by Tobias Wade
Demon Seeds
A Supernatural Horror Novel
Tobias Wade
Contents
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Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Author’s Note:
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, businesses, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is entirely coincidental.
First Edition: August 2018
Demon Seeds
Copyright © 2018 Haunted House Publishing.
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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1
“Mrs. Maston?”
The woman doesn’t hear. She lulls back in the waiting room, head precariously balancing on the back of her rigid chair, her once luxurious golden hair now greased into dangling strings.
“Mackenzie Maston?” the nurse repeats, tapping the woman’s knee with her clipboard.
How slowly her eyes open. Her gaze lazily hovers on the nurse through half-closed lids before drifting off to fretfully scan the room. A kaleidoscope of emotions passes through her face in swift succession: confusion about where she is, fear as to why, perhaps some anger too, although that is quickly buried beneath a suffocating blanket of resignation.
The eyes close again, unable or unwilling to process anything more under the harsh florescent lighting.
“Your daughter is about to begin her physical therapy session. She wanted you to be there.”
Mrs. Maston nods, slow and heavy as though struggling against a weight suspended from her chin. Then a second nod, faster and more purposeful this time.
“Yes, of course. Has there been any word from Ender?”
“Won’t you be the first person your husband calls when he gets back?”
This nod is the slow, painful one.
“You’re right. Of course. Which room is Jessica in?”
Jessica Maston is the incarnation of love: beautiful, inscrutable, and wasting away all too soon. It’s impossible to tell what she’s thinking behind the smooth marble mask of her skin. Even her eyes betray nothing, which is not to say that they lack spirit, but rather that the spirit is trapped behind a one-way mirror. Look at her and you will see the sky, or the crashing ocean, or the unknowable will of God—anything at all, except Jessica herself.
“You aren’t even trying.” Mrs. Maston wishes she hadn’t said it, but it’s too late now. It was just so frustrating to watch her daughter’s static countenance which gave no whisper of the battle underneath.
“You try falling five stories and let’s see how hard you try.” Even Jessica’s words are ethereal, neither rushed nor accusing.
“I just mean you aren’t going to learn to walk again unless you really want to with all your heart and soul. You can do this! Let’s see some grit, girl!”
The exaggerated whites as Jessica rolls her eyes. That’s tantamount to a tantrum for her.
“It’s okay, don’t worry.” The nurse lays her hand on Jessica’s shoulder. The girl doesn’t push it off, but the look she gives is potent enough for the nurse to quickly withdraw. “This isn’t going to be something that happens overnight.”
“When then?” Mrs. Maston asked. “It’s been over a month and she hasn’t even taken a step by herself.”
“Spinal injuries can’t be fixed with an attitude adjustment, Mackenzie.”
“Did I say fix? No, I didn’t. It would help though. And if the rest of the hospital could do their job—”
Jessica slumps back into her wheelchair. She admires the way the plaster curls up in little waves on the wall.
“We’re doing everything we can, ma’am, but we have no control over the insurance appeal process. We’ll let you know as soon as—”
“Come on, Jessica, we’re going home. This obviously isn’t helping.”
Mrs. Maston stoops to help load Jessica’s feet into the foot hangers of her wheelchair. Jessica watches it happen, doing nothing to assist.
“She needs to stay active,” the nurse scolds. “There’s already been significant atrophy in her muscle mass since the accident, and even if she does get the surgery she’ll need—”
“If she does?” Mrs. Maston snaps. “She will get the surgery, even if we have to pay for it ourselves. And once she does, we’re going to request another nurse with less back talk.”
The nurse sighs, dragging her hands through her short blonde hair. “Should I still put you down for the same time Thursday or…”
“Don’t bother. My husband will be back by then, and he’s going to have your blood money.”
Mrs. Maston opens the door, awkwardly propping it open with one foot while navigating the wheelchair through the gap. The nurse doesn’t offer to help, and Mrs. Maston doesn’t ask.
“It was nice seeing you again, Rachel.” Jessica smiles at the nurse who returns a tight-lipped imitation. “I hope you have better luck with your next patient.”
“Jessica, don’t say that…” the nurse replies, but Mrs. Maston has already closed the door behind her.
If the night’s job is to strangle all light and sound and life from the world, then this night deserves praise for its exceptional performance. Jessica wonders if the clouds are really thick enough to ride on, or whether they only stop the light from falling through. If she was going to die, then she’d prefer it happened on a night with a full moon, although perhaps it doesn’t matter after all. At least she can do something about this dreadful silence.
