by John Everson
“They haven’t noticed us yet,” she said. “Hurry, do me.” Before he could say a thing, she added in a whisper, “No comments!”
Joe scooted back until his head was at her calves. Then he held her right leg and slipped the box cutter between her ankles. She helped, putting pressure on the rope, trying to pry her legs apart. He didn’t want to cut her, but he needed to be fast. Someone was going to notice what was going on any second now. The chapel echoed with terrified screams as Joe sawed back and forth on the many loops of brown rope around Cheyenne’s ankles. The blade bit through the twine easily, loop by loop. And then, in a flash, he was done. Her ankles shot apart.
“With this sacrifice, we call you. We have loved for you. We have killed for you.” Sienna called. The screams from the floor grew frenzied. They began loud, but quickly dulled. Their voices sounded as if they came from underwater. Screams became horrible gurgles of pain and fear.
The demon callers had brought the knives down on the necks of the women.
“The circle of blood is drawn!” Sienna said. She continued in another tongue, pronouncing a long guttural passage. It sounded like a prayer from hell.
“C’thalna sein frunte ung torna metaok, Uma Dos!”
Joe rose to his knees. “Ready?”
Cheyenne nodded. She put her hands on the pew, ready to rise and run.
“Curburide we call you,” Sienna said. “Take these feet, take this blood, take these souls.”
The demon callers all now held the heads of their victims by the hair, shifting them back and forth. There were slits on both sides of each victim’s neck, and blood jetted and spread in a messy but deliberate trail along the outside of the ritual circle. As they moved their sacrifices’ heads back and forth, each woman’s trail of blood grew closer and closer to the growing river from the next victim. Joe saw the Indian woman connect the line of blood she’d released with her finger to that of Mike’s sacrifice. And then he connected his to Telly’s.
“Cin Seem un nei, Curburide,” Sienna called.
“Cin Seem un nei, Curburide,” the group responded.
She called it again, and they repeated. Again and again. Louder and louder.
One of the gurgling cries beneath the chant turned suddenly strange.
Joe swore one of the dying women laughed.
“Yes!” Sienna cried. “I feel you. You are here, you are with us now! At last!”
“Go,” Cheyenne said. She grabbed his wrist and pulled and they both stood and launched themselves down the aisle towards the front door of the chapel.
Behind them, laughter erupted. It did not sound happy, or human. It came now from several voices, and grew in volume as Sienna cried out something guttural and loud in the strange language. Her voice sounded different. Almost a dark echo of itself.
Before they reached the door, Sienna finally noticed their flight.
“Stop,” she yelled. “Nobody leaves here alone!”
CHAPTER 28
CINDY SAT in the parking area of the Birchmir for less than ten minutes before dozing off. She’d gotten back in the car to wait, and only rested her head against the window to bide some time, but the slow night at the Cowgirl had sapped her energy. She closed her eyes for a moment, just to “rest” them. And that was all it took.
She woke up almost two hours later, with her head painfully kinked. “Crap,” she whispered, rubbing the back of her neck and looking around. There was no movement outside. But obviously from all the cars, something was still going on inside. Where was Joe? Was he even still here? She decided if he was, that he had to have taken his stakeout indoors. There was no point in sitting out here watching a quiet building all night.
None of your business. It’s late. Go home! The voice in her head cautioned, but as usual, she ignored it. She’d wasted enough time just waiting here. She made sure she shut the car door quietly, and then ran across the open ground between where the cars were parked and the mission door.
Joe had said he would be watching the mission from the valley behind the structure, so she walked to the back of the building first. There were a couple small windows, which she stayed away from in case anyone was nearby inside, and then saw the broken one Joe had used to climb into the Birchmir on his first visit. Was that how he’d gotten in tonight too?
Cindy walked away from the old structure and looked out across the plain beyond. While it was the middle of the night, the moon and stars were bright enough that she could see individual plants and trees far out into the expanse. The moon was low on the horizon, getting ready for “the big event” at dawn. She scanned the hillside but didn’t see any evidence that Joe was out there. If he was, he should have recognized her by now, and flagged her down.
No, the air held only that gentle quiet of just before dawn. She turned back toward the mission then, and her eye caught on a glint of something shiny on the ground near the front wall. She walked towards it until she could make out the black rubber of a tire. A motorbike. And it didn’t look old and rusted and abandoned. Someone had dropped it here recently.
Internally, she nodded to herself. Yep, that had to be the one Joe had rented.
She looked at the windows of the Birchmir wondering how long he’d been inside. Had he been discovered? Was he safe?
A scream broke the slumbering silence.
And another one. And then a chorus. They came from inside the building.
Cindy quickly walked along the wall until she was standing just outside the broken window. With her ear to the opening, she listened, and now could hear the rumble of many voices. They were chanting something, as the screams multiplied.
What the hell? She’d never taken Arnie seriously, but obviously some fucked up shit went on out here. Her mind flashed on the night Joe had come home with her. He’d been so sweet in bed. Kinda funny, but kinda serious too. She could tell he had secrets and a past she was curious about.
