by Rob Bliss
“Where is she?” Gorman hissed, lips opening a crack to expose his black teeth.
“She’s lying in the room where I got this,” I said, pointing at my forehead. Knowing he could see it, knowing I could see the tattoo scrawled across his head, also.
Gord added, “She turned into a fucking bear when I cut her ass-dick off!” He snapped the tail like a whip, the flesh cracking close to Gorman’s nose.
Gorman’s reflexes were quick. He snatched the tail from Gord’s hand and held it as though it were a great treasure. The look of horror waned from his face and his eyes grew bright.
Something was going on in his mind, wheels turning. I tried to recall what Malcolm Miller had told me before he died. A malevolent smile of tiny black teeth formed Gorman’s mouth.
He thrust his fist into the air, brandishing the tail at the guests.
“The bitch is dead!” he cried. “Now I hold the family power!”
Gord and I stepped back, spun toward the guests to see the men cheer and begin their attack. The women screamed as their cloaks were torn off, hair wrenched and twisted until they slipped to the floor. The men opened the flaps of their fur pants to release their erections. The rape of the wedding party began.
“Stop him, you fucking asshole!” Danaë screamed at Kevin.
But he stood impotently, not yet family, no tattoo on his forehead, the marriage rites not yet concluded. He was ignorant of the many curses beneath the apparent blessings of belonging to the brood of Venus. Now of Gorman.
Danaë snatched the tail from the priest’s hand and pressed herself against Kevin, wagging the muscle in his face. “Kill this fucking usurper and I’ll make you king by my side. We will rule the family!” Then she hissed at Gorman, “And we won’t have to have a wedding in the goddamn bowels of the Earth! I’m as valid a family member as the others! I have wisdom and maturity—the young have fucked up this family for too long! You don’t just throw away the old—gouge out their eyes and cut out their tongues to become bait for your traps!”
“That’s enough!” Gorman bellowed as he closed in on Danaë. I saw him shake his arm, the sleeve of his cloak bulged out with something inside. As his free hand reached out for the tail, a knife dropped out of his sleeve, the handle into his palm. He spun it expertly to flip the six-inch blade down, ready to use.
“Give me the tail—the power’s mine!”
“Go to Hell, old man,” the old bride hissed. “She was your daughter. The power passes down to her daughter. Sons have no place in this family except as sperm donors.”
“And what if I tell her daughter what you just promised your fool of a future husband? Look at him—that’s the best you can do? You hag! You should’ve been in the tunnel to get trampled and slashed and run over by a motorcycle. You’re worthless to the family. Barren. And what man or woman would want to breed you—wasting their magic on you?”
“I’m not barren!” Danaë screamed. “This marriage is blessed by the recent mother.” She stabbed her finger to the ceiling. I looked up. Horror washed over me, chilling my skin and muscle and bone. “She will bring fruit back to my womb!”
Elizabeth was hanging from the ceiling of the cave, naked and bound to a St. Stephen’s cross which was pinned to the stone, surrounded by stalactites, lit by an unseen source of yellow light. She didn’t move, just hung, her wrists and hands tied to the cross, head hanging forward, hair masking much of her face.
But I knew her, because I loved her.
“She’s merely bastardized family, you fool! A peripheral being—she will never have any power!”
Gorman slashed the knife in an arc, opening a mouth in Danaë’s neck, severing veins and muscles, splitting her trachea—breath sucking from her lungs, bubbles bunching up and bursting off the top of her windpipe as blood vomited onto the priest’s smiling face.
The body dropped and hemorrhaged. Kevin stared at it in horror. And people raped and were raped in turn, smashing chairs, using the splintered wood to choke and bludgeon and fuck. Heads were smashed against stalagmites, and the tips of smaller pyramids of stone were used to impale wounded and dazed women and men, in every orifice available, and a few made by blades.
I raced to Gorman, snapping the knife from my sleeve, digging its edge into his neck. His head craned back as he laughed, murder still in his eyes and the tail in his hand.
“Bring Elizabeth down,” I hissed into his ear. He didn’t hear me, but Gord did. I glanced to the ceiling.
