Siren of Depravity

by Gary Fry

  But in the absence of that woman, a new plan had arisen, emerging as a consequence of all my investigations, whose information I’d communicated to Dex by telephone earlier. This latest attempt would involve my child, a girl also primed for the role on account of her grandfather being active with Hartwell before my mum had given birth to me. The truth was that I carried half my dad’s corrupted DNA and would pass this on to all offspring.

  Occult practices, intended to modify a gene pool like radiation, had infected me as much as they had my brother, and all that was needed was a girl born to either of us. After the backstory about our combined heritage was revealed, Dex would have realized that our dad’s granddaughter might be as useful as any direct female child. That was why he’d said over the phone, “Perhaps skipping a generation will work just as well.” It was also why my father had taken such an interest in each of his son’s sexual relationships, why he’d constantly mocked us, and then said during Eva’s infancy when I’d taken the girl to see him in his Newcastle flat: “All too late for me now.”

  My dad and my brother were both monsters, one preoccupied by sex and the other by death.

  And now the younger had a chance to raise at least one creature raging with these primal aspects of existence, turning the world to vicious chaos as it emerged. It might even rouse others, creating a chain reaction of hellish disorder right across the country and perhaps even farther afield, where similar entities still lay in slumber, left behind during an interglacial period, when ice had melted and deposited them in various places north of the planet.

  Again I was speculating recklessly. But as I finally saw my wife and daughter, with Dex standing between them looking remarkably recovered from his recent indisposition, I felt my mind become perceptively alert, focused on an imperative as vital as any other: survival.

  29

  Illuminated by scant light, my brother occupied a barred room at the far end, one whose door was almost certainly locked and contained a table to his right (as he looked at me) on which Olivia lay, clearly unconscious. A large black cupboard stood behind the table, its closed doors presumably concealing surgical instruments, because that was what this part of the cellar resembled: a crude operating theater.

  Farther to right, beyond that table and tucked into the corner was another section of this makeshift room, barred off from the larger part occupied by Dex and my wife. This was where Eva lay, obviously drugged more mildly than her mother, because she was now stirring on the stone floor, making a sequence of whimpering sounds.

  These nonsensical vocalizations were amplified by several microphones attached to the ceiling; thick wires led away, trailing across the ground like paralyzed snakes caught mid-wriggle, before descending abruptly into the starkest sight here: a great hole drilled into the stone floor and all the earth underneath.

  My flesh writhing with terror and anger, I paced forward and glanced into this three-foot-wide opening, which appeared to descend vertically who knew how deeply. All I could see as I peered into its shadows was those thick rubber wires falling swiftly away and still broadcasting the sounds of my daughter waking, a constant whimper that made more noise than its source could ever manage, even while issuing the pure high notes of a song.

  There must be a powerful speaker at the bottom of this hole, capable of dramatizing every sound made in this secret cellar (including those of the woman-pig I’d detected earlier). One moment, I heard my brother inhale, clearly about to speak; the next, I detected the rustle of Eva’s limbs shifting on the floor, as she perhaps wondered how she’d fallen asleep so quickly, just after being introduced by her mother to a man she hadn’t known, but who must have attacked both with chloroform, administering a larger quantity to Olivia. And yet for what grisly purpose? What was my brother about to do to my wife and daughter?

  Before Dex could speak, I regained my voice, shock turning to rage. “What the fuck are you doing, you sick bastard?”

  My words came out much louder than I’d planned, mainly because their volume had been increased by that microphone/speaker combination, making the whole cellar rattle and forcing me to look at other parts of it. Here, on shelves and other tabletops, I saw scalpels and drug vials; Bunsen burners and chemical equipment; various hypodermics and—most worryingly in light of that ghastly hybrid I’d seen trapped in a cage—intrauterine devices, surely capable of combining the DNA of one species with that of another. Although a large range of glass jars had tinkled in response to my comment, this impact paled in comparison to my sight of an item rested against one wall.