Jessica’s thin arms strain against her wheels, at last overcoming the friction of the thick carpet to propel herself against the couch. She hadn’t been able to use her normal bedroom upstairs since the accident had forced her to sleep on the pull-out bed in the living room. No privacy here—she can’t stand how open it is. It was only her and her mom in the house, but with mom always hovering around like some kind of specter it felt like she was under house arrest.
Jessica snatches her headphones from the couch and turns toward the bathroom instead: the one place she can still be alone. She locks the door and turns on the bathtub—as hot as it will go. She can’t feel anything below her waist anyway, but she liked watching her legs turn red in the water. It made them feel more alive.
“Jessica honey?” Knocking on the door. “Are you taking a bath? Let me help you.”
“I’m fine, Mom,” Jessica says, double checking to make sure the door is locked. The handle rattles from the
other side.
“No you’re not, but it’s okay. You’ve got nothing to be ashamed of. It wasn’t that long ago that I was bathing you every night, remember?”
“Like fifteen years ago maybe. And no, I don’t remember.”
Jessica puts her headphones on, but nothing is playing yet. She keeps skipping all her favorite songs. The silence on the other side of the door has a face, and a shadow is passing back and forth beneath the crack. Her mother isn’t going to leave her alone. Jessica gets ten seconds into “It’s My Life” by Bon Jovi before she skips again. Maybe classical will be more appropriate for the occasion.
“… five stories.” Her mom must have still been talking while the song was playing.
“Yeah Mom. Five stories. Great view though,” Jessica replies just so it seems like she is paying attention.
She crosses her arms over her chest and strips her shirt off. She stares at her reflection, admiring how normal she appears from the waist up. What a waste of a good figure. There’s another knock on the door, but she turns her music up and lets it dissolve the world into a comprehensible melodic pattern. Now comes the hard part.
Leaning on the counter, Jessica pulls herself out of the chair, laying her bare skin against the counter for balance. One of her feet has slipped underneath the foot hanger though, stubbornly refusing to let go. A deep breath and a pull, but the strain begins a sourceless pressure somewhere deep in her lower back. Hand over hand she’s dragging herself along the counter, but the whole damn chair is sliding along with her. Another deep breath, panting through clenched teeth at the exertion. The pressure in her back is growing more intense by the second. A blade of hot fire cuts into her and she retaliates without hesitation, pummeling the chair until it relinquishes its hold on her, then hurling it to crash sideways on the ground.
“…honey?” but it’s so faint that Jessica can barely hear. She allows her legs to fold uselessly beneath her as she sinks to the ground, pausing a moment to catch her breath. Then she’s moving again, inch by laborious inch, hand over hand until she reaches the tub, struggling out of her pants as she goes. Forcing herself not to look at her emaciated legs makes the process that much harder, but finally she’s free. Hoisting her body as high as it will go, she allows gravity to finish the job as she tumbles unceremoniously over the lip of the tub to lie facedown in the bottom.
The door handle is rattling again. The music won’t go any louder. The hiss of steam and the scalding touch, but it does nothing to soften the throbbing tension in her back. It’s all she can do just to keep her face above the rising water, but she isn’t fighting hard. The whole door is shaking now, but Jessica pretends that it’s just the beat of another backup instrument.
If she lay still right now—if the water kept rising and she didn’t rise with it—if the burning water flooded over her head, into her nose and mouth, down her throat and into her lungs, wouldn’t that be peaceful? But then her headphones would get wet and the music would stop. She could compromise on the full moon, but somehow she couldn’t imagine herself going anywhere without music to play her out.
“I’m fine, Mom, chill the fuck out,” she shouts, flipping onto her back to push her head well above the water. The door goes still, but only for a moment. Another tentative shiver runs through the wood, and then it’s still again. Jessica tries not to imagine her mother slumping her weight against the door and sliding to the ground on the other side.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean that,” Jessica adds more softly. “I love you, and I’m sorry for being such a burden.”
The music which drowns out her mother’s reply is the sweetest mercy left in this world.
Her mom might not understand now, but it’s going to be easier for her this way. A single parent—or might as well be with dad gone all the time—enslaved to her disabled daughter and the mounting medical bills which were never going to be paid. A lifetime of frustration and disappointment and failed expectations. Jessica could already see the frustration building in her mom. It would continue to ripen and grow, twisting and tormenting the woman into a shell of who she could have been. The fall hadn’t killed Jessica on impact, but it was killing her mother day by day.
