The Midnight Order

by Christopher Fulbright

  The old woman left in the wake of the five mysterious men.

  Dr. Falkenstein stayed behind in the library, staring grimly at the floor.

  11

  Isaac left the castle, headed out into the night, presumably to help the men set traps and hunt for the creature that had escaped the siphon. Nikki passed him on his way out as she helped Adam into the parlor and up the long, curved flight of stairs to his room.

  Before they made it all the way up the stairs, Raven ran to catch up with them. She grabbed Nikki by the elbow, looked around nervously, and said quietly, “Listen, they’re not telling us the whole truth here—that leopard thing didn’t kill Marie.”

  Nikki looked at Adam.

  “What?”

  “Shh,” she said. “That leopard beast didn’t kill Marie, but that tentacled fucking nightmare in the catacombs sure did. After the commotion, one of those vines licked right out, ripped into her throat, drank her blood, and left her a drained husk. Right there. Dropped her to the stone floor.”

  Nikki was stunned silent. Adam looked into the young woman’s eyes with dark intensity.

  “They carried her body out quick,” Raven said. “They thought I was too out of it to notice anything, but I saw them later, carrying her dead body around the edge of the castle keep. They threw her on a pile of other corpses in some kind of makeshift graveyard out back, on the mountain side of the island.”

  “Behind the castle?” Nikki whispered.

  Raven nodded, serious as the grave. “Take a look. You can probably see it from your window on that side of the tower,” she whispered.

  They had stopped on the stairs that curved around the high wall of the open parlor. They suddenly looked down. Eleanor was standing below in the middle of the parlor, staring up at them.

  Raven let go of Nikki’s elbow, quickly changed her demeanor, and then waved down at Eleanor, claiming she was starving as she hurried down the stairs.

  “Can I get you something to eat, dear?” they heard Eleanor say.

  “That would be awesome,” Raven said. She took a last glance up at them before following Eleanor into the kitchen.

  They went the rest of the way upstairs. In his room, Adam reclined on the pillows of his bed, staring at the wall.

  Nikki sat on the bed next to him.

  “Wouldn’t you prefer your own room to the company of a condemned man?” Adam asked. She looked at him, a little offended that he’d be so gloomy, and then realized he had a sideways grin on his face.

  “You’ve got a strange sense of humor, Adam Ross.”

  “And you’ve got a hell of a knack for choosing friends, Nikki Lane.”

  “Not a huge selection around here, so you’ll have to do, sweetheart.”

  “I’m not sure I take that as a compliment.”

  “I’m not sure I meant it as one.” Even with the oppression of the night’s events, they gave each other a smile. She was relieved to see him lighten up a bit, if only for a moment.

  She stood and walked around the end of his bed, going to the window of his chamber. The cove of the small island lay below, waves crashing against its rocky shores. Trees loomed in black silhouettes against the purple night. Stars spattered the skies. She looked down on the terrain below the castle, wondering if the beast was out there or still in here with them. Then she looked toward the mountain side of the island. There, in a rocky alcove cleared of trees, she saw fifteen or sixteen piles of rock that looked like cairns.

  “Do you see it?” he said.

  “I think so. It looks like rock-piled graves.” Nikki looked closer. Was that a fresh body at the edge of moonlight, awaiting burial? “My god, I think she’s right.”

  “The news gets better and better around here.”

  Nikki looked away from the gathering of graves, out to sea.

  “You never did tell me much about yourself,” Adam said.

  “I told you enough. More than I should have.” Nikki stayed at the window.

  “I don’t suppose it’s the sort of thing one talks about in a situation like this. Hell of a place to get to know one another.” He emitted a hissing laugh and broke into a coughing fit. She turned to help, but he held up a hand to quell her ministrations. She sat again at the end of his bed, a strange mixture of fascination and revulsion astir within her. She couldn’t say if her revulsion was for the emasculated Adam Ross, or from the deeply ominous realization that all of them had willingly lined up to let some organism drink critical life force from their souls. No doubt a combination of both.

