The Bloodspawn

by Michael McBride

  Opening the door, he climbed out of the Jeep, his feet sinking well past his ankles into the deepening snow. Closing the door, he could hear the echo of Harry doing the same as he walked up the pristine snow that covered the driveway towards the front door of the house. He bounded up the front steps as he had done so many times throughout his youth, alighting atop the landing and walking to the right side of the porch.

  A cluster of small junipers was just to the other side of the wrought iron railing. Reaching beneath, he fished around with his hand until he found a large stone beneath the scratchy foliage. Lifting it, he found the small plastic bag with the rust colored key that had been there from so many years before. Matt’s mom had stashed it there so he would always be able to get into the house as he had a tendency to lose them if he carried them with him. Often, Scott and some of Matt’s other friends had used it just to sneak into his house and startle him while he was alone after school, but that had been a lifetime ago.

  Brushing the snow from the knees of his jeans. Scott stuck the key into the deadbolt lock and turned it until he heard the loud thunk. Removing it, he slipped it into the lower lock and opened the door inwards as he turned it.

  With a quick glance over his shoulder at Harry, who watched him with keen interest, he ducked into the house, the wet soles of his shoes squeaking on the tile in the entryway. To his right, a built- in bookcase separated the entryway from the living room, a thin layer of dust covering the top which was just about chest level. Gesturing to the stairs that led up and to the left, Scott looked to Harry, who slowly eased upwards.

  “What exactly are you hoping to find?” Scott asked, right on Harry’s heels as they rounded the staircase into the hallway. “It’s the first door on the right.”

  Nodding, Harry opened the bedroom door and stepped into the stale air of the long since vacated room.

  “I’m not really sure,” he said, his eyes canvassing every inch of the room.

  The walls were painted light blue. A dark, wood shelf ran along the wall to the right, several splatters of the blue paint marring its surface. There were no impressions on the thick, blue carpeting from where any furniture had been, as it must have been quite some time since anything had rested on the flooring long enough to leave a mark.

  “Awfully cold in here,” Harry muttered, his breath gusting in thin lines of steam in front of his lips.

  Scott just nodded as he surveyed the room. In his mind, he could remember when the walls had been painted white, the carpet a much more tightly knit nap of dark blue. He could vaguely remember the wallpaper that had been on the wall to the right just above the built in shelf, ships, if he remembered correctly. Not just ships, but large ocean vessels, HMS something, anyway. Closing his eyes, he could see the dark wood furniture lined along the left side of the room, a pile of coins next to an old intercom. There had been a bookcase filled with novels: Choose Your Own Adventures, a line of Piers Anthony science fictions, and the budding start of a horror collection consisting mainly of Stephen King and Dean R. Koontz. A desk had sat just to the right of that in the corner, a lamp coming out of the top of an old Washington Redskin’s helmet which had always made no sense as Matt had been a Falcon’s fan since the day he had met him.

  There had been a bunk bed in the center of the room; both levels dressed the same beneath comforters featuring what looked like abstract drawings of ducks. He could remember many a night where he had crashed on the top bunk as a child. It had always been such a treat for him to sleep up high as he had always wanted bunk beds but his parents had never even considered the notion. He had listened to Matt talking from below as he made up stories of ghosts that haunted the woods around the house, wondering if he was for sure just making them up or if he had actually seen them as Matt never gave him a straight answer either way. His frayed nerves on edge, he had stared up at the panel that led up into the crawl space, praying that nothing crept out and grabbed him as he slept.

  Staring up at that same ceiling now, he could see there square entrance to the crawl space, which for some reason still seemed just as threatening to this day.

  “What’s up there?” Harry asked, nodding towards the ceiling where Scott stared.

  “Crawl space.”

  “Obviously,” Harry said, shooting him an icy glance. “Why are you looking up there?”

  “I used to think there were ghosts that lived up there that would come down and get me while I slept.”

  “Ever go up there?”

  “No, but I remember Matt talking about finishing it up there so he had a place of his own to go where no one could ever find him.”

  “Did he ever do it?”

  “Not to the best of my knowledge, but our friendship became somewhat estranged the last year or so.”

  “I think it’s about time we found out then, don’t you.”

  “I guess, but why…”

  “I’ll boost you up,” Harry interrupted, lacing his fingers in front of his waist.

  Scott put his right foot into Harry’s hands, bouncing a couple of times before propelling himself upwards. Hammering the square of drywall that covered the hole upward with his momentum, he grabbed hold of the lip of the wooden square, pulling himself up into the darkness.

  His knee snagged on the rim of the wooden edge, scraping the flesh beneath.

  “Ow,” he grumbled, feeling the soft texture of the carpet remnants beneath his palms.

  The light from the hole in the center of the hole did little to illuminate the dark covey. Dark shadows stretched from the light into the blackened corners of the barren attic as he pulled his feet past the rim and onto the makeshift floor. Batting his eyes, he could barely see his nose in the center of his face as his hands moved in a swimming motion to either side as he attempted to find anything that might shed a little more light on the situation.

