The Bloodspawn

He turned to call to Harry, but he was already scrambling up over the bank and into the field above, nearly to the lake. Glancing back, his heart rising into his throat, he peered back into the darkness, but there was no one there.

Furrowing his brow, his eyes pinched tightly, he peered into the darkness with everything that he had. But all he could see was the unending wall of shadows that seethed like a mass of squirming tentacles, beckoning him to step back into the darkness.

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THE BLOODSPAWN

Michael McBride

© 2004 Michael McBride. All rights reserved.

PART NINE

Section 9

Chapters 11 and 12

XI

Monday, November 14th

5 p.m.

Scott sat down at the kitchen table, staring out across the lawn at the reddened storm clouds, the sun sinking behind the mountains, staining even the falling flakes a bright hue. The coffeepot began to whir, a thin stream of the black fluid trailing onto the bottom of the pot as it slowly filled. The sound of running water from the flushing toilet below in the family room filled the walls, humming. The door opened and Harry’s footsteps were evidenced, clambering up the stairs. Staring down at the cloth-bound diary, still clenched tightly in his grasp, he set it on the table in front of him, hoping that whatever was contained within in those hand-scrawled words was going to be able to help them.

The stack of folders rested on the table to his right. Harry hopped up on the stool in front of them, pulling down the top one. He gave a glance to his right at the pot that was now nearly half-full; the dark fluid pouring down from the thin hole in the white plastic guard that housed the filter full of the ground hazelnut beans. Turning his attention back to the stack of files in front of him, he pulled the first one down, opening it in front of him. Peering up before throwing himself into the reading, he stared at Scott, who still clung tightly to the book, staring out into the darkness as the red faded from the clouds, the blackness swarming around them. The long shadows from the trees across the center of the snow-covered lawn were swallowed along with whatever last remnants of the light lingered before the night devoured them whole. Only the fluttering flakes, which flashed beneath the dim light that crept from the inside window, were visible against the wall of darkness that pressed right up to the house.

“Shall we?” Harry asked, holding up the first folder.

Nodding, Scott hopped from the stool and to the coffeepot atop the counter. The last of the slowly falling drops of the murky brew dripped from the saturated filter, sizzling onto the circular heating pad beneath the pot. Pulling it out of the machine, he poured the hot liquid into the two mugs he had set on the marble counter top next to it. Steam poured from the tops of the nearly-full mugs as he walked them back to the eating bar, setting a dark blue mug labeled simply “JAVA” in front of Harry, and a plain white, brown rimmed one in front of his stool. He climbed back up and opened the floral-patterned, cloth book.

Peeling back the first couple of pages, time sealing the inked pages together as if with some sort of glue, he stared at the thinly lined, hand-written pages. He had a hard time deciphering the words. The lines were almost excessively loopy, the ink expanding into the page from the pen.

“To all who must bear witness,” it began, his eyes moving from left to right as he tried to absorb every word. “This is my testament of the evil that walks the Earth in human form, of the dark one that has eluded our order for centuries. I feel that for the first time, we are one step ahead of the beast, that we are in a position to thwart his advances, be it only for this one time. I have been led here by the footsteps of the demon from my last assignment in the county outside of Johannesburg, South Africa.

“We were late in arriving as the cycle had commenced long before we had any knowledge of his whereabouts. Two hundred men and women were slaughtered in the night as they were being led from the city under the guise of night. The bloodspawn, a wealthy diamond mine owner named Clayton Van Den Mueller, had them mown down by machine gun fire as they trespassed across his land to flee the persecution that followed them from Johannesburg.

“It was that night when I first saw the monster that masquerades as human. He appeared to me as an apparition standing outside the window of the reformatory, smiling up at me, mocking me. How we had not known of his location in South Africa, I am unsure, but by the time we were situated, the end was a foregone conclusion.

“So, it is today, August 27th, in the year of our Lord 1972, that I find myself at the base of the Rocky Mountains, outside of the city of Colorado Springs, barely a year after my failure in Africa. I can feel his presence. As I know that he can sense ours, lingering within these hollow hills, silencing the birds in the midst of their morning song as I wander the grounds of this compound, knowing that somewhere, beneath the shadows of the foothills, he lies in wait, watching our every move. And I know, for every fiber of my being cries out, that this will be my last assignment. My death seems to be a foregone conclusion, but whether or not I am successful still seems in doubt.”

“Look at this,” Harry said, interrupting Scott’s reading as he laid an old, yellowed newspaper clipping atop the diary.

“June 19th, 1942,” was scrawled in pen across the top of the shred of torn paper. There was a picture in the center, a mass grave, the earth still piled at the lip of the hole, a mound of charred bodies piled atop one another as a group of what appeared to be soldiers leaned over the edge.

“It says they found this grave east of the Rhine in northern Germany, but unlike the other mass graves found during World War II, the bodies inside were not limited to being Jewish. Check out the uniforms on the soldiers on the side of the grave. Those aren’t allied clothes, I can tell you that much, and you can bet that in 1942, there was no way that we had any intelligence within the borders of Germany.”

“I can’t understand any of the words,” Scott said, staring at the newsprint that was written in the native tongue.

“It’s been close to half a century since I was in a classroom learning this stuff, but I think I was able to get the gist of it,” Harry said, pointing down at the page. “It says that the people found inside were not all Jewish, some of them even members of the Nazi party. And while the Nazis generally shot their victims before burying them, these showed no signs of bullet wounds, in fact, they appeared to have been burned to death in that very hole, which for some reason was never covered.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Look here,” he said, pointing to the third paragraph in the yellowed story. “It’s saying that they are looking for the faction responsible. They think that it might be an allied installment that sneaked across the border, but they aren’t entirely convinced. The Third Reich, it says, has even offered a large reward for anyone with any information on the mass killing.”

“That doesn’t make much sense.”

“Exactly. With the Nazis controlling the press, the only way they would have allowed this story to run was if they were convinced that not only did they have nothing to do with it, but that they also had no idea who, in fact, had done it. And how two hundred bodies had been found in a similar condition to those disposed of by the Nazis without anyone having any idea as to where they came from…”

“Did you say two hundred?”

“Yes, exactly two hundred.”

“That’s weird, because I’m reading over here in this diary about two hundred people who were killed in South Africa.”

“Odd,” Harry mused, opening the second file and submersing himself within the contents.

Setting the clipping aside, Scott stared back down at the pages of the diary.

“It was by Papal decree that we were ordered to Colorado, our limited intelligence pointing to a shift in the moral clime, often a sign of his coming. Manitou Springs, barely twenty miles south of our current location, had only recently become a hotbed of presumed satanic activity. Rumored to have been where writing had begun on the Satanic Bible, the Vatican had placed an operative in this area. It was he who alerted the Pope to the presence, or at least to the immanently impending arrival, of the beast.

“I can feel him in these hills, as I could feel him in Johannesburg, and I know that timing is of the essence. Now, where we are in the cycle, I am not sure, but my suspicions lead me to believe that we are close to the beginning, rather than clumsily stumbling in to the end of the cycle as we had last time.

“Whether right or wrong, to the best of our understanding, the cycle begins with the invitation, whereupon a group of followers beckons his presence with the sacrifice of the firstborn. After accepting the invitation of blood, the beast moves on to the copulation, planting his evil seed under the cover of the night. Quite often, as our best records indicate, more than one seed in sewn.

“Now, he knows as well as we, that these children, these bloodspawn, are half-human, and thus prone to the same fallacies and unpredictability as the rest of their race. Achieving their destiny is nothing resembling a foregone conclusion. They have to be surrounded by arbiters, unwitting helpers of evil nature or not, whose sole, unknowing purpose in life is to be in the right place at the right time to help the bloodspawn to fulfill their destiny. And while not as grandiose and climactic as the enslavement of the human race as written in the Bible as the coming of the antichrist, the end result is no less insidious: the stealing of two hundred souls.

“Why two hundred? We do not know. But it has always been that way since our fist discovery of the cycle during the Age of Enlightenment. There have always been two hundred corpses in the wake of his passing, but there has only been one instance where we have thwarted his efforts. Or, at least, that is what we have pieced together from the information left behind. That group, while successful in their endeavor, disappeared from the face of the earth without leaving more than the slightest trace of their existence.”

Scott raised his eyes from the book, staring out into the dark night, the blowing snow crystallizing in the corners of the window as the flakes bounced off the glass, swirling into the drifts beneath the window. Every word written in that diary sounded like something out of the Middle Ages. It all sounded like complete and utter bullshit, like a story fabricated for the sole purpose of scaring a child at bedtime. But he could feel, deep down in the very core of his being, that there was a certain truth to it. For he knew that he had seen the evil of which the author spoke; had felt its cold stare, its icy touch. And more importantly, he knew that it was somewhere out there in the night, waiting for him.

“Here’s another one,” Harry said, tossing the nearly disintegrated piece of newsprint in front of him on the table.

This one was labeled “September 19th, 1878.” It told the story of a group of settlers headed west along the Oregon Trail; none of them referred to by name. They were found in a circle of their own wagons, two hundred of them in all, slaughtered by what they assumed to be a massive and quick attack by the Apache. It was a call to arms of sort, with a reward of ten dollars for anyone who had any information about the attack. The President himself had ordered the cavalry into Idaho, commissioning them to “do what needed to be done to bring the rogue cowards who perpetrated such a monstrosity to be brought to justice one way or another.”

“Here it is again,” Scott said, sliding the article back in front of Harry. “’Two hundred of them in all’.”

“I’m sensing a pattern here.”

“Yeah, you and me both.”

Turning his attention back to the diary, he picked up where he left off.

“Perhaps we will be graced by God with luck this time, as we have stumbled into this cycle early on. Or perhaps this will end like the others, and we will never be heard from again. I pray to God nightly for the strength to endure, to do what must be done, as I know it will take more than I have to offer. I know that it will take every single ounce of my faith, of our cumulative faith, for—as we have already divined the origin of the bloodspawn—we will have to take the souls of innocents in the process.

“Not far from this very convent, in the wooded hills at the base of the mountains, a man named LeRoy Trottier has brought that evil onto this earth. The only problem is that there are four children, and as we now know to be fact, only one of them can truly be the bloodspawn. The others are nothing more than poor, vacuous shells, their innocent souls—should they even have any—nothing more than sacrificial lambs being led to the slaughter, regardless of if we do it or not. We have arranged for these children to be brought into our custody, as Mr. Trottier will undoubtedly be spending the remainder of his natural life in prison.

“Now, by seizing these children, whether we have broken the cycle, or merely become a part of it, is completely uncertain. Until that moment when we are able to separate the bloodspawn’s soul from his mortal body, there will be no way of knowing for sure. So I pray to thee right now, oh Lord, for the strength the do what must be done, and for your forgiveness for the violation of your commandments when and if we succeed.

“But know this, to whomever should carry the torch should we fail here today, that there is always the chance that the evil deed may never come to pass. As the bloodspawn is one half human, that gives the child an element of unpredictability. The right combinations of both internal and external forces must be in place to draw the bloodspawn to the right place at the right time to bring the prophetic resolution to fruition. If we are unable to do what must be done, there still may be a chance. Find the bloodspawn before it is too late.

“May God forgive us…”

Scott flipped the page, but there were no further entries; nothing but the blank, light blue-lined pages of the incomplete diary. And, if what Harry had told him about that night at the Cavenaugh house was true, he already knew why. Closing the book, he slid it away from him on the table, staring out the ice-rippled glass into the frozen yard.

“What happened to the child you saved in that house?” Scott asked, still staring at the dark line of trees at the edge of the yard.

“The state put him up for adoption almost immediately. I tried to find out where he had gone and who had adopted him, but those records were sealed and I had no way of accessing them. My employment with the state was terminated relatively quickly after that, and I no longer have the contacts to get any information at all.”

“So, how old would this child be now?”

“Oh, geez,” Harry said, rolling his eyes back and staring up towards the ceiling. “Twenty- nine, maybe thirty, it would depend on his exact age when I found him that night.”

“So roughly my age?”

“I would say so. He should be right about your age.”

“Is it possible that Matt might have been that child? That he might somehow have survived that car crash and is in the process of accumulating his two hundred?”

“Everything that I’ve seen in these clippings makes it appear as though all two hundred of these people are killed at the same time, not one by one.”

“But could it be possible?”

“I don’t know. I’m no expert on any of this. I’m just now finding out things that I wish I’d known twenty years ago.”

“Then I guess we know what we need to do,” Scott said, rising from the table and scooting the stool in beneath the eating bar.

“What’s that?”

“We need to find Matt,” he said, turning to stare Harry straight in the eye. “We need to find the bloodspawn.”

XII

Monday, November 14th

11 p.m.

The yellow cab slowed in front of the apartment complex, the rear wheels grinding on the snow-packed road as it came to a stop against the curb. Stumbling from the vehicle, the passenger clambered over the curb and glared back at the driver.

“Eight bucks for a five mile ride,” he grumbled, slamming to door.

Jeremy Willis pulled the collar of his jacket over his bright red cheeks. Shoving his hands deep into the pockets of the black leather jacket, he shuffled towards the front door of the complex. Breathing heavily, his breath in a cloud around his face, he grabbed hold of the handle on the door, staring through the glass into the dimly lit lobby. Leaning against the wall momentarily, he fought back the wave of nausea that gurgled up from his stomach, the sea of beer sloshing violently as he blinked his eyes spastically in hopes of staying conscious. Regulating his breathing so as to calm the swell that threatened to overwhelm him, he yanked the door outward and stepped into the lobby.

A gust of hot air blew straight down on him from the overhead vent, giving rise to the goosebumps that crawled across his skin. Three rows of tiny, square mailboxes were built into the wall to his left, the names of the occupants labeled beneath the keyholes on tiny, blue stickers. To his right, the leasing desk sat unattended, the door to the manager's office closed with a little plastic clock sign hanging from the doorknob.

“Will return at 8 am,” the sign read.

Scooting across the tightly knit knap of the bright red carpet, his feet barely leaving the ground, he made his way toward the glass wall with the door in the middle that led back to all of the apartments. Fumbling in his pocket for his keys, he pulled them out, bringing them close to his face so that he could leaf through them one by one until he found the right one. Swaying as he stood, his mouth hanging slack, he pinched the door key between his thumb and forefinger. It took several attempts, but finally he slipped the key into the lock, turning it to the right and pulling open the glass door.

