by Rita Vetere
Isabella plucked the century-old memory of Rossi’s death from what served as her mind, cherishing the remembrance of feasting on the evil man’s blood. Aside from Tomaso, she had derived the most pleasure from him, so much so that she had not been able to leave well enough alone. Her raging bloodlust had driven her to the mainland mere days later, where she had taken her fill from Rossi’s tiny son. She had managed to refrain from killing Rossi’s daughter, though. The girl she had allowed to go free, so that she might grow to bear children and provide further prey for her.
Earlier this morning, she had amused herself with the Spaniard called Alejandro, before tossing him to the dead for their entertainment. That he had arrived on the island with Rossi’s granddaughter, her next victim, meant dark forces had been at work in bringing the last descendant to her. The triumvirate which had arrived on the island of their own accord—Tomaso, the first; Rossi, who had most resembled Tomaso; and now the woman, Anna—denoted special importance. Anna, Isabella intuited, would be the last, the final kill. With her death, the curse would come to an end. It would explain the signs occurring in what passed for her body.
Isabella had purposely not killed the woman earlier in the field, only providing her with a hint of things to come. Toying with her first would make the kill much more enjoyable. She was, after all, the last. She writhed in anticipation, considering the most satisfactory way to end the woman’s life. Her days of feasting, she knew, would soon be over. A time of rest was approaching. Once the final descendant had been taken and the curse fulfilled, the other residing within her would become dormant once more, lying in wait until another opportunity presented itself. Then it would rise again, as it had risen on the day of Isabella’s death.
But for now, on this day at least, she would feed. One last time, there would be blood.
Chapter 27
Anna nearly jumped out of her skin when the office door burst open, slamming against the wall. The space occupied a second ago by the apparition of her grandfather shimmered and settled back into place, leaving no trace of him.
Without waiting to see what new horror would step through the open door, she lunged for one of the heavy chairs nearby, lifted it high and smashed it against the window next to her, shattering it. Jagged pieces of broken glass on either side of the opening sliced across her arms as she dived through.
Before she managed to get all the way out, something grabbed her by the ankles and viciously yanked her back inside. Her abdomen dragged across the sharp glass protruding from the sill, slicing through her midsection. Howling in pain as she hit the floor, she rolled to one side, clutching her bleeding stomach. She opened her eyes and found herself staring at a pair of tiny, rotted feet riddled with sores.
Anna stared up at the scarecrow of a creature, its matted hair standing up in all directions, its filmy black eyes exuding pure malice—the child that was not a child.
This time the creature was not alone. Pus-ridden corpses of the walking dead, their blind eyes shining with unnatural intelligence, filled the office. Among them, set apart by their white hospital gowns, were the blood-spattered corpses of the asylum patients, the tops of their heads forever gone. One of the latter, a woman—the one she had seen on the gurney in the hospital—came to stand next to the demon child. As the woman bent and whispered something in the dead child’s ear, Anna clearly saw the open cavity where her brain should have been, the impossible sight causing hysteria to bubble up in her.
Whispered words were spoken, but Anna could not make out what was being said. The bell—the one that was no longer there, her gibbering mind prompted—began to toll in the tower again. She clutched her injured stomach, attempted to get to her feet, and tried to think past the throbbing pain in her belly and the insanity threatening her mind.
“No,” rasped the creature in response to what the dead woman had whispered. “Not the bell tower. She is the last. I have decided she must die in the same manner as the first.”
Adrenaline pumped through Anna, anaesthetizing the pain from her wounds, when the dead child spoke. Although she didn’t comprehend the meaning of the words, she knew she was going to die, and looked frantically around for something to defend herself with. She found nothing.
The creature took a step toward her on boney feet, and Anna caught a whiff of decay. Panic raced through her at the idea of the vile creature touching her again. Without time for thought, she reached inside the pocket of her jeans, extracted the lighter and flicked it at the bottom of the creature’s filth-encrusted dress when it came near. A cry of triumph tumbled from her lips when the open flame caught. The demon child hissed, recoiling, and Anna caught a flash of surprise in those evil black eyes as fire began to travel up one side of it. It shrieked in anger, a sound that turned her blood to ice water.
The dead crowded around the creature. In the ensuing confusion, Anna pulled herself up from the floor and tumbled backward out the broken window. More blood gushed from her stomach in payback for her effort when she hit the ground outside. Her abdomen was a bloody, throbbing mess, but she didn’t care. She was going to destroy this island and the disgusting creatures inhabiting it, or die trying.
She stumbled to her feet, still clutching her stomach, and made her way along the rear of the building, keeping low to the ground. When she reached the corner, she scanned the trees to her left and the path to her right through the driving rain. Seeing nothing, she traveled to the back wall of the crematorium, where she stopped to remove her shirt and tie it around her stomach to staunch the flow of blood. Then she carried on to the back of the quarantine building. From there she spied the back door of the laboratory, through which she intended to enter the asylum.
