Blood & Rust

by S. A. Swiniarski

“I met Joey once, before....” She shivered. “I had no idea that would happen to him. He wasn’t happy, even before all this. He thought he was a bad person,” Cecilia said.

  “He thought Childe was a bad person?”

  “No, he thought he was, Joey. He saw himself as evil.”

  “So you knew these people a while before you ran away?” I made my way around to the driver’s door of the Chevette. I was feeling strain from standing still. I wanted to wring Cecilia’s neck, get her to tell me where they were now. But I knew pushing her might make her clam up, and I needed her talking.

  “Friends,” she said. “I thought they were friends. They aren’t people.”

  Neither are we, Cecilia, I thought. “Go on about Joey.”

  “He started following Childe before I met him. I don’t know what he was like before then. When Joey was in a good mood he would talk about what an evil bastard he was—saw himself as—about all the people he was angry at. When he was in a bad mood, he would sit and sulk. I think he amused Childe.”

  “Amused him?” I said as I slipped in and started the car. I didn’t know how tight control between master and thrall was, but I felt that there was a good chance that this woman was directly under Childe’s control. I was lucky she was volunteering information.

  Whatever that control aspect was, my experience with my own influence, especially with Doctor Nicholson, seemed to be less absolute domination, and more of an erosion of the victim’s will—or desire—to resist suggestions.

  After being locked up with Joey, Cecilia probably didn’t feel any excessive loyalty to Childe, or to Childe’s thralls. If I was right about the way things worked, I could probably deal with her up until she met Childe again, and the domination reasserted itself.

  “People amused Childe—” She shook her head. “I tried to leave him before.... Who are you?”

  The sudden shift startled me. I was driving carefully, away from Lakeview, keeping an eye on the rearview mirror. “My name’s Kane, Kane Tyler.”

  “Why is that name familiar?” She seemed to ask me and herself.

  “I arrested your father once.”

  “You are a cop!”

  “Was, a long time ago. I retired when a twelve-year-old blew a hole through my lung.”

  “Sorry,” she whispered and touched my bicep. “Were you hurt badly?”

  “I’ve been hurt worse since.” I turned the wheel, more to escape her hand than to maneuver the car. Her touch made me uncomfortable. “You said you tried to leave Childe. Why didn’t you?”

  “He convinces you. That’s what he does. He convinces you to do things, and once he does that, he owns you. Once you go with him, you can’t go back; no one else would have you if they knew what he’d made you do.”

  “If someone forces you—”

  “That’s it. He doesn’t force. Everyone’s free to go, they just can’t.” She bent over, palms pressing into her temples. “You can’t imagine—” She stopped talking for a while, and just shook.

  “I wanted to kill myself,” she finally whispered. “You know why I didn’t?”

  “Why?”

  “Because of what he has us do to the bodies.”

  Then, in a massive rambling lump, she let it all come pouring out.

  Cecilia had been sucked into Childe’s group because she was quite consciously searching for something diametrically opposed to her father’s Catholicism. In a sense, the neo-pagans that populated Cleveland Heights were just too good-natured for her.

  In other words, she was exactly the kind of person Childe looked for. Childe pulled his followers to him by appealing to something evil.

  Childe offered power to his followers, in return for their absolute slavery to him. Somehow the inherent contradiction of Childe’s offer was overshadowed by his demonstration of blood-magick. His charisma was such, and his appeal so visceral, that no one who entered his inner circle ever left. He called himself Satan’s agent on Earth, and the people he targeted were so alienated and nihilistic that such a proclamation was attractive, especially after Childe demonstrated the ability to transcend death.

  Cecilia told me of a time when Childe offered a revolver and a box of ammunition to a doubter named Eric. Within a circle of twenty people, Eric loaded the revolver, and pumped off three rounds point-blank into Childe’s chest. Childe’s robes erupted with gore, and Cecilia remembered seeing, briefly, the walls of the wound going deep into Childe’s chest. Childe smiled, took the gun, and fired a single round into Eric’s head.

