The Bloodspawn

by Michael McBride

  Turning left into his driveway at the end of the circle, he made the first tracks in the pristine snow that had accumulated since they had all left in the morning. His mother taught social studies at the junior high level, his father an engineer for a large computer magnate based out of California. He could remember asking his father what exactly he did for a living, but the technical jargon had twisted his little mind into a knot, and he didn’t want to let on that he didn’t understand. All he knew was his old man seemed to like the job less and less with each passing year. His mother, on the other hand, seemed to enjoy her job most of the time. She was one of those who chose to teach, who felt as though she could make a difference in the lives of those who entered her classroom.

  His father, Greg Parker, was a very analytical man. His mind functioned in logical rhythms, taking him from point A to point B to point C, diagramming itself on a small chalkboard in his brain. He was highly driven, and had an overdeveloped sense of accountability, assuming responsibility for everything around him, regardless of whether or not he had any control over the situation at all. A poster boy for a bygone age, he was a short-haired hunter, full-time provider, and preached education as the cure to the ails of society. Dinner was on the table when he came home at night, and then he went straight up to the computer room to check on his stocks.

  His mother was more nurturing, more emotional. Like his father, she recalled an older era, tending to the house as though it was her sole mission, but at the same time a modern woman, working full-time trying to exert her influence on the world.

  But neither of them were home right now, nor would they be for quite a while.

  Flipping up the small plastic cover on the keypad mounted on the side of the garage door, he typed in his four-digit code and the garage opened right up for him. Ducking his head, he slipped under the rising door and crossed the empty garage to the door leading into the house. He stepped up onto the sole step leading into the family room and pressed the button on the opener, closing the door behind him, and stepped into the house.

  Striding across the family room, he scaled the stairs and turned into the foyer, taking another right, cruising up the stairs, and into his bedroom to the right. Grabbing a piece of paper from inside the desk in his room, he scrawled a quick note:

  Mom-

  Studying. Don’t disturb.

  -Matt.

  Tearing a small piece of tape from the dispenser, he stuck it to the outside of his bedroom door and closed it, locking it from the inside. He tossed his backpack onto the bottom level of his unmade bunk bed. Grabbing onto the rail of the top bunk, he climbed up the side and knelt atop the mattress. Looking at the ceiling, he reached up with both hands and pressed up on the small square opening into the attic, sliding back the small white square of drywall, and ducking his head under the hole. Standing up, he braced his elbows on the wooden rafters and climbed up, sliding the cover back over the hole.

  Small lines of light filtered into the dusty attic from the seams around the vents through the roof, allowing him just enough visibility to find the box of matches he kept right next to the entrance. Sliding back the top of the box, he pulled out one of the light-anywhere matches, striking it with the tip of his thumbnail. It flared brightly, and he touched the flame to the wicks of the numerous candles melted into their holders in all four corners of the room. He blew out the match just as the searing heat of the fire hit his fingertips. A small corner of the attic had been unprofessionally finished. This had been his project over the last summer as he had all sorts of time to work with, what with having no friends or a girlfriend and all.

  He had dragged the pieces of plywood up there, one at a time, laying them over the ceiling joists. Using old orange- and brown-striped paneling, he paneled the angled ceiling and blocked off a portion of the crawlspace from the rest of the house, making it his own private little room. He had found some foam padding and laid it beneath patchwork remnants of carpet. There was even a small lawn chair in either corner of the room, and a beanbag in the middle. Every available inch of the walls had been covered with posters and pictures cut from magazines of all of his favorite bands, and, of course, the obligatory pictures of bikini-clad women finding some way to get themselves wet. In the center of the room, right next to the bright blue beanbag, was a small stack of hardbound books, tattered strips of paper protruding from a hundred different locations within each tome.

  Grabbing the closest candle, he carried it with him as he crawled beneath the low lying ceiling to the beanbag, setting it down right next to him on the white shag carpet and grabbing the book from the top of the stack. He stared down at the cover of the book; the black leather cover embossed in gold with a pentagram over the face of a bull. The corners of the cover were bent back, exposing the cardboard beneath, and the pages were yellowed, reeking of age. The title had faded from the cover and the embossing peeled readily back.

  It still had the original press date of 1968 stamped inside the front cover. All of the type was so tiny that he had to strain beside the candlelight to read it. There were old pictures every twenty pages or so, depicting the numerous faces of evil and the acts and rituals involved with those rites. Finding the latest of the numerous bookmarks dangling from the spine, he opened the book and held it close to his face.

  It had been a natural progression for him. Even before his life had begun to fall to shambles around him, he hadn’t been completely sold on his parents’ religion. He had far too many questions that no one could seem to answer without justifying it with the word “faith.” He envied those people who could just buy into the whole thing without doubts. The kind of people who stood around their piano as a family at the end of the night singing praise to Jesus, the kind of people who walked the neighborhood caroling every Christmas. The kind of people who always wore a smile on their faces, their glimmering eyes betraying the innocence captured within. But there was no way that he could be one of those people, the blissfully happy, either unaware of the pain in their lives, or able to rationalize it as the will of God.

