The Bloodspawn

by Michael McBride

  The candle on the floor in front of him sat burning right next to the black leather-bound book, the flame crackling, bouncing higher and higher until it was as long as the candlestick itself. Voices from the corners of the attic filled his ears, whispering words that he couldn’t understand, their speech rhythmic. They repeated the same indecipherable phrase over and over. His eyes scanned the darkened sanctuaries of shadows around him, hoping for the slightest glimpse of the creatures that lurked within, but all he could see was the thick, ever darkening blackness that pulsated from the walls toward the center of the room.

  He could feel the presence of many different entities, could hear their weight shifting on the plywood beneath the thick carpet pad.

  The temperature in the room suddenly began to drop, and there was a loud crack that Matt felt as much as he heard. The bridge of his nose began to throb, his eyes watering mercilessly. A thin stream of warm, red fluid spilled from his right nostril, racing over his upper lip and dropping onto the cover of the book in front of him.

  Tap. Tap. Tap.

  Like a dripping faucet, the blood splashed one drop at a time onto the black leather. The yellow light from the candle snapped from one side to the other before fading to a dark shade of crimson, washing the walls with the deep red. The shadows began to writhe in ecstasy.

  The pooling blood atop the cover slowly began to expand, the running liquid swirling until it matched the shape of the pentagram, hiding the gold embossing beneath the blood. Unable to rip his eyes from it, Matt cocked his head and allowed his jaw to fall slack.

  “Help me,” he whispered, shining tears welling in the corners of his eyes. “Please.”

  “What is it that you want?” a thin, cracking voice said from somewhere in the bleeding darkness around him.

  Matt’s heart stopped in his chest for a moment and he had to force his lungs to start to breathe once again. The hairs on the backs of his arms and neck stood tall, aching dully. Whetting his lips, his tongue smacked dryly. He peered into every shadow, hoping for a glimpse of whomever, or whatever, had spoken.

  “I need your help,” he said quietly, staring down at his trembling hands as he attempted to steady them on his knees.

  There was no answer, only the sound of the rustling of bodies across the carpeted floor and along the hollow paneled walls.

  “I want them to feel what I feel,” Matt started, the quiver in his voice vanishing as elaborated. “I want them to feel the hell they have put me through. I want them to know what it’s like to wake up every morning wishing that you hadn’t. I want them to… I want them to…”

  “To what?” the voice said, the heat from the creature’s breath right in his ear.

  “I want them all to die.”

  The darkness around him began to press in closer, smothering the light of the flame. There was the scratching of nails on the paneling and the wind kicked up in the crawlspace once again. Warm bodies brushed up against him, racing from one side of the enclosure to the other. Batting his eyes, he struggled to see anything in the darkness.

  Fingernails tore at his clothing, scraping the flesh beneath. Unseen hands grabbed at his face, tugged at his hair. The room filled with swirling bodies, buffeting him from side to side as they raced the room in circles, over and over until…

  Everything stopped at once. The flame from the candle sprung back out of the wick. The shadows retreated to the corners.

  Matt wiped his upper lip with the back of his hand. There was no streak of blood across his flesh. He stared down at the cover of the book, but there was no blood on it either.

  Had he just dreamed up the whole thing? Was it all just some flight of fancy?

  Shaking his head, Matt grabbed the book and tossed it against the wall. Hitting the base of the paneling, it slid beneath and into the pink insulation. He stared into his lap for a moment before finally snapping out of his trance with a long sigh and a chuckle.

  Grabbing the lip of the drywall to his left, he blew out the candle and started to open the trap door to his bedroom below.

  The shadows came at him with a fury and incomprehensible speed, peeling back his flesh as though it were paper mache. His back arched as he buckled in half, his head slamming onto the ground behind him. Frigid air forced its way down his opened mouth, silencing the screams that welled within. Bucking back and forth, his neck made of rubber, his eyes rolled backward into his head and his arms hung limply at his sides. Finally, his whole body collapsed to the floor with a thud, the air seeping from his lungs like a leaking balloon.

