Run to Ground

by Bark, Jasper

  Stephanie remembered what Jan had said about encountering the Heolfor in the basement and decided that’s where she must be. She made her way straight to the stairs.

  The basement was musty. It didn’t have the same sterile, disinfected smell as the rest of the hospital. The service corridors were like a low-ceilinged maze. There was a constant throb and hum from the back-up generators.

  It was more by accident that Stephanie found the door to the subbasement and made her way down the stairs. There was only one light, flickering in the corridor. Luckily, the hours she’d spent in darkened rooms as a teenager meant Stephanie had great night vision and her eyes quickly adjusted to the dark.

  Stephanie turned a corner at the end of the corridor into complete darkness. She stumbled on with her arms outstretched until her eyes adjusted and she made out a door up ahead. As she reached for the handle the temperature seemed to plummet, as if the blood had drained from her body. At the same time Stephanie could hear a high pitched whistling in her ears.

  The room on the other side of the door smelled of copper and salt. Stephanie was reminded of the taste of old pennies under the tongue. In the centre of the room was what looked like a discarded white sack. As Stephanie peered closer she saw that it was Jan’s naked body.

  Jan’s throat and wrists had been slashed open. The cuts were deep and the edges ragged and tattered.

  Jan’s blood had pooled in a thick red puddle in front of her. Stephanie blinked when she saw something rising out of the puddle. It looked at first like long thin drips were running out of the puddle towards the ceiling, as though gravity had been reversed.

  The drips were forming themselves into long, thin shapes. The shapes were sinuous and began to intertwine themselves, branching out like tiny underwater fronds as they formed a larger structure.

  The structure seemed to be sucking all the blood from the puddle as it formed itself. The rivulets of blood were making the outline of a body, like a wireframe image. No, not a wireframe image, it was like a life-sized map of the human circulatory system forming itself right in front of Stephanie.

  Stephanie could see all the veins and arteries of a human body, of Jan’s body, as the figure turned to regard her. It had no eyes, just the capillaries that would have flowed through an eyeball.

  Stephanie recognised something of Jan in the hideous stare of this blood being. What she saw was the personification of Jan’s unhinged fury. The deranged anger that had pushed a knife, soaked in rotting blood, into her father’s chest, then killed him as he begged her for help.

  Dark red stains were appearing on the walls and the floor around Stephanie. At first, the stains looked ancient but, as they spread, they began to get fresher and fresher. Blood oozed into them to form pools. Sinuous, living veins and arteries snaked out of the blood pools and formed themselves into more living circulatory systems.

  There were eight of them now, including the blood being that had once been Jan. Each of them seemed to represent a different type of malevolent delirium. Destruction, madness and denial throbbed in the living veins that composed their bodies.

  They formed a circle around Stephanie and opened their wet, red mouths to sing. The sound they made was the high pitched whine of blood whistling in the ears coupled with the whoosh and the roar as it pumps through the heart.

  Stephanie held her hands up to her ears and fell to her knees. It did no good. She couldn’t block out their song. They weren’t singing to her. They were singing to her blood.

  Infecting it. Altering it. Converting it. Until it was one with them . . .

  ***

  That had been a month ago. The images Stephanie saw in the blood sped up.

  ***

  She saw herself suffering as her blood rebelled against her. As it developed its own consciousness and became an alien entity inside her. Stephanie’s heart pumped the blood through her veins but it was no longer a part of her.

  Stephanie could feel her blood plotting against her as it circulated round her body. It longed to be free of her, to shuffle off her flesh and bones and take its true form. The vital fluid that gave her life ached to be rid of her, yearned to leave her and join its unholy sisters. Every time she saw a vein throb or an artery stand out on her skin Stephanie knew what her blood was planning.

  She fell in love with sharp objects. Ached with longing when she saw a knife. Stephanie became so desperate to feel a blade slice through her veins she would shake whenever she held one. Her heart would beat faster and her blood would sing of release. That’s why she stole and collected all the scalpels.