And if the door didn’t open? It had locked itself shut when she’d tried to escape earlier. Something told her she needn’t worry. She had the distinct impression the building had been trying to keep her in, not out, and it would allow her to enter. The thought filled her with fresh dread. She prayed she would be entering the asylum of the present, not the one from the past she had seen before. She gripped the lighter tightly and bolted through the pouring rain for the back door. It opened for her.
With a cry of relief she took in the ruined and deserted laboratory. Knowing what the place was capable of, she told herself to ignore the burning pain in her belly and act quickly. Things could change at any minute in here. She hurried through the room, holding her breath to keep from gagging at the stench still permeating the place from the spilled contents of the jar and stepped through the door into the adjoining ward. There, she set to work, dragging the old mattresses, loose stuffing and debris over to the vestibule. Working as fast as her injured stomach allowed, she repeated the procedure in the next two wards, dragging anything that looked flammable into the center of the vestibule. She registered the fact that the front doors of the hospital were once again closed. What if the building didn’t let her out after she started the fire? Terror spilled over her again as she reminded herself to hurry. If worse came to worse, she would find a way to leave the burning building via the open bell tower. She stopped only once to tighten the makeshift tourniquet around her abdomen to keep the bleeding in check. Moments later, she looked at the stack of debris in front of her and decided it would have to do.
No sooner had she finished preparing the pyre than the entrance doors of the vestibule burst open. Filled with dread, she lifted her eyes to see Isabella standing on the threshold, backlit by a stormy slate sky. Wind howled in through the open doors.
Lightning smacked the ground outside and lit up the room. Part of the demon child’s face and some of her hair had burned away but, other than that, the bloody creature looked no worse for wear. Anna stared directly into its malevolent eyes then threw the dice. She flicked the lighter in her hand.
The creature shrieked, a terrible sound that ripped through Anna’s soul like a jagged blade. Anna’s arm shot out to put the open flame to the heap, just as something landed on her back from behind. The lighter
flew from her hand as she struggled to dislodge the creature, which had materialized behind her in a split second. Cadaverous hands appeared out of nowhere, yanking Anna across the floor, away from the pile of rubbish and pinning her to the ground.
Her mind reeled as she stared up at the demon child. Cold, black hatred radiated from its shadowy eyes, falling over her in dark waves. The words spoken by the apparition of her grandfather loomed up in her mind. We are kin...joined by blood. Just as Anna was joined by blood to her grandfather and the evil man who had set all this in motion centuries ago. Anna knew what the creature wanted. It wanted revenge.
She struggled against the grip of dead hands as she lay on the floor, unable to move. Those not holding her drew close, positioning themselves around her. The creature bent over her and Anna cried out as it drew near. “It’s not my fault what happened to you! Not. My. Fault.”
Its predatory eyes studied her, and Anna could see something ancient moving inside them, like maggots on spoiled meat. It smiled a terrible smile. Then the creature’s tiny, cold fingers caught and crushed the bones in Anna’s wrist, causing her to cry out.
The monster’s rotten face was suddenly next to her own, and Anna could smell its carrion breath. Eyes like volcanic glass rolled over her, eyes that promised a horrible death. As if from far away, she heard the creature’s inhuman voice.
“See. Know the blood which runs through you, thick with guilt.”
The creature violated her mind, and Anna was helpless to prevent it. With dizzying speed, centuries rolled away. Then, the first of the powerful visions came crashing through her, entering with a force that knocked the air from her lungs. She was in a forest, hanging by bound wrists from the limb of a tree, looking through the eyes of the man, the one called Tomaso.
Sensations of torture and death flashed through her as she experienced firsthand Tomaso’s demise, then, one by one, all of those who had gone after him. She died vicariously through each descendant, over and over again, as if it was happening to her. The creature tightened its grip as she fought against each revelation.
Time ceased to exist in the alternate reality she had entered. She had fallen down a dark hole to a place where only pain and the sensations of death she was forced to endure existed. Anna passed from victim to victim, from one death to another. Each revelation stripped away another layer of her sanity. Just before her mind broke completely, she glimpsed a woman, and instinctively recognized her mother, Julia. Anna looked on helplessly as the creature taunted her with the revelation of her mother’s death.
* * * *
Her haunted eyes regard little Anna silently before picking her daughter up and hugging her tightly to her. Tears course down her cheeks. When she releases Anna, she places her in the hallway outside her bedroom door, locking it shut behind her.
She picks up the rope and looks at it for a moment before tossing it over the ceiling beam and securing it. The other end she fashions into a noose before dragging the bench from the vanity over. She mounts the bench, placing the noose around her neck, lifting her long black hair over the rope before tightening it. Her husband will be home soon. Anna will be all right until her father arrives , she tells herself .
As if in answer to her thought, Anna begins to cry from behind the locked door, and Julia’s resolve waivers a fraction. But then an image of the child-monster returns, blotting out her tiny daughter’s cries.
Yesterday, the monster had returned. It wanted to kill her, and would have done so last night if her husband hadn’t walked into the bedroom when he had. Her husband’s presence had caused it to disappear, but Julia had recognized it before it vanished into thin air … the monster who had killed Vittorio , so many years ago. It had come back for her, as she’d always feared it would, to do to her what it had done to Vittorio .
