by Gene Lazuta
Also by Gene Lazuta
Bleeder
Blood Flies
Forget Me Not
Happy Cage (as Daniel Raven)
The Shinglo (as Alex Kane)
The Bill Hawley Undertakings (as Leo Axler)
Final Viewing
Double Plot
Grave Matters
Separated at Death
Copyright © 1992 by Gene Lazuta
Bloodshot Books Edition © 2016
All Rights Reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means without the author’s written consent, except for the purposes of review
Cover Design © 2016 by Elderlemon Design
http://www.elderlemondesign.com/
ISBN-13: 978-0-9980679-0-2
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s fertile imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
READ UNTIL YOU BLEED!
VYRMIN
by Gene Lazuta
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE (January 7, 1963) 1
I - HARPERSVILLE, OHIO (1987) 13
II - THE KILLIBROOK VALLEY 109
III - DIE•RY 185
IV - BLOOD PRINCE 281
EPILOGUE 344
This book, like every book, is for my wife, Sue.
There’s wolves in the woods,
my girl, my girl.
There’s wolves in the woods,
my dear.
But come the full moon,
see the blue moon.
And there’s wolves in the house,
and the mirror.
- Children’s rhyme (circa 1800)
PROLOGUE
JANUARY 7, 1963
“Your father says you have bad dreams,” an invisible doctor said from behind a bouncing ball of blinding white light.
The boy nodded sheepishly, rubbing his hands over his naked knees and squinting as the light moved from his left eye to his right, describing phantom capillaries in a sulfurous glow that burned away the last of his sleepy confusion. He was fully awake. He didn’t know where he was. It was almost two o’clock in the morning.
“Tell him,” his father’s voice commanded angrily from the antiseptic smell behind the glare. “Tell him who it was this time!”
“Mr. Norris, please,” the doctor said, snapping off his penlight. “There’s no need to frighten the child.”
“He’s my kid, and I’ll frighten him all I want!” his father slurred, jutting his face forward and watching the boy with that same, wary expression he’d worn when he’d wrenched him from his bed, driven him down anonymous, snow-covered streets, and pounded on an unlit door. It was the same expression he’d worn as he’d whispered hoarse apologies to this frizzle-haired doctor who yawned and rubbed his chin while the boy shivered, shoeless, in a strange, amber-tinted alcove. And it was closely related to the gnarled mask of panic that had popped the sinews in his neck when he threw his hands into the air and cried, “There’s something wrong with his goddamn head, and I gotta know what it is tonight!” in a voice that made the boy wince and the doctor unlock his examination room.
The shrillness of that pronouncement made the boy feel as if salt had been poured into the hollow center of his spine. It sucked the life out of him, so that he dangled like a puppet when he was undressed. It festered in his mind, sensitizing him to the static charge of urgency hanging in the room. And it shrank his self-image into a tiny, vulnerable seed.
“Perhaps you should have a seat outside,” the doctor suggested, skillfully gathering up the man’s drunken protests and escorting him to the door. “I’ll call you when I’m through.”
“I know he’s the one doin’ it!” the man shouted as he was herded into the front room. “He denies it, but there’s something in his brain…something in his head! It makes him see things…makes things happen. Whatever it is, you gotta get rid of it, Doc. You gotta cut it out before he can do it again!”
The door slammed, the room was cold, and the night outside was absolute.
The doctor, who was tall and lean, had a bristling grey beard, hard black eyes, and a nervous, birdlike way of holding his head that was absurd and disturbing. He terrified the boy with his every move. And just the idea of his long white fingers touching his skin tingled his groin and quivered his lower lip.
“So,” the doctor said, then smiled, covering the distance between the door and the examination table in three flowing steps. “You’re only five years old, and already your father is afraid of you. Isn’t it a shame that such a weak man should be blessed with a son like you?”
The boy was trembling from head to foot.
Why did his dad do this to him? he wondered guiltily. What did he do that was so bad that it would make his father want to bring him to places like this, night after night, where men poked and prodded, jabbed him with needles, and took his blood, pee and spit? What did he do that made his father want to leave him with strange old men who did things to him…things that he couldn’t even talk about later, when his dad would drive them home in silence? His dad knew about the things the doctors did—he knew how bad they were—but he acted like they were the boy’s fault.
But they weren’t!
Just like the dreams weren’t his fault!
The dreams scared him.
He was scared of just about everything anymore. He was especially scared now that his father had left the room. But instead of displaying his fear, he straightened his spine, stuck out his jaw, and locked his fingers protectively over his crotch, producing a profile that would one day characterize the essence of his adult personality.
“Don’t be afraid,” the doctor said—like the doctors always said.
The muscles around the boy’s mouth twitched.
“I’m not going to hurt you.”
He knew that that was the signal that he was about to be hurt, and his hands reflexively clenched.
“Now, watch me…”
Then the doctor did something that no doctor had ever done before: he put his hands behind his back.
