by Night, Ash
Finally extracting himself from me, he took a deep breath. “I promise he won’t touch you.”
I nodded, having trouble with finding my own voice now. I turned to face the huge looming building in front of me and started to walk toward it, wincing at the chilly breeze as it nipped at my skin. Each step on the gravel driveway was like a single gunshot. I half-expected the door to grow fangs and take a bite.
We both approached the door in silence. My soul mate was standing right next to me, yet I felt so alone. I was human. He wasn’t. We were going into the den of a monster who had stolen two years of my life, tortured and made me an animal, but even worse, broken his own children beyond repair.
Aubrey opened the door first, not out of gentlemanly courtesy, but because he was afraid of what was behind it. My heart pounded in my ears as I followed him inside. Flash after flash of memory threatened to pull me under. My first steps into Hell. Saying a tearful goodbye to my mom, not knowing, never imaging the horrors that lay sleeping inside this place. The first shock. The first shock was the worst. It was the never-ending shock. That first leap into a world of pain I wasn’t sure I’d ever surface from.
Determined to pull through for the kids still trapped here, I forced myself to shove those memories into a locked box. I could deal with those later. I had to stay focused. The hard part was figuring out where they were being kept. The hallway was dimly lit and dead silent. The only sound was my soft breathing. Aubrey was moving forward slowly, his eyes hard. It struck me that he could probably see as if the room were fully illuminated. He could probably hear where the children were too.
“Take a left down this hall and then two rights. That’s where the rooms are. Not counting yours, I can hear a total of fifteen heartbeats.” He wasn’t looking at me as he spoke. He was looking straight ahead at a door. His posture was tense, somehow even tenser than it had been since we got out of the truck, and his voice lacked emotion. The tiniest amount of pressure could cause him to snap.
“Okay, I’ll meet you outside.” My own voice sounded tinny in comparison in the dark hallway. I walked down the left hall without waiting for a response. I was certain I wouldn’t receive one. Aubrey’s mind was elsewhere. In that moment, he didn’t care about the kids. In fact, he hadn’t even called them kids. He’d referred to them as heartbeats. Fifteen heartbeats.
Was that all a human was? Just a heartbeat? Vampires didn’t have a heartbeat. Topaz said he could recall the moment his own heartbeat stopped. The sound was most likely magnified by the stillness of the water he drowned in, but it was still terrifying to hear him talk about it. Aubrey had told me he had a heart, but it had never once beat. He said every human’s heartbeat was basically the same, but a certain few were more pleasing to his ears. He had said mine was the most beautiful piece of music he had ever heard.
“In here,” called a timid voice from the other side of a door. “We’re in here. There are…one…two…three of us.”
“I’m here to help,” I said as I opened the door. The room had a godawful odor to it. The sharp stench of urine and feces made me gag. All three of the kids, two boys and one girl, hugged me, clinging to me. They were wearing blue and white cloth hospital gowns, shaking from fear. “It’s okay. My name is Erin. I’m here to take you all home, I promise.”
“I’m Calvin,” said a boy with big blue eyes and nearly white blond hair. I recognized his voice as the one I heard from the other side of the door. He looked to be about five. The other two were a bit older, but wouldn’t even tell me their names. It broke my heart.
Ushering the kids out of the room, I went on to the next room. There was five kids in that room, two in the next. Most had burn scars from the electric pads. I stopped as I heard an older voice. It sounded like a teen. Could it be a staff member? I’d just assumed the staff wasn’t around. Aubrey hadn’t seemed too concerned. I held my breath, waiting.
“Calvin, Sarah, is that you? Why are you outside? And why does it sound like you brought the others this time? I told you not to leave your rooms! Go back before Mr. Kistel finds out. Please!” The voice sounded scared, not stern like I expected. It also sounded oddly familiar.
“C-Cody?” I asked, barely trusting my voice. “Is that you?”
The voice was silent for a few seconds. He was probably trying to wrap his mind around the strange event of tonight as well. The door flung open and a strong pair of arms squeezed the air from my lungs. “Erin! Oh my God! You’re alive! I can’t believe it. Where did you come from?” Cody released the death grip he had on me. His brown eyes were spilling over with tears as he smiled at me.
“Long story,” I said around the lump in my throat. It was amazing to see him again. Cody was a boy around my age who was in the institute with me. He had been there, hiding around the corner, the day I was signed in and introduced to staff. I had never actually met Kistel in the two years I’d stayed here. Cody and I used to sneak out on a few occasions to roam the halls. We never got very far, but those few times had kept me sane for as long as possible. I was overjoyed. “How are you still here?”
He wiped his eyes and grinned. “I convinced Kistel to let me stay on as a staff member. I live here with the kids.”
“You what?” I asked, dumbfounded.
He laughed. “Never mind, it’s a long story too. What are you doing here?”
“I came to rescue the kids. My boyfriend is actually Kistel’s son.”