  His fumbling fingers knocked into something, sending it toppling onto its side as it clanked against another seemingly invisible object. Tracing its form with his hand, his fingers followed the glass base of an oblong cylindrical object, rounding the top edge before touching something completely different. He chipped at the surface with his thumbnail, peeling back a soft, waxy chunk of what could only have been wax.

  “Do you have a match or a lighter or something?” Scott called down towards the hole, shifting his weight to the side as a box rattled to his right as he bumped it.

  “Never mind,” he muttered, having answered his own question. He pulled back the lid of the box of matches and pulled a pair of the wooden sticks from within, returning the cover.

  Running the bulbous head of the match along the sandpaper- like strike strip that ran down the side of the box, a ball of fire burst from the tip of the match, followed instantaneously by a black tuft of smoke. Holding the candle over his lap, he held the flame to the end of the wick, waiting as it popped and snapped before finally glowing with a flame all its own. Shaking the match which had nearly burned down to his thumb on the charcoaled stick, he set it down on the closed box and held the candle out in front of him. A dim aura of light encircled the flame, casting his long shadow into the recesses of the attic behind him.

  He could see a folding chair of sorts lying on its side, half opened, in the center of the room. There was a stack of books beside it, a thick tome lying open on the tan carpeted floor. The walls to either side, which were held in place by only a few sparse nails, were covered with posters and cut- outs from magazines, bands that he hadn’t thought about in nearly a decade and women in various stages of undress. It was, on the surface, the hiding place of dreams for any high school aged boy; the only problem was that in this case it obviously hadn’t been.

  Turning his stare from the snarling face of Dave Mustaine, he crawled forward into the crawlspace, heading for the back wall. A thin arc of light circled what he knew to be the seal around one of the ceiling vents, a stream of bitter, arctic air squeezing through the infinitely small gap and into the room. The surface of the carpe
t felt cold to the touch, the breeze causing the flame atop the candle to flicker, the goose bumps on the backs of his arms to rise. Pink rolls of insulation lined the back walls, filling the gaps between the wooden studs. The edge of the plywood laid across the floor fell several inches shy of reaching the back wall, exposing the insulation buried beneath. Stands of the thread that ran through the carpet to hold the knap in place danced, tangled and intertwined, at the edge of the frayed carpet beneath the chilly breeze.

  Rolling onto his rear end, he turned back to stare into the finished portion of the attic. A globule of melted wax rolled over the top of the glass candlestick, singing the hair atop his knuckle as it froze into place atop his scalded skin.

  There had to be something up there that would somehow be of use, he was sure of that, but what? What could he possibly find that would be of any help?

  “What’s up there?” Harry called from below, the sound of his shoes scraping off the shelf on the wall below as he tried to climb up behind him echoing in the attic.

  “He just finished a small portion of the attic,” Scott hollered, crawling closer to the entrance so that he wouldn’t have to shout. “There’s a whole little room up here.”

  “What do you see?”

  “A lawn chair in the center next to a small stack of books. The walls are plastered with old posters, rock bands and women, and so on. There’s carpet just lying on plywood, and enough dust to choke a mite.”

  “What books are up there?”

  Turning around, he held the candle towards the books, a line of wax falling from the light green candle onto the carpet. He worked through the stack, which was closest to him first. There was a book of witchcraft from the Time/ Life series, the stamp of possession from the high school library still on the inside cover. He tossed an old Metal Edge magazine from the stack into the corner of the room without even opening it. A copy of “The Chicks of Metal” brought a dry smile, but then ended up sliding across the carpet to greet the Metal edge. There was a copy of “Faust” and one of “Helter Skelter.”

  “Standard alienated youth reading list,” Scott called over his shoulder. “All we’re missing is a copy of… wait, here we go. ‘Dante’s Inferno’.”

  “Anything else?”

  “There’s one more book over here,” he said, crawling towards it. “Judging from the way this one’s worn, it has got to be pretty old.”

  Placing his thumb between the pages where it lay open, he closed it, turning it so that he could see the cover of the leather bound tome.

  “What is it?’

  “There’s no title on it. Its cover’s made of leather. There’s some sort of embossing here… wait a sec.” He held the book closer to his face, the candle right in front of it. “Appears to be a pentagram. Sound familiar?”

  “No. Why don’t you grab it and bring it down here?”

  “Just a minute. Let me open it up and see if there’s anything in it to make it worthwhile.”

  Opening the book to where his thumb marked it, he lowered the flame to the page, squinting as he read the small print.

  “Let thy first sacrifice be of thine own flesh,” he whispered as he read from the page. “Be it blood or bile, skin or nail, but surrender it willingly by thine own hand.”

  There was a small patch in the center of the paragraph: a dried fingerprint matted in blood on the yellowed page. He placed his own forefinger on that print, smothering it beneath his larger print. He could feel the crusted fluid flaking off beneath his oily touch.

  A whispering sound resonated from the darkened corner of the room.

  Raising the candle, he attempted to peel back the darkness, staring into the heart of the shadow only to see the thin arch of the vent. It must have been the wind whistling through the tiny gap between the aluminum vent and the shingles on the roof. He turned his attention back to the book.