What if he was in there and they’d discovered him? She might never get the chance to learn more about Joe.
She put her hands on the sill of the window and decided to see for herself.
Cindy felt around and confirmed that the sill was free of glass, and then she pushed up, and angled her head inside. The room was very dark, but she could make out enough to see that the floor was clear beneath the window. She just needed to slide her body across the sill and land quietly in that empty space. No sweat.
A moment later, she was in, and dusting her hands off on her pants. The chanting and screams were louder inside, and she thought they were picking up in intensity.
She tiptoed across the room and scoped the area beyond. An empty hall. The way to the right was dark. But to the left, there was a glow on the wall at the end. And the voices were definitely coming from that direction. She crept silently down the hall until she reached the end and had no choice but to turn right. The corridor moved past another couple closed doors, before opening onto the chapel. She could tell immediately that’s what the big room was; her corridor opened onto a view of an altar.
Cindy hugged the wall that was closest to the interior of the chapel, and eased her way to the edge. When she was close, she pressed one cheek to the cold wall and inched forward until her right eye could see around the edge and into the seating area of the old chapel. She almost lost it, when her vision registered the scene in front of her. At first with all of the nudity, she thought it was an orgy, but then she saw the blood.
An old woman stood naked in the center of an occult symbol drawn on the floor. She was calling out words in a foreign tongue; she seemed to be the high priestess or something. There were white lines drawn inside the circle, but they were obscured by bodies and smears of red. Five women lay inside, spread evenly around the space, their feet all facing the wrinkled priestess. There were others there too, holding the victims down. Four men and a woman. They all held knives. Bloody
knives.
The necks of all the women had been slashed, their blood spread in a smeary channel that ran all around the outside ring of the circle. A circle of sacrificial blood.
Cindy pulled her head back from the edge. Holy shit. This wasn’t just black magic bullshit with mirrors and candles and goats or something. These fuckers were actually killing people! Her stomach shrank to the size of a stone. This was not good. She should not be here. Cindy pressed her back against the wall and forced herself to breathe, slow and easy. She hadn’t seen Joe in the circle. At least, she didn’t think so. But there had been so much blood. Where was he?
Someone inside the chapel began laughing. It barely sounded human. Her skin goose bumped when she heard it. Another laugh joined in a moment later. The screams from the women seemed to be dying down. Probably because they’re dying, her inner voice said.
The priestess suddenly yelled something that clearly wasn’t part of the ritual. “Stop,” the old woman commanded. “Nobody leaves here alone!”
What the hell? Cindy thought. She pressed her face to the wall and peered around the corner again, straining to see what the woman was upset about. The five women remained on the floor. They may have all been dead by now. None of them were moving and a couple of them lay with their mouths open wide and eyes unblinking. Their captors all seemed to be still in place as well, though two of them were now standing. Seconds later, they began to run towards the chapel door.
“Let them be,” the priestess said. She waved them off. “The Curburide are here. It doesn’t matter what they do now, they won’t get far.”
As the priestess was speaking, a dark-skinned American Indian woman with waist-long black hair stood up. She’d been lying on top of one of the bloody women, and her cocoa-brown chest was now smeared with a more vibrant hue. Cindy realized it wasn’t just the blood of the dead woman on the floor that coated her; the Indian girl was also bleeding herself, from a long slash down her middle.
But Cindy only noticed that for a moment. Because as the bloody woman stood, her dark eyes opened wide as if in surprise. She turned her head first left, then right, in oddly fluid motions that looked as if she were a swan, angling her head on a long stalk from side to side. The woman then held her fingers out in front of her, and flexed them slowly, and then faster. She looked as if she’d never seen her own hands before.
Then the woman opened her mouth, and laughed.
Only, it wasn’t the sound of a woman laughing. It wasn’t even the sound of a man.
That sound couldn’t have come from her, Cindy thought. There was no humor in the laugh. It was low and nasty, like a metal grate dragged over nails. Or some kind of animal caught in a trap. The inflection mirrored laughter, but not.
Still, the woman’s mouth was moving and the sound matched those motions. The horrible laugh did come from the Indian woman.
What the fuck? Cindy thought.
“Welcome,” the old woman said to the laughing girl. “What is your name?”
’the fuck? Cindy thought again.
The Indian woman’s eyes seemed to bug out of her head, as her teeth flashed white in a disjointed grin. The horrible laugh stopped and the strange voice said, “Gonorah.” It sounded like the guttural noise of someone vomiting.
Next to her, one of the naked men stood up. He had unruly black hair and a pointy nose. Cindy thought his face looked almost birdlike. In a bird of prey kind of way. His chest was also covered with blood, and his penis hung obscenely long and garishly red. A wound of male sex.
“At last,” he said, in a voice almost as wrong as the woman’s. It sounded sharp, and shrill. “I have been waiting forever.”
“You’re here now,” the old woman answered. “And you won’t have to go home after just an hour or two, as they usually do.”