  He lay there for what must have been hours, his mind functioning only in fragmented spurts. A wave of warmth washed through his body from the inside out, resonating at the tips of his fingers and toes. His body felt as though it weighed a thousand pounds. It took considerable effort to rise to a seated position.

  He sat there, a line of saliva running from the corner of his mouth, falling with a small splat onto his jeans.

  There were a thousand voices in his head now, some whispering, some screaming, all of them fighting to be heard. Placing his hands on his ears, Matt tried to settle them, to regain some semblance of order in his shattered mind. A warm sensation pulsed through his veins, electric, throbbing from deep within the core of his being. It rose through his veins, his muscles burning beneath the skin.

  His shaking hands tugged at the cover to the crawlspace, sliding it back. Leaning over the hole, he fell through, landing in a heap on the mattress of the top bunk bed. Rolling onto his side, he could feel every muscle in his body as they swelled, pressing against the suit of flesh that was suddenly far too tight. His lids pinched tightly shut as his eyeballs threatened to pop out of his head from the pressure. His brains swelled against his skull to the point that he feared that gray matter would begin to seep out of his ears.

  Pressing his hands tightly against the sides of his head, he bared his teeth against the pain. Flopping from one side to the other, he battled against the intense, searing fire that pumped through his bloodstream. Even the thin air in the room was torturous against his sensitive nerve endings. Tears streamed from his clenched eyes. The voices chattered louder and louder, grinding out his own thoughts within his mind, until all at once… everything stopped.

  Slowly, Matt rolled back his eyelids and stared into the dark room. The clock atop the shelf next to his bed burned bright red. 2:35 a.m. His brow creased as he worked the quick math. He had been in the attic for nearly eleven hours, the time passing as though it had been a mere twenty minutes. Pangs of hunger roared in his stomach as he sat up and dangled his feet over the edge of the bed.

  He could sense the presence of the voices in his head, hiding deep in the recesses of his mind, thundering from one invisible corner to the next. They were quiet all right, but the pressure was still there, burrowing into his cranial tissue. There was an overwhelming sense of warmth, as though from an unseen sun, covering every inch of his body.

  His heartbeat slowly returned to normal and he rolled onto his stomach, dropping his feet onto the bottom bunk and hopping down to the floor. Pulling back the curtains, he stared out into the night. The cloud-drenched sky appeared a deep gray, muffling the thin glow of the moon. The snow still fell with enormous flakes, burying the row of pines that lined the back yard. Through the small walkway between them, he could see the trampoline hidden beneath close to a foot of powder. There was something else out there as well.

  A long shadow crossed the pristine plain of snow on the lawn. It moved slowly, creeping across the grass until it was out in the open. A large buck stepped into the gap. Turning, it appeared to stare straight up into his bedroom window, its glowing eyes reflecting a bright gold from the vaporous light above. It just stared at him, motionless for a moment, its huge five-point rack silhouetted like matching dead trees against the white-capped hedges.

  His eyes locked on those of the stag and he felt himself drawn into the deep gaze of the animal. The world around him ceased to exist, at least for t
he moment. A sense of comfort, of understanding, washed over him as his own voice joined the others within his brain, no longer dominant. His mind was empty of conscious thought. The only sound was the muffled whisperings of all of the voices at once, calling to him from the depths of his skull.

  Turning back into the night, the stag bounded over the fence and into the field behind his house, disappearing into the masses of scrub oak.

  Matt could still feel the animal, though, out there in the frigid darkness, calling to him from out of the blackened night.

  Nodding to himself, Matt turned and walked through his bedroom, opening the door and stepping into the hallway. A note that had been attached to his door fell onto the rust-colored carpet. Picking it up, he just stared at it for a moment, the words just jumbles of letters, his mind unable to decipher the writings on it. Dropping it back to the floor, he walked down the hallway and down the stairs onto the main level. The rubber soles of his shoes squeaked on the tile floor as he passed the kitchen and stumbled down the next flight of carpeted stairs into the darkened family room.