  Eric had not taken Childe’s sacrament; Eric died. After that demonstration, it was easy for Childe to order his followers to descend on Eric and feed—even those who had not yet become his thralls.

  The pattern Cecilia related was common for all of Childe’s followers. He would pull the victim in, gradually force the person to sever all ties to family and friends outside the group, show some demonstration of power, and slowly pull the person into steadily more degrading acts. Each event would increase Childe’s power over the individual, until, by the time Childe decided to take the final step and grant his own blood to the victim, the person was already psychologically enslaved.

  According to her, she had been locked in that mausoleum for two and a half weeks prior to the ceremony. She only had water. She was nearly driven mad by hunger and isolation—but Childe had done enough of a job on her to keep her from crying out.

  When they opened the door for her, she had no choice but to walk out. But according to her, after the door opened, she had no memory until waking up, inside the tomb, with the zombie.

  There were things in her story that didn’t ring true. There’s a difference in the way people tell their stories. And when I listen I can tell the difference between someone who’s telling me something for the first time, and someone who’s rehearsed. The pauses are more conscious. There’s more awareness of the audience. I can see the words flow by as if by rote.

  It doesn’t matter how emotional or inarticulate a person is, I can see when they know the next word they’re going to say. I suppose it was all those times hearing the difference between what people said during interrogation, and what they said on the stand after being rehearsed by their lawyer.

  Listening to Cecilia made me wonder if she had been talking to a public defender.

  But I had other worries. “So where can I find them?” I asked.

  “You don’t want to find them.”

  I slammed on the brakes and skidded the Chevette to the side of the road. Clouds had rolled over the moon, and a light snowfall was captured by the streetlights in front of me. Cecilia was curled up in her spattered, ragged, dress, staring at her lap.

  “They have my daughter!” I shouted.

  She winced and I softened my voice as much as I was able. “Cecilia, I need to find her.”

  “Too powerful....” she whispered. I had to struggle to keep from grabbing and shaking her.

  After the silence became too long, I said, “Lead me somewhere she might be, Cecilia.”

  She nodded. “I can’t go in with you. You can’t make me face him.”

  I placed a hand on her shoulder. “I wouldn’t make you do that.”

  Slowly, very slowly, she said, “There’s a house where he kept us—”

  The house was in East Cleveland, on the economic down-slope from the hills of Lake view. I was expecting her to lead me to something a little less mundane. Instead, I pulled up across the street from a three-story brick duplex that had seen better days. The yard was fenced-in chain-link, the gutters were sagging, and I saw a few major dips in the roof. All the windows were dark, and in the sodium glow of the street lamps, I could see newspaper covering the insides of most of them.

  “There?” I asked, looking at the dead windows.

  Cecilia nodded without looking at the house. “Don’t make me go in there,” she whispered.

  To me, the house looked empty. At least it was a hell of a lot emptier than its neighbors. There was loud rap
music from at least two nearby houses. Lights blared from a party on our side of the street. Teenagers were crossing the street from house to house, ignoring the snow, ignoring us.

  The clock on the dash read 1:30. The house across the street loomed in silence like a tooth missing from a smile. I looked at Cecilia.

  She looked terrified. I could feel the waves of emotion from her even without looking in her eyes. While that sixth sense felt the warm tide of fear, an older sense—a gut instinct that had hung with me ever since I was on the force—smelled a setup.

  They had tied Cecilia out there for someone. Sebastian maybe. Maybe me.

  I’d been able to bust the handcuff chain with no problem. If she had fed recently, wouldn’t she be capable of a similar feat? Why had Gabriel left her there?

  “What did you tell the man with the cane? What did you tell him that you haven’t told me?”

  “Nothing else,” she whispered.

  I wondered if that meant Gabriel was here. It was probably a mistake, but I couldn’t gamble with my daughter’s life. Still, I was second-guessing myself even as I said, “Don’t leave the car.”