  It was the claw my brother had located as an adventurous youth, back when, despite our dad’s wicked treatment, he’d had a chance of a decent life, being full of nascent intelligence and inquisitive well-being. With its tough-looking surface and sharp point, this was the object I still believed had changed my brother’s life, leading first to many creepy drawings, ones duplicated, I’d since discovered, by others living in this area, all seeking to give their convergent dark dreams a comprehensible structure. But even those early behaviors had been mere hints at what Dex had achieved later.

  Despite being mindful of the danger in which my wife and child lay, I had little choice but to continue observing the cellar walls, which, in a way my parents would never have allowed while living here, had been painted with simultaneously awesome and awful imagery.

  The portraits my brother had added to the stone were hideous to behold. Each had possibly been executed during different periods, whenever dark inspiration had struck, but all displayed the same unruly creature, a beast surely dredged from the bowels of the earth, churning and prowling, tearing apart anything that ventured into its path.

  Its eyes—hundreds of them, each a sluggish black-green and as big as overinflated footballs—were distributed across its misshapen body. Its head was little more than a gathering of steam, boasting teeth and flared nostrils, each the size of infants. Its multiple limbs crushed any object it chanced upon in its earthly environment: here went trees, there cars, and then houses, sheds and garages. In one portrait, the monster rose high on its rear section, looking as tall as a hillock behind it; in another, it bayed at the moon, its many peepers glinting in a heaven rendered frosty by starlight. In a third, the thing’s feet were visible, masses of leathery flesh terminated by great claws (much like the one elsewhere in the cellar) and whose rear sides were lined with toothy slits, as if various parts of the entity’s body were capable of consuming for sustenance, and not only its inorganic skull. Its chest heaved like the belly of some high-speed locomotive, spitting fire and smoke with thunderous obsession, flash-frying everything up ahead and with no morals about what it killed, what it ate, or whose lives it destroyed in the process. Allies, enemies, or combinations of both: all were mere prey to it.

  Once I’d processed all these observations, Dex replied to my previous comment: What the fuck are you doing, you sick bastard?

  “Now, that’s no kind of language—so much swearing, Harry—to use in the presence of a child,” he said in a soft voice, a gentle curl at his lips that in anyone else might denote wry amusement, but in him suggested sadistic menace, especially when amplified by that underground speaker.

  He’d certainly made a swift recovery from whatever had ailed him, breathing easily and clearly articulating his words. For a moment, I wondered whether he’d feigned his earlier injuries, but then, recalling all the dark tricks of which he was capable—resurrecting the dead, for Christ’s sake—I doubted that. If the missing young woman with the clubfoot, now half-transformed into a farmyard animal, had gored him while out in his garden during obedience training, the wound had now healed, maybe after application of some homemade medicine or perhaps an operational procedure.

  My daughter made another sound, which caused all those glass jars to rattle again, this time with even more resonance as the painted stone walls absorbed none of the reverberations. Her sluggish groans sounded like a creature shifting at the base of that hole situated be
tween me and the cage in which she was locked.

  Observing the girl trying to sit up on the floor, holding her body in that uneven pose she’d often demonstrated at home, I turned back to my brother.

  “Let her out now,” I demanded, my voice resonating once more. “She’s no good to you and whatever sick goal you’re trying to achieve.”

  “Oh no, Harry?” Dex replied with all the arrogance of a delusional or even incredibly well-informed person. “Why don’t you explain why?”

  “Well, how could she be? She’s…she’s just a child. And she’s never been through that…that conditioning I mentioned on the phone earlier.”

  “But our dad had. You said so yourself. And do you know what? I think that might be enough. Your daughter is a product of two parents who grew up in the North York Moors, and if not exactly conditioned, she’s certainly been primed.” My brother paused, licking his lips. “Tell me, Harry, is it true that…Eva, is it? Yes, I believe that’s her name… Does she ever complain of bad dreams?”