“Gord,” I said, bringing his horrified eyes to mine. “Undo the damage done. Save your sister.”
Anger swarmed him. He snapped out his knife, grabbed Gorman’s knife hand, stabbed his dagger through the old man’s wrist and twisted. The priest’s blade clattered to the stone. The tail fell as well, but Gord picked it up and wagged it in Gorman’s face.
“Is this power to you people? To Venus?” He raised the point of his knife to aim an inch from the priest’s eye. “Free my sister and you don’t die. And you can have the fucking tail—do anything you want with it. We’re leaving!”
“How do you bring her down?” I asked.
The priest stared at the point of the knife, his vision flickering from it to the tail.
“Switch on the far wall,” Gorman said, nudging his head to the left. “You can have the whore. Her young are useless.” His ebony teeth smiled at Gord. “Did you like fucking your sister’s useless cunt with your worthless seed…daddy?”
“Like father, like daughter,” Gord snarled back before he drove the knife through Gorman’s eye to the hilt. The priest laughed as blood and severed pieces of eyeball flowed from the cavity. The blood was black and oozed down Gord’s knife, swam up the hilt to his arm, burned the sleeve of his jacket in a rush of acrid yellow smoke before Gord could drop the knife and rip off the jacket before the acid blood corroded his arm.
The priest continued to laugh, and I felt no weakness in his body as I continued to hold my knife at his neck.
“You degenerate outsiders are so goddamn stupid. Venus isn’t dead, is she?” Gord and I glanced at each other. “Severing her tail doesn’t kill her, though it does weaken her powers. You can’t destroy this family; don’t you realize that? We have survived wars and purges and the hatred of the masses for centuries. But while Venus’ power is weak, I can take over. Make this a patriarchy. The men will rule—the men will choose wives instead of having wives choose them.” He glanced at Kevin, who dropped his eyes again, squeezing his nostrils, sucking up the residual powder encrusted around his nose.
“You used to have a wife,” I said, hoping sorrow would wound him. I released the pressure of the blade at his throat, knowing that if a knife in the eye didn’t kill, then one severing his jugular wouldn’t either.
He feigned sorrow. “So tragic…they all died. Killed by my daughter. Hadn’t she told you? That’s how I knew she was the strongest one. She’s my true wife…my lover…my blood.”
“I don’t fucking care who rules this shit cult of yours,” Gord said, picking up his knife again, but leaving the tail where it lay. “I’d like to see you all dead. Men or women, it doesn’t matter—you’re all fucked!”
Now that Gord had his knife in hand (though who knew how much it would protect against Gorman?), I released my hold on the priest and went to the far wall. Found the switch and lowered Elizabeth to the ground. I cut her bonds from the cross, tried to wake her but she was out cold. Wrapped the white bear fur around her and carried her over my shoulder back to Gord. As I approached, I saw the tail gone from the floor. Kevin was tucking something into the back of his pants. Tucked it deep, nothing hanging out. I knew he had a plan boiling in his brain. He had listened too closely to Gorman’s speech, and surely felt hatred for the priest, killer of his wife.
“Gord, let’s just go,” I said, shifting Elizabeth on my shoulder.
He glanced at her, then at the priest.
“Take the family, it’s yours. But we’re leaving. Come on, Kevin.”
&nb
sp; Gord stepped away from Gorman, didn’t see the smile on the priest’s face aimed at Kevin.
“Kevin, you comin’?”
Eyes on the rock floor, Kevin muttered, “I’m staying.”
Gord stepped back to look his brother in the eye. “What the fuck? We’re getting out of here, going back home. We’re your family—not these freaks.”
Gorman interrupted, “He’s a big boy, he knows what he wants.”
“You shut the fuck up! Kevin, goddamn it—it’s a trap, don’t you get it?”
Kevin spun on Gord, eyes fierce with fury. “No, I don’t get it, Gordy! I don’t get nothing! What do I have? A wife, kids, a family? A half decent job? I make shit money at a lousy job, live in a shitty bachelor apartment—I’ve been evicted from tons of shitty apartments because I can’t make rent. I’ve been on welfare a ton of times, I’ve been homeless—yeah, you and mom and dad didn’t know about that, did you? You don’t know how shitty my life is—how shitty it’s always been! I got nothing, Gordy. Fuck all!”
