”
“I’ve heard the name once or twice. He did that story on the murder of the Zdanowicz family awhile back. Released it in his own rag. He’s from Bedlam.”
Biting the inside of her lip, Linnéa’s said, “He’s a suspect.”
“Got to be.”
She looked at the vermillion veins and the tantalizing blood they’d shed. “Did you really drink from one of them?”
Stephen he
sitated, and then said, “Yeah.”
Linnéa asked, “Why?” but only out of formality—these kinds of freakish scenarios demanded Whys and What fors. She knew why, she knew what for. Even she wanted to take a chomp out of the things.
“Guess I thought it might help me figure out what it was.” He didn’t sound convinced with himself. “We should tell Detective Mills about this Connor Prendergast.”
Linnéa had a bad taste in her mouth. It was the death of the false hope she’d been harboring this last month like an immigrant; that ostracized emotion that had no goddamn right to be here, or so claimed hate and its equally ignorant brother, retribution. If their houses had been marked by some individual or cult, and if their children had been taken for the sins of their parents’ pasts, then that was it. Then it was decided. Filipa was in the hands of some cruel, violent, and depraved entity, and had been for thirty days. She wasn’t off experimenting with her peers in Maidenwood, testing the limits of their burgeoning pubescence. She wasn’t across state lines, empowered by how embittered she’d become by the parentarchy. She was just a ten-year-old prisoner in a cell just shy of hell.
She wrinkled her nose at the smell that seemed to linger about them.
“You okay?” Stephen took her hand in his.
“Let’s talk to Connor first.”
“You sure?”
“He sounds like a nut. I don’t want him to clam up, especially if he knows something. Can you email him?”
Stephen smiled, said, “Sure,” and went in for a kiss. Linnéa tried to meet him halfway, but both their arms were off. He got her nose, and she, some of his chin. Another day, they might’ve laughed about it, but not today. Couples who were together long enough followed a script, and their interactions were like well-rehearsed scenes from the longest running play.
Linnéa gave Stephen a quick kiss on the lips, but it was too late. There were curtains everywhere they looked.
Later that night, Linnéa, alone, read through Black Occult Macabre once more. From possessed jewelry, astral terrors, to a giant mosquito affectionately known as Mr. Haemo, the website should have been nothing more than clickbait trash, and yet all the information was compiled together as professionally as this low-rent shock blogger could probably muster. She was excited to meet Connor, in the same manner one gets that sadistic glee when they’re holding a shoe over a cornered centipede.