The razor blade slides cleanly from its paper wrapping. Jessica submerges her hands in the water, knowing the heat will dilate her capillaries and veins and let the blood run faster. High school hadn’t been a complete waste of time then, had it? Too bad she’d never make it to college. She couldn’t allow herself to think like that though. Leaving this behind won’t be a disappointment or a regret. She wasn’t killing her spirit, after all. She was setting it free from this prison of flesh.
A moment of stillness as the last notes of a song trickle through the air. She holds her breath, waiting for the fresh swell of notes to give her the strength to continue. It sounds like her mom was talking to someone—that’s good. She’ll be distracted long enough that she won’t interfere.
It’s almost beautiful the way the razor blade sinks into her white arm. First the indentation as the soft skin curls around it, then the plunge as though the skin is consuming the metal. Sure it hurts, but it’s nothing compared to the amount of pain it would be preventing. The red squirt comes thick and fast at first, but it’s not long before it slows to a steady drain as peaceful clouds swirl out into the water. Jessica slowly slides the blade along the length of her vein, cherishing every second of the excruciating motion. This is the last thing she will ever feel, so she might as well experience its full intensity.
Otherwise, what was the point?
What was the point?
There was no point. No place for her here, no place to go. No weeping angels, no laughing devils. Just a world painted in black and white, that which is, and that which isn’t, and very soon…
Jessica would be the latter.
2
Ender’s feet rest on solid ground, but his mind is far from easy. On the pathway to the edge of sanity he approaches the abyss, until standing on the brink his mind is as vacuous as the unfathomable beyond. The savage wound gouged into the earth is terrible to behold, yet his gaze is drawn to inexorably probe the heart of darkness leading to the infernal depths of the mine. Even his eyes must travel lightly, for staring induces a pressure like a heavy object tearing its way through a suspension of thin fabric.
If you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.
Ender tries to focus on the thick web of interlocking ground tunnels, chutes, and ore haulages that network across the chasm, but without fail his eyes return to the emptiness of the void. How quickly an awareness turns to an uneasy fear, and just as swift does fear transform to a self-destructive fixation. Warm air rises from below as a lover’s seductive whisper, and though he is mortified at the prospect of falling, it’s impossible to deny the liberation promised by that endless release.
Ender, or Captain Maston as he’s referred to by his troop, is an ex-Marine from the United States. He and his men have been contracted to perform a security sweep of the Mponeng goldmine in South Africa, the deepest mine in the world. The squad was boisterous on the way here, but no one has spoken a word since they’ve entered the parlance elevator.
The troop is lowered incrementally for the first few feet before the parlance drops to plummet downward at a sickening rate. It takes just 6 minutes to travel the first 1.5 miles into the ground. The young Sergeant Sosa has already puked by the time the metal chain screeches and catches at the bottom. Out of respect for his dignity, Ender pretends not to notice the sound of retching behind him. From the first elevator they must walk to a second shaft, which takes them an additional mile downward. Here the stone walls can reach up to 140 degrees F and will immediately fry the oils in the skin of anyone careless enough to make contact.
The tunnels of Mponeng’s gold mine spread nearly 300 miles, many of which have been infested with rogue miners and thieves who live down here for months at a time. A combination of poor nutrition, absence of sunlight, and refining gold
with mercury and other toxins have turned these miners into pallid ghouls. The “ghost miners” Ender is hunting are difficult to locate, often retaliating against their discovery with gunfire or explosives to demolish the tunnels.
Despite the generous pay, Ender would never have dared this expedition if he didn’t already have someone on the inside. Ramose, one of the ghost miners who now accompanies the troop, has betrayed his operation for a prize of 10,000 USD. They have a way to locate Azgangi thanks to him, the elusive subterranean refinery for pirated gold.
The ghost miner walks at the forefront now, navigating the endless black corridors without hesitation. His ivory skin glows with an almost internal radiance under their flashlights: a translucent sheen giving clear view to the blue veins in his neck and arms.
Ender doesn’t take his eyes off their guide for a second. His finger hovers on the trigger of his M9 handgun. One wrong move and the miner will be buried deeper than the Devil. Ender doesn’t discount the possibility that this allegiance is a ruse, and that rounding a blind corner he will lose track of the miner and be crushed by an immeasurable payload of rock.
Ramose keeps glancing over his shoulder with great pale orbs which bulge from his emaciated face. A thin white tongue is constantly flicking across parched lips to vainly defend against the inhospitable air. His eyes trace the gun in Ender’s hand, fully understanding the risk he accepted in this undertaking.