  When his ostracision had first begun, he had begged God to help him. He had spent hours every night praying for an end to the ceaseless torment, but whether his pleas had fallen on deaf ears or the maker had chosen not to respond was unimportant. It was the fact that things only got worse. After months of crying out for help and receiving none, he had been forced to seek another option.

  At first, it had been little more than mere curiosity. He drew pictures of a horned monstrosity on his papers during class, and that alone had a small, yet noticeable effect. The weaker of his tormentors, those who hadn’t really yet committed to making it their life’s work to abuse him, backed off nicely, almost fearing him a little. It was such a positive start that rather than hiding out behind the school during lunch time, he had begun going to the library, beginning to read up on the occult. It was only a matter of days before he worked through the small handful of politically correct books at the school, and had to start going to the public library whenever he got a chance.

  The thought of hell no longer scared him. The way he saw it, nothing could possibly be worse than the life he currently led. He learned to hate, learned the power of the darkness, solely out of spite. It was all that he had. The thought that in some way—whether it be today or years down the road—he was going to make each and every one of those sons of bitches who made his life intolerable pay, was the only thing that kept him going. Were it not for his highly developed sense of revenge, he would have committed suicide long ago. It certainly would have saved him a lot of grief.

  But for the same reason that he couldn’t blindly buy into the existence of a God, he hadn’t been able to swallow the Christian concept of a devil either. There was no denying the existence of evil; that was evidenced in everyday life. Nor was there denying the presence of good, as it seemed to surround everyone he knew in some form or fashion… everyone except him. It wasn’t until he had come across this particular book that thin
gs had started to make some semblance of sense.

  Within the heavy, yellowing pages of the tome was what he considered to be the recipe for his own salvation. He had given up on trying to fit in with his classmates again, as over the last year it had become apparent that there was nothing he could do to accomplish that. Nothing he could think of had worked. Every guy seemed to want to pound him mercilessly to show their manhood and superiority in front of their buddies, and every girl shied away from him as though he were some sort of leper.

  He clung tightly to the idea of at least assimilating himself back into everyday life, and while being blocked at every juncture, he had figured that at least he had one friend: Scott. Surely that would be enough to get him through the last year of his high school tenure. At least he had thought that until last week.

  For some reason that he couldn’t seem to grasp, Scott had been forgiven his part in the whole shower story. He had been hounded, just like Matt for a couple of months, but it had just seemed to stop for him one day, as if everyone else at school had gotten together and decided that he was off the hook. Though they had been best friends most of their lives, they had different identities at school. Matt was shuffled from one class to the next with the exact same thirty people. As part of the “talented and gifted” program, he was segregated from the rest of the student body. He was already cordoned off with the other freaks and brainiacs, making it increasingly easy to loathe him from the start. The main problem was that he had never really fit in there either. While he sat in the back of the class daydreaming about getting laid, the rest of his classmates competed to see who could memorize pi to the furthest decimal. They battled for scholarships on a daily basis, dueling with their perfect grade point averages, daring one another to mess up. It was an early encapsulation of corporate executive life, day in and day out, yet even they had to jump on the bandwagon, whispering “faggot” under their breaths, as none of them had the physical prowess to support their accusations.

  Scott, on the other hand, had classes with nearly every other kid in the school. He took grade appropriate classes and regular electives. Granted, Scott was more of an outgoing, get along type guy, but there was no reason for them to have let him off the hook, and singled Matt out. It had been a lot easier when it had been the two of them banished together.

  It was easy for Matt to understand how Scott really didn’t fight to come to his rescue, to change what all of the others thought of him. Knowing what it was like in his everyday life, if he found a way out of this tormented existence, he wouldn’t risk going back either. And he had been fine with the arrangement that they had; Scott just kind of ignored him in the presence of his other friends, Matt’s former friends, but would still hang out with him outside of school. At least until today.

  Instead of going to Calculus second period, Matt had decided to slip out the side door and just sit there beneath the overhang watching the snowflakes accumulating on the rooftops across the street. The parking lot monitors never turned him in, as they figured if the attendance office wasn’t smart enough to catch him, then he deserved to get away with it. He had just lit his cigarette when he heard someone press the handle of the door. Scrambling to his feet, he ducked around the corner, leaning against the small column of gray bricks that separated the recessed entryway from the long, ground level windows of the library.

  Taking one last quick drag off of his cigarette, he dropped it into the snow, holding the smoke in his chest until it grew stale. He could hear their voices distinctly, recognizing each one of them as though it were his own. There was the snapping and clicking of lighters as all three of them lit up at once, obviously having the same idea.

