Living in the convent wasn’t entirely bad. It was strange at first, sure, for an eight-year-old girl to see her parents’ farm evolve so much so rapidly. Even Mama and Papa changed. They’d always been reclusive people, at least here in the States surrounded by white farmers. When the crops went bad and the pigs began to die, things forever changed. But even after, Maria had some very fond memories she loved to recollect. Especially now, on the run. When she dreamed, she went back home. Her favorite place was right before her Baptism. Before she physically became a woman. Before menstruation and waking one morning to the sight of brightly colored blood in her white linen sheets.
Before then, when she was still a girl and the farm was going through a rebirth, or so Uncle Frank had called it. There had been so much joy back then. At twelve, she helped farm, she sang around the campfire, threaded and stitched worn, torn pants and shirts, and she helped feed the hogs. But what Maria loved most were the large family meals they shared together around the massive oak table in one of the converted barns. Here they sat and ate and talked about their day. Mama and Papa and Freida, too. Uncle Frank shared a meal with them, as did Betty Novak and Jules and John Freeman, and there was Nancy who always brought freshly baked peach cobbler. Allen and Amy Grice, the Hietts, and Victor Jennings helped with the dishes. She had always loved dinner at home with only her parents and sister, but after her parents had converted and opened their farm to their new church, well, dinners became even more special to her.
Oh, the times in those days held so much providence for her, a new world she had yet to discover. How fortunate for them to have Uncle Frank guide them to Salvation. Some stories were shared during mandatory lessons during the day, others at night after dinner around a roaring campfire, summer or winter. So long as the night sky was clear.
One such story, Maria recalled, aware she was dreaming.
She was back on the farm in the house she shared with Mama, Papa, Freida, Uncle Frank, and the Hiett family, Greg and Rebecca, and their two young ones Brent and Randel. They were sitting around the fireplace, watching the flames eat away a stack of cider logs. Rain was pouring down outside.
Freida was looking out the window before being told by Papa to sit by Maria. Sulking, she did as she was told.
Maria smiled at her, and Freida smiled back.
Freida had always been like that. Questioning. Challenging. It was a wonder to Maria she had ever agreed to go through the surgery to remove her ability to produce children.
Maria nudged her gently with her shoulder as Uncle Frank continued his story. Looking up at him from the rug, the expression hardening his face, she knew this particular story was important.
“The time of the birth of our Savior has come before, when I was not much older than some of you.” He gestured to the children gathered around him, the adults smiling and sitting on the outskirts. “The child was lost to us, stolen by negligence and arrogance. The Creeks had been chosen from our flock to usher in the child of our Lord. But the way was closed, and the seed died. By something as simple and banal as a car crash on a wet, rainy night.” He stood, shaking his head at the memory of the story he shared.
“However,” he continued, “it has been promised to us, another child of our Lord, in the flesh. And in time, his power will bring nations to their knees.”
“How, Uncle Frank? How will this happen?” Maria chirped without even realizing she had spoken.
Frank knelt, smiling. At eye level, he reached out and gently rubbed her plump cheek. “You, Maria. You will bear unto this world our Savior.”
“Me?” Maria gasped.
Freida looked tense in her peripheral.
He ignored Freida, nodding at Maria. “Not today, but soon. When you are of age, you will be the mother of Shg’ra’s son. You, my precious girl, will be anointed, and you will be called Blessed.”
Blessed? Have I forgotten that somehow? That I was Blessed?
How could I have—
What have I done?
I was so afraid…
“Maria!”
Frank still faced her, but it was not his voice calling her.
“Maria!”
Freida was yelling beside her, but her voice sounded miles away.
“Maria! Wake up, please!”
Wake up?
She’d forgotten she had fallen asleep, and in that realization, she could feel the world rumbling. No, not the world. She was shaking. Freida was shaking her awake.
“Freida?” she groaned, blinking, stretching, and rubbing her eyes.
“Maria? You’re awake! Oh, thank God. Oh, Maria, I was so scared. I kept trying to wake you up, but you wouldn’t budge. Why? Why wouldn’t you wake?” Freida stood above her, fretting, her eyes red and wet.
