The wind raged through the open field, tearing forcefully at the blanket atop him. He clung to the wet and frost-covered cloak; the soaked edges of it clapping like hands behind him. There were no trees to fight the rage of the gale in the middle of the field, which felt as though it was shredding his flesh with its icy breath.
The wind suddenly kicked up with a force unreckoned with. He had to lean into it to keep from being tossed onto his back. The ferocity of the wind ripping through the valley sounded like screaming… like the pained wails of an infant.
Harry stopped and cocked his head, placing his ear straight into the wind. It wasn’t the wind that had made that sound! It was separate, riding on the wind. And the screams of that child sounded like nothing he had ever heard before. His heart pounded in his chest and he could almost empathetically feel the pain in those screams.
Shedding the blanket, he ran towards the small white house, the frigid air slicing at his lungs from the inside, burning in his sinuses. His feet felt as though they each weighed a hundred pounds as he forced them to rise and fall through the thick, wet snow, the wind trying to force him backward.
As he rapidly approached, he could see shadows through the thin line of light between the closed shades of the window on the side of the house. A car buried in snow save for the windshield and scraped patches on either side window, sat in front of the house, its dark shape casting a long shadow out across where he assumed the road lurked below the snow.
The screams grew louder, pleading with him from across the field. He was almost to the point of physical exhaustion, but he had no choice but to press on as the screams cried to him, begging for mercy, for some sort of respite… until finally they were silenced, a loud thunk echoing through the night, hitting Harry like a slammed door.
He stopped, only twenty yards from the house, the bare tips of the branches of the trees encircling it scraping across the roof like fingers trying to peel back the shingles. He surveyed the field. The tire marks behind the car were still fresh as he could see them like dark lines across the shining white surface of the snow, tracing the course back into the wall of trees at the far side of the field. Muffled voices assaulted him on the bitter wind, shadows passing in front of the light in the window.
And then there was another wail, a hoarse cry like that of a newborn.
Harry raced towards the front porch, leaping through the snow and onto the wooden steps, ascending them as though on springs. His breath seized in his lungs, freezing like a mass of ice in his heavy chest, and he slid across the ice-covered porch. Weightless, he skated, his shoulder ramming into the front door, knocking it inward. Shards of woods blew into the air as the lock tore through the brittle wood of the trim. His feet caught on the edge of the tile in the entranceway and he careened forward, landing squarely on his chest, his breath exploding from him.
He looked up, pawing at the slick floor, fighting to regain his feet.
The room had taken on a red tinge from the handful of candles that flickered in the corners in front of the red velvet curtains. Three dark shapes loomed over him. He struggled to see in the light after coming in from the blinding darkness. Screams filled his ears from close by, ripping at his flesh.
With as much effort as he could muster, Harry hauled himself to his feet, his eyes scanning the room frantically, trying to focus. All of the furniture had been pushed back against the walls, exposing a square, patterned red carpet in the middle of the hardwood floor. There was a small wooden pedestal in the middle of the room, and what looked like a marble birdbath next to it. Atop the pedestal, a baby flopped on a swaddling cloth, his arms and legs fanning the air above him. A dark figure stood above the child, dipping an open palm into the contents of the birdbath, and then tracing a line on the forehead of the screaming child.
“Get out of here!” a female voice shrieked at him, a hand tightening around his upper arm.
Harry whirled, his right arm swinging with a closed fist at the body of whoever held him, striking the soft flesh of the midsection.
There was a hollow thud as his attacker hit the floor, damp breath gasping for air. Two other figures closed in upon him, their arms outstretched, reaching for him.
Lowering his shoulder, he lunged through the other two, knocking them to the ground. The birdbath toppled to the floor, its contents spilling across the polished surface. Steadying himself, he grabbed the child from the pedestal and brought him against his chest, zipping him up beneath his jacket.
“You have no idea what you’re doing!” one of the women cried as he whirled to face her.
On the left side of the room, beneath the light of the window that had guided him there, were three small lumps, bodies wrapped from head to toe beneath a thin white cloth. Bloodstains covered the bodies, growing in size with each passing second from the unseen wounds beneath. A tuft of dark hair protruded through the top of the cloth of the largest of the bodies.
His lower jaw fell and the contents of his stomach rose from his gut and into his chest, his thudding heart fit to burst.
One of the shapes appeared directly in front of him, this time moving very slowly and deliberately, arms straight at him, palms to the sky.
“Doctor,” the voice said, more calmly this time. “Please… just hand me the child.”
Her visage came into focus, the white of her habit in stark contrast to the blackness that swelled around them. Her eyes were awash with shadows. He watched her mouth move, trembling.
“This is a matter of spiritual importance,” she continued. “These children must be destroyed.”
Harry glanced back at the bodies that littered the couch, and pulled the child beneath his jacket even closer to his chest. It let out a pained wail.
“You murdered these children,” he gasped, slowly easing backward toward the door.
“They were the spawn of Satan,” Sister Catherine said evenly. “While they may have looked like nothing more than harmless children to you, doctor, these four contain limitless evil bound beneath human flesh.”