Wrapping his keys tightly in his closed fist, he turned to the right and opened the wooden door to the stairwell, stumbling up the cement stairs. Rounding the landing, he paused to catch his breath before heading up the remainder of the stairs to the second floor. Bursting through the door from the stairwell, he scuffed straight across the hallway, the door to the stairwell slamming shut behind him with a thud. His footsteps echoed on the hollow floor beneath, booming like the thunderous footfalls of a giant through the empty hall.

Slipping his key into the lock for the deadbolt, he sent it back into the door with a resounding thack, dropping his key to the doorknob to unlock it as well. Throwing the door inward, he stumbled into the apartment onto the olive-green and yellow linoleum floor of the entryway, the kitchen immediately to the left.

“Chopper?” he called, staring down the hallway into the living room. “Where are you boy?”

His wet shoes squeaked on the floor as he crossed it, nearly tripping over the seam of the carpet as he stepped into the living room. The television rested on a cluster of cinder blocks at the back of the room beneath the rust-tinged curtains that hung from the window. A tan couch sat in the middle of the room, the matching chair set up just to the right. The seams were tattered, the threads peeling back in clusters, and the bright blue throw pillows that rested in the corners were scattered across the floor, their corners knotted and matted as though they had been chewed.

“Chopper!” he yelled.

A meek whimper issued from down the small hallway to the right.

Whirling, he stopped, prepared to head down the hallway toward the bedroom, but his eyes caught on something else. There was a picture, framed and matted just to the right of the hallway, a gut-wrenching reminder of a better day. He stood to the left, wearing a black suit and tie, his left arm lying across the shoulder of a quite attractive blonde woman wearing a light purple sun dress. In her lap sat a small girl, her shiny blonde hair hung to either side of her smiling face as she clung tightly to a small stuffed dog. She wore a bright red dress, the edges fringed with lace. White tights covered her legs right down to the shiny black, buckled shoes that dangled above the floor, hardly past her mother’s knees.

He couldn’t believe how much younger he looked, his hair full and the suit fitting him perfectly as though it had been tailored just for him. His face looked nothing like it did today, his blue eyes accented by his thick brows, his lips curled back from a genuine smile. It showed none of the wear that aged his face today, his eyes weren’t sunken back into their sockets behind large brown bags, nor were the thin lines that aged his face even beginning to form.

“And Darcy…” he said, running his finger over the woman in the picture, the oils from his skin leaving a transparent line.

She had to have been the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. The only problem was that she knew that just as well as he did. What he had been unable to provide, another had been more than willing to, and she had left him nothing but a simple note on the table.

“See you in court,” the note had read.

He could remember dashing up the stairs and into their bedroom, throwing open the closet door only to find that all of her clothes and shoes were now gone. Spinning around, he could vividly recall the despair that sunk into his chest as he raced into his daughter’s room, only to find it completely empty, the carpet still holding the matted impressions of where her bedposts and her dresser had been. He had fallen to his knees on that very floor, sobbing like a baby, his face buried in his hands for the rest of the night.

That was when the serious drinking had begun.

The next time he had seen her was in court, as she had promised, her new beau loaded to the gills with enough money to bury him alive. Assuming that the worst of his worries were the child support issue, he had been completely unprepared for what he found there in that hollow, marble-floored room. Not only did he learn that he was a terrible husband, uncaring and oft-times violent—which came as a complete shock—but that he was a mean and abusive father as well. And while he had known that those accusations were completely unfounded, the judge obviously hadn’t, ruling that he was to have no further contact with the child… yet still, he was going to have to part with the house, the cars, and more than half of his monthly income.

It had been the worst day of his life, bar none. He had left there in tears, shrugging off his lawyer’s attempt to comfort him, unable to even give his only daughter one last hug before she was whisked away in her new “daddy’s” Mercedes. He had paid religiously and timely for the next couple of years. No longer able to afford the style in which he was accustomed to living, he had moved into this tiny apartment, selling everything that had ever mattered to him to cover the first and last month’s rent.

He had been fired from the department store where he had spent the last eight years managing the electronics department after showing up one too many times hung over and looking as though he hadn’t slept, let alone showered. Of course, he hadn’t, as there was barely enough time in his life for anything other than the bar. It was there where he received at least the most remote resemblance of respect: the bartenders all knew him by name, he placed second two years running in the annual darts competition, and there were always ladies there willing to treat him like a king, if only for a night.

Tonight, however, he hadn’t been in the mood for anything other than a long-term relationship with his bed. A one on one, twelve hour affair that would hopefully leave him able to wake up functional enough to try to find a better job than he had held for the last two years. And besides, he was getting awfully tired of waiting tables, even if the management didn’t make him claim his tips.

Kissing his fingertips, he placed them on his daughter’s picture, a tear forming in the corner of his eye as he shrugged, his lips twisting over his teeth. Sniffing, he broke his stare from the picture, heading down the hallway to the whining dog, which was, more than likely, cringing beneath his bed.

Turning left into the darkened bedroom, he could smell it right away. Covering his mouth and nose, he flipped on the light switch, his eyes surveying the floor for the fresh, steaming pile of crap, that he knew had to be there somewhere. There were no brown piles on the tan carpet, so, fearing the worst, he raised his eyes from the floor level to that of the bed, immediately seeing the stack of logs atop the comforter.

“Chopper!” he shouted, watching the tip of the dog’s nose disappear behind the bedspread that draped nearly to the floor.

Grimacing, he skulked across the well-worn carpeting, throwing wide the bathroom door. Grabbing the roll of toilet paper off of the counter next to the toilet, he pulled off about three feet of the white paper, bundling it up in his hand. Stepping back into the bedroom, he paused at the foot of the bed, his face crumpling beneath his upturned nose.

He snared the pile in the tissue, the warmth creeping through even the second ply into his flesh. Groaning, he whirled and raced to the bathroom, throwing open the lid of the toilet and dropping the heavy mound into the water with a splash. Flushing the toilet twice for good measure, he stood in front of the sink, running the hot water so that it might get warm enough for his hands. Pumping the soap dispenser, he was able to procure nothing more than the crusted ball of dried soap that clung to the nozzle. Sighing, he rubbed it between his hands beneath the slowly warming water before drying his unsatisfactorily clean hands on his bath towel that hung over the shower rod. Turning, he took a deep breath and stumbled back into the bedroom.

“Chopper!” he called, falling to his hands and knees right at the base of the bed.

He could see the dark outline of the dog beneath the bed, huddled right in the center in hopes of being out of reach.

“Damn it! You come out here right now!”

But the dog only whimpered as he reached quickly beneath the drooping covers, grabbing the collar tightly with his right hand and yanking the squirming dog out from beneath the bed. The nails on all four of his feet dug into the carpet as he stiffened, his head flopping from one side to the other as he was dragged out into the light.

“You know better,” Jeremy said, lifting the black and rust patterned Rottweiler into the air by its collar, its flailing legs accomplishing nothing more than twisting its neck tighter in the collar.

Raising his left arm, he whacked the dog on the hind end repeatedly, his palm stinging from the blows. His teeth bared, he tossed the dog down on the bed, the Rott landing squarely on its back before flipping onto its feet and cringing at the top of his bed atop his pillow.

Shaking his head, Jeremy rifled his fingers through his dark hair, trying to calm himself.

“Sorry, boy,” he said, climbing onto the bed and crawling toward the pillows. Chopper flinched, but immediately melted as Jeremy began to scratch behind his ears, his slobbering tongue immediately reciprocating with a quick slop across the face.

Smiling, Jeremy rolled onto his back, bringing the dog onto his chest as the ferocious licking continued until he could no longer take it and had to roll the dog back over, rubbing his exposed belly.

His head had begun to throb, his drooping lids nearly lowered over his burning eyes, but he needed to make it up to Chopper. It wasn’t necessarily his fault that he had dumped in the apartment; after all, he had been home alone for close to fourteen hours. Jeremy knew that there was no way he could hold his bowels that long. Chopper had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time, as it seemed he was more frequently, especially as of late. And the bottom line was that the last thing Jeremy wanted to become was abusive, as they had accused him of being in court on that one fateful day so many years ago now.

“You wanna go for a walk?” he slurred, smiling as he held the dog’s face cradled in his hands.

Chopper sprung to his feet, playfully bouncing on the bed from side to side, his saliva drenched tongue lolling from one side of his mouth to the other.

“You wanna go for a walk?”

The dog darted off the bed, sprinting toward the entryway, the carpeting grinding beneath his clawed feet as he tore across it. Chuckling, Jeremy rolled off of the bed and shuffled into the hallway to the sound of Chopper’s paws scraping on the front door. Rounding the corner into the family room, he turned back to the front door, opening the small closet and grabbing the leash that dangled from the inside of the knob. Latching it onto the bouncing dog’s collar, he opened the front door and held on for dear life. Chopper bolted out into the hall and toward the door to the stairwell, pausing only long enough for Jeremy to open it before bounding down the stairs as fast as his churning legs would take him. Struggling against the force of the strong dog’s will, he clung tightly to the railing, easing slowly down the steps so as not to be yanked headfirst into the air.

Staring back at him from where he sat at the door to the lobby, Chopper’s tongue dangled from between his canines as he panted, his eyes aglow with the anticipation of the night. Jeremy had barely turned the knob before Chopper threw his weight against it, leading them both through the lobby at a ferocious pace and to the front door where he just stared out into the swirling snow, the muscles in his shoulders and back tense with longing.

“All right, boy,” Jeremy said aloud, bracing himself for the freezing breeze that he knew would rip right through his clothing, nipping at his skin beneath.

Enjoying just one more moment of the blowing heat that poured from above, creeping down his back beneath his jacket, he opened the door. The dog tore out into the night. His shoulder lurched as the leash he had wrapped around his hand tensed, the Rottweiler pulling against him with everything that it had, wanting nothing more than to just cross the parking lot and make it to the line of shrubbery at the start of the green belt.

“Easy, boy,” Jeremy said, his head starting to spin slightly from the alcohol that coursed through his veins.

Pulling the leash in, he took up the slack until he reached the collar, unfastening the clip from the panting, slobbering dog’s neck. Chopper sprinted straight across the snow-covered parking lot, kicking up small clouds of the rapidly accumulating powder from behind his padded feet, heading toward the curb beneath the dim streetlight. Thousands of tiny flakes swirled in the small aura of light beneath the high lamp, the trees rustling heartily in the whistling wind.

Chopper bounded over the curb, stopping by the row of hedges in front of the tall pines. He sniffed at the bare branches buried beneath the heavy snow for only the briefest of moments before raising his leg and staining the snow yellow. Pinching it off, he sniffed along the ground for five feet before raising his leg once again. Repeating this pattern several times, he finally stopped, turning to stare at Jeremy, his eyes wide and his mouth hanging open in what looked like a smile, his lolling tongue bouncing behind the tufts of steam that bellowed from his throat.

Slowly, he raised his head into the air, sniffing loudly. He closed his mouth, swallowing his bright pink tongue. Cocking his head into the wind, he stood perfectly still as Jeremy finally crossed the parking lot, swaying, and clambered up over the curb. Chopper shot a quick glance back at him and then immediately broke into a fit of riotous barking.

“Chopper!” Jeremy growled, looking up at the line of darkened windows and hoping that the damn dog wouldn’t wake anyone.

He was allowed to have a dog, but the complex rules state that the dog cannot exceed forty pounds, and when he moved in it hadn’t. But Chopper had to be nearly sixty pounds by now and the last thing he wanted to do was to draw attention to that fact. The brazen, mostly disobedient dog was all that he had now, his only family, and he sure as hell didn’t want to lose his family all over again.

The dog stopped barking, pausing once again to sniff the air. Slowly, he turned, looking straight through the line of hedges. He lowered his head, the short hairs on his shoulders and neck bristling up, as a long, guttural growl ripped from between his bared teeth. His feet pressed forward only inches at a time as he crept towards the line of brush.

“What is it, boy? Do you smell a rabbit?”

The dog just stood there, every muscle in his body tensing visibly as he growled, unflinching, into the undergrowth. A thick line of drool hung from his lower jaw, growing longer and longer, before finally falling into the snow. His bobbed tail, which usually wagged incessantly, stood straight up.

“Chopper?”

Without a final glance back, Chopper let out one final bark and then shot through the barren hedges, leaving nothing but the bobbing branches in his wake. There was the sound of crackling and crunching as branches were torn from their moorings, the dog rocketing into the wilderness.

“Shit,” Jeremy muttered through his own bared teeth, his taut lips twisting and contorting. He fought down the sense of rage that swelled from deep in his chest.

Shaking his head, he kicked at a clump of snow that had fallen from the shrubbery where Chopper had entered. With one final glance back across the parking lot at the darkened building, he slipped into the foliage, the long, thin branches snagging at his clothing.

Breaking through the line of landscaped hedge, he ducked beneath the lower canopy of the mess of pine branches. The brown, needle-covered ground was nearly dry, as only the slightest dusting of snow had been able to make the descent through the branches that were so tightly woven together that barely a single ray of light could filter through. His back ached miserably as he hunched over, his hands still thrust deeply into his pockets. Bending his knees, he crept beneath the sharply-needled branches, the only sound he could hear being the needles on the ground as they crunched beneath his uneven footsteps.

“Chopper!” he called, ducking out from beneath the painfully low branches and into a slight clearing.

He craned his head and listened, but all he could hear was the wind ripping through the branches of the trees, filling the small path he had stumbled onto with a fine mist of powder. Off in the distance, he heard a muffled bark, but surely there was no way that Chopper could have gotten that far away in such a short amount of time.

Following the path, he made every effort to tread lightly, his clumsily-falling feet muffled by the deepening snow. He listened intently, turning his head from one side to the other as he scanned the lines of matted, white branches and intertwining trunks to either side. But there was nothing, not even the slightest—

“Chopper?” he said, quickly turning to his right as he caught just the briefest of glimpses of the round, rust-colored circle of fur on the dog’s rear end between a gap in the trees.

Stepping from the path, the snow got deeper as it piled upon itself at the base of the row of trees. Ducking beneath the low-lying branches, heavily bowed beneath the weight of the snow, he crept toward the dog, standing completely still, staring at something outside of his view in the middle of the forest. Unraveling the leash from his right hand, he gripped the clip tightly, pulling back the trigger to open it wide enough to just quickly latch it onto the metal ring on the collar. It wasn’t often that Chopper took off on his own, but on that rare occasion when he did, Jeremy knew that he was in for a seriously long night.