  Stephanie knew she wouldn’t be able to hold out past the next new moon. Her blood was wearing her down. The only thing that gave her the strength to resist was the knowledge of what a monstrous thing it wanted to become. Then she’d think about what she did to her sister’s child and realise she was already monstrous herself.

  The child died a few weeks later and the ensuing investigation pointed to Stephanie. With the net closing in on her, she gathered up her scalpels and a flashlight and decamped to the basement.

  ***

  Kneeling on the floor, Stephanie stared at the image in the blood, and saw herself. The cycle had come around to the beginning. Only this time she wouldn’t be allowed to look away. This time she would have to face what the blood was trying to show her.

  Stephanie saw why the Duty Nurse had no record of her that first time she met Jan and why none of the nurses’ uniforms fitted her.

  She saw Mike hold her wrist as she tried to punch him and he said “Stephanie please, you’re in danger, great danger. You’re suffering from postpartum psychosis. You came off your pills because you didn’t want to endanger our child, remember? Like you did last time, when you miscarried.”

  “Let me go,” Stephanie said, trying to pull away. “I’ve got to get back to my rounds.”

  “Stephanie you don’t work in the hospital. You’ve been stealing uniforms and posing as a nurse. You’re going to get into real trouble if you don’t stop.”

  “Lies. You’re lying. This is all my sister’s doing. First she steals you from me, then she poisons your mind against me.”

  “No one stole me away from you Stephanie. You don’t have a sister. You’ve never had a sister. You’re an only child! This is all part of your delusion. It’s why you’ve got to start back on your medication. You’re a danger to yourself and . . . and . . . ”

  ***

  Mike couldn’t bring himself to finish that sentence, but he didn’t need to. Stephanie had proven him right. It was her own child she’d killed.

  Stephanie had a completely different life inside her now. It was time to give birth to it. The scalpels could not cut her anywhere near as deeply as the truth had. That was why the blood had shown her—so she could be ready.

  Stephanie made a fist with her left hand so the veins stood out on her wrist and bent her hand back so she could see the artery. Then she took a scalpel and made a deep incision, cutting down from the forearm towards the wrist.

  Stephanie felt a roar of joy inside her as the blood gushed out in rhythmic spurts. She took the scalpel in her left hand and repeated the process. It was more painful this time. The fingers on her left hand were numb from blood loss and she couldn’t cut so accurately.

  She felt cold, bitterly cold and empty. Coloured blotches appeared in front of her eyes and she fought dizziness.

  Stephanie picked up a longer scalpel. It wasn’t easy. Her fingers felt like balloons and were slick with escaping blood. She lifted the scalpel to her throat.

  The blood inside her carotid artery was so desperate to get out that the whole artery was throbbing and distended. Stephanie didn’t have to search for it.

  She plunged the tip of the scalpel directly into the artery and sliced down. The blood escaped in an ecstatic red spray like a fine mist.

  The flashlight flickered and finally died. Stephanie fell forward and ceased to exist.

  ***

  The n
ew life fled Stephanie’s body like an insane notion. It pooled into a glorious red delirium as the darkness crept in and the others joined her.

  She rose up corpuscle by corpuscle into the murderous frenzy of her new self. She was slick and red and fluid and entirely without tissue or bone.

  Her eight companions were waiting to greet her. The mad murderous sisters she’d fantasised about her whole life. The siblings who had plotted Stephanie’s downfall, just as she’d always known they would.

  “How The Dark Bleeds” was first published in the collection STUCK ON YOU AND OTHER PRIME CUTS from Crystal Lake Publishing.

  EXCERPTED FROM: THE FINAL CUT

  by

  Jasper Bark

  CHAPTER 1

  So, let me see if I’ve got this right,” Ashkan paused for effect. Like a lot of gangsters, he fancied himself a bit of an actor. The Iranian Al Pacino was how he styled himself. Right now his well practised glare was boring a hole in Sam’s forehead.

  “You muppets borrowed fifty grand of my money, my fucking money, to shoot a feature film. Ten days you said, ten days to shoot it. Two months to edit it, then blam, stick it out on the net as video on demand and we’ll recoup the cost in a matter of weeks. Am I lying?”