“Why?” she cries in anguish to the empty room. Why had the hideous thing attached itself to them? To that, she has no answer. She only knows she will not, cannot, allow that filthy creature to do to her what it had done to her brother .
Anna’s cries grow loud from behind the locked door. “I’m sorry, baby,” Julia whispers, closing her eyes. “Mommy’s so sorry.” Before her resolve flees, she kicks the bench away and drops. She dies begging forgiveness from her little girl.
* * * *
The hand crushing her wrist disengaged, and Anna came crashing back into reality. Her sanity, however, had not survived the journey she’d been forced to travel. Her mind no longer seemed to function and she understood she must be in shock. Try as she might, she could elicit no emotion—no fear or anger, not even panic. Disjointed fragments of the scenes of death and mutilation she’d experienced melded with the waking nightmare of the present.
“Take her to the forest,” Isabella screeched.
The creature’s raspy voice penetrated Anna’s debilitated mind. Unintelligible sounds came from her mouth as dead hands lifted her off the ground.
Back out into the savage storm they dragged her, kicking and screaming. Thorny brambles tore at her face and arms as they pulled her through the field. Anna did not feel them, barely even acknowledging the gut-wrenching pain in her belly. Mindless instinct took over as she struggled to break free of the dead hands hauling her roughly along. All of her efforts proved futile.
* * * *
Rain blasted through the thick foliage in the forest. The world swung back and forth when Anna next opened her eyes. Terrible pain assaulted her dulled senses. Her whole body throbbed, except for her arms, which she could not feel at all. She glanced up to see the ropes with which her wrists had been bound to the low limb of a tree, and the words the demon child had spoken earlier returned to haunt her: She is the last. She must die in the same manner as the first.
Understanding entered her feeble mind as the sensations of Tomaso’s death returned. Anna struggled weakly against her restraints as the storm reached its raging climax, causing a nearby tree to crack and fall. Her feet were off the ground, her body swinging like a pendulum as she kicked and struggled in vain. The cuts to her stomach had opened and she saw her blood on the leafy ground below her being washed away by the rain.
She looked into the faces of the dead surrounding her. Then they parted to allow through the one who led them. Death arrived in the form of the monstrous child.
The creature’s gravelly voice reached her, scraping against her soul. “Will you beg for mercy, as did the first?”
The evil thing tittered, a sound that sent a cold finger of fear running up Anna’s spine. The dead closed in.
They took turns coming at her, ripping at her flesh with their hands, their teeth, their filthy mouths. Her screams stopped abruptly when they surged on her helpless body. She closed her eyes against the immense pain, no longer able to cry out or speak.
As they tore into her, brief images, snippets of her life, paraded across what was left of her mind... Alejandro’s mutilated body lying in the field... Her mother in a coffin... Nonna telling her that her mother had taken her own life... The bike ride, the one that had ended in her rape.
She understood at last why she had been stalked by melancholy all her life, the feeling she was doomed to misery. This fate had been waiting for her all along, a fate she’d been condemned to centuries ago. Her conscious mind had not known it, but the knowledge of her destiny had been engrained in every cell of her being since the day of her birth. Her blood had known. Every moment of her existence had been leading up to this end.
Something landed heavily against her chest and Anna opened her eyes in time to see the creature’s mouth open wide, wider. Its vile odor suffused the air around her. Filth-encrusted hair brushed against her face as the hideous thing bent toward her neck. She felt the soft flesh below her ear give way as the demon ripped open her throat. Pain again, blinding pain, as hot blood cascaded down her front.
Rotted lips battened down on the open wound. The disgusting sounds made by the creature as it fed on her blood filled the air around her.
; A vague awareness that the storm had spent itself floated across her mind. One last coherent thought flashed through her before she lost consciousness. The baby...the child she had birthed long ago, her daughter.
Her eyes suddenly snapped open at the implication. The creature ceased feeding and lifted its head. Anna saw its filmy black orbs widen, as if in surprise, and the flicker of understanding in them before it lowered its head again to continue feeding.
She died with the knowledge of the fate awaiting the daughter she had never known crushing her soul.
* * * *
When it was over, Isabella flicked the last drop of blood from her mouth with her rotted tongue and looked down on Anna’s ravaged carcass. Most of the woman’s flesh had been stripped from the bones. Only her head remained more or less intact, attached to her skeletal remains.
Isabella erupted in insane laughter. It sounded hellish, even to her, and the dead scattered in fright on hearing it. She remained alone with her prize in the forest for some time. Then she grabbed what was left of Anna by the hair, dragging the cadaver behind her as she crawled with it into her underground lair.
While drinking the woman’s blood, Isabella had seen something—a child. The woman, Anna, had birthed a daughter. For some reason, however, she could not see it clearly. It remained hidden from her. But she had glimpsed it in the blood—and blood never lied. Another descendant existed. Her days of feasting might not be at an end after all.
Isabella stretched out next to Anna’s remains and rested, her belly full. The blood she’d consumed permeated her, restoring her purpose of being. She would feed again. There would be blood, and another fulfillment of the curse to savor, although she knew not when.