Slipping past the hindquarters of the dog, the hairs along its back still standing erect, Jeremy clipped the leash onto the collar. Smiling, and more than just a little pleased with himself, he positively beamed, his face awash with a gigantic smile. Had he been outside of the cluster of trees, he surely would have raised both arms above his head, Rocky-style, and bounced up and down.

His sudden burst of happiness waning, the thought of kicking that dog’s undisciplined butt slowly entered his mind, writhing around like a serpent in his brain until there was nothing that he wanted more. He yanked on the leash; visibly jerking the dog’s body backward, but Chopper didn’t budge, still intently focused on whatever was locked in his line of view.

“Come on, Chopper!” Jeremy shouted, tugging on the leash with everything that he could muster from that somewhat crouched position atop the piled needles.

But the dog didn’t give an inch. The muscles in his back legs tensed like steel cables from beneath the black fur as he fought against the leash.

“Damn it, Chopper! I said—”

The dog interrupted him with a fierce, terrifying growl that sent the hackles straight up Jeremy’s back and neck. Allowing the leash to loosen in his grasp, the leather cord went slack and he placed his left hand atop the dog’s arched back. He could feel the growl as it rumbled through the animal’s body, the shoulders shuddering as it burst from the throat and through the snarling, bared teeth.

Running his hand up the back and through the stiffly-standing hairs on the shoulders, he patted Chopper’s neck lightly, staring down his poised head towards whatever he was looking at. His right knee touched the frozen ground, the thin layer of snow soaking damply through his pants.

His eyes followed the blotched ground toward where Chopper’s stare was fixed, the shadows thickening beneath the heavily intertwined branches of a dense cluster of pines. A cold breeze ripped through the forest, chilling him straight through his jacket and into the flesh beneath. The rustling trees showered him with tiny flecks of ice crystals, which settled in his hair and across his bare flesh as he stared into the shadows.

He couldn’t see it right off, but he knew that there was something in there, hidden in the shadows. The hackles slowly rose across the backs of his arms.

“Come on, boy,” he said, gently tugging at the collar while he patted the dog on the neck. “Let’s go.”

The sound of rustling needles and crackling branches filled the still air about them.

He didn’t like this, didn’t like it at all. There was something about the situation that really didn’t sit well with him, writhing serpentine-like in his belly as he was overwhelmed with the urge to take flight. His breathing grew short and quick, sounding almost identical to the panting canine.

“Now!” he shouted, clambering to his feet, his head raking across the bottom of the branches above, which showered him with snow.

Tugging on the collar, he barely moved the dog in the slightest, but he kept on tugging, trying frantically to drag the dog from the confines of the forest and back onto the thin path that would surely lead them home. Chopper’s sides still quivered from the growls that issued from his tight jaw, but slowly, the sound dissipated, and the dog’s sides shook for a different reason.

A high-pitched whine echoed through the night from Chopper’s trembling form, and Jeremy could feel his heart sink in his chest. Slowly, he turned, the leash falling from his formerly clenched hand to the hard, frozen earth. His shaking hands flopped to his sides as he fell to his knees on the ground.

He could feel it, aching in the marrow of his bones. It was right there with him.

His eyes rose from the ground, following the shadow-infested ground to where the dog stared, straight ahead. He was helpless to do anything but observe as a form eased out of the shadows that concealed it. His gaze rising from the ground, Jeremy could see two bare feet, the flesh buried beneath a layer of crusted mud and earth, dangling inches above the frosted earth. Tattered edges of a long, dark cloak flagged about those feet.

With one final whimper, Chopper turned suddenly and raced back out of the woods and into the clearing.

His gaze shifting upward, Jeremy flopped onto his back, his feet kicking at the ground in an attempt to propel him to his feet. All he could see was the darkness of the shroud, the loosely-fitting garment rippling about the hidden form beneath, blending into the shadows that seemed to be stretching out toward him. From the heart of that darkness, a pair of eyes shone dully beneath the thin hint of light that somehow broke through the sheath of branches. There was something in those eyes that he had never seen before. They were so cold, so cold…

Thrusting with his hips, he flopped over onto all fours, scrambling across the dead needles that poked straight through the thick skin on his palms. The jeans shredded back from his knees as the hard ground rose up and tore at him, trying to keep him from reaching his feet.

Tears streamed from his eyes, his heart jackhammering, fit to burst. He could see the path ahead as he scrambled to his feet, stumbling before launching himself headlong into the masses of branches, barely throwing his arms in front of his face in time to keep the needles from raking the flesh on his face.

He hurdled along the path, breaking through the mass of branches that shielded the other side, his feet propelling him onward as he fought to see through the small gap he had left between his arms. Branches grabbed at him from all sides, trying to get a grip on him to keep him from escaping their wooden clutches.

There was a sharp and sudden pain in his right toe, his leg aching straight through to the thigh as he felt himself become airborne, his hands reflexively reaching out in front of him to brace his fall. His chest was the first to hit, slamming onto the frozen turf, knocking what little air he had in his chest out with a loud groan. Fighting for air, he tried to push himself back to his knees, unable to draw in even the slightest gasp of oxygen.

Straight ahead, he could see the light from the parking lot, the darkened apartment complex through the bare branches of the hedge from where they had first entered the forest. He could see Chopper sitting at the door, staring straight up at the doorknob as though someone were going to let him in.

Jeremy’s clawed hands tore at the turf, urging him toward the parking lot. His shoulders shook and tears streamed in waves down his cheeks, his collapsed chest struggling to come up with enough air to cry out.

There was sharp pressure to either side of his neck, clamping on the thin muscles above his clavicle. All he could do was watch the parking lot as he was suddenly ripped from the ground and into the air, his flopping legs dangling above the ground. He mouthed the words, hoping that just once the sound would come.

“Help me!”

The words came in a dry burst that wouldn’t even qualify as a whisper.

“Somebody, please! Help me!”

His voice trailed off into the night as he was turned, the parking lot fading away behind him. There was now nothing but wave after wave of snow-matted pine needles ripping into the flesh on his face as he was led deeper into the forest.

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THE BLOODSPAWN

Michael McBride

© 2004 Michael McBride. All rights reserved.

PART TEN

PART 10

XIII

Tuesday, November 15th

4 a.m.

Leaning back in the chair at the computer, Scott stretched his arms above his head, stifling a yawn as he tried to work out the dull ache that had settled in at the base of his spine. He had been pouring over the Internet for what felt like an eternity, trying to come up with anything at all that could lead him to the whereabouts of the child that Harry had saved so many years ago. Everything within the State of Colorado Department of Child Welfare and Social Services web sites was password controlled, and, try as he might, he had no luck entering. From there he had moved on to some of the adoption location agencies, some of which claimed they could locate the adoptive child’s parentage within forty- eight hours. He had found one such service, The People Network, which had been the only one of the many web sites that he had encountered that had anyone online to help. They had been unable to offer their forty-eight hour guarantee as special circumstances surrounded the initial adoption, but had gladly taken his credit card number. The agent, as he was called, had promised that they would either call or fax him as soon as they knew anything, but said not to expect to hear from them for at least four to five days unless they got lucky. So now, it was just a matter of waiting.

He rubbed his weary eyes and glanced over at the clock.

4:18 a.m.

His body was a seething mass of pain and discomfort, every strained and pulled muscle begging for him to just lie down, if even for just a little while. But he knew, as he could tell most every other night, that there was no way that his mind would shut down for any stretch of time, let alone long enough to fall asleep. And this night was no different than any other, but piled even higher with the stress of suddenly having to deal battling supernatural forces for the fate of two hundred souls. He was already short a couple of buddies from high school. The first thing on his agenda in the morning was to call what remained of his old social circle to see if he could convince the others—if they were actually still alive—to get the hell out of town for a while.

He still wasn’t sure that he completely accepted everything about the current situation as it stood. Sure, he had seen two of his best friends brutally slaughtered, but there was almost a dream-like quality to it. Almost as though their deaths existed only in his imagination. There were no bodies lying on cold, stainless steel tables in a coroner’s lab, their lifeless corpses awaiting the final touches on their make up in the back office of a funeral parlor. There was nothing tangible about it in the slightest. All that he had were the vague recollections of what, in all actuality, were fairly traumatic moments, with absolutely no physical evidence that the bodies had ever actually been there.

And then there was the diary and the files they had found in the little room back in the tunnel. The whole concept of a devil that wandered the earth planting his seed, with the sole purpose of that child, that bloodspawn, bringing the ultimate deaths of two hundred people was outside his comprehension. It seemed completely preposterous from just a surface view. The fact that there was an entire sect of nuns devoted to tracking and battling with this hitchhiking devil seemed like something out of an early eighties horror flick he might have seen on the USA network in the middle of the night.

But he had seen whatever it was that had torn his friend clean in two. He had felt it down there with him in that darkened tunnel earlier in the day, had tasted its cold breath, felt it on his bare skin. Maybe he would have been able to shrug the whole thing off and go to sleep; dismissing all of the nuns’ accumulated information with the most lackadaisical shrug. But the fact remained that he had seen it with his own eyes, and whether he bought into the whole bloodspawn theory or not, he had seen enough over the last couple of days to know better than to not take it seriously.

And, truthfully, he wasn’t sure of exactly what he was supposed to do, but from everything that he had read and seen that day, it seemed like the best place to start was to try and figure out this whole bloodspawn thing. The first question that needed to be answered was what had happened to this child that Harry had rescued from the Cavenaugh house so many years ago?

“Harry?” Scott said, turning in the swiveling chair to face the living room.

Harry’s head lay back on the top of the recliner chair, his mouth wide open as he wheezed heavily. His chest rose and fell rhythmically, the diary, which he had been reading, had fallen from his lap to the floor. The arms of the chair did little more than prop up his arms. His hands dangled over the sides, nearly touching the carpet.

Chuckling to himself, Scott rose from the computer chair and crossed the living room, stretching his arms straight over his head as he walked beneath the high, vaulted ceiling. He lurched up the stairs, his exhausted legs fighting him the whole way as they did little more than drag his limp feet up the steps. Rounding the corner and walking down the short hallway into his bedroom, he paused at the foot of his bed, staring down at the unmade mess of covers and thinking about just how delightful it would be to just climb under that comforter for just a few minutes, just long enough to close his eyes and… And what? Sleep? What were the odds of that?

Feeling completely disheartened, his shoulders slouching, he knew that his only option would be to do the next best thing: take a nice, hot shower, and start the day anew.

Shedding his button down shirt, he tossed it into the corner of the room. He ran his fingers through his hair, rolling his neck about on his shoulders, as he kicked off his shoes and socks and walked into the bathroom.

Leaning toward the mirror, he opened his eyes wide and studied the myriad red veins that crept from the corners of his eyes into the dark irises. His heavy lids settling back down over the thin slits of his open eyes that rested deep within the dark bags beneath them, he stepped to the right, lifting the toilet seat and sighing mightily as he drained the nearly full pot of coffee that swelled within his bladder. Smiling to himself, he closed the lid, pressing the small metal handle that caused the loud whoosh that filled the room.

The cold tile felt almost nice beneath his aching feet as the muscles slid apart just enough to allow the cool surface to soothe the tight tendons. Ducking back to his left, he opened the cabinet beneath the sink and pulled out a towel from the small stack and slung it over the brass rim of the shower stall. Turning to go choose some different, and say, clean clothes to wear, he heard a faint thump as the towel fell from atop the opaque glass shower stall, landing in a clump on the floor.

Sighing, he whirled around as he hadn’t quite made it out of the bathroom yet. Kneeling to the floor, he swiped up the towel with his right hand. But before he could return to standing, he caught a glimpse of something on the floor.

“Dammit,” he grumbled, wiping the small droplets of the red fluid from the tile.

Tossing the towel back up over the top rim of the shower, he paused. He was definitely tired, he knew that, and under these circumstances there was no way that his brain was as sharp as he generally prided himself on keeping it, but he suddenly needed to figure out what the hell he had just wiped off the floor of his bathroom.

The first thought that crossed his mind was that Harry had used the bathroom, and being an older fellow and all, and having something of a physically taxing day, maybe there was just something wrong with the plumbing. But why would he have gone into his bedroom to use the bathroom when he would have passed one on the way down the hall, and the other one was more than likely a whole lot cleaner than his personal one.

Something caught his eye in the mirror. It had barely snared his attention from the far reaches of his peripheral vision, and it had taken him a moment to find it, but there it was, clear as day, and he suddenly wondered how he had possibly missed it when he had first entered the room.

There was a series of small red splotches, so dark they almost appeared black on the light blue horizontal blinds. He dabbed at one of them with his right index finger, recoiling quickly as it was still wet to the touch… and still warm. Lifting the blinds, he stared down at the windowsill that was covered with a splotch of the red fluid, which crawled over the molding and was running down the wall in a pair of small, crimson lines, just ready to peek out from beneath the curtains.

He tugged on the window, but it was locked tightly, and even through the frosted window he could see that the screen was still in place, so how could it have possibly gotten in there?

There was a small splat as one fine ball of the somewhat viscous fluid dropped from the orange peel-textured white wall to the tiled floor. His eyes followed the sound, staring at the small circle of red. And there were more, leading in a small line toward the base of the shower where he had wiped up the first couple of drops. And then he saw it, something that were he any less tired he would have noticed right away when he had first walked into the room. There, on the top edge of the brass handle affixed to the right side of the hinged, almost white looking glass, was another splotch of red. He peered more closely at it, creeping across the red spotted tile, his eyes fixed on the marking. Coming right up on top of it, he craned his head forward, inspecting it thoroughly. There were small whorls in the pattern pressed into the red mark on the shining brass fixture, and there was absolutely no denying that what he was looking at was, indeed, a thumbprint.

Scott’s breath caught in his chest. He was suddenly quite aware of just how alone he was in that bathroom, and wishing that he had opted for the clear glass panels for the shower, rather than the opaque.

Reaching out with his trembling hand, he grasped the brass handle, trying to catch his breath as he slowly pulled outward. There was a small popping sound as the door disengaged from the magnetic seal, the glass door swinging backward with slight squeak. His eyes grew wide, his jaw falling slack. From his shaking legs all the way up and over his shoulders, his whole body started to quiver at once. Every tiny hair that covered his skin stood straight on end as he saw it, right in the middle of the floor of the shower stall as soon as he looked inside.