  “No,” said Sam, appalled at how high and frightened his voice sounded. “Look if you just give us a bit of time we can . . . ”

  Ashkan brought the back of his hand across Sam’s face. The blow sent Sam sprawling and the only reason he didn’t fall out of the chair was because he was held there with duct tape. The side of his face stung and it took a second for his vision to come back into focus.

  “When it’s your cue to fucking speak I’ll tell you, alright?” said Ashkan. Sam nodded and his head throbbed. Ashkan drew himself up to his full height. At six five he was pretty imposing. He adjusted his leather jacket and smoothed down his Ben Sherman shirt like he was about to go on stage. Then he looked from Sam to Jimmy, who was duct taped to the chair next to him.

  “See, what really disappoints me is, I like you guys. I like what you do. You’re good at it. So I put in a little sweetener. I let you off the interest for six whole months. That should’ve been enough time to clear the whole debt. Now, some people might think I was going soft. But I saw it as an investment in my acting career. You guys were writing me a big part in the movie, so it was the least I could do. So yesterday, I rock up at the set with my crew, looking to show off me mad acting skills and what do I find, Farshad?”

  “These two cunts, with their dicks in their hands and fuck all else,” said Farshad, a short guy with a thick beard and huge shoulders. He was standing behind Sam and Jimmy.

  “That’s right,” said Ashkan. “And trust me guys, as far as dicks go, they weren’t that impressive. I was expecting lights, cameras, the whole fucking shebang. Instead I got mugged off. No equipment, no script, no fucking actors, just you two cunts in an empty fucking warehouse. That’s all I got to show for my fifty grand. Am I lying?”

  Sam and Jimmy shook their heads.

  “You know what else I found out? Last week you two pissants tried to buy fifty grand’s worth of coke from one of my rivals. One of my fucking rivals! Only someone pulled a gun as it was going down and you were left with fuck all to show for yourselves. What were you gonna do with all that coke? Sell it to your friends in the film biz?”

  Sam and Jimmy looked at each other, then nodded hesitantly.

  “So you never had any intention of making a film then?”

  Sam didn’t know what to do.

  “You can talk now,” said Ashkan.

  “No, we’re still going to make the film,” said Sam. “I swear we’re going to make it, but we had overheads. I maxed out all my cards funding our last feature and costs were spiralling. We were going to take the profits from the coke and plough it all back into the film, I swear to you we were.”

  “Whose idea was this?”

  “It . . . it was mine,” Jimmy croaked, after a long pause. He was sweating heavily, it ran in trickles from his chestnut curls and pooled in his beard. He blinked nervously.

  “Jimmy thought we could use some of his underworld contacts and bring the deal off quickly,” said Sam.

  “Oh yeah,” said Ashkan with a derisive snort. “Big man is Jimmy, really well connected. See, what I don’t understand is, I just found you got some huge fucking trust fund waiting for you. So what the fuck you getting mixed up with all this shit for?”

  Sam hung his head. “It’s my parents,” he said in a small voice.

  “What?”

  “It’s my fucking parents. They won’t let me access the fund until I get a proper job, in the City or something, raping third world countries.”

  “You have to admit they’ve got a point. I mean you wouldn’t be in this mess if you had a proper job and I wouldn’t be about to do this.”

  Ashkan clicked his fingers. Faisal, one of the thugs who’d grabbed Sam and Jimmy and driven them to the Bethnal Green lock up, sidled up to Ashkan. He was tall and rangy, with a thick black moustache and a scar down his left cheek. He handed Ashkan a syringe. It was the big, thick kind you find in hospitals, not the sort you get at a needle exchange. It was full of clear liquid.

  Ashkan grabbed hold of Jimmy’s hair and bent his head to one side. A blue vein throbbed on Jimmy’s neck, Ashkan plunged the syringe into it.

  “Jesus, Ashkan,” Jimmy screamed, “What the fuck, what the fuck?”

  “Just giving you a little taste innit,” said Ashkan, pushing the plunger. “Thought you boys liked this sorta shit.”

  “The fuck is it?” Jimmy looked like he was going to have a fit. The muscles in his legs spasmed and his eyes twitched.