Cody whistled. “Wow, you sure know how to pick ‘em.”
I laughed at the ridiculousness of comparing Aubrey with his father. “No, no, my boyfriend Aubrey is the kindest guy in the world. Now, help me get the kids outside. Is this everyone?”
“All right, everyone, head count.” Cody said. All the kids, ages varying from four or five to thirteen years old, lined up according to height. They were surprisingly efficient for being so young. It took only a couple minutes before they were lined up perfectly. The staff had had the kids line up like that when I was here.
Cody quickly counted them. Fourteen in all. He was the fifteenth heartbeat. His blond hair was cut short and his brown eyes seemed too old for his face with deep circles under them. Proof of all the sleepless night he’d had. He was also at least six inches taller than me. He was a far cry from the wild hopeful twelve-year-old I walked these halls with. I smiled as we walked out in front of the kids, side-by-side. “Like old times,”
“I’ve missed you, Erin. I know it seems crazy. I mean, in reality we’ve only seen each other a handful of times in those two years, but you really helped me and I treasured our friendship.”
“I’m really grateful you were here. I really needed a friend back then. I’m so glad you’re alive.” I stopped in front of an open room and stared. Inside was a long off-white table with a black helmet resting on it, attached by a curly black cord. The shock helmet.
My breath came fast and my knees started to shake. The remembered pain was so real I could feel it. The hair on my arms and on the back of my neck rose up. Squeezing my eyes shut, I tried to block out the memories. It was as if it were happening all over again.
“Erin, Erin, calm down.” Cody touched my arm. I jumped.
“Cody?” My heart pounded against my rib cage. “What just happened?”
“Anxiety attack,”
I sighed. “Sorry. I get those from time to time.”
“I know, I do too. It’s been tough without you here, Erin, but I’m so, so grateful you made it out. I cried when you left. I was happy for you.”
I smiled and held the door open for the kids to go through. “Go to the big red truck and jump in the back, okay?”
“Oliver, help the little ones, will you?” Cody said, looking at the oldest one. He was a boy who looked to be about thirteen. He nodded and went to the head of the line. “Erin,” Cody grabbed my hand. His hands were rough but warm. “Thank you. Really. I would never have been able to get all of them out of here by myself. I have helped a few, as many as I could, in the past. That
was why I stayed on as a staff member…To help them because no one had helped us.”
“You’re welcome, Cody. I’ll be out there shortly. Wait by the truck with the kids. I have to tell Aubrey you’re all safe.”
Wrapping me in a hug, Cody kissed my cheek. “Erin, you’re an angel.”
I smiled. For the first time since entering this place I felt safe, here in the arms of an old friend.
Chapter Twenty-two
Aubrey
“Brother, just what the fuck are you doing here?” Alex asked as I walked in. He was standing by the wall. The room was spacious. A desk chair and a collection of TV monitors were the only objects in the room aside from wall to wall shelves of old VCR tapes and a few dozen books.
“You said that you needed to look at Erin to undo the compulsion. She’s in the truck.”
He snarled. “I didn’t mean right now, you idiot! After all, there’s still a chance I might die so the problem would have resolved itself either way!”
“Well, I’m not okay with you dying so…”
“So, nothing! God, how stupid can you be? The royal bastard is going to be here any minute so you need to leave! How did you find me, anyway?”
I smirked. “Got in your head.”
“Explains why my head hurts. Anyway, you need to leave. Now.”
“Or what?”
“Or I’ll kick your ass all the way home!” He roared, his voice echoing off the walls. I flinched. Alex looked ready to pop a blood vessel. I might have pushed one too many buttons.
“Could you brats keep it down? Now you know why I hate kids. Constantly noisy. Aubrey, what an unpleasant surprise. Did you bring your pet with you? I do so enjoy messing with her mind. Maybe set her in the shock helmet for old time’s sake?” Kistel smirked as he sat down in the desk chair. It still startled me whenever he appeared out of nowhere.
“You are never going to touch her again, you bastard!” I snarled. He laughed.
“Fine, watch a video with me, then?”
The monitors silently clicked to life, each monitor part of the bigger picture. It was a video of Erin taken before I met her. She was strapped to a table, a black helmet on her head. Her eyes were bloodshot from crying while her voice was hoarse from screaming. The image turned my stomach. Alex was a stone wall, expressionless, as he watched. If I thought her voice was spent, I was wrong. The screaming only increased in pitch.
“Stop! Please!” I begged. “Please turn it off!”
Kistel chuckled, swiveling the chair to face me as the video continued to play. “Oh, brat, you’re too late. This was what I did to her once a week for two years. You see, once a week of this is all they can handle. The other six days were for resting and being treated like dogs, of course. But don’t worry, we did take care of them. We gave the kids ice baths, fed them once every few days, and even let then play outside once a year, if we remembered, that is.”
“Why?” I asked. “Why do any of this?”
“Because, my dear boy, I enjoy torturing others. Seeing the helpless look at their eyes reminds me of my boys. The one I never got to kill.”
