Daniel’s keys had become unhooked from their loop on his belt during the assault and Bartholomew strained to reach them through the bars of his cell. The keys were agonizingly near to his clawing fingers and he giggled impishly as his nails brushed the metal ring that held them, like a thick white spider scurrying after its prey.
As Bartholomew’s remaining index finger nudged the keys again, Mary’s slim hand dexterously plucked them from his grasp as she spat, ‘Imbecile! The doctor will be unable to complete his rounds now. I will have to continue his ministrations. You will be punished for your behavior, you see if you shan’t!’
Mary ripped the electrodes from her head, small geysers of blood springing from the holes left behind. Mary unlocked her cell and strode purposefully to the small table that served Daniel as a stand for his washbowl and where the shaving mirror had rested until recently. Opening the little central drawer, she withdrew the revolver and checked that it was loaded. She turned and aimed the weapon down towards the prostrate figure of Bartholomew.
He began to sob, ‘No, no, don’t kill me! I dare not go to their domain, I…’
Before he could finish the sentence, Mary fired, the shell hitting him squarely between the eyes and exploding a clump of his brain out through the back of his skull.
‘There now, all better.’ She smiled as she emptied five more rounds into his head at close range.
Daniel’s peripheral vision started to blur and he felt the walls of the small room edge closer to him, but with each effort he expended to gain the chair, the thing seemed to retreat further into the distance. The cables that cluttered the floor hindered him, but he managed to draw himself up into a kneeling position and swing onto the chair. He felt heavy now, as if his body had solidified, the muscles and ligaments denser and somewhat immobile. Then he seemed to be melting into the chair, his heartbeat like the pounding of artillery shells, each one finding its target in his chest. He tried to focus, but his mind was vague and it was with a supreme effort that he lifted a hand and threw the generator’s starting lever.
The generator hissed like it was producing steam and static charges flared, localizing around the seated figure of Daniel, and then dancing down the lengths of cables that fed the generator. Blue-green bursts scampered along the bundles of wires, branching off to visit each of the six cells and climbing to the electrodes attached directly to the inmates’ brains. Screams filled the air as tissue was probed, stimulated, and burnt. Nerve endings were ruptured and blood filled the spaces created and brainwave activity was provoked and began to travel in the opposite direction.
Inside the small room, Daniel was barely conscious now and barely aware of the wooden splinters piercing the muscles where his forearms touched the rests on the chair. The fragments adroitly avoided all major arteries, making deep connections within the flesh. The morbid tapestry of the chair’s engraving was now fed with Daniel’s blood, giving the scenes vivid color. The spindled backrest peeled into wooden shoots that penetrated Daniel’s back in small, precise punctures from nape to base, breaching the skin on either side of his spine and seeking the central nervous system. Synchronized arachnid legs of wood sprang from the top of the high back, splaying outwards to close around Daniel’s skull, and began to drill into the hard, dense tissue like medieval brain surgeons’ instruments.
Fingers of energy leaped from a single bronze dish mounted on the generator, crackling and fizzing as they hit Daniel’s skin. Charred patches of necrotic tissue were left in the wake of the bolts as they hurried like miniature tornadoes across his body and ignited his clothes where they lingered. The light fittings began to sway, rotating beams of light around the two rooms, turning the inmates’ agonies into the motion of characters drawn on the edges of a rapidly flicked sketchbook. The generator began to emit a high-pitched screech as the chair began to vibrate. Molecules were disassembled and Daniel seemed to be fused with the chair on an atomic level, the distinction between his flesh and the chair’s timber becoming less defined.
A brilliant, dazzling pure white light blinked into existence in front of Daniel’s face, but his eyes were closed now as the wooden fingers surveyed the matter of his brain. His face twisted into a grimace of pleasure, as his subconscious became responsive to levels of awareness beyond normal human experience and worlds beyond the physical plane. The light rippled like liquid sky in front of Daniel, the edges changing from blue to green to black as the centre began to shimmer silver and blossom outwards like the unfolding of a steel flower. The layers folded and peeled, to be replaced again and again, as the centre expanded until the dimensions of the phenomenon paralleled the chair.