“I was dreaming,” Maria moaned, rubbing her belly as a new spasm of tight cramps crept across her stomach.
“Dreaming? Dreaming? Maria, we have to go. Now.” Freida started pulling on Maria, trying to get her to sit up in bed.
“Leave? Why do we need to—” Maria stopped when she heard the chanting coming from outside the window.
Frieda must have noticed her expression. “I’m so sorry, Maria. They found us. Somehow, they’ve found us.”
Somehow? How could we run from providence? This was ordained. Prophesied.
Maria held her breath as she sat up in bed, exhaling slowly, not wanting Freida to see signs of contractions written as pain on her face. “How?” she asked.
Frieda stopped fussing with her arms. “I don’t know. Maybe someone with the church saw us. Maybe—”
“It was inevitable?”
Freida stared at her in shock. “Inevitable? No. We can’t give up, remember? We agreed to run. It was for the best. They’re crazy, all of them.”
Maria refused to look her sister in the face. “Even Mama and Papa?”
Freida stood her ground, defiant as ever. “Yes, even them.”
“And Uncle Frank?”
“Especially him,” Freida said, glaring at her.
Maria looked over at the window, listening to the growing sounds of chanting coming from outside. Out there was her family. Out there was Mama and Papa. And out there was Uncle Frank, their Teacher. “I understand your fear, because I was afraid too, which is why I ran. So much has already been given. You gave your ability to conceive. We both gave them our flesh. But they’ll worship him. They’ll worship this baby. He won’t have it like we did. He’ll be anointed. He’ll be revered.”
Freida held her mouth, staring down at Maria with wet eyes. “Are you even listening to yourself? Don’t you remember what you said to me, that you didn’t want your son raised with them, that you wanted a better, different life?”
Shaking her head, Maria said, “There is nothing better. Don’t you understand? He’ll be anointed.”
Freida hung her head. “Like you were?”
Maria glared, her own anger igniting, broiling from her belly to her heart. “I was anointed. I am Blessed.”
“Blessed? Is that what they call raping a young girl nowadays?”
“I gave myself freely to Shg’ra.”
“Shg’ra doesn’t exist!” Freida dropped her hand, yelling now.
Maria stared, her mouth ajar. “You don’t believe that.”
Giggling in that sort of mocking sort of way, Freida said, “I don’t? Everything they ever told us, everything they told Mama and Papa, everything Uncle Frank ever told us or them was a lie. Nothing more. Just bullshit. Some pathetic pervert’s attempt at self-importance. Maria, do you even remember our Baptism? Do you remember the pain? The shame we both felt after? Was that all for the glory of Shg’ra?”
Maria crossed her arms, looking away from her sister. Tears brimmed in her eyes, hot and wet. “It was the only way.”
Hands on her hips, Freida answered, “It was rape, nothing more. And our parents, our mama and our papa, they let him do it.”
Maria fought back the moans creeping up her throat. “It was our sacrific
e.”
Freida shook her head. “I can’t believe this. Why? Why did you agree to leave with me? Why did you run?”
Maria looked at her palms, studying the lines etched in her flesh. She gazed at the closed window, listening to the growing chants of her church. “I was afraid,” she said quietly.
Freida exhaled loudly. “I’m afraid too, but that doesn’t—”
“I’m not afraid anymore.”
“What?”
“I’m not afraid. Not anymore.”
“How are you not afraid?”
“I believe.”
Freida backed away, hands in the air as if surrendering to some unseen threat. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re not thinking clearly. You’ll thank me when we’re gone. We’ll find a way, I promise. Just get dressed, and I’ll find us a way out.” She started stuffing their belongings back into their suitcases.
Maria quietly stood and went to her own suitcase in the chair at the foot of her bed.
Glancing back at her, Freida said, “See? You’ll feel better once we’re free.”
Unzipping her suitcase, Maria reached deep, digging with her hand to the bottom. Her fingers touched a cold metallic handle. Pulling the object out, she looked at the ornate curved, serpent-shaped blade.