  I locked the Chevette behind me, leaving her curled up and hidden behind the snow-dusted windows. I stepped out into the slush in the middle of the road and looked around me.

  It was so damn normal—obnoxious teenagers drinking, partying, and playing loud music. Change the black kids to white, and the rap music to neo-punk grunge, and this could be my neighborhood. The alienation I felt from that normalcy was crippling.

  I walked to the one empty house, conscious of exactly how quiet it was. I was figuring geography in my head as I stepped through the snow-covered, carless driveway, so I wasn’t surprised to see the rusty fence at the rear of the house, the woods beyond it, or the fresh-cut hole in the chain-link.

  The ends of the cut wire were shiny, and fresh tracks marred the snow in a path between it and the rear door of the house. Too many tracks to tell if the most recent were coming or going.

  It had taken me a while to figure, but it was clear to me now that this property bordered on Lakeview. Beyond that fence was part of the cemetery. Lakeview was a huge suburb of the dead, bordering Cleveland Heights and East Cleveland, as well as Cleveland proper.

  Of course Childe would own a house that bordered on the cemetery’s property. The question in my mind was, was anyone home?

  The house gave no clue. It was silent and dark, most of the first-floor windows covered by wood or newspaper from the inside. If it weren’t for the glittering wound in the rusty fence, and the trail at least as fresh as the last snowfall, it would appear totally abandoned.

  I looked to the lighted yards on either side of this one, and saw no one watching me. I drew the Eagle and walked to the back door of Childe’s house.

  I tried the door. It was locked. I slowly leaned on it, forcing my shoulder between the lock side of the window and the doorjamb. I thrust with my legs, concentrating on using whatever paranormal strength I had.

  The dead-bolt gave with surprising ease. Dry-rot showered me as the wood of the jamb gave. The lock broke as I’d wanted it to, with a bare snap. It didn’t look or sound as if I had kicked the door in.

  A metal object glimmered a moment, and I caught it with my left hand before it clattered to the ground. It was the half of the dead-bolt that I’d torn loose from the wall, screws and all. I pocketed it to avoid making any more noise.

  I listened at the doorway for movement inside. I could sense some dim life—not heard, but felt as a dim wave of barely conscious emotion. The only thing I heard was the loud music next door.

  I slipped in and shut the door behind me.

  I found myself in the rear stairwell of a two-family home. Stairs before me led down into an ink-black basement. The stairs up led to the rear of the first floor apartment.

  Where first?

  I wanted to follow the impression of life I felt upstairs; it could be Gail. But I had a long instinct for not leaving my backside exposed. I descended into the basement, going slowly down the stairs to give my eyes a chance to adjust. Even my extreme night vision had problems seeing in the near-absolute darkness.

  I held the Eagle before me, and before I made it halfway, I could smell the blood. At the foot of the stairs I had to pause for a long time before I could understand exactly what I saw.

  At first all I saw was an abstract pattern of shapes piled against the cinder-block walls. I saw blotches of shadow, and deeper shadow, and oblong and round patches that rose out of the shadow. My gaze locked on a circular patch of off-white formed of symmetrical shadows.

  I must have stared for at least half a minute before I realized I was looking at a skull, jawless and upside down, perched on top of a pile of other remains.

  It was the same conceptual shift I remember from those optical illusions where suddenly a vase becomes a pair of faces. Suddenly I saw the random shadows as bones from maybe half a dozen human beings. Other piles resolved into scattered piles of sneakers and jeans.

  I stopped breathing.

  Blood dotted the walls like rust-stains. Odd bits of clothing, reduced to rags, were scattered everywhere. Ragged lumps of bone lay here and there. Most appeared to have been gnawed.

  I began to see movement in the piles of remains, and I nearly shot, before I saw a fleshy patch-furred thing trailing a naked tail.

  Rats.

  If I concentrated, I could hear their claws scratching on the concrete. They followed the edges of the basement, scratching and gnawing. But I saw them now, dead-eyed things, the smallest the size of my fist.