Although the floating, mushrooming shape was suspended, independent of the space around it, viewed from the front it seemed to possess depth and three dimensions. However, from the side aspect it was razor thin, almost invisible. The light radiating from the interior quivered as if the surface of a lake had been disturbed by something coming out of its depths. The immediate area surrounding the happening began to reek of the stench of deprivation, of the corruption of flesh in all its facets, blood, sex, waste; and Daniel’s eyes flickered as if smelling salts had been passed under his nostrils. An acrid, metallic taste filled his mouth and he heard the pitch of the generator, even though it was beyond the range of human hearing.
The opening at the heart of the distortion warped and buckled as something solid emerged, something stepping from the void into this world. Its tread was hesitant and unsure, like a wild animal testing unfamiliar territory. The limb was moist, dripping with a thick, gelatinous substance like mucus, and it issued a thin vapor as it came into contact with an environment markedly colder than its own. The skin was paper thin, almost invisible, so that the muscles and sinews were visible, working beneath the transparent film as the body parts moved. The remainder of the entity emerged from the opening, and as it did so, it trailed a wet jellied membrane that secreted from the rift and attached to the thing’s body like a placenta.
But the being was fighting to be free of the link and its internal organs and muscles were visibly stretching beneath its sheer skin, as if they were magnetized and resisting the strong attraction of the opening. The thing was seven feet in height and humanoid but it had the shape of something that had deviated from true human form. The torso was wide and powerful, a glistening barrel chest protruding below heavy, rounded shoulders. Its arms were long, lean, bony attachments with four slender talons that dripped the same thick slime that covered the rest of the body, wet and slithering. The legs resembled human limbs down to the knees, the thighs bulky and solid, but then the angle reversed into the contour of an ungulate, like skinned goat legs.
The thing’s head turned to survey its new surroundings and its eyes glowed hot and red, tainted with a fury that was not born of this world. Its mouth opened and stretched wide, as if exercised for the first time, and the bottom jaw dislocated and jutted outwards. The rows of small, pointed teeth glinted in the dimness and from the wide, flaring, flat nostrils came short, deep snorts. Daniel’s hand trembled as he raised it and through the fog of his failing eyesight it looked as if it belonged to someone else. His fingers made contact with the taut, damp flesh of the being, touching its arm as the thing regarded Daniel’s hand. Then Daniel’s hand began to fall limp again, threads of a silvery substance still connecting his fingers to the thing’s arm, hanging like a ghostly grey web, glittering with early morning dew.
The being lifted its glistening skull and tilted it to one side, more of the rheumy matter dripping to the floor like a clump of jellyfish. Its red eyes considered the slumped figure of Daniel and the lip-less mouth spread into the semblance of a cruel, wicked smile that showed vicious teeth like an open wound on its face. A scratchy, dry noise fell from the mouth, like the sound of dead leaves crushed between palms.
And then the thing found its voice for the first time in centuries on the physical plane, ‘You flesh walkers will have hell on Earth, and we will have your life.’<
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Daniel tried to move but he was dying from his legs up and all he could manage was an approximation of motion, as his head fell to his chest. He groaned and the sound was mournful and came from his soul. The elastic strands attaching the entity to the opening were beginning to shred as it forced itself forward and its arm snapped forward to grab Daniel. Daniel was lifted high into the air, until his face was inches from the thing and its foul breath filled his senses to the point of retching. But he did not possess the strength to empty his stomach and he lolled in the monster’s grip, his legs dangling like a puppet below him as blood still flowed from his neck in a steady stream.