  “This shit? This is better than meth, better than any of that crap you get on the street. This is from my private collection. Save it for special occasions, like this one.” Ashkan clicked his fingers and one of his flunkies handed him another syringe.

  “Please,” said Sam, as Ashkan approached. “Not the neck, please.”

  “It’s better in the jugular vein, innit. Goes straight to the brain see. Gives you twice the fucking hit—Blam!”

  Sam felt a sharp prick as the needle hit his vein and the drug shot into his blood. His heart hammered like he was going into cardiac arrest and an ice cold wave washed over him. All the hairs on his body stood on end. The mother of all rushes charged through him. Ashkan hadn’t lied, this stuff was powerful. Sam’s head began to shake and his jaw worked involuntarily. He was blinking about a hundred times a minute.

  Faisal put a laptop down on a card table in front of them. “Have I got your attention? Good. Wouldn’t want you to miss a minute of this.” Ashkan opened the laptop. “You boys like film shows don’t you? Well I’ve got one mother of a film for you.” He clicked an icon on the screen and a piece of footage came up. “See this? This is what happens when you fuck with me. When you take my money and mug me off in front of my crew.” Ashkan patted Sam and Jimmy on the shoulders. “Enjoy the show boys.”

  The footage showed a dimly lit stone room that could have been a cellar or a prison cell. The camera, held by an amateur, swung unsteadily about the space. It picked out three figures, two men and a woman, strapped to operating tables which were covered in thick plastic sheeting.

  One of the men was screaming and sobbing, snot streamed down his top lip as he writhed and fought his straps. The other man, from his expression, was bargaining for his life. He looked Mediterranean, but was shouting in a language that sounded Arabic.

  The woman couldn’t have been a bigger contrast. She lay very still, her body completely relaxed and her face serene. She seemed completely at peace with what was going to be done to her.

  She was very striking, with strawberry blonde hair and high cheekbones. Her curves suggested a sensuous nature, but her eyes seemed to look heavenward, giving her a saintly, almost beatific look.

  “This the tape you got from Mr Isimud?” said Farshad.

  “Yeah man,” re
plied Ashkan. “This is some seriously fucked up shit, seriously fucked up.”

  “Sweet, wanted to see this for ages.”

  “Some of the things they do man, they’re like artists, trust me, artists—not killers.” Ashkan smacked Sam and Jimmy on the back of the head. He reached over their shoulders and pointed at the screen. “Pay attention boys, this is my money back guarantee. I guarantee this will happen to you if I don’t get my money back.”

  CHAPTER 2:

  The camera pushed in to a close shot of the Mediterranean guy’s face. He was still babbling desperately as two dark figures moved in on either side. The figures were blurry shadows, underlit and out of focus. Sam wasn’t sure how they’d achieved the effect because the Mediterranean guy’s face was crystal clear, so were the scalpels the figures held.

  The blurry figures moved in unison, as though choreographed. They stretched a tight strap across the guy’s forehead to keep his head still. Only his eyes rolled wildly as he pleaded for his life. Then the figures each took hold of an eyelid and pried them apart.

  With their other hands the figures brought the scalpels down into the corners of the guy’s eyes. Using tiny, deft movements they severed the muscle tissue holding his eyeballs in place. The guy stopped imploring the figures and shrieked with pain and fear.

  Thin streams of blood spurted from the guy’s eye sockets. The figures put down their scalpels and each produced a set of forceps. They took hold of his eyeballs with the forceps and lifted them out of their sockets, pulling them as far as their optic nerves would stretch. Next they turned the eyeballs so the pupils were pointed at the guy’s mouth. Working together, as though their free hands belonged to the same body, the figures applied dental clamps to the guy’s mouth and forced his jaws apart, holding his eyeballs over his mouth the whole while.

  With the clamps in place, the figures picked up their scalpels again and took to slicing off the guy’s top and bottom lips. Blood sprayed the cornea of one eyeball and Sam realised that, as the optic nerves were still attached, the guy could still see out of his severed eyes. He was being forced to watch an extreme close up of his own mutilation.