  She did know that the fascination she had was for Adam Ross, the man, or whatever he’d been, when he arrived here with her. How did one live such a life? And, if she could believe the amazing story of how he became what he claimed to have been (and she did—how could she not, given what they had seen?), then there were no longer any barriers to her speculating even further. Nothing was normal on this island.

  When Adam recovered, he looked at her and said, “I assume you have some thoughts about tonight’s revelations.”

  “Don’t you?”

  “Of course, but I’d be interested to hear your side of it. Better that you talk than me…I’m feeling a bit weak.” He pressed his lips together and blinked his sunken eyes at her, reclining on a stack of pillows.

  “I’ll go all the way out on a limb here,” Nikki said, “and say that I think the old men of the Midnight Order are lying. They definitely don’t want us to destroy that thing downstairs, but not for the reasons they gave us. I think they need it.”

  “Need it?”

  “I think they’re living off it.”

  Adam raised one eyebrow, intrigued, but he didn’t voice his thoughts.

  “I think—and this sounds crazy, but I swear it’s all just clicked together in my head like this.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “I think they’re living off the siphon. I think its powers go both ways. It must, otherwise they wouldn’t have suggested that you go back downstairs with the siphon and your beast-half. They clearly think it can make you whole again, using what it originally took from you and replacing it.”

  Adam cleared his throat. She pretended not to notice the smear of blood on the handkerchief he used to wipe his mouth. “Yes,” he said after a moment. “They appear to believe there’s a chance of reuniting me with my better half.” A bitter smile. “Or, they just hope to get us both in one place, lock us in, kill us both, and say it was all a failure.”

  “Maybe.” Nikki stood again, starting to pace. “But I don’t think so, Adam. I think that thing, that siphon, gives and takes. You heard Eleanor say that we were all handpicked to come to the island. I thought I was referred by a friend, but maybe they used her to get me here. Maybe they use their network of people they’ve ‘helped’ to find other, more successful, and strong-willed people, to bring to the island. Then they let that siphon downstairs suck their energies into pods and…”

  Adam waited. Nikki was on the verge of protesting her own thought, but damn it, she knew. She didn’t know how she knew, but she was on the right track because it made sense. It was the only thing that made sense here, crazy through it seemed.

  “Adam, I think those men of the solemn Midnight Order are using us. That they’ve used everyone who ever came here. Luring strong-willed people with problems here with the idea of helping them get over their shortcomings by simply withdrawing these ‘darker passions’ as he said, from their person. But really”—she paced back and forth at the end of the bed—“it’s like a transfusion.” She stopped near the window, illuminated by the moon. She looked at Adam for a sanity check, to see if maybe she’d really just gone around the bend and kept on going.

  No. He was with her. He’d even sat up in the bed, a new glimmer in his eye as her excitement over a possible explanation for everything ignited his own passion for her idea.

  “Of course,” he said, in an incredulous whisper. “If it’s really true, the irony of it makes it more fascinating…tha
t it is the broken parts of us, the monsters within us, from which they draw their strength. For surely, without those parts of us inside, flawed though they were, we never would have become as successful as we were. A concept Sigmund Freud would have appreciated to no end. As if those parts of us that were killing us were unconscious forces equally responsible for carrying us to higher levels of success. Using that ‘siphon’ creature below, they’re drawing out our id, where our most powerful instinctual drives live, our sexual desires, our primal aggressions. The demons, if you’ll excuse the expression, by which we’re driven.”

  Nikki looked at him, heart pounding. He’d taken her thought and infused it with reason. Given it air to breathe and really come alive. She didn’t remember any psychology from high school, but what he was saying made sense. A twisted, dark kind of sense. If the siphon could really transfuse the very life forces between humans...

  “My god, Adam. Those men. Those old men, all this time, they’ve been living off us, and people like us.”