“Because of me?” Alex glared at him.
He nodded. “Yes, and now that I have you here, I can finally kill you and all of this can stop.”
Alex growled, ready to fight. “Oh, hell yeah, it’s going to stop because I’m going to burn this place to the ground!”
“Well, torturing you the past few weeks has been fun. Messing with your hunting habits, your emotions, and best of all, making little Erin have nightmares again.”
My eyes widened. That explained my sudden urge to kill at the bookstore and why I got so mad at that boy in the bar. I was relieved to know that actually. Now it would stop.
Laughing, Kistel turned to me. “Say, brat, bet you’re happy you stole all of my precious kiddies now, right? You led Erin here for nothing. I was about to set them free. Don’t you feel stupid?”
The video changed. It was live security camera footage of my truck and fifteen kids cramming in the bed of my pickup truck. My stomach lurched.
“Okay, you know how to work a camera. Good for you.” Alex said. “Now get to the damn point, old man. I think I can spot gray hairs sprouting on my brother’s head.”
“Aubrey, you may leave. I have no need for you.” Kistel told me as he pulled a knife from his pocket and began to sharpen it on a small sharpening stone. Shinxt! Shinxt! Sparks flew from the knife each time it was struck against the stone. “You don’t need to be here for this. You didn’t see your mother die. Why should you witness your brother’s death?”
My chest tightened as I thought about what he said earlier. “Did you mean what you said? Was my mother’s death an accident?”
He paused for a moment to look up at me in surprise. “Didn’t your mother ever tell you it isn’t polite to eavesdrop, or were you too young?”
Biting my tongue, I fought every instinct that told me it was a logical idea to tear his head off. “Was it?”
He smiled. “Yes, yes, it was. I only meant to rough her up a bit, take a bit of blood. I was thirstier than I expected.”
“Brother, run!” Alex yelled as the lights dimmed and then went out completely. It took a second for my eyes to adjust. Alex had ripped out the electrical wires and in the split second of surprise, he had knocked Kistel over and stolen his knife and stone. Shinxt! Sparks fell on the still-live electrical wires and went up in flames instantly. Throwing the knife to the floor, he began feeding the flames the strips of black tape from the VCR tapes. The flames licked it up hungrily, growing higher.
“Alexander, what are you doing, you little shit? Those tapes are mine!” Kistel screeched, lunging at him. Alex barely had time to avoid being knocked directly into the fire. Thinking fast, he threw a flaming tape at Kistel. As Kistel dodged that, Alex slashed at him with the knife. The knife grazed Kistel’s arm. Kistel snarled in pain, shoving Alex away. Alex used being off balance to his advantage and was able to grab Kistel, swinging him so he went down right on top of the flames.
The resounding bellow that came from Kistel would haunt my nightmares forever. Alex glared at me. “Brother, the room is going to-Ack!” Alex’s eyes widened as he looked down. To my horror, I saw the tip of the knife glinting though a hole in his chest, the hilt buried deep in his back. With the last of his strength, Kistel had grabbed the knife and stabbed my brother in the heart.
Get out of here, stupid. You’re highly flammable, brother. Alex said weakly.
Kistel coughed. “See you in Hell, Alexander.”
“Alex!” I rushed to Alex’s side. He was still. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he was sleeping. But I knew better. Not even a trace of power was left. In that moment, I knew how Alex felt when he knew Mother was dead. No wonder he didn’t know what to say. There were no words.
“Aubrey, what the-” Erin opened the door and gasped. I put Alex’s body on my back, like Mother used to do when she used to give me piggyback rides, and scooped Erin up with the other hand. She was already coughing profusely from the smoke. The fire was eating at everything now, spreading to the other rooms. If not for Erin, I’d have let it consume me too. My thoughts were in a fog as thick as the smoke. Only one thought was strong enough to cut through: I had to get Erin out.
Erin had her face pressed into the crook of my arm as she struggled for air. The smoke stung my eyes but I was able to make out the shape of the front door. I didn’t stop running until we were safety outside, away from the burning building. Erin gasped and coughed, gagging on the smoke she inhaled. I kissed her, coaxing the poison out of her lungs and harmlessly into mine like a vacuum cleaner. Thankfully it worked and she was able to breathe easier.
“Alex…” She looked at my brother’s body sadly. The compulsion had worn off the minute he died. She was no longer scared of him. Picking his body up, I smiled. Alex looked so peaceful. There was no anger, no trademark scowl, only peace.
I felt lost as I searched for a place to bury
him. My brother had always been by my side. Since the day I was born, he was there, and since Mother died, he was all I had.
You always were a crybaby. The words echoed through my head as clearly as if he had just spoken them. He always used to tell me that whenever I cried over something. Would he say that now as I cried over his body? I knew I should be getting back to Erin and the kids, but for now, I just wanted time to grieve.
Even if I still didn’t know what to say.
The End