  “So what’s up with you talking to fagboy?” Jeremy asked, his lips pressed tightly around the filter of the smoke. The large, fluffy flakes were skewered atop his spiked brown hair. He always wore a black leather jacket and faded Levi’s; black converse “Chuck’s” duct-taped together, his shoes of choice.

  “Whatever, dude,” Scott said, exhaling loudly. “I’ve known him since I was seven years old. What does it matter to you if I say ‘hey’ to him?”

  “Nothing… if you want to be a freaking queer like that little worm,” Shane popped off, laughing so hard his smoke poured through his nostrils. He was the party guy, the one who kept the beer bong in his car. His eyes were always bloodshot, and he had a permanent little grin, the corners of his lips turned upwards, regardless of the situation. The grease monkey of the crew, he always wore a red, oil-spotted STP hat turned backwards and a flannel shirt, rolled at the cuffs.

  “Why don’t you guys give him a break?” Scott said, shaking his head.

  “Don’t tell me he’s turned you to the dark side,” Jeremy said, finishing with his Darth Vader breathing impression.

  “Whatever, man. You know as well as I do that he’s not gay. He’s just got more than his share of problems right now.”

  “Like being a queer,” Shane said, laughing.

  “I think it’s about time you just gave it a rest.”

  “Or maybe you’re just turning into one of them like him.”

  “Maybe we should just kick your ass right here and now,” Jeremy said, stepping up and blowing smoke right into Scott’s face.

  “So the dude’s gay,” Scott said, backing down. “So what?”

  Matt’s teeth began to grind, tearing at the soft tissue on the inside of his cheeks. His fists clenched at his sides and he wanted nothing more than to whirl around the corner and start swinging.

  “No, he’s a fucking faggot and I want to hear you say it,” Jeremy said.

  “What’s that going to accomplish? You got a thing for semantics?”

  “Only faggots use words like semantics. Say it or I’ll figure you’re queer too.”

  “Okay fine,” Scott said, dropping his smoke to the concrete and stamping it beneath his black high tops. “He’s a fucking faggot.”

  “There,” Shane said, throwing his arm over Scott’s shoulder. “Doesn’t that feel better?”

  Scott just shook his head and shrugged. He opened the door and went back into the building on his way to class.

  “I think the time has come to settle this thing once and for all,” Shane said.

  “I think you’re right.”

  “Perhaps an encounter is warranted.”

  “Scott will never agree to it.”

  “If we set it up as some sort of reconciliation party, I’m sure he’ll go along with it.”

  “Reconciliation party?”

  “Yeah, we meet somewhere, talk for a few minutes and then beat the stuffing out of him.”

  “Show him what we think of faggots in our school. You know what I’m saying?”

  “I hear you. What say we make it happen?”

  “Done deal. When?”

  “No time like the present. Let’s set it up for tomorrow night.”

  There was a pause and Matt could hear them high five each other from around the corner.

  “This is going to be too fun,” Shane said, opening the door. “Should I bring my video camera?”

  “That would be sweet,” Jeremy said, his voice disappearing behind the closing door.

  A tear crept from the corner of Matt’s eye as he sat there in the darkened attic.

  A burst of cold air blasted him from the gap around the vent above. He set the book face-down in his lap and closed his eyes, rehearsing the passage he had just read. The cold wind grew and intensified around him, swirling through the dank air. It took on a life of its own. One by one the flames atop the candles blew out, the wind racing faster and faster, whistling in the blackened confines of the attic. Still he pinched his eyelids closed tightly, the howling wind metamorphosing with each lap around the attic. The whistling changed from a high-pitched whir that made the wooden supports around him creak noisily, into something more resembling human voices, tortured and twisting as they finally came to rest in different corners of the room, the unseen figures hiding in the d
arkness.

  He could feel them all around him, crouching in the pitch black, their eyes fixed intently on him. His fingers trembled with anticipation and his heart pounded so loudly in his chest that it was all that he could hear, until the sound of footsteps, creeping along the plywood floor aroused him from his trance.

  Thrusting his eyelids back, he pawed at the floor, frantically trying to find his matches so that he could re-light the candles and get even the slightest glimpse of what he had been waiting for so long to see. He could feel them, there in the darkness with him; their aging brimstone-soaked breath heavy on the hackles on his neck. Fear welled in his heaving chest. There was the slightest moment of doubt, one fleeting instant where he wondered if what he was about to do was the right thing. It wasn’t like he was selling his soul. That archaic concept was almost amusing. If it had been as easy as signing his name in blood on the dotted line of some contract, he would have done that long ago and lived his life out like a rock star. But as no one had come to his door, offering his or her legal representation in contractual matters, he was going to have to do it the hard way.

  The box of matches rattled as his fingertips glanced off of it, before he finally gripped the box tightly in his fist and raised it in front of him, sliding back the cover and producing one of the wooden sticks. Pressing the tip of his thumbnail onto the surface, he prepared to snap the white tip, when suddenly, a bright yellow flame burst to life before his very eyes.