“I’m sorry, Freida. This is the only way.” One last tear fell from the cliff of her eye, rolling down her cheek.
“What’s wrong? Do you need help dressing?” Freida went to her.
Maria whirled sharply around, the blade in her hand.
Freida stopped.
Maria thrust the dagger, stabbing her sister in the stomach.
Freida grabbed her hand, a trickle of blood running down the corner of her mouth. She looked down at the blade wedged deep into her flesh. Pain slowly registering on her face. “Why?” she managed to utter, coming out as more of a cry
Maria pulled at the blade and thrust it back in, grinding her teeth as she did.
Her legs giving out, Freida slumped against the wall and slid down, keeping her gaze on her sister. “Please…” she whimpered, the torment drawing stained lines in her face. “Please don’t do this…”
Maria stood where she was, listening to the chants outside become a shout of jubilation. “I have to,” she said matter-of-factly.
“Why?” Freida choked, sputtering up frothy blood. Her hands clamped over her wounds, covering as much as she could.
“Because I am the Blessed one.” Maria turned away to face the window and watched unmoving as the glass shattered, ripping open the curtain. Soon after, robed, faceless figures began pouring in. One hooded figure came to her, touching her stomach as one would touch a holy relic, and guided her with reverence to the bed.
“No!” Freida yelled from the floor, reaching out with a bloodied hand.
More and more of the congregation flooded into the hotel room. Two separated from the mass surrounding the bed with Maria. They stood in front of Freida with serpent-shaped daggers in their hands glistening in the glow of the lamplight.
“Mama?” Frieda whispered. “Papa?”
They said nothing.
And then she screamed.
Chapter Nine
Al had worked at the Twin Pines Hotel all his long life, living longer than most, given his genetic disposition. Sixty years, thus far. And for all he knew, he was born here. Might as well have been. This place, as he saw it, this hotel attracted monsters. What better place for a beast such as himself? In his time here, he had seen more than he cared to remember of ruthless and forgotten people checking in and never checking out. For a long while, though, the walls and halls of Twin Pines had remained dormant, silent, denying itself the decadence of screams and horrifying laughter it had indulged in for...
Only recently had it stirred.
And stir it did.
First, about a year back, there was that fellow in Room 313. Came to paint his brains on the ceiling only to find something more atrocious in him unwilling to go so quietly into the night. And recently, there was the special guest in Room 249, Andy, wasn’t it? Seemed like a nice guy, but the Hotel took an interest in him, an interest brewed from the deepest bowels of this place. For as long as Al had lived here, worked here, even he did not understand all the inner workings of this basilica of devils.
And what of the Hotel’s newest guests?
Al thought the girls were nice, or at least Maria was. Her sister treated him like everyone else did. Staring at him in trepidation like he was some freak. Unnatural horror. Maybe he was. Scaled skin and a head and shoulder above most men, yellow eyes. Mean eyes, he’d been told. Lord knew what drove them here to Twin Pines, what hell they stepped out of only to step into a much darker place.
Sulking in his hunched walk from the kitchen, he went through the lobby, praying Annalise was not working on her book at her desk, the one that would never be finished…not in this place. Nothing was ever finished here. Not death, nor life. And if she showed him one more Otto Dix painting, he was going to take her arms to match her legs. He’d seen enough horrible here; he didn’t need to see it in paintings, too.
As luck would have it, she was not at her desk. Exhaling, Al pushed through the large oak double doors and continued down the hallway of guestless rooms, hoping the girls in Room 158 had left the cart out as he had asked.
Rounding the corner at the end of the hall, he stopped. Down a little way, curled up in the hallway, a body lay unmoving. Narrowing his yellow crocodile eyes, he recognized the woman as Freida, the woman who stared at him so rudely before, one of the guests of Room 158.
He started toward her and stopped again.