Fighting back the urge to vomit, his stomach heaving dryly, he cupped a hand over his mouth and stared down at the pile of flesh that lay in the middle of a bloody pool that slowly trickled down the circular drain beneath the showerhead. The tattered remnants of a shredded shirt clung to the chest of the body, saturated with the crimson mess. The legs were crumpled to either side, the jeans torn away from the scraped knees. Blood ran in small lines over the bare feet, dripping from between the toes.

All he could see of the head was a mass of dark, tangled hair, the man’s chin resting in the middle of his chest. The tips of each ear appeared to have been clipped off, blood puddling in the hollows of his ears, forming large droplets at the bottom of each lobe. There was a small circular scar in the lobe of the left ear, apparently from where the hole from a piercing had healed shut.

Shaking violently, he reached toward the man with his right hand, pressing on the forehead with just the middle finger of his hand as he leaned the head back. Staring straight into the face, he could tell at first glance exactly who it was, even though he hadn’t seen him in years. Jeremy looked exactly same as he had in high school, even without his eyes. His hair was a little shorter, and his features more mature, but there was no mistaking it.

Ripping back his hand, Scott turned away from the body, the head bouncing several times off the chest before rolling to the right. The image of the face was engraved into the back of his head, and all he could see as he closed his eyes was the empty sockets of the eyes. The lids were sunken inward; streams of blood poured from the corners of the eyes, running through the thick stubble on the cheeks, clinging in drops at the line of the chin, hanging there perpetually as if they would never fall. The open mouth exposed the swelling tongue, which pressed on the chipped front teeth, the lips faded from their formerly dark pink as he remembered them to a more subdued, pale shade of light blue.

“Harry…” he managed in only a meek whisper.

He swallowed the huge lump that had formed in his throat, slowly pushing himself backward along the floor, his hands and bare feet barely able to get any traction on the slick tile.

“Harry!” he shouted, the word booming through the upstairs bathroom.

Unable to fight the urge any longer, he stared through the open shower door at the body that sat almost Indian style in the middle of the blue marble stall. He shook his head over and over, as if that sign of disbelief would change the fact that he was actually staring at it. A muffled whimper crept from his chest as the only other sound in the room was the light trickling of the blood dripping down the drain.

Breaking his gaze, he leapt to his feet, turning his back on the bathroom as he raced across the bedroom and into the hallway.

“Harry!”

Rounding the corner, he could see the living room straight down the hallway at the base of the stairs. Harry was still completely unconscious in the chair, a small line of drool slipping from the corner of his mouth.

“Harry!” Scott shouted. He hit the stairs at a full sprint, hurdling them three at a time as he grasped the railing.

Harry shot upright; looking completely perplexed as he wiped the saliva from his chin with the back of his hand. Squinting, he stared at Scott who was already crossing the living room floor.

“What’s going on?” he mumbled through a yawn. He gently massaged his stiff lower back with his left hand.

“Come on!” Scott shouted right into his face as he grabbed him by the hand and nearly yanked him right out of the chair.

“I’m coming!” Harry snapped, snatching his hand back from Scott.

“Jesus Christ,” Scott muttered as he raced back toward the stairs, clambering up to the hallway and ducking back into him room.

He could hear Harry’s muffled footsteps on the plush carpeting as they reached the top of the staircase and turned down the hallway towards his room. Stopping at the doorway, he leaned against the trim staring back toward the bedroom door. He knew he couldn’t stand to look in there at his old friend again.

“What is it?” Harry asked, the sleep finally wearing off, along with it the incredible grumpiness.

“In the shower…” Scott stammered, his voice trailing off to a whisper. “In the shower.”

Harry walked past him and into the bathroom, his shoes squeaking on the tile.

“What?” Harry asked, his eyes scanning the glass enclosure.

“Right there, on the floor in the stall.”

“Is that real marble?”

“What?” Scott asked, shaking his head and closing his eyes momentarily before whirling and stepping into the bathroom behind Harry.

Pushing him to the side, Scott walked right to the edge of the shower and stared through the open door.

There was absolutely nothing there.

Not a single drop of blood could be seen on the marble surface, the brass drain shining as though freshly polished. His eyes covered the floor, looking for any trace of the droplets of blood that had freckled the tile only a moment prior, but there was nothing. Shoving past Harry once again, he grabbed the horizontal blinds, noticing immediately that there were no splotches on the blades. Throwing them upward, he stared at the windowsill only to find the white trim looking just like new without the slightest hint of the crimson that had traced lines across the painted wood.

“Did I miss something?” Harry asked.

Turning, Scoot just stared at him, his mouth opening and forming words, but no sound came out. His brow furrowed as he paused, then quickly turned and stared out the window.

“It was there. I promise you. It was there just a minute ago.”

“What?”

“Jeremy… an old friend. He was in my shower.”

“Well,” Harry said, unsure of what to say or believe. “Where is he now?”

“There!” Scott shouted as he stared out onto the snow-covered lawn. There was a wide dark streak running straight through the center of the yard toward the line of trees. He could barely see a pair of bare feet at the edge of the undergrowth, but only for a split second as they were dragged out of sight into the darkness beyond.

Bounding out of the bathroom, Scott grabbed a pair of shoes from the floor and slipped his bare feet straight into them, grabbing the button-down shirt from the floor where he had tossed it, slipping his arms into the sleeves as he ran out of the bedroom. He hit the hallway at a full sprint, grabbing the wall to keep from slamming into it, not even bothering to button up the shirt. He leapt the stairs, landing in the entryway, his whole body functioning on pure instinct.

Unlatching the lock, he slid back the sliding glass door and bounded out into the blowing snow. The channel carved into the accumulation was still there, the powdered mass of flakes melting back from the warm red stain as whatever new flakes fell atop it fizzled into water. His eyes followed the line of flattened snow to the edge of the forest as his legs slowly began to move forward.

There was something on the wind, an unnatural scent of sorts. It was almost like a mixture of sulfur and copper that he could taste as well as he could smell. It was all around him, yet seemed to be resonating from within the confines of the closely packed trees that led back into the wilderness. And he could feel him there, too, watching him with stoic eyes as he crossed the lawn and peeled back the first layer of undergrowth, entering its domain.

The sound of the whistling wind dissipated into the night as he pressed deeper into the pine grove, the only audible sounds were those of his heavy, labored breathing and the needles of the branches as they caressed one another, scraping from side to side as he passed beneath. It became increasingly difficult to follow the trench through the forest. It shifted from side to side as it meandered through the maze of trunks, the redness fading to a pale silver on the white ground as there appeared to be no more of the red to stain it.

An owl hooted in the upper reaches of the needle-covered branches above, its long feathers clapping together as it rapidly took to flight.

Scott finally stopped, leaning his hands on his thighs. He doubled over in an effort to catch his breath. Steam swirled in bursts from his ruby red nostrils as his eyes scanned the thin lines of darkness between the closely packed trunks, peering through the masses of green and browning needles for anything resembling a human form. Granted, there was a large part of him that really didn’t want to find whatever it was that he had chased out here into the forest, but there was another part that just had to try to force some form of resolution. He couldn’t keep doing this night after night with no end in sight. He couldn’t just lie awake waiting for whatever monstrosity stalked the darkness to parade the slaughtered corpses of two hundred of his friends in front of him, if that was, indeed, the whole point.

And there was a part of him that wanted to prove that it was nothing more than a dream, a bad dream that he just couldn’t see the way out of. If he could just track down whoever this was out here in the night, he might be able to wake up, because, after all, there was absolutely no way that this was his friend he had watched die right in front of his eyes so many years ago. Regardless of what the diary may have insinuated, or what Harry had seen at that house in the valley, he needed to prove to himself that his deceased friend Matt wasn’t skulking around in the shadows taking his revenge in the form of a garish bloodbath.

Wiping the crystallized drops of sweat from his forehead, he jogged deeper into the woods, dodging the branches and trunks. They came at him with surprising speed, his tautly-wound reflexes spring-like in their reactions. The hollow thud of his footsteps atop the frozen ground resonated within his head, hammering like the thumping of the blood through his temples. His brow furrowed with a will of its own and his churning legs slowed to a walk, and then finally stopped all together.

He was in the center of a small circle of trees; the needled arms lacing together like fingers above his head to blot out the slivers of light that crept through the clouds from the moon. The piercing cold stabbed at his bare chest, penetrating through the flesh like a series of needles, ripping at the skin as though to peel it back. His swirling breath lingered around his face like a localized fog before fading into the darkness. Turning in place, he watched the ring of trees around him.

There was no doubt in his mind that there was someone nearby, just out of his line of sight. He could feel him there, the heavy stare fixed upon him as he stood alone in the center of the grove. There was that coppery smell again, climbing into his sinuses and dripping down the back of his throat as it filled the forest on the thin breeze.

Peering beyond the shadowed trunks, he could see nothing but the thick blanket of darkness that enshrouded the shrubbery. It masked whatever animals slumbered through hibernation or brumation or whatever small prelude to death slowed their functioning through the frigid winter months, allowing them to arise in time for the mating season in spring. Perhaps his eyes were playing tricks on him, but the darkness seemed to be gaining mass, piling blackness upon itself until it seemed to pulse behind the lichen-crusted trunks. Threatening to swell all around him and spill through the thin gaps between the trunks into the small circle where he hesitantly waited for whatever had drawn him here to reveal itself, it called to him with words that he could feel, but not necessarily hear.

He looked straight up into the darkened mass of interwoven branches, their needled extremities shuddering against one another. A thin cloud of snow sifted through from above. There was nothing around him, at least nothing that he could see with his own eyes, yet still he knew that it was there with him, standing just outside of his line of sight, sharing the same frigid night air that rifled through his lungs. He could taste its rotting breath on the tip of his tongue and feel its damp warmth on his exposed skin.

Staring down at the white-dusted ground, he could see something etched into the frozen, crusty snow in the dim light. Though barely visible, he could tell it was there. Kneeling, his face only a few feet from the hardened surface of white, his finger traced the carvings. They were letters, marked into the snow by a human hand, his finger fitting perfectly into the thin channels.

“White lace?” he mused, discerning the patterns of letters.

Why in the world would anyone take the time to write the words “white lace” in the snow in the middle of nowhere?

His mind raced in circles, the words echoing over and over in the corners of his brain, which churned like an engine in response to the letters. Knowing they were written there for his benefit, for his eyes only, he frantically sought to decipher the cryptic code.

Finally, it hit him.

An old Alice Copper song played through his head. It was a song he hadn’t listened to since he was maybe sixteen years old, yet still the words poured back atop the music in his mind as if he was listening to it at that very moment. The chorus echoed in his brain and he whispered it aloud.

“In my mind,” he said, his finger still tracing the words, “Blood drops look like roses on white lace.”

There was a dull splattering sound, like the sound of a leaking faucet dripping onto an open drain. Following the noise, he stared down on the small droplets, bright red circles in the virgin snow. Dabbing at one of them, he brought his dampened finger right in front of his face, inspecting the reddened surface of his fingertip. He rubbed his thumb over it, smearing the thick crimson fluid.

Throwing himself onto his back, he stared up into the canopy above, just as a loud crashing sound filled the woods. Brown needles fell in droves from the branches above as a shower of snow cascaded through the air. A dark shape appeared from the branches above, hurdling toward the ground at an enormous speed. The object landed with a sickening thump, a gut-churning groan emanating from the shape that was sprawled across the ground just past his outstretched feet.

Sitting up, Scott felt his heart begin to race. He reached for the object with his trembling hands. He could tell what it was, but beneath the darkened sky, he was unable to tell whom. His throat grew dry, his lips parting to dampen his mouth with the humid air.

Rolling up onto his knees, he shakily lifted the arm that was sprawled across the snow in front of him into the air. The skin was cold and dry, the flesh traced with the drying lines of blood that had run like small streams over the surface. Fingers curled into claws, elbow tightly straightened; rigor mortis had begun to set in. Allowing the arm to flop back down onto the snow, he leaned over the body and stared at the face, which was crusted beneath a mask of dried blood.

It was Jeremy, just as he had seen him only minutes prior in a heap on the marble floor of his shower stall. His peeled back eyelids exposed the bloodshot whites of his eyes, only the bottom crescent of his dark eyes visible as they had rolled back into his skull.

A gaseous groan parted his blue lips as the head slowly lifted from the ground.

Scrambling backward, his red hands buried in the thick snow, Scott hurriedly scuttled away. The body slowly rose from the ground. The head lolled back onto the shoulders, the arms and legs hanging limply, as the body floated into the air. The tips of the blue toes scraped at the crusted surface of the snow, tracing thin lines with the long, yellowing nails.

Unable to take his eyes from the body hanging in midair, he scrambled backward against the trunk of a tree, the jagged bark pressing deeply into his back. His feet continued to kick at the snow in an attempt to propel him further away, but to no avail. So he sat there, trembling against the base of the tree, helpless to do anything more than watch as Jeremy’s head snapped forward, the whitened eyes seeming to stare straight down at him on the ground.

Thin tufts of steam rasped from the mouth of the formerly lifeless body, the breath scraping audibly through the collapsed trachea. It just hung there momentarily, before finally beginning to move very slowly. It came toward him, the toes dragging in the snow.

Scott fought to close his eyes, to roll around the side of the trunk, to leap to his feet to sprint in the other direction, but nothing was going to work. His entire body was paralyzed with fear, even his breath growing stale in his lungs as only his hammering heart was able to function through the onset of the crippling numbness that raced through every inch of his being.

The body stopped, still dangling like a marionette on unseen strings from the mass of branches above. Falling to the right, the head rested on the shoulder, the eyes still appearing to be fixed directly on him. He watched in horror as the lips slowly began to move, the thin blue lines writhing like snakes as they fought to mouth words. A faint sound whisked through those lips, growing stronger and louder with each subsequent attempt until finally it found its voice.

“It’s been a long time,” the deep rasping voice said through the lips of the deceased, its breath visible against the dark night.

The voice seemed to reach right in through Scott’s ears and straight down into his chest, seizing his rapidly pumping heart within its cold grasp. He recognized the voice immediately, knowing that it didn’t belong to the body that floated in the center of the ring of trees around him. Trying to respond, he swallowed the ball of phlegm that blocked his throat, but still the words would not com. His eyes grew even wider, the brows raised nearly to the center of his forehead.

“Aren’t you going to say hello to an old friend?” the corpse mouthed, the voice seeming to come from all around him rather than from behind the swollen tongue of the chipped-tooth mouth.