“What about mom and dad? Are they not your parents? You do have a family!”
“Kevin,” Gorman said softly.
Gord pointed his knife at the priest. “I told you to shut up—this is between my brother and me!”
But Gorman held Kevin’s eyes. “If you give me the tail, I can take power. You will be at my side…for eternity. You can marry anyone you want—have many wives, live as a king.” He pointed down at the dead woman at his feet. “You won’t have to settle for an old crone. Or, with my new patriarchal power, I can turn her young and beautiful again. No longer will Venus only have such power. All of your wives will be young and beautiful forever—as you too will be—and they will serve your every wish. With myself in power, the rules will change for men like you and me.”
Gord stepped up to his brother, to speak close to his ear, get his words deep into Kevin’s mind, trying to push out the propaganda. “He’ll kill you, Kevin. He’s a liar. First chance he gets, you’re dead.”
“You’re close to becoming an official member of the family, Kevin, a privilege even your brother doesn’t have” the priest said. “We’ll go back to the main house and you can take your pick. I’ll marry you to your woman of choice tonight. It only takes a wedding…” his pitted eyes roved over to Gord, then to Elizabeth, “…or a birth…and you’re family forever.”
Gord stepped up to Gorman, halted by the body at his feet. “And family can kill family—easily.”
Fluttering a hand, he said, “She was mere proof that Venus’ power is weakened.” He raised his eyes to bore through Kevin. “Without the tail, Venus will grow a new one. Her healing powers are greater than those of the rest of the family. That is one way in which she retains power over the rest of us. We have to act fast.”
Confusion etched all our faces, but it was Kevin who looked the most horrified. “A new tail?”
The priest nodded. “There’s a way for her to do it. That only she and I know. Through the centuries, others have cut off her tail, but she kept it close so that no one could take it and usurp her power. I can stop her, which will disable her power for good. You could even marry her, Kevin. Would you like that? Would you like to be my son-in-law?”
Kevin was lost. The promise of Venus was too tempting, as it had been for us all. No one was immune to her power. Which was why Gorman wanted that power so badly.
“Kevin—goddammit—come on!” Gord yelled desperately.
But his brother didn’t speak. Instead, his answer came in the form of stepping up to the priest and putting the tail in the old withered hands.
Kevin’s eyes were dead as he said, “This is my family now.”
Gord threw up his arms and stormed through the writhing, fucking, injured, dying and dead bodies on the cave floor, kicking them, stomping them with his cloven heels.
I carried Elizabeth around the orgy of rape and death and followed Gord out of the cavern.
— | — | —
Chapter 25
We rose a worn and wet staircase of stone, rock walls like solidified wax, formed by a million slow drips over eons to erode and sculpt the cavern. The stairs ended at what looked to be the opening of a mine, an arch of old railroad ties framing the entrance. The stench of marsh gas was thick, almost suffocating, but we exited the stone alcove to feel the cool breeze of the night air against our faces, pushing away the thick stench of rotting vegetation.
A building lay before us, a wooden house that backed onto a marsh. A bridge of rope-tied logs wound through the still, dark water and deformed trees, pyramidal roots exposed above the water’s surface, looking like multi-fingered hands grasping the bog.
I sat Elizabeth down at the mine entrance and called to her, patting her face, trying to bring her back to consciousness. Goosebumps peppered her skin, so I wrapped the bear fur tighter around her, even though the marsh air was warm with just a thread of cool breeze wafting through it.
She shivered herself awake, eyes blinking sleepily, head lolling from side to side as her vision adjusted to the darkness.
She looked up at Gord and I. “Where am I?”
“Long story,” I said. “But you’re safe. For now. What do you remember?”