  And now the deep hoods and cowls to hide their faces made sense, too. She felt her vague emptiness inside like a vacuum, that missing part of her yawning like a chasm. Perhaps it was just a sensation brought on by the thought of her very essence having been captured by others for some nefarious purpose, but she sensed a palpable emptiness within, nevertheless. Nikki shuddered.

  The stone walls of the room seemed grimmer now, no longer the quaint surroundings of a step back in time, but the walls of a dungeon. The high ceiling of the room was deep with shadow, and she looked up, almost expecting to see something lurking there above, perched on the wooden beam, listening.

  Adam pushed himself to a sitting position. Then he used both hands to stand. He swayed. She stepped quickly to his side but he caught himself on the corner bedpost and waved her back.

  “Enough,” he snapped at her, then softened. “Thank you, but I have to do this on my own.”

  “What?”

  “Destroy it.”

  “Not alone, you won’t. You can’t.”

  “Because I’m not strong enough?” He gave her that painful smile. She noticed blood on his lips. When he coughed, more blood came up. “We can’t allow these men, these…id-drinking energy vampires, or whatever they are, to continue this way. I wouldn’t say, for all I was led to believe about this arrangement, that I’m much better off than when I arrived. Would you?”

  Nikki contemplated that vacant feeling inside her. She had to agree.

  “No,” he said. “And I’m guessing all those people down in that grove of shallow graves would concur.”

  She clasped his arm gently, just firm enough to hold him in place, ready to catch him if he fell. “Aren’t you afraid that we might die, after all? There’s a chance old Great-Grandpa Masterson was telling the truth and we’re all connected to the thing. That if it dies, we all die.”

  “Do you believe that?” he asked her.

  Nikki looked at him, searched his eyes.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I think you hit the nail on the head and they were lying to protect their fountain of youth.” Adam pulled his arm from her grip, but held her hand for just a moment. She felt his cold fingers, his bones in loose skin. He gripped her ever so slightly. “I wish I’d known you before this.”

  Nikki’s eyes filled with tears.

  “No, you don’t.”

  He smiled. “I have to do this. If for no other reason than to prove to myself that the only part of me that ever drove me to do anything worthwhile is not the same part of me that’s killed these people tonight and now roams the halls of the castle a murderous beast. I am still a man worth living…and I must tame my own beast.”

  “Oh, for Christsake, don’t get all poetic. Screw fighting that creature. Let’s take some of those kerosene lanterns down to the lower chamber, douse that fucking tentacled thing, burn it to smoking embers, and be done with it.”

  Adam Ross blinked at her. For a just minute, she thought he’d begun wheezing to death but it turned out he was laughing.

  “Yeah, it’s a laugh a minute around here,” Nikki muttered, going to the nightstand and grabbing the oil lamp. There was also a lit kerosene lantern on the dresser. She thought for a moment about gathering more kerosene into the water basin on the dry sink and carrying that, but she wasn’t sure how much time they’d have.

  As it turned out, they didn’t have long at all.

  Adam took the other flat-wick kerosene lantern from atop the dresser and went to the door. They moved out into the dark hallway, thick with the scents of musty rooms and damp rock. They made their way to the end of the corridor, moving as swiftly as they could with Adam’s weak and twisted legs. Nikki was careful not to leave him behind as he limped along, the lamp swaying by his side. Nikki’s eyes went to Raven’s chamber door. She wondered if the girl was in there, not sure she could leave her behind to fend for herself with a clear conscience if the place was going to come down; she was unsure how much, if any, impact starting a fire in the catacombs would have on the rest of the structure.

  Nikki and Adam followed the stairs down along the contour of the inner tower wall. She let him take the lead, at his insistence, though it made her nervous. One side of the staircase was open, without rails. The massive height was intimidating. As they descended, they reached a point at which they could see down into the arched entry hall of the castle.

  Adam gasped. Nikki stopped short behind him.