  I really wanted to say no, but knew this wasn’t the time for untruths. The fact was that my daughter had suffered these; we’d even discussed the issue lately, when the girl had said something about a monster and I’d glibly tried explaining it away in my typically reductive psychological manner, a tendency that may have been a response to deep-rooted fears about similar beasts, lying beneath the surface of everyday reality the way sex and death always did.

  Unable to respond to his question, I glanced across at my wife, who still lay unmoving on that makeshift operating table. Then I asked myself the terrible question I’d been withholding from my conscious mind: Was Dexter about to lose his virginity by raping Olivia while Eva was forced to watch? Was such a dreadful plan intended to overcome the fact that the girl, despite having been close to nature in spirit, hadn’t been prepared by Hartwell’s methods to serve as the desired “siren”? Was this the great terror my brother had threatened earlier?

  Whatever the truth was, as my daughter started climbing awkwardly to her feet and Dex paced forwards to reach my wife, I realised that my brother knew he’d been correct moments earlier: Eva did suffer family-induced nightmares, and I’d been unable to deny that.

  “What are you going to do?” I called, watching my brother now running his hands across my wife’s fully clothed body. She wore a skirt, I noticed, and with a deep breath and uneasy smile, Dex started rolling it up her stockingless shins…and then knees… and then thighs…and then…

  I cried, “Stop! Stop now, you sick fucker!”

  Just then, Eva became aware of me, turning my way with disorientation, her face transforming from confusion to palpable relief as she spotted me.

  “Daddy!” she cried, her voice causing the microphone/speaker combination to make more noise than anything else had lately. While switching my gaze to that hole and deliberately overlooking all those disturbing paintings on the walls, I genuinely believed that something every bit as frightening might soon emerge from this shadow-packed opening: a leathery limb of sorts, gasping with working mouths and with huge eyeballs along its clawed length.

  But nothing tangible arose yet, merely more reverberations induced by Eva’s single screamed word: Daddy!

  As Dex continued manhandling Olivia, presumably working himself up to an act he found distasteful and yet essential for his experiment, I realized that I must now support my wife and daughter, using whatever powers I could muster to prevent this dreadful episode from occurring.

  I darted across to the cell’s bars, identifying the part of its frontage bearing the gated entrance and then trying to yank it open. But as I’d suspected earlier, it didn’t budge. It was secured from inside and with no sign of a key hanging in its heavy chamber. Dex must have that item, as well as another for that black cupboard (which also bore a lock) behind him and unresponsive Olivia.

  “If you do anything to her, I’ll kill you, Dexter.”

  My brother ignored me, simply stroked Olivia’s thighs, as if getting himself into a suitably abusive mood to complete his task. Then he cocked his head one way, almost certainly checking whether my daughter was ready for his attempt to traumatize her forever.

  “Hello there, Eva. I hope you feel refreshed after your short sleep.” As his voice resonated louder than previously, he bore a goatish smile. “I’d be grateful if you could help your uncle by…”

  Eva had noticed her mother being mauled, but she refused to look properly. That was sensible, but there was nothing I could say to make this situation more bearable. I felt simultaneously enraged and disturbed as she looked to me for help.

  That was when my brother finished his request to Eva: “…by singing me a song.”

  “No! Noooo!” I hadn’t been able to stop myself from responding, which implied that whatever I’d once thought about the regional myth and how that creature trapped in this area could be raised, panic had robbed me of skepticism. That was when I realized that, unable to rescue Olivia from this sickening episode, I had to do what I could to prevent my daughter from screaming as loudly as a siren and wakening that long-buried, undead entity, which, in combination with who knew how many others, would surely take delight in causing more damage to the world than perhaps even Dex hoped for.

  As my brother started moving again, to the foot of the table, where my wife’s legs were now parted, I focused wholly on Eva, speaking quickly to command her attention.