The thing’s tongue unfurled from its gash mouth. It was long and seemed to have a life of its own as it squirmed and darted over the files of blade-edged teeth. The texture was leathery and it forked into a snake-like tip, quivering, as it tasted the blood smeared across Daniel’s throat. Slowly, as if he was lifting a great weight, Daniel’s hand rose to the side of his neck, to where the shard of glass jutted out like a bony protrusion. The thing’s head turned slowly to watch as Daniel grasped the fragment and wrenched it from his neck.
At first the removal of the object resulted in no perceptible change and the monster disregarded Daniel for a moment to look to its rear at the tentacles of slime disconnecting in its wake. Blood swelled at the open wound in Daniel’s neck, like water pushing at a dam, and then surged from the deep hole. It spilled over the entity’s hand where it still gripped Daniel and the thing howled in rage. The sinewy fibers holding the thing to the suspended opening grew taut and began to retract, pulling it and Daniel through the aperture.
Standing at the door to the small room and watching, Mary now moved towards the light, captivated by its beauty. She probed it with her fingers and the play of light became malleable under the pressure of her touch as she wriggled her fingers. She was mesmerized by the way the substance of the rift folded around her hand, like a mouse writhing in and out of her fingers. Small bolts of lightning jumped from the opening and produced an aura around her, a glowing halo that seemed to emit from her body. The aura changed from white, to yellow, to black, and then the opening began to chip and splinter like pieces of a shattered mirror.
Mary spoke as if in a dream, ‘Doctor Daniel, you took your own life to send the demon back to where it crawled from.’
Then there was an explosion as the phenomenon imploded in on itself and winked out of existence. Mary’s hand was sliced away in a clean cut, as if it had been drawn on paper and snipped off with scissors. The hand vanished along with the opening and Mary studied the stump left behind, clean, bloodless, no wound, no pain, and as if she had simply been born that way. The chair began to slowly revert to its original shape and the generator’s screech diminished to a barely audible hum. Apart from the pool of blood that stained the stone floor and splattered the chair, there was no evidence that the event had even taken place.
Mary turned and walked to the small table, opening the drawer where the revolver she had used to kill Bartholomew had been kept. She found the store of bullets and using her teeth and remaining hand she reloaded the weapon. The aura around her crackled like static electricity and it turned as black as raven’s wings as she walked calmly past the inmates’ cells. The inmates were all dead, their brains fried by the huge energy levels that had backfired from the generator. Mary climbed the stone stairs and walked calmly across the small study. She closed and locked both doors behind her and left the key on one of the small tables that decorated the large reception hall, and made her way to the main body of the asylum.
John Miller looked up from the ledger he was busily updating. It was a record of the hourly rounds completed by the asylum staff and he had been too preoccupied with it to notice Mary until she was mid-way across the reception hall. Her footfalls were silent on the wooden floor as she wore only a gown. John frowned and peered into the lamp-lit twilight of the hall. Mary became more distinct and John saw the flayed folds of skin around her head that had housed the electrodes, revealed now where her light hair was shaved. He saw the crusted blood caught in the illumination thrown from the lamps, the full mouth, her breasts moving beneath the gown, the stump of her left hand and the revolver in her right.
John started and moved to press the alarm button on the wall of the office, but before he could do so the first bullet hit him just below his left eye. He fell backwards, crashing into a table and upsetting the books and forms stacked there, before collapsing into a seated position. Papers drifted like large snowflakes to rest in his lap and he inclined his head, making a high-pitched gurgling noise as Mary shot him in his large chest. John sat with his head bowed, slipping into death as Mary watched the pool of blood begin to form around him.
She admonished, ‘Someone is going to have to attend to this mess and it will not be me sir, I have other business to keep me occupied!’ and she began to ascend the main staircase.
Deep in the east wing Matthew Bailey had nearly finished checking Dominic Cray’s room. Old Mr. Cray was the last inmate Matthew was required to visit on this particular round. Mr. Cray was an emaciated, wasted, pitiful, skeletal creature. He was a tormented man and his shrunken eyes burnt with a nameless fear. That spark of animation and the living tissue stretched across his bones were the only things that suggested he was still alive, as he did not move, did not speak, and did not blink.