  One of the huge front doors of the castle stood open. The night loomed beyond. They could hear the roar of the surf, could smell the salty, crisp scent of the cold ocean air.

  Upon the red rug that lined the entryway lay the twisted body of Isaac. Blood gleamed in the wan light of the faux torches on the wall. The old man had one leg torn off. His throat was ripped out and his face was eaten away.

  As they came down the last few steps, they could also see into the library. The body of Dr. Falkenstein was sprawled over a broken chair amongst a pile of spilled books. His entrails were strewn across that section of the room, glistening in the dying firelight from the hearth.

  Nikki heard a terrible, animalistic groan. At first her heart clenched because she thought the beast had found them, but she realized the sound was coming from Adam.

  A deep, resounding purr vibrated the air, echoing up to the rafters in the great hall.

  The beast came out of the library. It roared, giant fangs glistening in the light.

  12

  Nikki kept her eyes on the creature and backed into the parlor, across the hall from the library. She hissed at Adam to follow her, but he was bent on facing down the beast.

  She would have to get around the man-leopard somehow. If she was going to carry out their plan, she had to wait until it came closer, and then run around it to the stairs that led down to the catacombs. For now, this was the only safe place for retreat.

  Her heel stubbed against something heavy but resilient.

  She looked down quickly.

  The whites of Raven’s eyes struck her first. Then jet-black hair. Then the stark contrast of the scarlet splashes of her blood across the powder-white skin of her face.

  Like Isaac, Raven’s throat had also been torn out. Both arms gnawed to the bone. Her thigh and crotch had been eaten down to the bone and pubis.

  Nikki felt her gorge rise. It came violently. As the lurching thing approached from the castle’s main hall, she felt herself wither in the face of this new grotesquery. Making matters worse, she could see that the kitchen door stood partially open. A limp elderly hand was propped against the jamb.

  Oh God, she thought, not Eleanor Masterson, please not her.

  She knew if everyone else was dead, there was a damn good chance Eleanor was, too. She felt a surprising amount of grief at the prospect of the elderly woman’s death, but instead of bringing her to her knees, it strengthened her resolve and gave her the will to continue on, focused on their goal.

  Adam stayed between her and the b
east. His other half.

  The leopard-thing came into the parlor, quietly padding the stone with twisted feet wet with blood. Those mostly human back legs made for awkward balance. Its penis swayed between its legs, long feline tail swishing in the air. It lowered its head, ears back, neck muscles rippling beneath the sheen of black fur. It roared at them, wicked fangs gleaming.

  “Adam…” She reached forward and grasped his shoulder.

  He pulled away, balancing precariously on his own feeble, malformed legs. His eyes were focused on the beast.

  “Go downstairs and burn the siphon.”

  “Not without you—”

  “Go!”

  The leopard-beast lunged forward. It raised a huge paw, extending blood-crusted claws. Adam reached up to catch the descending limb before it flayed him. The impact of the swipe knocked him to his crippled knees. The leopard-beast came forward again, menacing, opening its jaws to gnash at its alter ego’s bared neck.

  Nikki froze, a scream caught in her throat.

  Adam dropped the kerosene lantern he’d been carrying. The glass shattered on the floor. Some of the pieces scattered over the carpet, others tinkled across the nearby stone. The powerful smell of the kerosene rose into the air as the beast knocked him flat on the floor. Adam reached down for one of the larger shards of glass, then swung it up toward the neck of the beast. He drove the shard in deep and gouged the beast’s flesh, but it was far stronger than he and pushed him back again onto the broken glass.

  Adam grunted. The creature growled.

  I’m wasting time.

  Recognizing there wasn’t much she could do but get hurt in the battle and squander her only chance to get downstairs, Nikki ran around them. She ducked into the arched hallway, then ran down the echoing corridor to the recessed doorway leading to the catacombs. The lock bar that had been in place the last time they’d come this way now stood in an upright position, the stays for the bar just empty hooks.

  The door was unlocked.