It couldn’t be possible, Scott thought. Every rational part of his being fought in circles trying to grasp the concept of what he already knew to be true, but was completely unprepared to accept. And though much time had passed, he still recognized that voice as well as if it were his own. Wrapping his trembling arms around his chest in what resembled a self-embrace, he stared at the dangling feet of the body, his voice coming in little more than a muffled whisper.

“Matt,” he said, closing his eyes tightly. He felt the cold swell upon him from all sides, tearing through his clothing in an effort to freeze the skin beneath.

“Ahh,” the voice echoed from all around him. “I see you do remember, even after all of these years.”

“You… you’re dead. I watched you die,” Scott muttered, pressing his back as far as it would go against the trunk of the tree, unable to steer his gaze from the figure that hovered in front of him.

“For a while, I thought so too. In fact, there were definitely times when I wished that I had been, but apparently I was meant for something more.”

Scott’s hands shook violently as he held them in front of his face, the dangling apparition gliding slowly toward him in the small grove. There was a shadow to his left, muffled beneath the darkness of the trees. Barely more than a vague outline against the pitch black night, it seemed to generate its own blackness, the serpentine darkness writhing and twisting, a cold effervescence emanating from the heart of the shadow.

“What… how…” Scott stammered, unable to connect his scattershot thoughts.

“How did I survive? Is that what you’re asking?” the lifeless form mouthed. “After that car slipped beneath the ice on that lake, the freezing waters filling the inside of the car, I prayed for a swift death. I prayed for the water to rise up and fill my lungs. But there was to be no solace for me. When the weight of the car finally broke through the ice, it rolled, trapping a pocket of air within the vehicle. It landed on the roof of the car on the bottom of the lake. I broke free of the seat belt and swam out through the open window, but it was so dark under the layer of ice that I was unable to see anything at all. I couldn’t even see the hole in the ice where the car had fallen through. So I swam beneath the icy crust, pounding on it with my fists before the cold finally began to overwhelm me, numbing my flesh so that I could barely move. I watched the surface above me as I sunk deeper into the water, but before I knew it, my back was on the sloped bottom. The stale breath forming icicles in my lungs, I scrambled up the bank, kicking and scraping at the rough silt before finally slamming my head into the thin ice by the shore.

“Clawing up onto the frozen bank, I dragged myself forward. My body shook so violently that there was no conscious control of my faculties. I just crawled, my whole body trembling. Little did I know there was a river just off the far bank. Before I even knew that it was there, I had splashed down into it face first, the rapidly-running water ripping me beneath the surface. The next thing I knew, I woke up in a small, dark tunnel. I don’t know how I got there or why, but my entire body felt as though it was frozen and my muscles were beginning to atrophy. I could barely move as I was wedged so tightly into this tunnel. There was no wriggling free, at least not in the state that I was in. There was no water, no food. I just lay there, pressed tightly into a small cylindrical tunnel of packed earth, praying for death.

“Four days passed before the rats came. The water must have risen in the larger tunnel beyond, as the earth grew damp beneath me, the rats coming all at once in a screaming fit of squeals and clawing nails. They raced right up the tunnel toward my body, squeezing between the earthen walls of the tunnel and me. I was able to bait them with my own flesh long enough to keep them near enough to me to grab them, to snap their little necks. I feasted on those rats for as long as they lasted, buying me enough time to regain my strength, to claw my way through the soft ground, and into that house.”

“What do you want from me?” Scott asked in a meek whisper, his eyes scanning the shadows for the source of the voice, rather than the mere puppet that dangled in front of him in the freezing night air.

“That night, so many years ago, you dragged me out of that house. Who knows how that night would have played out, maybe they would have killed me, or maybe I would have killed all of them: no one will ever know. But it was because of you that I was able to get a second chance.”

“A second chance at life?”

“No,” the voice said, booming laughter filling the entire forest. “A second chance to kill all of them. There is just the one thing that still needs to be decided. I have summoned you here for one reason and one reason alone tonight. I need to know whether or not I need to kill you as well.”

“You were my best friend,” Scott said, sliding to his feet along the roughly-barked trunk of the tree, his eyes scanning the darkness hard, searching for some connection with the ghostly apparition that lurked within the shadows. “I would never have let them hurt you if I had known that was their purpose for bringing you to that house that night. They told me that it was time to bury the hatchet—”

“It would have been if you hadn’t pulled me out of there.”

“Time to let bygones be bygones, if you will. I never would have let you show up if I had known what was going to happen. For the last twelve years, I’ve blamed myself for your death. I’ve carried the burden that I was the one who couldn’t save you, couldn’t pull you out of that car. Do you know what that’s like? I haven’t had a single decent night’s sleep since I was seventeen years old.”

“Poor thing, and here I thought living in a hole in the ground surviving on nothing but the uncooked flesh of vermin was bad. Please forgive me for troubling your sleep.”

“That’s not what I’m saying,” Scott said, lowering his shaking head. “And it’s really not the point.”

“Then what is the point?”

“Why are you doing this?”

The corpse slumped to the ground in a heap, the gasses building within bursting from the compressing flesh in a combination of a loud belch and flatulence that sounded more like the roar of a bear than anything else. Stepping from where he hid beneath the blackened cloak of the shadows, Matt’s outlined form stepped towards the clearing. Though barely more than a shadow in the night, Scott focused on the form as it began to speak, the darkness around him seeming to resonate from within the dark core of his former friend.

“You remember how it used to be, don’t you?” Matt said, his voice almost sounding human, like it had more than a decade ago.

“How so?”

“Don’t you remember how everyone looked at me, how they treated me? It was as if I carried the plague, as if I was the antichrist. I couldn’t escape it, not even at home. Wherever I went, there was always someone there to try to bring me down.”

“Like I said back then, if you don’t dwell on it, it will eventually go away.”

“But it never did!” Matt’s voice boomed from the heart of the darkness. Snow fell from the branches overhead in clumps from where it had piled atop the nest of needles. Whatever lonesome creatures skulked through the night, scavenging for food or respite from the wicked storm scattered from the underbrush at the sound of the ear-shattering voice.

Scott stared at the wall of shadows. Matt’s form seemed to pulse from the dark rage that resonated within his form. He could feel the cold waves of hatred as they rippled through the forest across the thin, frigid breeze. The form eased from the blackness that cloaked it in its embrace of invisibility, stepping out into the middle of the small clearing, just to the other side of Jeremy’s lifeless form.

The dark cloak that shielded his form blew around him, the tattered edges dancing rhythmically. It looked as though a fire burned about him; black flames lapping at the night from his almost spectral form as it hovered inches above the frozen ground. His face was cloaked in shadows, only the dull manila glare from his sunken eyes, and the choppy, rotten teeth from his snarling mouth were visible. The dim light reflected from the dried surface of his eyes. The cracked and yellowed eyeballs appeared as though they couldn’t see anything at all, the leathered surface snagging each time the eyelids blinked.

“Jesus,” Scott uttered, his eyes fixing on the blind stare of the creature that stood before him.

“Do I repulse you? Does this festering visage offend you in some way? You’ll have to forgive me as I’ve been living in this infernal hell for as long as I can remember now. But this is all a part of the deal for me. When I gave up my life, my soul, for the chance at retribution, this became a foregone conclusion. The voices in my head that chatter amongst themselves relentlessly are nothing compared to the physical torment of a body that is in a constant state of decomposition. My skin cracks and peels back from the blood that flows like fire through my veins. And there is only one way to end this nightmare, this never ending stream of pain.”

“What’s that?” Scott asked, his trembling voice betraying the onslaught of fear that raged through his quivering body. He stumbled backward from the advancing form.

“I have to finish what I started. I have to live up to my part of the bargain. I was given this power, this curse, for the sole purpose of bringing death to those who had forced so much pain upon me. The demons that writhe within my body, my mind, demand this from me, demand that I reap the souls for them that I promised I would.”

“Two hundred?” Scott asked as he slipped beneath the shadow of the tree behind him, slinking behind the trunk.

Matt just laughed, an insidious cackle that shook Scott to the core of his being.

“Been doing some research, I see. If only you knew what I do. I think you’d find that pretty amusing.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Our destinies our linked, you and I. It is our lot to walk side by side through the valley of the shadow of death. The night I made the deal, at the point when the demons swelled from the darkness, whispering, as they entered my body, they revealed everything to me. They told me of the child of the horned god’s blood that would bring the souls of the prophesied hundreds to the master for his eternal consumption. They revealed to me all of the secrets that the darkness held, for me, for all of us. And indeed, I would have my revenge, but that was only one part of the grand scenario.

“Later that night when I killed my parents, I could feel their souls rise from their decapitated bodies as they lay atop those blood-stained sheets. Their essence filled the air all around me, swirling in the stench of their own rot. Theirs were the first of the many that I would reap, my part of the redemption of my life.”

“You’re a monster,” Scott gasped.

Jeremy’s body suddenly floated back into the air in the center of the grove, the arms and legs floundering. The body jerked back to life, the shadowed form of the creature that had once been his friend Matt slipping back into the darkened refuge that the trees provided.

“You call me a monster!” the voice boomed from all around him, tearing a hole in the night. “I had come to offer you help, but you reject me in such a way!”

The body spun in circles in the air, the lifeless arms flopping in the air as they whirled like helicopter blades. There was a gut-wrenching tearing sound as the body ripped straight down the center, droplets of blood flying in all directions. The body was rendered in two, the innards filling the air as they sloshed to the snow-covered earth. Emptied, the flapping shell was flung into the night, the flesh draping from the branches of the trees. What little fluid still clung to the lifeless sheath drained in small drops atop the whitened ground.

“See you real soon,” the voice boomed from the darkness as the outline of the form faded into the shadows.

Scott fell to his knees, burying his face in his hands. He fought to keep the stench of his friend’s insides from overwhelming his senses. Small splatters of the rapidly cooling blood that was not his own ran down his bare, chapped face as the last of the rustling sounds of the monster slipping through the tightly wrought forest faded into the hum of the wind, the rattling of the needles.

Slowly, Scott opened his eyes, rolling onto all four. His stinging, bright red knuckles burned in the ice-cold snow as he crawled forward, staring down at the red patterns that decorated the even white surface. Churning, his stomach turned over in his sour belly, the vomit rising to the back of his throat before being choked back down with an audible thump. Tears crept from the corners of his eyes, arching over his cheeks as they mixed with the crimson droplets, hanging like icicles from the stubbled line of his chin.

Harry burst from the line of trees behind him, his thin shadow casting a long line across the center of the grove. Scott bolted upright, the noise startling him to the point that he was unsure if he would ever be able to slow the hammering in his chest.

“My God,” Harry whispered, surveying the blood-stained ground, his eyes recoiling in horror as they caught a brief glimpse of the lines of intestines that dangled from the branches of the pines like a Christmas garland.

Scott turned, looking over at Harry as his shoulders began to shake, the tears streaming from his eyes. He began to sob uncontrollably. Harry crossed the snow, kneeling beside him and resting his hand on Scott’s back, comforting him as he brought his other hand to his face to cover his mouth and nose.

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THE BLOODSPAWN

Michael McBride

© 2004 Michael McBride. All rights reserved.

PART ELEVEN

Part 11

Chapters 14 & 15

XIV

Tuesday, November 15th

10 a.m.

Harry peeled back the thick, hard- bound cover of the old yearbook, thumbing through the pages that were all nearly stuck together. Rifling past the freshmen, sophomores, and juniors, he settled into the senior section. All of the pictures were large and in color, unlike all of the other sections where the pictures had all been so small and in black and white. He looked over the faces one by one, until he came to page 267. There were twelve pictures to a page, three rows of four. Bringing the book closer to his face, he stared at the right hand page.

Matt Parker was the top, left picture, and the first on that particular row of four. His long hair hung over the collar of his gray and black flecked sport coat. He had an off white shirt with a blue and black marbled-looking tie. His arms were crossed across his chest, his chin tilted upwards so he appeared to be looking down at the viewer. A thin smile traced his lips, his right eye hidden behind his long bangs. He stared into the one visible eye. The page seemed to melt away behind it as a certain blackness rose from within that lone eye, resonating throughout the living room as the faint sun crept through the clouds outside, arching a thin line of light through the bay window and onto the plush carpeting. The hackles rose along his spine as he grew suddenly quite aware of how cold he was, his breath coming in short bursts.

Breaking his stare from Matt’s picture, he easily identified the one just beneath it. It was Scott Ramsey, dressed smartly in his late eighties splendor. He wore a dark suit, from the lighting it was unclear whether it was black or a navy, with a thin black tie, his chin resting on his right hand. He wore a pleasantly sincere smile that barely showed his bright white teeth, his eyes warm and charming. And compared to most of the faces he had seen so far just flipping through the book, these two should have done quite all right as far as the social scenario went.

The pipes in the walls hummed as Scott started the shower upstairs. Harry had insisted that he try to sleep, or at least lay down for a couple of hours to try to get a little shut eye, but he knew that there was no way that he was going to sleep. His face appeared to have aged close to a decade since he had met him, barely more than a day ago. His eyes, which from the start had been so filled with life that they positively sparkled, had faded to a duller hue, more akin with his own.

He knew how difficult all of this was for him to suddenly not only have to comprehend, but to have to accept on nothing more than blind faith. After all, he himself had been forced to do the same thing so very long ago, but at least he was there for Scott. Back when he had first been forced to reckon with the evil that walked the earth, he had been completely and exhaustingly alone. Not that his plight had been any more difficult than the one that Scott now fought through, but at least there was someone to talk to, someone to sympathize with him as his world turned upside down over and over again.

Turning his attention back to the book spread out across his lap, he scanned the color pictures with his eyes, watching the names for any that he might recognize. He started at the beginning of the section with the two- page spread that featured a class photo on what appeared to be bleachers outside at the stadium. Above it was a large heading in bright blue letters, outlined in white: “Class of 1990.” His eyes wandered across the tiny faces lined up along the bleachers, but he couldn’t make out either Scott or Matt.

Flipping the page, he first scanned the listing of names along the left- hand column of the page, and then perused their faces. He crossed page after page, focusing on the pictures with first names similar to those that Scott had used to identify the friends who had died at the hands of the bloodspawn. After passing a handful of Brian’s, he finally came to the picture of Brian James. As he stared at the picture, a thin line appeared to pass over the picture from the top right corner down to the bottom left. It looked like a thin line of gray like that of the lead from a pencil, but it slowly widen, separating the colors of the picture with the white from the page beneath. It looked as though someone had torn the picture diagonally without removing it from the page.