“You’ve lost your mind!”
“Like yourself, we were skeptical at first. We found the body of the mother who dropped them off ripped to shreds, her blood covering the ground in a hundred foot radius, her intestines run through the tops of the trees like a Christmas garland.”
“Stay back,” Harry said, glancing to either side as the other two sisters closed in on him. One of them held a long, thin knife in her closed fist.
“These four children are impervious to pain. When that little girl broke her ankle, she didn’t even shed a tear, she just continued walking on it even though her bones stuck out from the torn flesh.”
He could feel the cold air coming in from the door behind him, the wind howling from the blackened night.
“I heard them screaming—”
“As we placed holy water on their foreheads to baptize them… to try to save their eternal souls from damnation.”
Harry stepped out onto the icy porch, still fixed upon the three women who were nearly to the frame of the door now.
“If you take that child with you, his fate will be your responsibility. The evil he spreads will mean your damnation. Give back the child and save your own soul!”
Harry placed his right hand over the child’s exposed head, every muscle in his body tensing as he prepared for flight.
“There is no redemption in hell, doctor. Weigh your decision very carefully, for you have but one chance here.”
He stared down at the thin blond locks atop the child’s head that filtered through his open fingers. The blood in his veins hammered in his temples as her words echoed in his mind.
“You’re not going to kill this child!” he shouted, turning and sprinting across the porch.
He could hear their footsteps behind him landing on the wooden stoop as he leapt over the steps, the ground rising to meet him too quickly. He stumbled, losing his balance. Rolling onto his left side so as not to crush the child beneath his we
ight, he absorbed the brunt of the impact, his eyes closing in pain.
He heard footsteps on the steps coming down to the lawn.
Forcing his eyes open, he could see the shadow of a figure, kneeling just to the side of the small house, crouching like an animal ready to pounce.
Leaping to his feet, he staggered away from the house, waiting for his body to find its sense of equilibrium so that he could sprint toward the forest. Behind him, he could hear their anguished voices, calling after him, but there was no way he could even turn to look. He was fixed intently on the line of the trees ahead, and the salvation that lie within. If he could just get to those trees, he could disappear into the undergrowth and there was no way they were going to find him. He had grown up in woods just like these, playing hide and seek, hunting large game. It was his home field. If only he could just make it there…
The pleading voices behind him turned to screams, not shouting as though trying to be heard, but screams of terror.
There was no way he was going to turn around until he hit that wall of trees that grew closer with every second. His legs burned from the strain. He had used up the oxygen in his lungs long ago and was urging himself on with pure fear and determination. The snow burned his eyes, falling directly into the open lids, but he managed to keep them open.
Hurdling the first layers of sage, he leapt into the wall of branches, finally having the courage to glance back as he shoved through the sharp needles of the cluster of spruces.
There was no one in the field behind him, only the glimmering snow and the line of tracks that he had left. He could still hear the screams riding along the wind from the house, but there was only one shadowed figure, slowly easing up the steps and onto the front porch. It was large—inhumanly large—and not so much walking, as it was floating up onto the porch and into the house.
The screams intensified, filling the night like sirens, drowning out the whistling wind, before finally fading back into the silence of the night.
Harry watched the front of the house; unable to draw his gaze from it as the large shadow finally reappeared on the porch, standing motionless… staring directly at him.
Whirling, he threw his body through the endless masses of tangled branches. He tucked his head and raised his left arm in front of his face in an attempt to block the rows of razor sharp needles that ripped at the skin on his face, trying frantically to find his way back to the road.
Breaking through the last row of trees, he burst into the open, stumbling over the edge of the pavement, barely able to keep his balance as he staggered down the center of the road. He could no longer feel any part of his body, the pain had rubbed the nerves raw and he had reached the point where the body wanted to shut down. Every inch of flesh grew increasingly heavy, his inertia petering to nothing more than a limping lurch. His chest would allow no more oxygen to enter, the air within growing stagnant, his vision darkening.
His car appeared around the next bend, right on the side of the road as he had left it. He had been running for as long as he could, his brain on the verge of shutting down. Without even thinking, he pulled his hand off of the child’s head and shoved it into his pocket, producing the car keys. Stopping beside the door, he yanked it open, his body suddenly wanting to collapse into a heap. Jamming the key into the ignition, he cranked it, pinning his foot straight through the gas pedal and into the floorboard.
The engine roared to life immediately, and he threw it into gear, the back end sliding back and forth as the spinning wheels grabbed for traction. With a loud squeal and a sudden jolt the car rocketed forward, racing straight down the center of the road as he drove on nothing more than reflex, trying with all his might to just keep that car in the center of the road.
It wasn’t until that precise moment that the reality of the situation set in. There was no way that his vehicle should have started, let alone driven him out of those woods. He would have been lucky if the insurance company hadn’t totaled it. The undercarriage of the car had been shredded by the antlers from that buck, draining every ounce of fluid from the engine. There was no way he could have driven the car, yet here he was…
A flash of light caught his eye and he looked over in time to see a large stag standing motionless at the side of the road, the headlights reflecting in golden orbs from the wide eyes beneath the enormous rack of antlers. The buck watched the car as it raced by. By the time Harry looked up in the rearview mirror, the stag was gone, leaving nothing but the darkness from which he had just escaped.