“Okay?” he asked, bending forward at the waist so that his hairy head loomed huge and close in the boy’s vision. “There’ll be no touching tonight. Do you understand?”
Tiny, twin reflections of a shivering child were drifting freely within the black depths of the doctor’s eyes. Watching those phantom shapes, the boy coiled his muscles in hopeless preparation as his first whiff of the man’s scent did something to him.
It was a warm, brown smell, a rich muskiness that seemed to place images in his mind, pictures that teased at his thoughts and made him blink. In his head he saw horses, and sparkling water, swirling spirals of wood-smoke, and twisted iron wheels rusting in the sunshine of rippling, grassy fields.
“You can feel it,” the doctor said. He smiled, displaying remarkably white, unnaturally long teeth that were pointed, perfect, and…
Sharp.
He has teeth just like a dog, the boy thought flatly.
“Just let it happen, my son,” the doctor added, and there was a babble like water running somewhere deep behind his words: cool, soothing, and deceptively inviting. “I know that you secretly want it to happen, because I know what you dream.”
“You do?” the body couldn’t help but ask—when he spoke, his tongue felt a little numb.
“I do. Now, watch…”
There was something in the doctor’s eyes—something big. Gazing into those eyes, the boy felt trepidation and fear trickle from his system as a warm sensation of peace eased his thoughts and lowered his mental defenses. His hands were limp on his lap, his mouth dropped open a litt
le, and his breathing slowed to a steady, gentle rhythm that was as shallow as a promise.
In the doctor’s eyes, children floated…small, naked and distorted by perspective so that their foreheads bulged over swollen brows.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” the doctor whispered lovingly, his lips forming the words with hypnotizing precision. “There’ve been others of your kind. But none of your breed. I’ve not seen a prince in three hundred years. Hail to thee, bloody prince. Hail to thee for thine kin.”
His face was closer now, and around his eyes, wrinkled skin puckered over twitching muscle. His words played on the boy’s sensitive cheek in hot, meaty puffs. And when he reached to cup the child’s chin, he let him.
“Sometimes at night, you see things that make you scream,” the doctor said, moving his head appraisingly back and forth. “Your father fears your screams and the things you tell him of your dreams. His fear is great enough to motivate his misguided search for a cure.”
He laughed: one brutish grunt.
“A cure for the sun.”
The boy nodded his agreement, unsure if it was he or the man who made his skull bounce.
The doctor smiled again.
“Sometimes, when you close your eyes, you float over your bed and you see yourself sleeping. That’s when you see the things that your father is so worried about: the things that frighten you so badly. Isn’t that so?”
The boy nodded…he couldn’t help but nod. There was something about the way the doctor moved his head, slowly, back and forth, that made him want to tell nothing but the truth.
“Tell me what you see,” the doctor urged. “When your spirit roams the night.”
The boy hesitated, suddenly aware of his voice, coming not from his throat, but from the figure he was watching, awash in the darkest dark he’d ever seen. Somewhere in that dark behind his reflection, there were vague forms that seemed to drift shapelessly, swirling like mist and watching all that transpired.
“Tell me,” the doctor prompted in a voice that was not to be denied. “I know of your pain…and your loneliness. I know of the men who’ve examined you at night. Tell me about your dreams, and I promise that no one will ever bother you again.”
“Places,” the boy offered hopefully, gazing into his reflection’s eyes so as not to see the things that seemed to be peering at him from inside the doctor’s head—the animal things. The things that looked so old, and so ugly.
“Go on.”
“And people.”
“I’ll not ask you again, boy. Continue!”
The fear was back now. But this time, it wasn’t simply physical. This time, it was a creeping sensation of dread that had nothing to do with the boy’s body, and everything to do with his soul.
“Speak!” the doctor’s voice pronounced, and the boy was instantly certain that if he didn’t, something far worse than any touching would happen.
“I see people and places, far away,” he said, meekly, his voice pitifully small. “I go up into the sky, or somewhere like the sky, and I see things happen—bad things happen—to people I don’t know.”
“And are you alone in the sky?”
“No. While I’m there I can feel…something. I don’t know what it is, but it’s big…maybe bigger than the sky is big. It watches me. I think it always watches me, but I can only really feel it for sure when I’m in the sky.”
“And do you know what that something big is?” the doctor asked, pointedly.
“No.”
“Would you like to know?”
“No! I want my daddy!”
“Silence!”
The boy felt himself flinch.
“I’m going to tell you about it, boy. I’m going to tell you, and you’re going to keep it hidden until again we meet, many years from now. You’re going to lock it away in your mind. You won’t speak of it, or think of it, or remember it until the day I summon you unto myself. On that day you’ll remember…and you’ll come. No resisting will prevent it. You will come. And together, we’ll change the world. Now, listen:
“The man who brought you here tonight isn’t your father, and the place you live isn’t your home. You are of the trees and the valleys. Your nature is green, and your essence earthen. You are of the holy places, where silver water is bejeweled with moon glow, and the gods breathe music through the sacred stillness as rustling leaves and singing rain. In your heart there is no concrete or steel, but forests and open skies. In your soul resides the flame of freedom, lost to all but a precious, dwindling few.