  The deep black shapes of the large, fluffy couches crouched in the center of the room. He had to dodge them to get to the garage door. Throwing it back hard enough to bang against the wall, he gripped the side of the door for a moment before stepping down into the garage.

  There wasn’t a conscious thought in his head. He was working purely on instinct now. Whatever had been in there—call it a soul or a mind or whatever you like—was no longer there. He was a hollow shell, unthinking, unfeeling, skulking through the pitch black within the garage. Sliding past the Bronco and into the third garage, he walked straight to the tall, wooden cabinet next to the workbench. Reaching toward the high shelf above the table, he fumbled past a can of WD- 40, grabbing a small stack of keys on thin rings. Holding the mass of keys in his right hand, he dropped them onto the floor one by one until he found the small set of two identical keys that he wanted, gripping them tightly between his thumb and forefinger and shoving them into the lock on the closet door. With a click, he popped the lock, looped it through the holes, and tossed it onto the concrete floor.

  Opening the hollow wooden door, he reached within, his right hand grasping the well-oiled steel of the barrel of his shotgun. Bringing it to his body, he cradled it beneath his left arm and walked to the back of the garage to another row of closets. Opening the middle one, he pulled out a small metal box. Taking it back to the workbench, he shoved aside the clutter of tools and set it down. Throwing back the lid, he reached inside and pulled out a small rectangular, gray cardboard box. Tearing back the flaps, he pulled out three bright red shotgun shells and headed back towards the inside door.

  He slipped the first two shells into the bottom of the shotgun, and then pressed the small lever beside the trigger guard, and shucked one into the chamber. He crammed the third shell into the gun. Opening the door into the house, he walked straight through the doorway and into the family room, oblivious to the fact that he hadn’t even closed the door.

  Up the stairs he bounded, two at a time, stopping at the top of the stairs to glance out the sliding glass door in the kitchen to the left. But there was nothing out there… nothing but the snow.

  Whirling, he crossed the foyer, turning onto the stairs and bounding up them. The floorboards creaked loudly beneath the plush carpeting. He passed the bathroom, turning down the long hall that led back to his mother and father’s bedroom. He slowed his pace, watching his shadow as it appeared on the bedroom door in front of him. Reaching out, he pushed the door inward. The hinges made a slight whine as he brushed past, standing at the base of the king-sized bed.

  There was no Matt inside of his head now. There was nothing resembling conscious thought. His body was a vessel, coursing with the evil that enveloped every living tissue within. Matt was merely the smallest of the voices in the back of his mind, drowned out by all of the others that now swelled in unison, crying for blood.

  This was not what he wanted… not what he wanted at all.

  His body leapt up onto the bed with both feet, the mattress bouncing beneath him. He raised the stock to his shoulder and fired twice. Brilliant flashes of light pulsated in the darkened room, one, and then another, the deafening report echoing explosively, resonating deep within his brain.

  Hopping down off the bed, he could feel warm fluids running down his face, the bare skin of his arms. He smiled, the coppery blood dripping over his lips and onto his exposed teeth. Bounding down the hall, he turned into the bathroom, resting the gun beside the opened door. He kicked his shoes against the far wall of the bathroom, his eyes rolling back into his skull. Yanking his shirt over his head, he tossed it onto the floor with a wet slap and began to hop out of his jeans, allowing them to lie in a pile in the middle of the carpeted floor.

  He cranked the knobs on the faucet and the water burst from the showerhead, splattering against the back wall. Shedding his underwear and socks, he hopped into the hot stream of water and began to rinse the thick, red fluids from his body. A small tear appeared for an instant in the corner of his right eye, the hot water washing that tear, and whatever else was left of Matt within that body, down the drain.

  home • order • blackest death • authors • community • contact • submissions • auctions • message board • live chat

  mail list • customer service • bargain bin • free fiction

  THE BLOODSPAWN

  Michael McBride

  © 2004 Michael McBride. All rights reserved.