Harry looked up, staring into the still living room, the yellowing Norfolk Pine drooping terribly, the needles falling in a circle around the hand crafter pot onto the carpet. A bewildered look etching his face. He stared back into the open yearbook at the picture. Not only was the tear mark still there across the picture, but another was in the process of forming, running diagonally from the other side to form a large “x” across the picture.

Slamming the book shut, he rifled his trembling fingers through his hair, the book falling from his lap onto the floor. Placing his quivering hand across his mouth, the air from his nostrils whistling over his knuckles, he stared down at the book on the thick carpeting.

The incessant tick- tock from the grandfather clock in the corner filled the otherwise silent room. Dust floated in swirling clouds in the stream of light from the window, but only for a moment as the next wave of the dark front rolled over the Rockies from the west, choking back the sparse rays of sun behind the black, rolling clouds. A dull whine echoed from within the walls as the water from the shower was turned off.

Harry stared down at the cover of the book. Mustering his courage, he shifted his weight, leaning over the edge of the couch with his outstretched right arm to grab the yearbook from the floor. Right before his slowly steadying hand could grab the heavy annual, the front cover peeled back, the pages flying past before finally opening wide. It stopped of its own will on one of the pages with the color pictures, the smiling faces beaming up at the vaulted ceiling of the living room. Squinting, he tried to make out the names along the line to the left. Barely able to read more than just the capital letters at the start of the first and last names, he crawled from the couch onto the floor, careful not to so much as breath on the book.

Placing a shaky hand to either side of the book on the floor, his shuddering breath blew down on the pages as a thin line began to trace across one of the pictures, just as it had the one he had been watching a moment ago. His eyes shot to the left to read the name as the line continued to scratch right through the picture from the inside of the page.

“Williams, Tim,” he read aloud.

The first diagonal line had finished its course, the second beginning on the upper right corner of the picture. Before that line was even half way across Tim’s face, another line started in the picture directly to the right. His eyes jumped to the left, landing on the line below the one he had just read: Jeremy Willis.

The tearing continued until both pictures were etched under a thick, white “x.”

Harry had only a moment to stare at the page before it changed on its own, the pages flying past until finally coming to rest between the B’s and C’s. There were only three bodies that he knew of, one corresponding to each of the three “X’s” that the phantom had had scrawled across the pictures. Staring into the smiling lines of faces, he watched for anything at all: any movement, the beginning stroke of any of the tears across the page.

But there was nothing.

There was no movement at all. Not even a single “x.”

Starting with the page on the left, Harry’s eyes stared from one face to the next, lingering just long enough to place the face with the name to the left. All of the smiling face leered back at him from beneath the gloss of the page as he inspected them one by one. But nothing jumped out at him.

Moving on to the right page, he began to scan once again, caressing each of the faces with his gentle stare. One by one they passed, the names lining up with the faces, until…

Something on the page jumped, he caught the movement from the corner of his eye. He couldn’t see it right off, but he was sure that he had seen something on the right page. Glancing towards the bottom right side of the page, he scanned the pictures, waiting for whatever had happened to do so again. Finally, his patience was rewarded.

A tiny, almost unnoticeable flash of red caught his eye as it immediately focused in on the picture of its origin. Choosing not even to steer his gaze from the picture long enough to read the name for fear whatever was happening might stop, he stared deeply into the picture, watching as the crimson flashes started appearing with more regularity.

The picture was of a young man, fairly attractive in the grand scheme of things, but nothing incredibly out of the ordinary for that age group. Whatever color his hair had been was now replaced with a deep red, the hair matted damply to the arch of the skull. The face was different from all of the others, as the expression that haunted the face was nothing even close to the smiles that ripped across all of the others. This particular boy wore would could only be described as a grimace, his tightly stretched lips peeled back from his clenched, grinding teeth. His eyes were mere slits, his brow knit tightly below the taut skin of his forehead. Thin lines of red ran vertically down his neck, diffusing into the white color of his shirt, spreading in an oblong arc like a sweat stain across his chest beneath his black tie.

Harry’s eyes darted to the left side of the page, quickly finding the name and reading it aloud.

“Corso, Shane.”

His eyes shot back to the picture before the name had even fully rolled off the tip of his tongue, but by the time his gaze had settled onto the picture, it had returned to normal. The only red in the picture now was the two small circles in the center of each eye. The grimace had been replaced by a warm smile; the light hair combed back into place, and the white shirt almost glowing beneath the dark jacket.

Reading the name one last time, Harry closed the book with a loud clap and slid it across the floor of the room beneath the love seat across the room from him.

Footsteps pounded down the hallway upstairs as Scott appeared rounding the corner just above the staircase. Harry’s head jerked to the side as Scott could see immediately the startled look on the man’s pale face as he crouched on the ground.

“What’s going on?” Scott asked as he bounded down the stairs. His damp hair bounced slightly as he descended.

Harry just stared up at him from the floor, his jaw hanging open.

The dark blue sweatshirt featuring the old Denver Broncos logo in the center brought out his eyes from behind the thick bags that encircled them as he crossed the entryway into the living room. Thrusting his right hand into the pocket of his faded jeans, he hovered over Harry, the carpet seeping between his bare toes.

Harry just stared up at him for a moment, his brow knit tightly over his eyes, before finally he spoke.

“Do you know Shane Corso?” he asked, rising from the floor and settling back onto the couch.

“Sure,” Scott replied, bewildered. “But I haven’t seen him since high school.”

Harry stared at the dark line beneath the love seat where the yearbook had slipped beneath.

“I think we should try to get in touch with him.”

“What’s going on?”

“I was looking through that old yearbook of yours and…”

“And what?”

“And I think that he’s going to be the next to die.”

The ringing phone startled both of them as Scott looked to Harry to elaborate briefly before walking from the room and into the kitchen. He grabbed the receiver from the rechargeable stand and pressed the “talk” button.

“Hello?”

“Mr. Ramsey?” the voice on the other end asked.

“Yes.”

“This is Bob Goode with the People Network.”

“Oh, hi.”

“I just wanted to call to let you know that I have been assigned to the location that you requested.”

“Okay.”

“I’m going to go ahead and give you my phone number and extension where I can be reached should you have any questions or any information that you may find pertinent to the situation.”

“All right,” Scott said, pulling a pen and a small notepad from the top drawer of the cabinet beneath. “Go ahead.”

“Area code 206, 541, 2064, extension 302,” he said, pausing briefly. “Did you get that?”

“Yeah.”

“Well then, Mr. Ramsey, I look forward to helping you, and thank you for choosing the People Network.”

“Yeah, thanks,” Scott muttered into the phone as the he heard a click at the other end of the line.

Replacing the cordless unit atop the charger, he walked back towards the living room.

“It seems almost silly to have them look for the kid you pulled out of that house, but I didn’t know exactly what to say.”

Harry was standing in front of the couch staring out the window as the snow multiplied, a white sheet of the enormous flakes hammering into the large picture window.

“Do you have any way of getting in touch with your old friend Shane?” he asked without turning around. Some of the color had returned to his cheeks, but he still looked quite pale, the lines of age clearly defined across his face.

“I don’t have a phone number or anything, but I think his parents still live in the same house and I doubt they would mind giving me his number.”

“Good.”

He still stared out into the storm.

“But I don’t remember their phone number so I’m going to have to go look in the phone book.”

“Why don’t we just stop by, there’s something else I would like to take a look at while we’re out.”

Harry finally peeked back at Scott, but only long enough to give him a worn smile of reassurance, returning his gaze to row of spruces in the front yard, and the yellow, glowing eyes of the stag that stared back at him from within the branches of the trees.

XV

Tuesday, November 15th

Noon

The forest green Cherokee rolled to a stop against the curb in front of the house. A large “For Sale” sign was staked in the lawn in the front yard just to the right of the driveway. In the right corner was a picture of the smiling Realtor, her pseudo- smile so large it threatened to rip her face in two.

Scott stared up at the vacant house for a moment. He had more than his share of memories within this house. He could remember so many afternoons where they had gone one on one in the driveway beneath that freestanding basket that had been painted green to match the house. There had been the times where they had brought girls over to bounce on the trampoline in the back yard for no other reason than the bounce.

All of the window coverings had been removed, and even through the second story windows he could tell that the house was completely barren. From what he understood, the house had changed hands close to a half dozen times over the last decade plus, with none of the owners staying lone enough to even trim back the Mugho Pines that crowded the front walkway, covering the slate.

Opening the door, he climbed out of the Jeep, his feet sinking well past his ankles into the deepening snow. Closing the door, he could hear the echo of Harry doing the same as he walked up the pristine snow that covered the driveway towards the front door of the house. He bounded up the front steps as he had done so many times throughout his youth, alighting atop the landing and walking to the right side of the porch.

A cluster of small junipers was just to the other side of the wrought iron railing. Reaching beneath, he fished around with his hand until he found a large stone beneath the scratchy foliage. Lifting it, he found the small plastic bag with the rust colored key that had been there from so many years before. Matt’s mom had stashed it there so he would always be able to get into the house as he had a tendency to lose them if he carried them with him. Often, Scott and some of Matt’s other friends had used it just to sneak into his house and startle him while he was alone after school, but that had been a lifetime ago.

Brushing the snow from the knees of his jeans. Scott stuck the key into the deadbolt lock and turned it until he heard the loud thunk. Removing it, he slipped it into the lower lock and opened the door inwards as he turned it.

With a quick glance over his shoulder at Harry, who watched him with keen interest, he ducked into the house, the wet soles of his shoes squeaking on the tile in the entryway. To his right, a built- in bookcase separated the entryway from the living room, a thin layer of dust covering the top which was just about chest level. Gesturing to the stairs that led up and to the left, Scott looked to Harry, who slowly eased upwards.

“What exactly are you hoping to find?” Scott asked, right on Harry’s heels as they rounded the staircase into the hallway. “It’s the first door on the right.”

Nodding, Harry opened the bedroom door and stepped into the stale air of the long since vacated room.

“I’m not really sure,” he said, his eyes canvassing every inch of the room.

The walls were painted light blue. A dark, wood shelf ran along the wall to the right, several splatters of the blue paint marring its surface. There were no impressions on the thick, blue carpeting from where any furniture had been, as it must have been quite some time since anything had rested on the flooring long enough to leave a mark.

“Awfully cold in here,” Harry muttered, his breath gusting in thin lines of steam in front of his lips.

Scott just nodded as he surveyed the room. In his mind, he could remember when the walls had been painted white, the carpet a much more tightly knit nap of dark blue. He could vaguely remember the wallpaper that had been on the wall to the right just above the built in shelf, ships, if he remembered correctly. Not just ships, but large ocean vessels, HMS something, anyway. Closing his eyes, he could see the dark wood furniture lined along the left side of the room, a pile of coins next to an old intercom. There had been a bookcase filled with novels: Choose Your Own Adventures, a line of Piers Anthony science fictions, and the budding start of a horror collection consisting mainly of Stephen King and Dean R. Koontz. A desk had sat just to the right of that in the corner, a lamp coming out of the top of an old Washington Redskin’s helmet which had always made no sense as Matt had been a Falcon’s fan since the day he had met him.

There had been a bunk bed in the center of the room; both levels dressed the same beneath comforters featuring what looked like abstract drawings of ducks. He could remember many a night where he had crashed on the top bunk as a child. It had always been such a treat for him to sleep up high as he had always wanted bunk beds but his parents had never even considered the notion. He had listened to Matt talking from below as he made up stories of ghosts that haunted the woods around the house, wondering if he was for sure just making them up or if he had actually seen them as Matt never gave him a straight answer either way. His frayed nerves on edge, he had stared up at the panel that led up into the crawl space, praying that nothing crept out and grabbed him as he slept.

Staring up at that same ceiling now, he could see there square entrance to the crawl space, which for some reason still seemed just as threatening to this day.

“What’s up there?” Harry asked, nodding towards the ceiling where Scott stared.

“Crawl space.”

“Obviously,” Harry said, shooting him an icy glance. “Why are you looking up there?”

“I used to think there were ghosts that lived up there that would come down and get me while I slept.”

“Ever go up there?”

“No, but I remember Matt talking about finishing it up there so he had a place of his own to go where no one could ever find him.”

“Did he ever do it?”

“Not to the best of my knowledge, but our friendship became somewhat estranged the last year or so.”

“I think it’s about time we found out then, don’t you.”

“I guess, but why…”

“I’ll boost you up,” Harry interrupted, lacing his fingers in front of his waist.

Scott put his right foot into Harry’s hands, bouncing a couple of times before propelling himself upwards. Hammering the square of drywall that covered the hole upward with his momentum, he grabbed hold of the lip of the wooden square, pulling himself up into the darkness.

His knee snagged on the rim of the wooden edge, scraping the flesh beneath.

“Ow,” he grumbled, feeling the soft texture of the carpet remnants beneath his palms.

The light from the hole in the center of the hole did little to illuminate the dark covey. Dark shadows stretched from the light into the blackened corners of the barren attic as he pulled his feet past the rim and onto the makeshift floor. Batting his eyes, he could barely see his nose in the center of his face as his hands moved in a swimming motion to either side as he attempted to find anything that might shed a little more light on the situation.

His fumbling fingers knocked into something, sending it toppling onto its side as it clanked against another seemingly invisible object. Tracing its form with his hand, his fingers followed the glass base of an oblong cylindrical object, rounding the top edge before touching something completely different. He chipped at the surface with his thumbnail, peeling back a soft, waxy chunk of what could only have been wax.

“Do you have a match or a lighter or something?” Scott called down towards the hole, shifting his weight to the side as a box rattled to his right as he bumped it.

“Never mind,” he muttered, having answered his own question. He pulled back the lid of the box of matches and pulled a pair of the wooden sticks from within, returning the cover.

Running the bulbous head of the match along the sandpaper- like strike strip that ran down the side of the box, a ball of fire burst from the tip of the match, followed instantaneously by a black tuft of smoke. Holding the candle over his lap, he held the flame to the end of the wick, waiting as it popped and snapped before finally glowing with a flame all its own. Shaking the match which had nearly burned down to his thumb on the charcoaled stick, he set it down on the closed box and held the candle out in front of him. A dim aura of light encircled the flame, casting his long shadow into the recesses of the attic behind him.