“For you are Wild.
“There are others of the Wild, but you…oh, you will be their prince, because you have been born a Sender! Your dreams will be the key to the future of your kin. Your gift will open their gate. And as the emancipator, you will be revered!
“Among your fellows you will be as a stallion is to a plowing nag. Your coming of age will herald the dawning of a new Dark Time for the unharried Flock that has passed so many a restful night without having its blood chilled by the Singing or spilled by the Law.
“In you, it all begins again. In you, it is again. In you…”
His voice trailed off, and his eyes picked up where the abandoned emotion of his words stained the air.
His eyes…
His deep, terrible eyes.
They mesmerized the boy, entranced and entangled him in a web of threat and enticement that made his heart pound and the tiny, inner voice of his thoughts scream, He’s not a man! He looks like a man, but inside…he’s big! And old! And strong!
He’s not a man!
He’s…
He didn’t have the words to continue.
As if the doctor had heard his thoughts, a crackle of lightening sparkled in his eyes. In an instant his hands let go of the boy’s chin and shot up before his face. With dreadful fascination, the boy watched the long white fingers curl into a fist. As they tightened, a terrible knot formed in his throat, and he gagged.
“That thing that watches you in the sky is me,” the doctor said, squeezing his fist a little tighter as a tendril of hair crawled snakelike over his forehead. “I watch over you, and all others like you, wherever they are—as I’ve always done…since the start of it all.”
The boy heard the words, but he didn’t care what they meant. His throat was gorged, full and hard, his breath backed up hotly in a bloody bubble that trapped his racing heart. And his eyes were locked on a thing that had just appeared, in a corner, barely visible over the doctor’s shoulder.
“When I call for you, will you come, Blood Prince?” the doctor asked, shaking his fist.
Everything inside the boy quivered. In horror he felt warmth on his leg and heard dribbling on the floor. As he peed, he felt every contact his young life had ever established with what he had been taught was “real” slip from his mind’s fingers and shatter on the hard floor of events.
There was a monkey in the room—a monkey, here, in a doctor’s office. It was grey and black, and it had sharp, dark eyes that blinked and stared and sparkled. It was only about three feet tall and had very long arms that it wound out before itself as if they were boneless. It was grinning, and watching him struggle, watching him squirm. At first he had thought that it was sitting on a shelf on the wall, but now he saw that it was just hanging there, sticking to the whitewashed plaster…
With its wings folded up on its back.
And with a running brown streak of shit crawling down the wall beneath it.
“Will you?” the doctor hissed, and the sound seemed to bruise the air. Within the depths of his stare were sparkling pinpoints that gleamed like the eyes of hidden animals, cloaked by night. “The world is not as you perceive it, boy,” he added, curling his lip savagely and turning his fist to reveal the pig-like bristles on the back of his hand. “Will you promise to remember the trees?”
The boy could feel himself drifting inside himself, and he experienced a profound sense of disassociation of spirit from body.
Th
e monkey on the wall was jabbering now; clattering its jaws together in a rapid-fire staccato that was both maddening and mean.
“Will you swear to remember the earth?”
The boy’s eyes felt as if they were about to split.
“Will you pledge yourself to the Wild?”
The monkey wanted him—he could see that in its eyes.
The monkey wanted his body…
And the doctor wanted his soul.
“Will you swear?”
Briefly, he wondered which would hurt less to give. But seeing the monkey’s dripping teeth when it spread its lips made his decision easy.
“Swear!”
And he did…not as a word, but as a thought. He didn’t voice it…he became it with every drop of blood and ounce of will he possessed. Inside his head he exploded, screaming, throwing out his soul’s arms to embrace the very essence of the word…
“Yes!”
He swore, giving himself up to the vow.
“Yes!”
He raged, his body melting beneath his mind.
“Yes!”
He bled, signing a pact he could never understand with an evil it would take him years to even recall.
And, with a smile, the doctor said, “Thus is our agreement sealed.”
Before his eyes the man’s fist unfolded, like the misty clouds at the eye of a hurricane, relaxing simply, and breaking the thunderhead that had amassed inside his skull. Breath rushed first up, and then out, chocking him with a gale of phlegm. Then it rushed in, and down, drowning him in a dizzying, uncontrollable gulp. His head reeled, his eyes rolled, and his world fell away.
“Now, sleep, Blood Prince,” the doctor said, waving his hand. “Sleep until the wolf in thine heart is born.”
And he did.
His legs kicked an instant before his head hit the table with a dull thunk. His eyes closed. He didn’t want them closed. He wanted them open. He wanted to see what was happening as the examination room door opened. He could hear it, and he could hear his father’s heavy steps.