The Bloodspawn

by Michael McBride

  Setting the clipping aside, Scott stared back down at the pages of the diary.

  “It was by Papal decree that we were ordered to Colorado, our limited intelligence pointing to a shift in the moral clime, often a sign of his coming. Manitou Springs, barely twenty miles south of our current location, had only recently become a hotbed of presumed satanic activity. Rumored to have been where writing had begun on the Satanic Bible, the Vatican had placed an operative in this area. It was he who alerted the Pope to the presence, or at least to the immanently impending arrival, of the beast.

  “I can feel him in these hills, as I could feel him in Johannesburg, and I know that timing is of the essence. Now, where we are in the cycle, I am not sure, but my suspicions lead me to believe that we are close to the beginning, rather than clumsily stumbling in to the end of the cycle as we had last time.

  “Whether right or wrong, to the best of our understanding, the cycle begins with the invitation, whereupon a group of followers beckons his presence with the sacrifice of the firstborn. After accepting the invitation of blood, the beast moves on to the copulation, planting his evil seed under the cover of the night. Quite often, as our best records indicate, more than one seed in sewn.

  “Now, he knows as well as we, that these children, these bloodspawn, are half-human, and thus prone to the same fallacies and unpredictability as the rest of their race. Achieving their destiny is nothing resembling a foregone conclusion. They have to be surrounded by arbiters, unwitting helpers of evil nature or not, whose sole, unknowing purpose in life is to be in the right place at the right time to help the bloodspawn to fulfill their destiny. And while not as grandiose and climactic as the enslavement of the human race as written in the Bible as the coming of the antichrist, the end result is no less insidious: the stealing of two hundred souls.

  “Why two hundred? We do not know. But it has always been that way since our fist discovery of the cycle during the Age of Enlightenment. There have always been two hundred corpses in the wake of his passing, but there has only been one instance where we have thwarted his efforts. Or, at least, that is what we have pieced together from the information left behind. That group, while successful in their endeavor, disappeared from the face of the earth without leaving more than the slightest trace of their existence.”

  Scott raised his eyes from the book, staring out into the dark night, the blowing snow crystallizing in the corners of the window as the flakes bounced off the glass, swirling into the drifts beneath the window. Every word written in that diary sounded like something out of the Middle Ages. It all sounded like complete and utter bullshit, like a story fabricated for the sole purpose of scaring a child at bedtime. But he could feel, deep down in the very core of his being, that there was a certain truth to it. For he knew that he had seen the evil of which the author spoke; had felt its cold stare, its icy touch. And more importantly, he knew that it was somewhere out there in the night, waiting for him.

  “Here’s another one,” Harry said, tossing the nearly disintegrated piece of newsprint in front of him on the table.

  This one was labeled “September 19th, 1878.” It told the story of a group of settlers headed west along the Oregon Trail; none of them referred to by name. They were found in a circle of their own wagons, two hundred of them in all, slaughtered by what they assumed to be a massive and quick attack by the Apache. It was a call to arms of sort, with a reward of ten dollars for anyone who had any information about the attack. The President himself had ordered the cavalry into Idaho, commissioning them to “do what needed to be done to bring the rogue cowards who perpetrated such a monstrosity to be brought to justice one way or another.”

  “Here it is again,” Scott said, sliding the article back in front of Harry. “’Two hundred of them in all’.”

  “I’m sensing a pattern here.”

  “Yeah, you and me both.”

  Turning his attention back to the diary, he picked up where he left off.

  “Perhaps we will be graced by God with luck this time, as we have stumbled into this cycle early on. Or perhaps this will end like the others, and we will never be heard from again. I pray to God nightly for the strength to endure, to do what must be done, as I know it will take more than I have to offer. I know that it will take every single ounce of my faith, of our cumulative faith, for—as we have already divined the origin of the bloodspawn—we will have to take the souls of innocents in the process.

  “Not far from this very convent, in the wooded hills at the base of the mountains, a man named LeRoy Trottier has brought that evil onto this earth. The only problem is that there are four children, and as we now know to be fact, only one of them can truly be the bloodspawn. The others are nothing more than poor, vacuous shells, their innocent souls—should they even have any—nothing more than sacrificial lambs being led to the slaughter, regardless of if we do it or not. We have arranged for these children to be brought into our custody, as Mr. Trottier will undoubtedly be spending the remainder of his natural life in prison.

  “Now, by seizing these children, whether we have broken the cycle, or merely become a part of it, is completely uncertain. Until that moment when we are able to separate the bloodspawn’s soul from his mortal body, there will be no way of knowing for sure. So I pray to thee right now, oh Lord, for the strength the do what must be done, and for your forgiveness for the violation of your commandments when and if we succeed.

  “But know this, to whomever should carry the torch should we fail here today, that there is always the chance that the evil deed may never come to pass. As the bloodspawn is one half human, that gives the child an element of unpredictability. The right combinations of both internal and external forces must be in place to draw the bloodspawn to the right place at the right time to bring the prophetic resolution to fruition. If we are unable to do what must be done, there still may be a chance. Find the bloodspawn before it is too late.