  “Close your eyes, pet,” I said, demonstrating with my hands clamped briefly over my own. “Try not to think nasty thoughts. Do you remember what I taught you the other evening? Whatever events happen in life, they can…they can always be overcome by our minds, by thinking them through and…and getting command of our feelings.”

  I’m not sure how much of this I still believed, which was why my voice faltered, struggling to speak such glib words. Even after everything I’d endured during my youth, this terrible situation had made me realize how little conscious grip every one of us has on experience. But I had to help my daughter get through it by preventing her from witnessing Dex physically assaulting her mother.

  “There’s something wrong with this man,” I went on, indicating Dexter through the bars separating him and Olivia from the girl standing alone in that smaller part of the cell. By referring to my brother impersonally, I refused to offer him any sense of him being part of our family. “He’s not well. He needs help. Just remember that, Eva. Whatever happens next, bear this in mind—no other people you meet in life will ever be as bad as this.”

  Dexter laughed aloud at this. The noise was so stark and cutting that the whole room resounded with more chattering glass and even a savage protest from that half-woman, half-pig caged up nearby. But then my brother drew my attention by calling to me.

  “How charmingly naïve,” he said, and when I glanced back, I realized that, rather than beginning to clamber on top of my wife, he was actually moving away from the table, heading for that black cupboard with a hand deep in one trouser pocket. “Is that really what they teach you at universities—that whatever happens in life, it can be simply storied away, like a horror yarn replaced by a fairy tale?”

  I was unable to reply; I no longer knew what to believe.

  “Some events can never be unexperienced, you fool,” Dex spat, his voice vitriolic, reflecting the true monster behind the smug mask. “Some of them last forever, burning into your mind, causing sleepless nights and torturous days until you can no longer bear it.”

  I deliberately overruled any concerns I might still have about him. “If…if you want to kill yourself, please do so alone. Leave good people out of this.”

  I meant that, too, and not only because of what he was proposing to do to my more immediate family. I hated him now, and any decent times we’d enjoyed together as children were lost to me. I went forcefully on.

  “You don’t scare me, Dex. All I feel when I look at you is pity. You’re powerless. And…and your death wish concerning yourself and a world you believ
e hates you is a sad perversity, the bitterness of someone who always stands aloof from it and then feels sorry for himself when he fails to get the attention he believes he’s due. You’re pathetic.”

  My brother reeled, his former smugness fading to reveal, deep in his eyes, the immature child he essentially was, whose lifelong tantrum was no longer masked by mockery. But then, with palpable effort, he again became that falsely calm people-hater, plucking his hand from the pocket, holding up a small item, and then speaking again.

  “So you’re not scared of me, eh?”

  Instinct made me glance briefly at my daughter, telling her again to close her eyes, which she’d yet to do, preferring the sight of her beloved mother lying to one side. But once she’d finally obeyed, saying in a plaintive voice, “Okay, Daddy,” I switched my gaze back to Dex, who’d turned away, transferring whatever he held from palm to fingertips.

  “Oh, you will be scared, Harry. You definitely will be as soon as”— a pause followed while he used the key he now held firmly, and then finished—“I unlock this.”

  He referred to the black cupboard standing head-high beside him and deep enough to contain plenty. But as my eyes flicked back toward my still-unconscious wife, I never saw what, after unlocking its door with a single savage twist of that key, he removed from it, whether medical instrument or otherwise.

  Maybe I’d got it wrong, I thought, now in considerable distress. Maybe he’d never intended to rape Olivia at all. Maybe his fundamental asexuality wouldn’t allow him to.

  But that was when I realized Dex wasn’t about to make Eva witness something more gruesome than my latest suspicion; he wasn’t planning to kill her mother with a misapplied tool or device. In fact, he had something even worse in mind, ruthlessly negating my assurance that terror was simply a state of mind easily overcome by the application of logic.