  PART THREE

  III

  Friday, November 12th

  6:20 am

  Matt pulled a long sleeved black shirt over his head, forcing his arms all the way through the cuffs. There was a large green lizard, a basilisk, on the center of his shirt. It had a sail-like green casque on its head, back, and tail; a bright red eye set in the center of its face. Grabbing his well-worn Falcons cap from where it hung on the post of his bed, he slipped it over his damp hair, turning it backwards and bending the rim just how he liked it.

  Turning, he stepped out into the hallway, passing the room where his parents still lay lifeless in their bed, their warm fluids cooling as they soaked into the mussed covers. There was no expression on his vacant face, his eyes fixed directly ahead, unblinking. Shuffling along the hall, he eased down the stairs into the entranceway. He stopped at the front door, opening the closet just to the right and pulling a jacket off of the rack, his backpack from the floor. Closing the door, he slid back the deadbolt and opened the front door, stepping out beneath the overhang onto the gray slate-tiled front porch.

  The sun rose behind the thick storm clouds, the snow falling even more heavily than it had been for the last twenty-four hours. The snowplows had been out working all through the night, shoving the amassed accumulation from the roads into high piles at either curb, coating the scraped layer of ice with a thin dusting of sand and gravel. Falling flakes swirled and danced off of the warming roads, a thin layer of fog hanging just beneath the amber glow of the street lamps.

  There was only the vaguest outline of the mountains straight ahead of him against the slowly lighting sky as he walked down the front stairs and onto the driveway. The flakes battered his face, slamming coldly against his exposed skin, freezing there momentarily before turning to liquid on his fiery-hot flesh.

  He turned right and walked straight down the street toward his bus stop, not the stop he had been using for the last two months, but the one closest to his house, just at the end of the culdesac.

  He could see them, standing there on the sidewalk, the shapes of their bodies just darkened silhouettes beneath the early morning sky. As he drew near, he could hear their muffled voices trail off as they all turned to watch him approach. Shouldering right up to them, he stared off towards the hill to his left, the rumbling sound of the bus’s engine echoing up from the valley below. They began to talk again, whether directly to him or to each other he couldn’t tell. Their words just floate
d up above him into the thin air.

  The yellow top of the bus appeared, cresting the hill, a cloud of exhaust swarming from behind and then engulfing them as it rolled to a grinding halt. The stop sign behind the door on the side of the bus swung out with the squeak, the two red, circular lights flashing as the door popped inward.

  Matt clambered right up the steps and past the driver who stared at him momentarily, trying to place his face. He sat down in the first seat to his left, tossing his backpack beside him on the green vinyl. He stared straight ahead, watching the others as they passed him, looking directly into his face, his hollow eyes appearing to see right through them.

  Slowly, the bus began to inch forward, fighting for traction on the icy road, before finally gripping and heading east, turning right down the enormous hill that led out of his neighborhood. There were still two more stops to be made before finally heading off to the school. Matt had receded back into his mind, allowing everything that went on around him to fade into a mere scene that rolled in front of his eyes like a movie, involving him so little that he barely noticed the rest of the world around him.

  Each person to board the bus stared scrutinizingly at him before passing to find a seat. He could hear the voices growing louder and louder, the driver turning up the volume on the radio in an effort to drown them out. Small wads of paper nailed him in the back of the head, bouncing off and falling innocuously to the floor. He didn’t even feel them. He just stared straight ahead through the large front windshield of the bus, watching as the large flakes of snow swirled in front of the large yellow mass of metal that rocketed across the frozen roads. A thin smile traced the course of his lips, his eyes narrowing to slits.

  Today was going to be a good day.

  The ride passed in the blink of an eye, and before he knew it, they had crossed the Air Force Academy and were pulling up in the large parking lot behind the gray brick school. The door opened with a pop and a whine. The driver settled back in the seat and stared out the side window at the other drivers who stood outside of the busses, swilling steaming mugs of coffee in a small circle as they prepared for the return trip back to the school district staging grounds east of town.