As an adolescent, he had claimed to see demons, hideous apparitions that manifested in this world and skulked in the shadows, watching. The young Mr. Cray could not understand why he alone was cursed with this ability and one day he decided to try to make contact with one of the beings. It was a vicious-looking little imp-faced thing with teeth like the edge of a saw, jet black eyes, and skin as albino white as fresh snow. But the second the young Mr. Cray addressed the monster it became frenzied and began to slash at the boy’s face, lacerating his arms as he tried to protect himself. From that moment on, it was as if the devils were aware of the young man, whereas before they had been oblivious of him.
So Mr. Cray made himself a small target, lying still and barely breathing, barely eating, never speaking, his eyes permanently alert and watchful in case he gave himself away with some involuntary action. And thirty years later he still watched, mapping the monsters’ movement amidst the darkness and smiling inwardly because they did not notice him. As long as he kept still. His muscles had wasted many years ago so that even if he had the will to move, he could not. Except for his precious eyes.
Now he watched Matthew fulfilling the obligatory inspection of his room. He liked Matthew. He was a kind man. He did not see the demons, of course, but nobody did, except Mr. Cray. Matthew spoke to him as he lay on the bed as if in a morgue. His bedsores required constant attention and Mr. Cray required many turns of his frail, lifeless body throughout the day and night.
‘How are you tonight, Mr. Cray?’
No answer. There never was an answer.
‘Miss Eve says we have to check every single last blooming room, every single blooming night! Says that when we least expects it, a patient will conspire to deceive us and take his own life. Or the life of one of us!’ and he proceeded to feel under the mattress where Mr. Cray lay. Then he checked the windows and then the small cupboard under the sink. Finally, he examined Mr. Cray, satisfying himself there were no concealed implements about his person. He showed great care to ensure he did not harm the delicate body.
‘You hear that, Mr. Cray? Says we have to make sure everything is ship-shape and Bristol fashion 29 every blooming hour, if you don’t mind, Mr. Cray. Anyway, we are all done here now,’ he continued.
Matthew looked into Mr. Cray’s intense, green eyes, always keen and scrutinizing. And always focused on Matthew when he spoke. In fact Mr. Cray was the only person that paid any attention when Matthew spoke and Matthew liked him for that. Except that now Mr. Cray’s eyes had become unnaturally large and were staring past Matthew, as if he had seen something in the shadows. The stare tran
sferred to Matthew and it held a desperate quality that unnerved the attendant.
But the warning came too late and as Matthew bent close to Mr. Cray and began to form the words, ‘Are you quite yourself Mr. Cray?’ the scissors’ long blades sliced between his shoulder blades. They sank fully up to Mary’s fist, puncturing his spinal column. Matthew lurched forward so his nose pressed down hard on Mr. Cray’s cheek, his eyes blank and locked into Mr. Cray’s screaming eyes. Blood surged from between Matthew’s lips and filled the old man’s mouth. And as the attendant slid from view, Mr. Cray saw the demons in the shadows at the edge of the room, leaping and somersaulting with delight.
Mary now appeared at his side and Mr. Cray began to weep for the first time in thirty-five years, the tears bitter and alien as they ran from his eyes.
Mary leaned close and she was beautiful. An angelic halo surrounded her as she spoke but Mr. Cray knew it was merely the single ceiling light.
‘Good evening, Mr. Cray. My goodness you are in a state. But do not concern yourself, I have heard Doctor Daniel speak of you many times. And yes, I am afraid the demons are quite real.’
And now Mary held the perfectly smooth stump in front of Mr. Cray’s pleading eyes and continued, ‘Look how they took my hand. But no need to worry unduly, Mr. Cray, I will make it so that you will not have to look upon their godless faces again.’
Then Mary delicately and with a tender aptitude removed his precious eyes with the scissors, clipping the optic nerves and placing the orbs in Mr. Cray’s hands.
Spawn of Man Page 3