He could see a folding chair of sorts lying on its side, half opened, in the center of the room. There was a stack of books beside it, a thick tome lying open on the tan carpeted floor. The walls to either side, which were held in place by only a few sparse nails, were covered with posters and cut- outs from magazines, bands that he hadn’t thought about in nearly a decade and women in various stages of undress. It was, on the surface, the hiding place of dreams for any high school aged boy; the only problem was that in this case it obviously hadn’t been.

Turning his stare from the snarling face of Dave Mustaine, he crawled forward into the crawlspace, heading for the back wall. A thin arc of light circled what he knew to be the seal around one of the ceiling vents, a stream of bitter, arctic air squeezing through the infinitely small gap and into the room. The surface of the carpet felt cold to the touch, the breeze causing the flame atop the candle to flicker, the goose bumps on the backs of his arms to rise. Pink rolls of insulation lined the back walls, filling the gaps between the wooden studs. The edge of the plywood laid across the floor fell several inches shy of reaching the back wall, exposing the insulation buried beneath. Stands of the thread that ran through the carpet to hold the knap in place danced, tangled and intertwined, at the edge of the frayed carpet beneath the chilly breeze.

Rolling onto his rear end, he turned back to stare into the finished portion of the attic. A globule of melted wax rolled over the top of the glass candlestick, singing the hair atop his knuckle as it froze into place atop his scalded skin.

There had to be something up there that would somehow be of use, he was sure of that, but what? What could he possibly find that would be of any help?

“What’s up there?” Harry called from below, the sound of his shoes scraping off the shelf on the wall below as he tried to climb up behind him echoing in the attic.

“He just finished a small portion of the attic,” Scott hollered, crawling closer to the entrance so that he wouldn’t have to shout. “There’s a whole little room up here.”

“What do you see?”

“A lawn chair in the center next to a small stack of books. The walls are plastered with old posters, rock bands and women, and so on. There’s carpet just lying on plywood, and enough dust to choke a mite.”

“What books are up there?”

Turning around, he held the candle towards the books, a line of wax falling from the light green candle onto the carpet. He worked through the stack, which was closest to him first. There was a book of witchcraft from the Time/ Life series, the stamp of possession from the high school library still on the inside cover. He tossed an old Metal Edge magazine from the stack into the corner of the room without even opening it. A copy of “The Chicks of Metal” brought a dry smile, but then ended up sliding across the carpet to greet the Metal edge. There was a copy of “Faust” and one of “Helter Skelter.”

“Standard alienated youth reading list,” Scott called over his shoulder. “All we’re missing is a copy of… wait, here we go. ‘Dante’s Inferno’.”

“Anything else?”

“There’s one more book over here,” he said, crawling towards it. “Judging from the way this one’s worn, it has got to be pretty old.”

Placing his thumb between the pages where it lay open, he closed it, turning it so that he could see the cover of the leather bound tome.

“What is it?’

“There’s no title on it. Its cover’s made of leather. There’s some sort of embossing here… wait a sec.” He held the book closer to his face, the candle right in front of it. “Appears to be a pentagram. Sound familiar?”

“No. Why don’t you grab it and bring it down here?”

“Just a minute. Let me open it up and see if there’s anything in it to make it worthwhile.”

Opening the book to where his thumb marked it, he lowered the flame to the page, squinting as he read the small print.

“Let thy first sacrifice be of thine own flesh,” he whispered as he read from the page. “Be it blood or bile, skin or nail, but surrender it willingly by thine own hand.”

There was a small patch in the center of the paragraph: a dried fingerprint matted in blood on the yellowed page. He placed his own forefinger on that print, smothering it beneath his larger print. He could feel the crusted fluid flaking off beneath his oily touch.

A whispering sound resonated from the darkened corner of the room.

Raising the candle, he attempted to peel back the darkness, staring into the heart of the shadow only to see the thin arch of the vent. It must have been the wind whistling through the tiny gap between the aluminum vent and the shingles on the roof. He turned his attention back to the book.

“Let thy second sacrifice be of flesh not thine own. Be it a rodent or a human, it matters not, so long as it is taken unwillingly.”

The whispering sound arose again, this time louder, sounding like more than one voice at a time all vying to be heard over the other.

But it had to be the vent… didn’t it?

“And lastly, with thy third sacrifice,” he whispered from the page. “Let it be thine own soul. Commit it to thy master and thy vessel shall forever walk in the shadow of thy lord. Commence thee to thy task and pave the way in blood for thy master, the physical manifestation in flesh of the bloodspawn: the antichrist. Eternal life shall be thy reward for wielding the saber of vengeance, and a seat at the high court of hell should you succeed in bringing the destiny of the child to fruition.”

His head jerked up as movement caught his eye. The thick shadows beneath the vent swirled like the tentacles of a squid, gaining life as they stretched their thin arms into the room, piercing the glow of the candle.

“Holy shit,” he uttered as the whispering grew so loud that it filled his head, the jumbled words seeming to originate from within his fear wrought mind, rather than from without.

Without a sound, the flame atop the wick of the candle dwindled to an orange ember, a thin tuft of smoke trailing from the dim pinpoint of light into the darkness. The coldness of the trilling tendrils pierced his dry skin, shredding through the flesh and muscle and into the bone beneath, throbbing painfully in the core of his being. They tugged at him, coaxing him towards the heart of the darkness from which they sprung, their voices chattering within his brain.

There was a loud thump as the drywall square that he had pushed off to the side onto the carpet slipped back into place, filling the square hole and shutting out the last of the tiny hint of light that shined up from the bedroom.

The tendrils were all around him now, ripping at him from all directions, the icy touch covering every inch of his exposed flesh as he scrambled frantically against the overwhelming urging of the tentacle towards the hatch. Growing louder and louder until they echoed within the confines of his skull, the voices dug sharply into his brain. Closing his eyes as tightly as he possibly could, he clapped his hands to his ears, scraping his way towards the only exit in the room on his elbows. His bared teeth showcased the savage pain the rippled across his flesh, tiny needles of icy fire stabbing repeatedly through his skin.

A scream died somewhere between his chest and his mouth, escaping as a mere whispered moan from between his clenched teeth. With a thud, his elbows landed hollowly on the thin square of drywall. There was knocking on the small door from below as Harry’s fists hammered against it, trying to force it back open.

Summoning all of the strength that he could muster, he fought through the blistering pain, rising to his feet atop the drywall hatch. All of the muscles in his legs cried out at once as they wobbled on his shaky ankles, wanting nothing more than to just succumb to the will of the darkness that sought to reel him into the darkened heart of the room. Breathing heavily, he brought forth all of his will, all of the strength he had suppressed within his frail human form, jumping straight up into the air.

His head slammed against the paneled rafters, as bright balls of light appeared from behind his sealed eyelids. A throbbing wave of pain rushed through his head, pounding several times as though from beneath the repeated downfall of a hammer, jostling all of the voices as they formed finally into one.

“Master,” they all whispered in unison as his feet hit the floor.

The drywall square shattered into a million tiny fragments beneath his weight. Clouds of the chalky inside layer filling the air around him like a magician’s smoke as he hurdled downwards through the air. His bent elbows slammed into the wooden square around the hole, purple and black bruises swelling from beneath his sweatshirt almost immediately upon impact. The back of his head slammed into the rim, tearing wide a fresh, red rimmed gouge beneath the matted hair on the back of his head, causing his feet to flop backwards.

He landed in a heap on his side, the impact from the blow knocking the wind from his suddenly collapsed lungs. Rolling from side to side, he fought to draw even a single breath, his wide eyes staring back into his head, exposing nothing but two large white orbs beneath his lids. Every inch of his flesh cried out in cold pain as he flopped like a fish out of water.

Harry’s hands were all over him, trying to steady him long enough to get a good look at him, to see if he was badly injured. He could hear his voice, sounding as though it were coming from a mile away, but none of the words penetrated the fearsome throbbing of his swelling brain beneath his skull. His frantic tongue lolled from his mouth as with one final, great effort he drew in an entire chest full of air, sending him into a coughing frenzy. Lines of saliva flew from his open mouth, dangling from his lips onto the blue carpet.

His rapidly pumping heart slowed to an almost functional level as he slowly rolled onto his side, curling into fetal position. He allowed the air to creep through his seemingly collapsed trachea into his flattened lungs, his chest rising and falling several times before he was finally able to shake the feeling that he might never breathe again. From the corner of his teary eye he could see the concerned look on Harry’s face as he sat helplessly back on his knees, waiting for him to come back around.

“What the hell happened up there?” Harry asked, leaning over so that he could make eye contact.

“I… don’t know,” Scott wheezed, forcefully swallowing the large lump that had formed in his throat.

“I heard all of this banging and then all of a sudden you closed the door, and there were… voices.” His voice trailed off with that last word.

“They were all around me, grabbing at me, trying to … to…”

“To what?”

“I don’t know, to suck me into the darkness.”

“Who was up there with you?”

“No one. There were just these… arms that came out of the corner of the room, grabbing me, pulling me towards the center of the darkness. And they were so cold. And the voices, right before I fell through the whole I was able to understand what they were saying.”

“What was that?”

“They were saying ‘master,’ over and over again, a hundred different voices all whispering it at the same time.”

“What do you suppose that means?”

“I don’t know, but I think they were calling to their master, and whoever, whatever their master is, I sure as shit don’t want to be up there when he gets there.”

Harry stared down at him for a moment, a somewhat bemused look scratching across his wrinkled face.

“What’s that?” he finally said, pointing down at the book Scott still had tucked beneath his arm.

“It’s all yours,” Scott sighed, handing the leather bound tome to Harry for his inspection.

He took it within his leathery hands, slowly peeling back the cover and opening it to the first page. A tuft of black smoke billowed in a small cloud above the book as the whole thing suddenly turned to ashes in his hands, falling between his fingers like grains of sand to the floor. It sifted into the carpet on the wisps of cold air that gusted down from the hole above.

Scott and Harry just stared at each other, and then at the darkened stain on the carpet.

“Do you know what that was?” Harry asked without looking up from the soot.

“No, what?”

“That was the Book of the Damned, but like no other copy that I’ve ever seen. Hell, you can buy it off the shelf at most bookstores in paperback, but that one was old, far older than any other copy I’ve ever come across.”

“I’ve never heard of it,” Scott said, wincing, as he rose to his feet, warily staring back up into the darkened square above his head.

“It’s a bible of sorts for certain sects of Satanists. It was written in the early seventies by a man named Ashvan Montevega, and, rumor has it that it was written somewhere around here. He was said to have taken court with the devil himself, receiving, as a gift, a handwritten copy of the book. I forget which publishing house he sold it to, but to make it more palatable for the masses, they had no choice but to make countless revisions. This guy in this little bookstore downtown where I found my copy told me that there were six original volumes, all hand pressed. He had never seen any, but he had heard the stories of the leather bound, gold embossed tomes, and, I believe, that is what we were looking at.”

“I don’t know. That book looked much older than thirty years.”

“If that’s right, and those rumors are true, then that must be one of the original copies penned by Satan himself.”

Scott just looked at him.

“So, what bearing does that have here?”

“Those who take the book as gospel believe that after being cast down from heaven, the angel Lucifer’s punishment was to walk the earth in human form until the day of the final reckoning, whereupon a great and final battle would ensue. The final winner of which would take control not only of the heavens but of the earth as well. But in order to lure the angels from the heavens for the final battle, Lucifer must first collect and damn enough souls to bleed the heavens dry. And these souls stalk the night at their master’s bidding until that ultimate conflict when they will fight long past their deaths.”

“So you think that is the reason for the two hundred souls?”

“Stands to reason. Why else would the Vatican give the story enough credence to devote an entire sect to trying to stop it?”

“Sounds insane,” Scott mumbled, looking back over his shoulder as he walked out of the bedroom, careful not to walk directly beneath the open hole in the ceiling.

“Any more insane than what we’ve seen over the last couple of days?”

Clambering down the steps towards the entryway, Scott stopped on the landing and looked back up to Harry as he began his descent down the stairs.

“So…” he began with a pause. “What are we supposed to do?”

“I believe we have to stop it.”

“And how do we do that?”

“We have to find your friend Matt, or whatever he has become, and make sure that he is not allowed to claim his two hundred lives.”

“Kill him?”

“Unless you think pleading will work.”

“How do you propose we do that? He’s not even human any more for God’s sake.”

“Whatever he is, if his body is still flesh, then we can still kill him.”

Scott sighed loudly, his furrowed brow lowering over his troubled eyes. He stared into the living room where there had once been rust colored carpet and a small antique wooden coffee table. In his mind he could see Matt and himself as eight year- olds playing with their Star Wars figures on that table.

A tear crept to the corner of his eye.

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THE BLOODSPAWN

Michael McBride

© 2004 Michael McBride. All rights reserved.

PART TWELVE

SECTION 12

Chapters 16 & 17

XVI

Tuesday, November 15th

9 p.m.

They had locked up Matt’s family’s old house and had driven across the neighborhood to Shane Corso’s mother’s house. The roads had grown increasingly treacherous as the fluffy snow was piling atop a thick layer of ice, and it was only a matter of time before not even the snowplows and sand trucks would be able to get back into this area to try to clear the roads. Why they hadn’t already remained a mystery, but he had learned a long time ago that when dealing with the city, nothing made sense.

Shane’s mother, Annette Corso, had answered the door in a long red bathrobe, her graying hair bound atop her head in large soup can sized curlers. She wore some sort of plastic or vinyl bonnet over them, just the first few rollers atop her forehead being visible. White slippers with purple designs adorned her bare feet. While at first she had been hesitant to talk, it only took a few moments for her to open up and that became a whole new problem as Scott remembered even from way back then, that once she started going it was nearly impossible to get her to stop.

Her forced trip down memory lane began where high school left off. With Shane ready to leave the house to go off to school or whatever it was he was going to do, she and her husband of twenty- two years, Herb, were going to move up to the land near Crystal Lake that they had purchased nearly ten years prior. After all, their house was nearly paid off, and they had little other existing debt. Shane’s schooling had been taken care of for quite some time with the money that her parents had left to him for that very purpose upon their death. They were going to build a cabin right by the lake and open up a small general store. Herb would be able to sell the flies that he tied religiously to the tourists, while she would be able to run the gossip mill from behind the counter. It was something that they had talked about, dreamed of, for the last decade.

That dream had been put to rest with a single call.