  “May God forgive us…”

  Scott flipped the page, but there were no further entries; nothing but the blank, light blue-lined pages of the incomplete diary. And, if what Harry had told him about that night at the Cavenaugh house was true, he already knew why. Closing the book, he slid it away from him on the table, staring out the ice-rippled glass into the frozen yard.

  “What happened to the child you saved in that house?” Scott asked, still staring at the dark line of trees at the edge of the yard.

  “The state put him up for adoption almost immediately. I tried to find out where he had gone and who had adopted him, but those records were sealed and I had no way of accessing them. My employment with the state was terminated relatively quickly after that, and I no longer have the contacts to get any information at all.”

  “So, how old would this child be now?”

  “Oh, geez,” Harry said, rolling his eyes back and staring up towards the ceiling. “Twenty- nine, maybe thirty, it would depend on his exact age when I found him that night.”

  “So roughly my age?”

  “I would say so. He should be right about your age.”

  “Is it possible that Matt might have been that child? That he might somehow have survived that car crash and is in the process of accumulating his two hundred?”

  “Everything that I’ve seen in these clippings makes it appear as though all two hundred of these people are killed at the same time, not one by one.”

  “But could it be possible?”

  “I don’t know. I’m no expert on any of this. I’m just now finding out things that I wish I’d known twenty years ago.”

  “Then I guess we know what we need to do,” Scott said, rising from the table and scooting the stool in beneath the eating bar.

  “What’s that?”

  “We need to find Matt,” he said, turning to stare Harry straight in the eye. “We need to find the bloodspawn.”

  XII

  Monday, November 14th

  11 p.m.

  The yellow cab slowed in front
of the apartment complex, the rear wheels grinding on the snow-packed road as it came to a stop against the curb. Stumbling from the vehicle, the passenger clambered over the curb and glared back at the driver.

  “Eight bucks for a five mile ride,” he grumbled, slamming to door.

  Jeremy Willis pulled the collar of his jacket over his bright red cheeks. Shoving his hands deep into the pockets of the black leather jacket, he shuffled towards the front door of the complex. Breathing heavily, his breath in a cloud around his face, he grabbed hold of the handle on the door, staring through the glass into the dimly lit lobby. Leaning against the wall momentarily, he fought back the wave of nausea that gurgled up from his stomach, the sea of beer sloshing violently as he blinked his eyes spastically in hopes of staying conscious. Regulating his breathing so as to calm the swell that threatened to overwhelm him, he yanked the door outward and stepped into the lobby.

  A gust of hot air blew straight down on him from the overhead vent, giving rise to the goosebumps that crawled across his skin. Three rows of tiny, square mailboxes were built into the wall to his left, the names of the occupants labeled beneath the keyholes on tiny, blue stickers. To his right, the leasing desk sat unattended, the door to the manager's office closed with a little plastic clock sign hanging from the doorknob.

  “Will return at 8 am,” the sign read.

  Scooting across the tightly knit knap of the bright red carpet, his feet barely leaving the ground, he made his way toward the glass wall with the door in the middle that led back to all of the apartments. Fumbling in his pocket for his keys, he pulled them out, bringing them close to his face so that he could leaf through them one by one until he found the right one. Swaying as he stood, his mouth hanging slack, he pinched the door key between his thumb and forefinger. It took several attempts, but finally he slipped the key into the lock, turning it to the right and pulling open the glass door.

  Wrapping his keys tightly in his closed fist, he turned to the right and opened the wooden door to the stairwell, stumbling up the cement stairs. Rounding the landing, he paused to catch his breath before heading up the remainder of the stairs to the second floor. Bursting through the door from the stairwell, he scuffed straight across the hallway, the door to the stairwell slamming shut behind him with a thud. His footsteps echoed on the hollow floor beneath, booming like the thunderous footfalls of a giant through the empty hall.

  Slipping his key into the lock for the deadbolt, he sent it back into the door with a resounding thack, dropping his key to the doorknob to unlock it as well. Throwing the door inward, he stumbled into the apartment onto the olive-green and yellow linoleum floor of the entryway, the kitchen immediately to the left.

  “Chopper?” he called, staring down the hallway into the living room. “Where are you boy?”

  His wet shoes squeaked on the floor as he crossed it, nearly tripping over the seam of the carpet as he stepped into the living room. The television rested on a cluster of cinder blocks at the back of the room beneath the rust-tinged curtains that hung from the window. A tan couch sat in the middle of the room, the matching chair set up just to the right. The seams were tattered, the threads peeling back in clusters, and the bright blue throw pillows that rested in the corners were scattered across the floor, their corners knotted and matted as though they had been chewed.

  “Chopper!” he yelled.

  A meek whimper issued from down the small hallway to the right.

  Whirling, he stopped, prepared to head down the hallway toward the bedroom, but his eyes caught on something else. There was a picture, framed and matted just to the right of the hallway, a gut-wrenching reminder of a better day. He stood to the left, wearing a black suit and tie, his left arm lying across the shoulder of a quite attractive blonde woman wearing a light purple sun dress. In her lap sat a small girl, her shiny blonde hair hung to either side of her smiling face as she clung tightly to a small stuffed dog. She wore a bright red dress, the edges fringed with lace. White tights covered her legs right down to the shiny black, buckled shoes that dangled above the floor, hardly past her mother’s knees.

