by Aaron Dawbot
The boy cast the event from his conscious mind, and tucked another secret deep into a black fathomless void. Like the many instances he had to confront such dark inexplicable visits. This time, the ghastly force had dared to touch him.
CHAPTER EIGHT
* * *
Back at Still-Water, Thomas was walking along the stone-paved lane, coiling around the arch-edged flower beds. He was careful not to startle Louise, who was standing there in silence, almost bearing resemblance to a pious image of some Gothic statue. Thomas could not discern if she was brooding over an unfortunate event or whether she contemplated on the soothing effect which her garden provided.
The young nun turned around by the time he was a few feet away. Thomas was surprised how her face was absent of its lively complexion, now she was pale, and her skin was studded with transparent beads of sweat. He took her cold and clammy hand. Thomas withheld mentioning any observation.
"Sister Louise, enjoying the beautiful day?"
"If only we could call it that," she sighed over her words.
“I need to tell you something?” Thomas expressed a despondent look.
Louise scanned his face, her sadness now matched his worry.
“I think we're dealing with organ trafficking, and Elizabeth is the head-piece of the operation.”
Louise blocked as he uttered his words. Thomas didn't give her the time to think.
“I faced her with my evidence, but she threatened to take legal action.”
”And what happened?”
”I had to leave before it could get ugly,”
Her lips trembled, “So, what will happen next?”
“Well, considering her lousy choice, Mr. Squire, I think she pissed off her buyers too, no one wants to deal with bloody trails, and I wouldn't be surprised if she ran already,” Thomas added.
"Maybe that's why Marie can't find her anywhere."
“I'm sorry, Louise, but my agency will have to press charges.”
Louise became restless, her cheeks flushed again, and her hands pressed against the gush of her watering eyes.
"Oh my God. You think you know a person after many years. It's the betrayal that hurts the most." Louise sniffled over her words.
"People can get nastier than anything you can imagine." Thomas responded.
"Nevertheless, we'd still have to count on the goodness in them."
Thomas shrugged, "Have you been outside these walls lately, Sister?"
"I would cut the smart talk short, Mr. Arsen." Her eyes blazed. “You just told me that I've been working all these years under a criminal.”
Thomas raised his hands in fake surrender, "Excuse me, but cruel realism is one of my job’s necessities."
"Yes, I could agree with you on that, Mr. Arsen, but you shouldn't only be what your job tells you. What is left of you when you go back home?"
"A rubble of exhaustion," Thomas tilted his head.
Louise dabbed her eyes, Thomas noticed the faint flicker at one end of her mouth - a belated weak smile.
Thomas stepped further, "You've been through a lot, don't be harsh on yourself and don't add Elizabeth's crimes to one of your responsibilities." He said while he examined every twitch in her body.
Another tear drop freed itself and slipped down her pale pasty cheeks. "This place was my home. I thought I had a family, a flock. And now it's all gone. I'm sure they're gonna shut us down."
Thomas turned her around and brought her weak eyes toward his face.
"Then it means you have a new beginning. For you and everyone else." He said with an adamant gaze, he saw her lids succumbing under their own weight, partially covering her glinting eyes. Louise looked deep into his green eyes. She appeared to be delighted, as if she had discovered something in him.
"Beautiful words, but you'll never know how a mother feels."
"A mother?" Thomas was intrigued.
"These are my children, my very reason." She looked toward the layered windows on the western facade, old faces appeared from the gleaming glass as they enjoyed the mid-summer sun.
"I never had a family, so I found one for myself," she shrugged.
Thomas smiled at her gesture, "And you'll find another, I'm sure of it."
"What about you, Tom? Where is your flock?"
"It's different with me, Louise."
”And why is that, does the world see you in another way?" she asked, dabbing her cheeks with a handkerchief.
Thomas scoffed, "You live in this word for so long, your eyes start telling you a different story."
"There are people who listen nevertheless," Louise said.
Her face wandered about his, then turned her look beyond the straddling stone wall. Above the guard, were massive grey mountains towering like indifferent deities.
"Caring for others has become my bread and bone. That's all I know and all I will ever offer the world. My simple plain talent, mine nevertheless." Louise said.
"What if the world disagrees with your view?" Thomas said.
"It's what I believe that matters, Mr. Arsen. That's more than I could bargain for."
He nodded, "It's beautiful how you can wish your reality into the mold you want. Too bad it's not that easy for everyone. I guess you can't trust your heart when nothing is left but cracked pieces."
Louise sought Thomas's face and said with a flat voice, "You have a way with your words Thomas, as if your Soul has seen the entire course of life and back. Wisdom bred from perpetual pain."
Thomas sighed, "Quite the talent Sister Louise, a true divine talent."
"You haven't lost everything, Tom. That's why you're still fighting."
Thomas looked curious as he heard her suggestion, "Is that what they call faith?"
"It's what they call Life, Tom. Faith just makes it easier."
Thomas hid his grin.
"Is it that funny?" Louise asked.
"Excuse me, let's just say I won't need faith after what I've seen, that being enough for both of our lifetimes.” He ended on a more somber tone.