The phone had rung at a quarter past seven. Herb was always home by seven. She had answered the phone with only the slightest concern in her voice, as fifteen minutes, even with Herb, wasn’t great enough cause to emote. Stirring the mashed potatoes on the stove, she had cradled the phone against her shoulder.

“Hello?” she had answered merrily.

“Annette.”

“Herb?”

“There’s something I need to tell you.”

“What? Are you running late?’

“No, not exactly,” he had said without the slightest change of inflection in his voice. “I’m leaving you.”

“Leaving me what?”

“No, no. I’m leaving you for good. I’ve fallen in love with Helen.”

“Your secretary?”

“Yes.”

“What is she, maybe twenty?”

“Twenty- eight, but that’s of no importance. I’ve thought this through…”

“Obviously you haven’t.”

“As I was saying… keep the house and the car, the money in the kid’s college account. I’m taking the deed to the land in Crystal and the remainder of the money in the personal accounts. Good luck to you, and say ‘hi’ to the boy for me.”

The conversation had been that simple, at least according to her version. And while that story had been somewhat gut wrenching, it really didn’t answer the question they had asked, “How can we get ahold of Shane?”

Scott had been as patient as he possibly could; after all she had been exceedingly nice to him growing up. She had, more often than not, brought them out cookies and lemonade while they were outside just messing around, and had always invited him to stay for dinner. She was a relic, a throwback to the fifties, a mother who thrived in that role. She only seemed contented while she was serving her family in some fashion. So he had listened to her story, truly feeling sad for her, but in his current situation, he really just wanted that one simple piece of information so he could just get the hell out of there and find Shane before it was too late.

A silver BMW had pulled into the driveway just as Scott was preparing to ask just one more time how he could find Shane.

“Oh, no!” she had exclaimed. “All this chit chat has made me run late.”

An older man, maybe in his mid fifties climbed out of the driver’s side of the Beamer, hiding the bouquet of flowers from the passenger seat behind his back. He paused at Scott’s Cherokee, almost jealously sizing up Harry as he sat in the car. Making his way up the front stairs, Scott asked just one more time.

“Please, Mrs. Corso…”

“Annette.”

“Okay.” His fists clenched and unclenched at his sides. “Can you tell me how I can get in touch with Shane… tonight?”

“Oh, sure,” she said, pulling the rollers from beneath the plastic hood as she frantically tried to primp herself before the man with the flowers made it to the top of the stairs. “He’s working down at the shop right now. I’d give you the phone number there, but he tells me his boss doesn’t like him to get personal calls while on the job, but he’s always there until close to nine. Just pretend you want to buy something. That always works for me.”

“And the address?” he asked coaxingly.

“542 South Mohawk.”

“Are you sure?” He asked as all he could picture down there were a bunch of deserted looking warehouses.

“Of course I’m sure,” she said, smiling widely as she allowed her robe to open a little further. “Tell him to call his mother sometime.”

The gentleman from the car, the red roses blooming over his shoulder from behind, hopped onto the landing and swung the flowers out for her inspection.

“Oh, Jerry, they’re beautiful,” she said, snatching them from his outstretched hand.

“As are you, my dear,” he said with a slight bow.

Rolling his eyes, Scott lumbered down the stairs and to the driver’s side door of the Jeep.

“Don’t stay away so long next time!” Mrs. Corso, er, Annette, called after him as she pulled her gentleman caller inside and shut the door.

With a chuckle, he had clambered into the vehicle, which he had left running. The heater blasted full tilt directly at him, warming him thoroughly, all except for his knuckles clenched tightly to the wheel, which felt as though they might catch fire.

They rode in silence the whole way, the sun having long since set behind the mountains, though who could have known it as the sun had made but a brief appearance from behind the dark clouds that day. The forecast said that was more than they were likely to see within the next couple of days, however.

They had arrived in the small warehouse district, winding through the maze of Indian named roads until they found the address that they were looking for. 542 was a large, cement building that looked much like all of the others with the exception of the thirty or so cars parked in the lot on the side of the building. The lights in the entryway, behind the side by side glass doors, were dimmed behind the vacant receptionist’s desk.

Pulling up against the curb just across the street from the front doors of the abandoned looking building, Scott looked over to Harry who wore that same puzzled look as he stared at the building.

“What do you think they do here?” he asked. “It doesn’t look as though they provide any sort of service.”

“I’m not sure, but why don’t you wait here for me.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, knowing Shane, I don’t think he would take well to being cornered by two of us.”

“Think he’ll believe you?”

“Not a chance, but I think I’ll be able to get him to come with us regardless.”

“You’re not going to tell him, are you?”

“What does it matter if I’m able to get him somewhere that he’ll be safe.”

“I don’t think there is such a place.”

“Well,” Scott said, opening the door and hopping out into the snow that blew straight from the side. “I hope you’re wrong.”

He left the engine running so that Harry could still take full advantage of the fiery heat that gusted from the heater. Slamming the door shut, he lowered his head and raced through the blinding snow across the slick street, bounding up onto the curb in front of the warehouse. Slowing, he walked straight towards the front doors, pausing briefly to note the sign etched into the glass on the door.

“International Awards,” he read aloud, grabbing the handle and pulling it wide.

A muffled ding echoed from the back of the warehouse, behind the closed doors to the left of the secretary’s desk. Several bronze service award plaques hung from the carpeted walls as well as the company’s mission statement that was tacked to the surface in large letters: “Quality and service are the industry standards. Set the bar high.”

The door to the left side of the room opened and a man in a light pink button down shirt appeared. The cuffs were rolled up past his elbows and a tuft of the dense hair on his chest peeked over the top button. He wore khaki slacks with a pair of dark brown loafers. His long, black hair was pulled tightly into a ponytail behind the base of his skull, his green eyes leering from beneath his thick unibrow. A scruffy goatee wrapped an “o” around his thin lips, more than accentuating the look of surprise on his sun burnt face. A tattoo of a dragon was carved into his right forearm.

“What can I do for you,” he asked, looking Scott up and down.

“I’m looking for Shane Corso.”

“Who can I tell him is here?”

“Scott Ramsey,” he said, gnawing the corner of his lip.

“Have a seat over there and I’ll tell him you’re here.”

Scott turned to see a pair of folding chairs leaning against the wall. Pulling one down, he opened it and sat down, staring around the darkened room. There was a small door to the right side of the room without a knob, just a little circular hole where there had once been one. A peeled sticker on the door stated that at least once it had been a “Restroo.”

The door opened to the left again as Shane burst into the room. With the exception of the thick sideburns, he looked just as he had a decade ago. He was wearing an expensive looking suit with a bright red and black patterned tie. His highly polished black shoes reflected the dim light that seeped from beneath the door he had just exited. And while his light brown hair was somewhat thinner, it was still in the same style he had worn it back in high school.

“Scott Ramsey,” he said, a wide, white toothed smile appearing. He looked like a salesman. “Long time no see, my brother. What’s it been twelve years?”

He offered his hand.

“Something like that,” Scott said, clasping the hand which more than firmly squeezed it.

“What brings you down here on a night like this?”

“I was hoping you might have a few minutes to talk.”

Shane glanced down at the watch beneath his ornate gold cufflinks.

“I’ve always got time for an old friend. Why don’t we go to my office.”

Turning, he opened the wooden door and held it wide, allowing Scott to pass through the doorway first.

It was an enormous room, with desks as far as the eye could see. There were people sitting in those desks, all of them with a phone held to their ear. Their voices clamored into a loud din, with none of them standing out. A handful of nicely dressed men and women walked the floor with clipboards leaning over the shoulders of the people on the phones. Every ten desks or so, there was a large chalkboard on wheels. Written on the green surface was a line of names along the left side, each of them with a varying amount of white markings to the right.

Shane slipped in front of Scott and walked straight down the thin walkway between the desk towards a closed door at the back of the room.

“But ma’am, surely you knew that it was Al Capone who originally started the better business bureau,” a man on the phone to his right said as he passed.

“Now ma’am,” another said from a different desk. “I’m a business man and a Christian…”

“I’ll bet you dollars to doughnuts that you’re not only going to appreciate the quality of those pens, but I’ve got a hunch you may be the big winner,” a tall, burly looking fellow said into the old style receiver.

Shane opened the door and stepped to the side to allow Scott to walk through, closing it behind him. The roar from the room outside was nearly sealed off from them; barely the hum of the clamor crept from the crack beneath the door.

Shane walked around the desk and sat in the leather chair behind the desk. There was a brass nameplate affixed to a wooden placard at the front of the barren desk.

“Mr. Corso,” Scott read with a nod.

“That’s me,” Shane said, lacing his fingers behind his head and leaning back in the chair.

“Well, Mr. Corso,” Scott said, lowering his voice and leaning forward. “I’ve got to ask. What is it that you do here?”

“We sell pens.”

“Pens?”

“Not just the ball pens that you’ll find in every store in the world, but nice pens. You’ve seen Cross pens, right?”

“I got a pair for graduation.”

“Just like that.”

“Just like that?”

“Well, truthfully, they’re not quite as nice. We get them in volume from Taiwan, but in addition to those pens, our customers have the chance to win five thousand dollars.”

“Hence, International Awards.”

“Bingo,” Shane said, pointing at Scott.

“How much do you charge for these pens?”

“19.95 for a set of four, but they always receive one of our four fantastic awards.”

“Fantastic?”

“Sorry, man, I’m in work mode.”

Scott chuckled, “And what would that award be?”

“Ninety- nine percent of the time they get a nice feaux opal broach, but one in every twenty thousand wins the big one.”

“Five thousand bucks.”

“Right.”

“So these people are lured into buying the pens by the hope of winning five thousand dollars.”

“We call them ‘mooks’.”

“Classy.”

“Did you come down here to insult me, or what? Not everyone inherits their daddy’s business, tough guy. I make ten percent of every sale. That’s close to five thousand bucks a week. I barely work forty hours and I’m driving a brand new 3000 GT. If you can top that, please do. Otherwise, get to the point.”

His smile had faded to a scowl, his hands falling to the desk in front of him where he leaned forward, somewhat menacingly towards Scott.

“Relax,” Scott said, shaking his head. “I just came down here to see what you were up to these days. I ran into your mom earlier today and she said that I could find you here.”

“Well, okay then,” he said, his smile returning.

“We’re all just about to knock off for the night. Can I buy you a drink or something?”

“Sounds good.”

“Can I offer you another form of recreation?” Shane asked with a curious glimmer in his eye as he opened the top drawer of the desk and pulled out a small mirror and a glass vial.

“Thanks anyway,” Scott said, watching as Shane tapped the contents of the vial onto the mirror in two straight lines of white powder. Capping the vial, he slipped it back into the desk and pulled a one hundred- dollar bill from the desk.

“We use these as incentives,” he said, holding up the bill momentarily before rolling it tightly into a small straw.

Placing it into his right nostril, he lowered it to the glass and deeply inhaled the first of the two lines. Sniffing back the run off, he tilted his head back as his eyes began to water furiously. Swallowing hard, he licked his teeth and switched nostrils, inhaling the final line. The welling tears forced his eyes shut as he brought both fists to his face to rub them.

Finally opening his red rimmed eyes, he licked his finger and rubbed it across the mirror, picking up the remnants of the dust that marred his image as he stared intently down at it. Contented, he rubbed his finger beneath his upper lip across his gums and slid the mirror back into the desk.

“I prefer my sugar in my coffee,” Scott said somewhat uneasily.

Shane burst into a laughing fit that boomed and echoed throughout the hollow office.

“You know, pal,” he said, rising from behind the desk and walking towards him, laying his arm across Scott’s shoulder. “I’ve really missed you.”

“Same here,” Scott faked, rising from the chair and stepping towards the door.

“So what have you been up to lately? Found yourself a lady?”

“Not just yet. I’ve been working a lot.”

“That’s no reason not to have yourself a woman,” Shane said, opening the door and stepping out into the main room. All of the phone operators were staring intently at the clock mounted on the wall, pensively staring at Shane as he entered the room.

“I thank all of you for your hard work today, and I expect more of the same tomorrow.”

None of them moved as they all just stared at him.

“Who was our top seller today?”

One of the men in the suits piped up from the back of the room. “I’ve got one with six back here,” he shouted.

“I’ve got one with seven,” another called.

“Ten here,” a slender woman in a skirt suit chimed in from just to his left.

“Can anyone beat ten?” Shane shouted.

There was a chorus of ooh’s and ahh’s, but it appeared that no one could.

He pulled the hundred dollar bill from his pocket and straightened it our, folding it lengthwise down the middle and brushing it off on his pant leg. Handing it to the woman, he nodded approvingly as she passed it on to a rather meek looking middle aged man. He rose from the desk, nearly knocking over his almost completely filled ashtray, and gave a curt bow to the rest of the group who clapped and hooted before beginning to file through the side door that opened into the parking lot on the side of the building.

“Can I talk to you for a moment, Mr. Corso,” the brunette in the skirt suit said, taking him by the arm. Her bright red nails ran up and down his thigh as she gave a gentle tug.

“Why don’t you give me a few minutes to wrap things up here,” Shane said, looking to the woman. “I’ll meet you outside in say… ten minutes?”

She shook her head, licking her ruby red lips.

“Give me fifteen,” he said, allowing himself to be led into the office. Scott could see him walk around to the chair behind the desk and sit down in the chair. The brunette followed him, dropping to her knees behind the oak desk as he opened up the top drawer once again.

Scott whirled towards the door, a sudden and embarrassed redness rising in his cheeks. Walking past the rows of now empty desks towards the front lobby, only the supervisors in their suits remained, wiping clean their chalkboards and sifting through the white recipe cards that contained their contacts. Breezing through the wooden door and across the darkened lobby, he stepped out into the howling wind once again.

The flakes had gotten larger since he had first gone in, blowing straight from behind him as the bitter wind raced down the front slope of the Rockies. Rolling, black clouds choked out every ounce of light from the sky, the only dim rays filtering through the night from the street lamp across the street in front of the vacant docking bays of what appeared to have once been a small shipping business.

His previous footsteps were already filled with snow in the walkway as he bounded towards the Cherokee, his hands shoved tightly into his pockets. He could see Harry watching him intently from the vehicle, his palms raised upwards in a “what happened” gesture.

Throwing back the door, he hopped into the warm car as the heat burst past him, dissipating across the whipping wind.

“Well?” Harry asked as Scott closed the door.

“We’re meeting him for drinks.”

“Did you tell him anything?”

“No.”

“So what’s going on then?”