  He couldn’t believe how much younger he looked, his hair full and the suit fitting him perfectly as though it had been tailored just for him. His face looked nothing like it did today, his blue eyes accented by his thick brows, his lips curled back from a genuine smile. It showed none of the wear that aged his face today, his eyes weren’t sunken back into their sockets behind large brown bags, nor were the thin lines that aged his face even beginning to form.

  “And Darcy…” he said, running his finger over the woman in the picture, the oils from his skin leaving a transparent line.

  She had to have been the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. The only problem was that she knew that just as well as he did. What he had been unable to provide, another had been more than willing to, and she had left him nothing but a simple note on the table.

  “See you in court,” the note had read.

  He could remember dashing up the stairs and into their bedroom, throwing open the closet door only to find that all of her clothes and shoes were now gone. Spinning around, he could vividly recall the despair that sunk into his chest as he raced into his daughter’s room, only to find it completely empty, the carpet still holding the matted impressions of where her bedposts and her dresser had been. He had fallen to his knees on that very floor, sobbing like a baby, his face buried in his hands for the rest of the night.

  That was when the serious drinking had begun.

  The next time he had seen her was in court, as she had promised, her new beau loaded to the gills with enough money to bury him alive. Assuming that the worst of his worries were the child support issue, he had been completely unprepared for what he found there in that hollow, marble-floored room. Not only did he learn that he was a terrible husband, uncaring and oft-times violent—which came as a complete shock—but that he was a mean and abusive father as well. And while he had known that those accusations were completely unfounded, the judge obviously hadn’t, ruling that he was to have no further contact with the child… yet still, he was going to have to part with the house, the cars, and more than half of his monthly income.

  It had been the worst day of his life, bar none. He had left there in tears, shrugging off his lawyer’s attempt to comfort him, unable to even give his only daughter one last hug before she was whisked away in her new “daddy’s” Mercedes. He had paid religiously and timely for the next couple of years. No longer able to afford the style in which he was accustomed to living, he had moved into this tiny apartment, selling everything that had ever mattered to him to cover the first and last month’s rent.

  He had been fired from the department store where he had spent the last eight years managing the electronics department after showing up one too many times hung over and looking as though he hadn’t slept, let alone showered. Of course, he hadn’t, as there was barely enough time in his life for anything other than the bar. It was there where he received at least the most remote resemblance of respect: the bartenders all knew him by name, he placed second two years running in the annual darts competition, and there were always ladies there willing to treat him like a king, if only for a night.

  Tonight, however, he hadn’t been in the mood for anything other than a long-term relationship with his bed. A one on one, twelve hour affair that would hopefully leave him able to wake up functional enough to try to find a better job than he had held for the last two years. And besides, he was getting awfully tired of waiting tables, even if the management didn’t make him claim his tips.

  Kissing his fingertips, he placed them on his daughter’s picture, a tear forming in the corner of his eye as he shrugged, his lips twisting over his teeth. Sniffing, he broke his stare from the picture, heading down the hallway to the whining dog, which was, more than likely, cringing beneath his bed.

  Turning left into the darkened bedroom, he could smell it right away. Covering his mouth and nose, he flip
ped on the light switch, his eyes surveying the floor for the fresh, steaming pile of crap, that he knew had to be there somewhere. There were no brown piles on the tan carpet, so, fearing the worst, he raised his eyes from the floor level to that of the bed, immediately seeing the stack of logs atop the comforter.

  “Chopper!” he shouted, watching the tip of the dog’s nose disappear behind the bedspread that draped nearly to the floor.

  Grimacing, he skulked across the well-worn carpeting, throwing wide the bathroom door. Grabbing the roll of toilet paper off of the counter next to the toilet, he pulled off about three feet of the white paper, bundling it up in his hand. Stepping back into the bedroom, he paused at the foot of the bed, his face crumpling beneath his upturned nose.

  He snared the pile in the tissue, the warmth creeping through even the second ply into his flesh. Groaning, he whirled and raced to the bathroom, throwing open the lid of the toilet and dropping the heavy mound into the water with a splash. Flushing the toilet twice for good measure, he stood in front of the sink, running the hot water so that it might get warm enough for his hands. Pumping the soap dispenser, he was able to procure nothing more than the crusted ball of dried soap that clung to the nozzle. Sighing, he rubbed it between his hands beneath the slowly warming water before drying his unsatisfactorily clean hands on his bath towel that hung over the shower rod. Turning, he took a deep breath and stumbled back into the bedroom.

  “Chopper!” he called, falling to his hands and knees right at the base of the bed.

  He could see the dark outline of the dog beneath the bed, huddled right in the center in hopes of being out of reach.

  “Damn it! You come out here right now!”

  But the dog only whimpered as he reached quickly beneath the drooping covers, grabbing the collar tightly with his right hand and yanking the squirming dog out from beneath the bed. The nails on all four of his feet dug into the carpet as he stiffened, his head flopping from one side to the other as he was dragged out into the light.