  Central to the basement, extending the width of the room between the sinks and the rusted-out water-heater, was a table. I saw the stains, the marks, and the chains meant to restrain. I was overcome with memory.

  The stains form a vaguely cruciform outline on the dining room table. Markings by the police give it a human shape. The table is scarred, knives perhaps, maybe even claws. I see wires that could have bound legs and arms. Some of the strings lead up to bloodstains on the ceiling.

  The table was the same here, the same as the dining room where Kate had been killed. It served the same purpose, for many more people. A deep rage filled me, and fear for my daughter that bordered on agony.

  28

  As I ascended to the first floor, the air warmed, freeing something dead in the air. I bent close to the door on the landing and listened for movement. I heard the scratching of rats below me, the music blaring outside, little more. I stood for a few long moments, before I reached for the doorknob.

  The knob spun loosely in its socket. I pulled gently. It slid out of the door. The door creaked open a fraction, and in the crack I saw a slice of the kitchen.

  The scrabbling of rats continued, and the smell grew worse.

  I pushed the door open with my foot, keeping the Eagle leveled at the dark kitchen. A rat the size of a brick exploded out of a pile of garbage by the door, shooting between my legs.

  I froze, listening for reaction from the rest of the house. Nothing but the sound of music blaring outside and rats scratching inside the walls.

  Yellowed newspaper sealed the kitchen’s one window, filtering the only light. Piles of garbage, mostly clothing, covered cracked linoleum. The refrigerator, doorless, gaped at me, revealing an interior splattered with black stains. There was no stove.

  I dropped the doorknob in the filth choking the sink, and inched deeper inside.

  The place was empty, but I counted a half-dozen mattresses in the two bedrooms, where the windows were painted black. The walls in the living and dining rooms were covered with writing, or symbols, or something. Predictably, the marks were written in blood.

  The bathroom was where most of the smell was coming from.

  I dreaded approaching that place, but when I came near enough I realized that, whatever it was in there, it had been there since long before Gail had disappeared. It hung from a pair of handcuffs to the rear, over the bathtub. It was v
aguely humanoid, and quite dead. About half of it had spilled into the bathtub.

  The fact that it wasn’t Gail was faint reassurance. The deeper into this place I walked, the more the fear gripped me. I backed out of there quickly, and retreated for the stairs.

  I could feel that more was here besides me and the rats. What I felt came from upstairs. I mounted the steps, climbing to the second floor. I expected more of the same.

  I was wrong, very wrong.

  The first sign was that the door was locked. It wasn’t a great lock, it broke when I put my shoulder to the door—but just the fact that the door was locked at all was a signal that the upstairs was different.

  After the door broke, a security chain went with it, swinging and jingling as the door rebounded off of the wall.

  I stood there, the Eagle covering a relatively clean kitchen with refrigerator, stove, and empty sink, and I listened. This time I heard more than scratching rats and Dr. Dre lyrics in the background. I heard a high-pitched whine....

  The sound stopped me in my tracks. It was something that might have come from a leaky radiator. It had the same weak breathless quality. But the tone of that sound struck me on an entirely different level, something that tore at the bowels, that made me want to curl up into a ball and shake.

  The sound did not end. It droned on and on and on—

  I thought of Gail and my stomach tied into a hard little knot. It was that thought that gave me the courage to move. The thought ran over and over in my head, I woke something up.

  The doorway between the kitchen and the dining room was blocked by a heavy red drape. The sound came from beyond that. I steeled myself, and pushed it aside with my gun.

  It was as if I had left this century and entered the previous one. I entered a twisted parody of Childe’s apartment. The walls had been knocked out, down to the structural supports. Most of the second floor was now a giant velvet-draped space. Candles guttered everywhere, and threadbare Victorian furniture weighted stacks of balding oriental carpeting. Incense fogged the air, barely covering the smell of rot.