Another voice laughed, and another naked man stood up from the floor. He came up behind the priestess and wrapped thick bearlike arms around her wrinkled, sagging belly. The grey thatch of her pubic hair brushed his hand as she shook her backside to rub against him.
“This time, the door will not close,” the old woman promised.
Gonorah nodded. She raised both hands in the air and turned in a pirouette. “They are coming,” she said. “More and more of us.”
The black-haired guy slipped an arm around the curvy waist of the bloody Indian girl, and dragged Gonorah close to him, until her small breasts squashed against his ribs. He leaned in and stuck his tongue in her mouth. Instead of slapping him, she threw her arms around his neck and vaulted herself off the floor, to grind her pelvis on his. Now it was her forcing a pink tongue into the other’s mouth.
Cindy pulled away from the opening to flatten her back against the wall. It felt as if her eyes were going to fall out of her head. She didn’t know what she was seeing in the other room, but it was anything but normal. It was as if a bunch of murderers had been possessed.
Something cold touched her in the back of the neck, and the chill shot down to the base of her spine like a shock. She gasped.
Someone spoke to her then in a voice like wind through wooden chimes. It was faint but airy. “That’s exactly what has happened,” the voice said.
“Huh?” Cindy said, partly out loud. As she did, she prayed nobody in the next room heard her.
“They won’t pay any attention,” the voice said. Suddenly it was louder, and the ice grew solid down her back.
“Who is speaking?” she whispered. “Where are you?” Part of her still expected someone to walk out from around the corner of the hallway to where she could see. But part of her knew better. That part of her was petrified. And rightly so.
“I am Delivida,” the wind-voice said. “And I am as close to you as close can be.”
Cindy tried to push away from the wall… or to raise her arm… and found that she couldn’t. She was locked in place.
“I’ve been waiting a long time for this,” Delivida said.
Suddenly Cindy’s leg lifted of its own accord. It was as if a puppeteer was above her, pulling the strings.
Or the reins.
“Let’s go for a ride,” the demon suggested.
CHAPTER 29
“HAVE ANOTHER DRINK,” Helone suggested, and waved Alex across the room. There was a carafe there of something ruby red that slid heavy and rich across the tongue. Alex had already sipped one glass, and her head felt light because of it. Helone had downed three.
“I don’t know,” Alex said, and the demon’s face lit.
“You only live once,” Helone answered. “You told me you didn’t like to hide from life.”
Alex couldn’t resist a smile at that. She got up from the smooshy, cushioned chair she’d been in for most of the past three hours and walked over to the carafe with her empty glass.
They had spent most of the evening in the sitting room, Helone lounging on the couch, Alex on the chair. They had talked about all sorts of things, from daily “demon” life to what it was like growing up in Nebraska. Helone had asked her about her talent for talking to spirits, and Alex had shrugged. It was just something that had always been natural for her. Her parents had chalked it up to a child’s vivid imagination at first, when she’d sat in corners playing with dolls and jacks and blocks talking animatedly to a person who wasn’t there.
Only, it wasn’t imagination; the spirits were there. Her parents couldn’t hear them, but Alex had gathered a handful of ghosts who used to sit with her and play with her every day… until her father had finally decided she wasn’t imaginative, but possessed.
After he’d had the house exorcised, her friends hadn’t come back. But that hadn’t stopped other spirits from drifting into their house in the following years. “I learned not to let him see me talking to them,” Alex had told Helone.
The old demon nodded. “I’ve walked a similar road,” she said. “I love humans, and d
on’t want them to be hurt when they’re here with me. That’s why this house is built the way it is. Nobody can see me talking with you here. Nobody can come inside without my permission.”
“Isn’t that a normal thing for a house?” Alex had said. She pictured the deadbolts on the front door to her parents’ house.
Helone had smiled. “No,” she said. “The Curburide move through things like air. We abide by the structures we build, most of the time, simply for comfort. But we’re not bound by those things. We go where we wish, see who we wish.”
“So what’s different about this place?” Alex had asked.
Helone looked around the room before answering. “With age comes privilege, and wisdom,” she said. “I’ve lived a long time. A very long time.”
“What is a long time?”
“Your kind were still squatting in caves when I first built this house,” Helone had said.
Alex poured herself another glass of the ruby liquor. It was sweet, but heavy. She couldn’t have drank it fast if she wanted to; it was overpowering in a gulp. It was meant for sipping. She looked at the old demon, lying sprawled and clearly comfortable on the couch.
What must it be like to live for eternity? A long night like this one was barely a blink to her. And from her stories, she rarely stirred from this place, just walked these rooms week after week, sometimes not even moving from one place for days. It seemed like it would be a prison, even if a comfortable one.
“What was it like to live in a prison with your parents?” Helone asked. Alex hadn’t guarded herself enough again. The demon had heard her path of thought.
“It was bad at the end,” Alex said. “I just wanted to be left alone.”
“So you could do as you pleased. Talk to the spirits who you enjoyed.”
Alex nodded.
“If your parents had been different, would you have minded staying in your home?”
Alex shook her head. “No, but that’s not the same thing as living there forever. I would have grown older, gone away to college, moved into my own house.”