She lifted her head, crimson saliva drooling from her mouth to the diamond-carpeted floor. “Please…” she begged hoarsely. “Don’t let them take…the baby.” Her gaze became unfocused, head dipping back to the floor. She exhaled and breathed no more. Beneath her, a dark pool spread, soaking into the carpet he knew Annalise would order him to scrub later.
He went to her and knelt. Rolling her over to make sure she was dead, Al noticed through the purplish wounds that cut up her abdomen, blood oozing across her exposed insides, a tattoo on her ribcage. Two serpents, it looked like, licking a staff or rod.
“Serpents?” he whispered out loud. With his talon finger, he touched the mark, remembering something that happened a long time ago.
Pink Chrysler. “Bye Bye Love.” Al was no longer looking at Freida but into the past, sixty or so years ago when he was just a boy. The fields of wheat came to him first; he’d been playing out there, chasing rats. And then here came this pink car, blaring music. He recalled thinking how much he despised them. Not that he knew them personally, but because of who they were. Normal. He saw them coming and decided to dash out in front of them, give them a good scare. He hadn’t expected the pink car to skid and flip and burn up. In the flames, the driver, the man, reached out. There was a ring on his finger, two serpents licking a rod.
“Two serpents…”
Al glanced up from the floor. The door to Room 158 was ajar.
More curious than anything, he stood and went to the door, listening.
Nothing from inside.
Peering in, he furrowed his crocodile eyes, smelling the bodies before he saw them. All around, there were dozens of them. All dressed in black robes, faces partially unmasked from their hoods. Lifeless with smoldering eyes and blackened mouths open wide, as if they’d been cooked from the inside, their expressions contorted with unimaginable pain.
Walking through the hotel room, from the TV area to the bedroom, there were more in there, by the dual queen beds. Blood painted the wall here, as well as the carpet where he assumed Freida had been butchered.
On the furthest queen lay Maria, naked, eyes open and glasslike, her legs spread exposing what used to be her sex, now folds of dark purple and deep red skin stretched beyond reason, glistening with whitish-red pus in the soft lamplight. What he saw was festered looking, cut deep inside her, as if
something had ballooned and then clawed out of her.
“Oh, Maria,” Al said quietly. “You seemed like a really nice girl.”
He spotted the cart he’d brought the food on earlier and went to it. Maneuvering around the bodies, he started pushing the cart toward the hotel door.
He stopped.
Soft crying echoed from the hotel floor near the bed with Maria’s cooling corpse.
Curious, he went toward the sound.
The cries grew louder and louder in pitch, shrill and upset.
Al found the source tucked in the arms of one of the robed bodies, a bundle of blood-soaked blankets. He stooped and pulled back the sheets.
“Hello,” he said gently to the newborn baby wailing in the dead man’s arms. But this was unlike any baby Al had ever seen before. Nearly perfectly normal, but for the midnight skin, the darkest color he’d ever seen—pitch black, a void, except for the eyes. Two red orbs looked up at him, smiling. Protruding from the baby’s head were two small horns as colorless black as its skin.
“Hello,” Al said again. He bent low and picked up the baby boy, prying him from the smoldering corpse’s charred hand. He cradled the baby and walked away cooing.
About the Author
Thomas S. Flowers creates character-driven stories of dark fiction ranging from Shakespearean gore feasts to paranormal thrillers. Residing in the swamps of Houston, Texas, with his wife and daughter, his debut novel, Reinheit, was published with Shadow Work Publishing, along with The Incredible Zilch Von Whitstein, Apocalypse Meow, Lanmò, The Hobbsburg Horror, and FEAST. His veteran-focused paranormal thriller series, The Subdue Series, including Dwelling, Emerging, Conceiving, and Converging, are published with Limitless Publishing, LLC. In 2008, he was honorably discharged from the U.S. Army, where he served three tours in Operation Iraqi Freedom. In 2014, Thomas graduated from University of Houston-Clear Lake with a Bachelors in History. He blogs at machinemean[dot]org, where he reviews movies and books and hosts a gambit of guest writers who discuss a wide range of strange yet oddly related topics. You can follow Thomas at a safe distance by joining his author newsletter at http://goo.gl/2CozdE.
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