The year had been 1972, but still the images were as clear as though it had just happened that morning, burning themselves into the backs of his eyelids so that they were all that he saw every time he closed his eyes. It was what woke him, covered in sweat, every night. It was the first thing he saw in the morning when he arose and the last images to cross his brain as he fell into sleep. And here he was, standing in the entranceway to hell as he had seventeen years prior, staring into the darkness of the house that resonated with all of his fears.
His responsibility.
The thin rays of moonlight that dripped through the thick, cloud-covered sky filtered into the room from the open door behind him. He stood in the entranceway, his hands trembling, reaching into the darkness in front of him. Slowly, Harry inched into the room, the hardwood floor squeaking beneath his damp boots.
As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he could make out the furniture stacked in piles at the left side of the room, the fabric slashed and torn, the filling pouring through the gaping holes. Plaster fragments, which had fallen in chunks from the walls, littered the floor, adding to the overwhelming stench of dust and stagnation. The red velvet curtains were shredded, hanging in strands from the thick wooden curtain rods above the boarded windows.
Vandals had completely had their way with the place. There was a pentagram drawn in red spray paint right in the center of the floor, the blood of some cat or other oblivious animal spilled in the center, dried and cracking. Initials and other random messages were spray painted across the walls: everything from “Class of ’86 Rules!” to “Praise Hail Satan.” A pile of smashed beer bottles sat in the corner, the brown glass sparkling in the dim light.
The molding around the door in front of him was ripped from the plaster. Stepping over the trim, careful of the nails the jutted upward, he entered the kitchen, the waning light barely following him from the living room. All of the appliances had left years prior, and there was nothing left to show that they had ever been there, save for the small pipes that protruded from the walls, and the cracks along the plaster where the countertops had been. The linoleum had been ripped up, exposing the bare plywood floor, which echoed loudly with his hollow footsteps. Cobwebs hung from one side of the room to the other, bouncing from the stir he created with his movements.
There were only a few sayings scrawled across the walls in here, but in the darkness, he could only tell that they were there, not what they said. The smell of dampened earth, a cross between ozone and brimstone crept up from the stairs at the back of the kitchen, leading down into the blackness of the cellar.
There was a small scratching sound, like fingernails trying to claw through wood, coming from the doorway to his right. He heart leapt up in his throat. He fought physically to make his shaking legs carry him through the doorway. Tears formed in the corners of his eyes and his head began to pound, throbbing as it bore the pressure of his now overwhelming fear. His breath came in short, loud bursts from his heavy chest.
Stepping carefully into the room, there was an almost sickening crunch beneath his boot, and then another as he slipped his whole body into the room. Something covered the floor, but in the darkness he couldn’t make it out. Crouching, he set his hand atop whatever it was that carpeted the floor, and recoiled suddenly in pain.
His left hand trembling, he pulled a handful of small, sharp stickers from his palm. They felt like needles from a cactus or like the stingers from…
Harry’s jaw d
ropped and he knelt once again, very carefully pulling a credit card from his wallet and dragging it slowly across the floor, producing a handful of the hollowed out exoskeletons of… bees. Every inch of the floor, from the entranceway through the open closet was covered with a half-inch layer of dead bees. Turning, he scanned the kitchen, but there wasn’t a single carcass on the floor in there, yet this room was carpeted without a single gap.
In the open closet, he could see a large glass bottle containing a dark fluid on the top shelf, a cork wedged halfway down the long neck of the jug. But there was absolutely nothing else in the room: no furniture, no shredded curtains or debris, just the bees.
Rising, he turned to face the kitchen, just as the dark shape of a man walked straight through the kitchen in front of him and into the living room.
Harry’s heart felt as though it was going to burst and he fought to breathe through the onset of panic. Every muscle in his body seized at the exact same moment, twisting him from the inside out, tying knots in his back and neck. His fingernails drew blood in the middle of his palms from his tightly clenched fists. It took every iota of his courage to shuffle his feet into the kitchen so that he could peer around the corner and into the living room.
The shape stood in the open doorway, silhouetted against the falling snow beyond, his back to Harry. Long, matted hair framed the head and extraordinarily broad shoulders. Long fabric, almost like that of a trenchcoat, fell from the shoulders to an inch above the floor, the edges flapping like a cape from the wind. His hands were open at his sides; the long, thin fingers writhing like worms.
“I’ve seen you before,” Harry sputtered through his bone-dry mouth. “That night…”
The figure slowly turned, his face drenched in the thick shadows. His hair tossed from the whipping wind that screamed through the valley. He stood motionless for what seemed an eternity, and though Harry could not see the man’s eyes, he could feel their stare crawling on his skin.
Slowly, the man inched towards Harry. He seemed to glide across the floor. There was no sound from his footfall on the hardwood. Stopping a mere foot from Harry, he cocked his head and slowly extended his arm, taking Harry’s trembling hand within his own.
The Bloodspawn Page 4