Her face was like a stone as she reflected, then tears began as her memory returned. “I gave birth. To…to things. They weren’t babies, were they? They couldn’t have been real.” She placed a hand against her chest, feeling bile rising. “Coming out of me…”
I held and comforted her as she wept, asked if she remembered anything else, but she said no. Then she asked what was on my forehead. I brought out my knife to shine and show her, told her that she had a tattoo as well, but Gord didn’t and he couldn’t see ours. She and I were family—me by marriage and she by giving birth. Her tears flowed again, but I tried to distract her from her sorrow. Asked if she felt strong enough to stand and walk. Gord and I helped her to her feet. She shivered and her teeth chattered as she tightened the bear fur around herself.
“We’ll get you inside somewhere, find you some clothes, get you warm.”
“What is that?” she asked, looking at the house.
I shook my head. “I don’t know, but it does look familiar.”
“Yeah,” Gord agreed, “it does.”
He stepped onto the bridge to see if it was sturdy, then I helped Elizabeth on and guided her steps. Black water lay on either side of us and steam evaporated from its surface, reeking of sulfur and rotted vegetation. I gazed at the house and the marsh that seemed to lead right to the door instead of stopping at dry ground. The house appeared to be three levels high, surrounded by swamp, if not built right on top of it. We may have faced the rear of the building, now with windows to show light inside, and we could only guess that there would be a door.
We made it halfway across the bridge when a voice behind Elizabeth and I stated, “You must still contend with the dead.”
We stopped and turned to see a man covered in the same vines that hung down from the swamp trees around us and had patches of moss and mold dotting his nude body. A tattoo was on his forehead, a pencil-thin moustache above his top lip. I recognized him…from a dream.
The first person I had ever killed.
The dream (if that’s what it was) of the three bridesmaids taking me to a forest, bringing me to a man tied to a tree and desperate to live. But I was drugged and would only obey my lust and blood-lust. They urged me to kill, so I did. This man died by my hand. So how could he stand before me?
“Who are you?” I asked, afraid to confess to Gord and Elizabeth that I was the murderer. I was afraid of their judgement concerning him, because he was no enemy of mine, nor was he a mercy-killing as with Malcolm.
“I usher the living to the judgement of the dead,” he said. “It is my eternal task now, always a servant of the family. Death does not release one of their obligations to the Royal Order of Ursa. Ursa commands both the dead and the living.” He raised an arm to point to the house. “Go into the Ho
use of Death to receive your judgement. To stay alive or to join the dead. Yet to remain forever in the family.”
The definition of his features waned into darkness until he was gone, a shadow blended back into the night. Elizabeth held onto me as we turned our steps to continue along the log bridge through the swamp. But when we turned, we saw that the house was covered like the man, with vines and moss and mold eating away at its structure, softening its corners and angles, raising a steam of putrid gas high into the surrounding trees and dark sky. The house had been absorbed by the swamp.
And if I was correct, that the man had been the one I killed—a family member, someone’s husband, possibly one of the bridesmaid’s, grown tired of her companion, choosing me, testing me to see if I could kill and, therefore, become a husband for her, though I was usurped by Venus—if that was the true story behind the man and my killing of him, then I assumed that the house before us was the roadhouse of the bachelor party. Of the drugged and delusional night of excess, where killers and their ghosts resided.
The Swamp Hotel.
We walked the length of the bridge and came to a door with a wooden knob carved into a bear’s claw. Swamp water lapped against the base of the door, seeped beneath it. The three of us exchanged a wary stare.
“You think what that…ghost…said was true?” Gord asked.
I cleared my throat, stared at the door. “Only one way to find out.”
Elizabeth gripped my hand and I gripped the bear’s claw.
The door didn’t open, but we were inside. Standing in an alcove with a red velvet drape behind us, red paisley-patterned wallpaper, jeweled beads covering the doorway to our right, a flight of stairs with a thick wooden bannister rising to our left, a lamp with a stained-glass shade hanging over our heads. It was not just warm, but hot. The wallpaper sweated diamond beads.
Two coins rolled down the stairs, bounced, glittered silver in the light, and landed side-by-side four steps up from the landing. Gord stepped toward the stairs to reach the silver, tried to put his hand on the bannister, but he couldn’t get a grip. His hand went through the wood. Looking at his hand, he couldn’t see any transparency, but it still wasn’t solid. He put one hand through the other, then put both hands through his sister and me and we did the same to him.