"Then have faith in what you'd wish to see, that's how people survive the bad things in this world."
She softened his frown by touching his left arm. Thomas felt a wave of release running through him. He didn't know if he should stop her. An invasion of bizarre but vaguely familiar connection with the being he saw in Louise.
“Pain will always visit you, just make it worth your while, Tom.”
Thomas woke up to notice a weak shiver in her dangled right arm. Her face turned gloomy, as if her blood poured from her head and down her feet.
"Now, if you'd excuse me, Tom, I'll head back and have some rest. The sun must've exhausted me."
"Of course," Thomas steadied her frail frame, but the woman brushed off his hands and nodded. She tottered towards the building's white gate. Thomas fought back his simmering feeling of disappointment at the new revelation.
He called Lonnie. "Well?" As Lonnie answered the phone.
"It's not good, I think I have a lead on the caretaker, but I have to be damn sure about it. Can't afford any more mistakes. Any luck figuring out what I should be looking for?"
"Fitz and I have been searching for all sorts of signs on how to find that Spawn thing."
"Why do I get the feeling that I won't like it one bit?"
"Like our business was ever pretty in the first place. Now, I couldn't get any details, but what I could gather up were some small hints. Let's say you should look out for huge, ugly, and hungry."
"Could you be more specific?" Thomas was becoming impatient.
"Imagine a giant pit bull with wings and a face only a mother could love," Lonnie said.
"I'll have better luck finding its caretaker."
"Don't you dare do it alone, Fitz and I are on our way."
"Anyways, I'll stay here till nightfall. This time I'm not going anywhere, something's bad coming our way."
"We'll be there."
Thomas hung up, his mind battled the notion tha
t the most delicate being could commit such terrible acts under the will of evil. The fair garden breeze was ominous enough, beckoning the challenge he had to face. The very air around him was charged with the intensity he felt inside. It all hung upon some rogue hunch he never wished to believe, and begged his heart not to fool him into some miscalculated move. For the incoming night held a whispered promise of death. However, action was all he had in the face of what was about to happen.
***
Thomas curled from behind a hallway. The smooth silence dared him to venture beyond his vantage point. He was lurking in the sub-levels and management quarters of Still Water, careful not to stir any attention toward himself.
Thomas looked past the long dark corridor, he glimpsed a woman walking fast in the distance. Thomas hissed at the fact that he was helpless. He used to have a remarkable stack of abilities, but his latest trip to Hell had robbed him temporarily of such advantages. He still needed time to replenish his former self, or a miracle might thankfully drop by his way.
Thomas hungered for any possible lead that could aid him further in the case. His suspicions about Louise were troubling enough to make him overly paranoid. The case would've been solved already if it wasn't for his unfruitful infernal excursion.
The woman neared enough for Thomas to recognize her face. She was a young female cleaning personnel stowing away her equipment in one of the in-wall cabinets. Thomas observed a smeared metal tattoo peeking from under a white cut-sleeve. She shuffled away with hastening steps.
Several moments passed and the coast was clear, Thomas passed by several tagged doors, and stopped on the one that gave him an instant idea.
The food locker had a bulky metal door that trapped the cold air inside. Thomas meddled with the locks to discover how simple it was to pick.
He was soon inside a chilling sleek room, chrome-paneled refrigerators with hung ledgers on each one. There were wide processing slabs and multiple scattered rolls of nylon sheets.
Thomas thought of checking the refrigerator with the word MEAT on it. He tugged the mammoth door open to reveal an empty space of condensing vapor. He then checked the other one next to it. All the units were polished clean or, more likely, were never used before.
Thomas scrolled down the orders of the preceding month to find a delivery of 200 kilos of veal and pork signed yesterday by the old hag herself.
It either meant that Still Water was planning some massive banquet, one he couldn't imagine they would be having, given the current circumstances, or something inhabiting the premise was binging on huge chunks of meat by the hour. And how could the meat disappear in such a relatively small place?
Tom looked around to glimpse a peculiar worn-out wooden door hidden between a wall and the adjacent shadow of a giant cooling unit.
Thomas smelled the intrigue emanating from the concealed thin entrance. He unlocked the crude mechanism that simulated a modern lock. And found himself looking down a flight of stairs. A faint rancid smell crawled into his nostrils. He knew that it came from the basement down below.
With slow steps, Thomas lowered himself to see a wide space with boxes and crates covered in cobwebs and mold. The smell got worse with every advancing step he took. Thomas lit a small flashlight from his phone. From the distance, he noticed the far wall covered in blotching spots of black mud and dry trails of green, making streaks that ran down to the floor.
He approached with his light pointed to the far-left corner, the smells got more pungent and offensive in intensity. The streaks on the walls became wide, with brushes of black and red. Then he saw the unbelievable.
A young, overweight woman with short hair, the same one he had seen moments earlier with her complete and clean uniform, the same warped tattoo on her shoulder. She was laying with her head slumped to one side, mouth dripping with blood. Her skin was as white and pasty as a corpse. Her chest and abdomen was eaten out, dry from all traces of all entrails or most of her other organs, with the legs bitten off from the upper thigh down . An emptied husk left for dead, possibly for many hours as the smell indicated, like a shed human cocoon.