  “Let thy second sacrifice be of flesh not thine own. Be it a rodent or a human, it matters not, so long as it is taken unwillingly.”

  The whispering sound arose again, this time louder, sounding like more than one voice at a time all vying to be heard over the other.

  But it had to be the vent… didn’t it?

  “And lastly, with thy third sacrifice,” he whispered from the page. “Let it be thine own soul. Commit it to thy master and thy vessel shall forever walk in the shadow of thy lord. Commence thee to thy task and pave the way in blood for thy master, the physical manifestation in flesh of the bloodspawn: the antichrist. Eternal life shall be thy reward for wielding the saber of vengeance, and a seat at the high court of hell should you succeed in bringing the destiny of the child to fruition.”

  His head jerked up as movement caught his eye. The thick shadows beneath the vent swirled like the tentacles of a squid, gaining life as they stretched their thin arms into the room, piercing the glow of the candle.

  “Holy shit,” he uttered as the whispering grew so loud that it filled his head, the jumbled words seeming to originate from within his fear wrought mind, rather than from without.

  Without a sound, the flame atop the wick of the candle dwindled to an orange ember, a thin tuft of smoke trailing from the dim pinpoint of light into the darkness. The coldness of the trilling tendrils pierced his dry skin, shredding through the flesh and muscle and into the bone beneath, throbbing painfully in the core of his being. They tugged at him, coaxing him towards the heart of the darkness from which they sprung, their voices chattering within his brain.

  There was a loud thump as the drywall square that he had pushed off to the side onto the carpet slipped back into place, filling the square hole and shutting out the last of the tiny hint of light that shined up from the bedroom.

  The tendrils were all around him now, ripping at him from all directions, the icy touch covering every inch of his exposed flesh as he scrambled frantically against the overwhelming urging of the tentacle towards the hatch. Growing louder and louder until they echoed within the confines of his skull, the voices dug sharply into his brain. Closing his eyes as tightly as he possibly could, he clapped his hands to his ears, scraping his way towards the only exit in the room on his elbows. His bared teeth showcased the savage pain the rippled across his flesh, tiny needles of icy fire stabbing repeatedly through his skin.

  A scream died somewhere between his chest and his mouth, escaping as a mere whispered moan from between his clenched teeth. With a thud, his elbows landed hollowly on the thin square of drywall. There was knocking on the small door from below as Harry’s fists hammered against it, trying to force it back open.

  Summoning all of the strength that he could muster, he fought through the blistering pain, rising to his feet atop the drywall hatch. All of the muscles in his legs cried out at once as they wobbled on his shaky ankles, wanting nothing more than to just succumb to the will of the darkness that sought to reel him into the darkened heart of the room. Breathing heavily, he brought forth all of his will, all of the strength he had suppressed within his frail human form, jumping straight up into the air.

  His head slammed against the paneled rafters, as bright balls of light appeared from behind his sealed eyelids. A throbbing wave of pain rushed through his head, pounding several times as though from beneath the repeated downfall of a hammer, jostling all of the voices as they formed finally into one.

  “Master,” they all whispered in unison as his feet hit the floor.

  The drywall square shattered into a million tiny fragments beneath his weight. Clouds of the chalky inside layer filling the air around him like a magician’s smoke as he hurdled downwards through the air. His bent elbows slammed into the wooden square around the hole, purple and black bruises swelling from beneath his sweatshirt almost immediately upon impact. The back of his head slammed into the rim, tearing wide a fresh, red rimmed gouge beneath the matted hair on the back of his head, causing his feet to flop backwards.

  He landed in a heap on his side, the impact from the blow knocking the wind from his suddenly c
ollapsed lungs. Rolling from side to side, he fought to draw even a single breath, his wide eyes staring back into his head, exposing nothing but two large white orbs beneath his lids. Every inch of his flesh cried out in cold pain as he flopped like a fish out of water.

  Harry’s hands were all over him, trying to steady him long enough to get a good look at him, to see if he was badly injured. He could hear his voice, sounding as though it were coming from a mile away, but none of the words penetrated the fearsome throbbing of his swelling brain beneath his skull. His frantic tongue lolled from his mouth as with one final, great effort he drew in an entire chest full of air, sending him into a coughing frenzy. Lines of saliva flew from his open mouth, dangling from his lips onto the blue carpet.

  His rapidly pumping heart slowed to an almost functional level as he slowly rolled onto his side, curling into fetal position. He allowed the air to creep through his seemingly collapsed trachea into his flattened lungs, his chest rising and falling several times before he was finally able to shake the feeling that he might never breathe again. From the corner of his teary eye he could see the concerned look on Harry’s face as he sat helplessly back on his knees, waiting for him to come back around.

  “What the hell happened up there?” Harry asked, leaning over so that he could make eye contact.

  “I… don’t know,” Scott wheezed, forcefully swallowing the large lump that had formed in his throat.

  “I heard all of this banging and then all of a sudden you closed the door, and there were… voices.” His voice trailed off with that last word.

  “They were all around me, grabbing at me, trying to … to…”

  “To what?”

  “I don’t know, to suck me into the darkness.”

  “Who was up there with you?”