Thomas rang his friend.
"It goes down now! We're late as it is."
CHAPTER NINE
* * *
The incessant cricket chirps polluted the perfect serene night. An ominous nocturnal chill came down, brushing the stunted garden trees with a soft breeze.
Thomas was well hidden in the bowels of the old shelter, shrouded by the perfect cover of the night. He awaited the perfect moment just before the witching hour struck three.
All the remaining residents of Still Water were well under their comfortable covers. Perfect preys nestling in their ignorance of predators that lurked nearby.
Thomas came out of his sheltering closet and sneaked along the rooms and he looked out and far for Louise's private room. He reached the staff quarters to find all the rooms dim with no sounds or any live voices. After he had passed several rooms, he came upon a door with a small plate carrying his target's name.
He could've waited few more minutes for his backup to arrive, but his instincts urged him not to wait any longer.
In that fraction of a moment, Thomas's ears caught a scream from afar. He sensed the strident sound emanating from the west end of the hallway. Thomas dashed towards the source while the continuing screams goaded him to a small apartment.
Thomas couldn't wait for Lonnie anymore. It was time for action or else he would allow another crime to be committed on his watch.
Thomas opened the door and found Sister Marie, small as she was, curled up and shivering beside one brass leg of her bed just below her window sill. He flew to her side and held her with two firm hands. She felt like a soft clothed doll with rattling bones, Thomas could sense the strength of her heartbeats thrusting into his palms. He asked the weeping woman what was going on.
The girl lifted her face, showing three parallel wounds, Identical to a feral scratch oozing blood down her jaw line. Thomas's eyes lit up and asked her another time. "Who did this to you?
"Louise....sssshhhhhhee's a mmonsterrr," she whimpered.
Thomas contained his senses from slipping into outrage.
"Tell me where she is."
The girl sniffled and pressed a trembling hand on her aching cheek. "Don't go. My God, don't go. She's the devil. I saw it in her eyes."
Thomas ignored her warning, "Marie, tell me now where she is...It's time to end this."
"I Don't know!," she screamed.
Thomas then looked in her eyes, guarding her between his arms. "You stay here...you understand?"
The girl's head bobbed in approval.
Thomas thundered out of the room and heard chuckles coming out from every wall. His gut told him to head to the north side of the building, as he felt a palpable reverberation rising from that precise direction.
He dashed toward some vestibule, facing two large doors that lead to the large festivity hall. Thomas felt the malicious energy riding the loud giggle exuding from behind that worn wooden gate.
Thomas kicked the entrance and rushed through the spacious room. There, he saw Louise standing with her back to him. Her outline blocked the object she was staring at. All the chairs and tables were stacked to the periphery, allowing for a wide empty clearing in the center of the room.
Thomas looked past Sister Louise who was trembling. He first thought she was laughing, but as he gained in on her, he understood that she was sobbing in terror. Thomas stood by her side to reckon the effigy of carnal desecration that was left erect in front of them.
Lumps of bone, flesh, and tight skin, interlaced with cut ribbons of intestine, foul for any set of eyes, dripping fresh blood from between the small recesses left between the entangled human parts, forming a bloody cross.
Thomas vaguely recognized the faces stretched on the shaft of that demonic pile of human organs. But seeing the blood depart from Louise's face assured him that she knew each and every one.
Th
omas couldn't tolerate his confusion any longer, "Louise, what the Christ are you doing here?"
Her jaw locked mid-open. She seemed to forget his name as her mouth shook without uttering a sound. Thomas then lurched toward her, shaking her small shoulders.
"Answer me!"
Louise lifted her eyes to him and finally said, "Marie sent me here. She was attacked." Then she collapsed.
Thomas bore her weight in his forearms, pulling her away from the crucifix.
As he headed for the exit, the large gaping entrance shut by itself with an invisible force. He then heard that devilish giggle once more
Thomas placed Louise against a wall and approached the carnal structure.
"Show yourself!" he bellowed.
The hung heads opened their eyes, adding vivid terror to the hellish simulacrum of flesh and bone.
But Thomas felt the direct threat coming from the wicked laugh right behind him.
"A nice trick, don't you think?"
Marie was rubbing two small palms against her lower lip.
Thomas's eyes flickered.
"Oh what? Disappointed, are we?" Marie said with a grin.
"And all this time you thought it was the bitch over there," she pointed to Louise who was unconscious. "Well, I have to admit it was partly my fault. A few drops of my blood in her tea, that's all it took," She then shrieked in a raucous laugh. "You're so predictable, boy. It gets boring after a while." Her nose crinkled.
Thomas lowered his guard, relaxing his stance, as he came into the revelation that he was finally in front of the being he sought.
Marie then looked at the hellish depiction, she drew a deep sigh. "I was wondering if her head would go right there, in the middle. I mean, you'd enjoy that, wouldn't you?"
Thomas clenched his fingers deeper in the tense skin of his palm.
Marie furrowed her brow, "Look at you, thinking about getting into Sister Holly's pants. Now that's fucked up." Her eyes glowed red.