The 13th

by John Everson

  David saw the people touching his girl…He realized as the thought passed that he labeled her as “his girl.” He was ready to die to make sure that she got out of this place. He considered his chances of turning on Elsie before she severed his jugular…If she went deep, before he’d gotten Brenda off the stage, then he had done no good at all.

  Amelia whistled as if she were calling a dog. The mumbling ambient noise dropped off and she held her hands up to the crowd. “We have sent the blood of the twelve mothers to Ba’al and their babies to the mother, Astarte,” she said. “And you have given it back to the Thirteenth through your hands. Now, we call Ba’al, and if our sacrifices were good, he will be among us…and we will be his.”

  David shuddered as he looked at Brenda on the stage. Her breasts glimmered wetly in the firelight, and the smears from dozens of hands left her body clothed in a chocolaty smear of blood. If nothing else, at least some of her nakedness was covered by the blood of the mothers.

  “Fuck,” David said. “How do I help you?”

  His aunt turned to answer, digging in the knife just a little more. “Maybe you could start by helping her to meet her destiny instead of running from it.”

  Rockford took Brenda by the shoulders, and began to push her toward the ground. The crowd began to cheer, and someone started to chant, “Astarte, Ba’al, Astarte, Ba’al.” The whole room took up the cry.

  David began to move, forgetting the knife at his throat, but Elsie wasn’t forgetting. It dug into his flesh and he cried out, at the same time as Brenda, who Rockford had finally pushed all the way to the floor.

  For the first time in the whole ordeal, David finally felt truly, completely afraid. Not for his life, but for what was coming. As the townspeople milled around and chanted at the stage, the air seemed to grow murkier in the already-shadowy room. It was as if a cloud had passed overhead, but it didn’t go away. While the flames on the side of the room continued to gutter and sway, their impact lessened as the inky blackness grew from the ceiling. It twisted and moved, and then David saw something emerging like a funnel from the center. Something that almost glowed black in the darkness. But in its center, there was something lighter. Two somethings. Somethings that moved in slow motion to circle the room until they came to rest on him.

  Eyes.

  The cloud had grown a head and eyes that found him. He tried to look away, but couldn’t…The thing held his gaze like a magnet, and David felt tears begin to stream down his cheeks as it slid through the oily air to grow closer, so close that he could see the deep black holes in the center of the yellowed eyeballs. Holes that you could get sucked into, he thought, as his groin turned over inside him. Even as his stomach quailed, his groin burned at the gaze of the demon, and suddenly David knew that all was lost. In a heartbeat he had gone from crushing fear to burning desire at the look of the thing. If this was what Rockford and Amelia were calling, then no man would prevail against it. The thing was lust incarnate, and David strained against the knife to move closer. He needed it. Needed…

  Elsie whispered in his ear, “Not for you. Not now.”

  And with that the demon’s gaze flipped away, back to the stage where Rockford knelt between the legs of David’s girl.

  Amelia invoked the demons from her place on the stage and someone in the room screamed, “At last, the god, at last.”

  That’s when the gunshot echoed through the room.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

  “Every time I run into you, you’re a prisoner,” the voice said. Christy struggled to open her eyes. Her head felt on fire. She couldn’t remember exactly what the last thing was that she’d seen, but she remembered a lot of fists and feet connecting with her body after David and Brenda had escaped the basement. And then the lights had just…gone out.

  Now they were back on, and she managed to make her eyelids flicker open, a painful act even in the low light of the torch-lit room. At a glance she knew right where she was—back in the same room that the twelve mothers had been hung in. Hung just as she was now. Like meat in a locker. Her eyes flickered up to take in the chains that connected to the cuffs on her wrists. There was pain in her arms, but only a little…Mostly she didn’t feel a thing below the neck.

  “Who’s there?” she finally said. When she tried to look around the room, she didn’t see anybody. Chains hung from the bricks around the walls, but no other bodies were to be found.

  “Down here,” the man answered. “On the floor where you left me. I don’t think you’ll be bringing any help.”

  Christy struggled to scan the floor. She didn’t see him at first.

  “To your left,” he said, and she twisted.

  “Billy!” she whispered.

  “Last time I checked,” he answered. “But that could change soon if you don’t get an ambulance out here. Aren’t you supposed to be a cop? Bringing help to those in need?”

  His voice changed at the last sentence as he struggled to contain a moan of pain. “I could use a little help here,” he said finally. “That’s why I let you out the first time.”

  “Yeah, well, things got a little complicated out there,” she answered.

  “Not here,” he answered. “Just bleedin’ going on here.”

  Christy didn’t answer immediately. She took in the room, trying to ignore the growing sounds of excitement from outside.

  “There’s a key over there by the door,” she said finally, picking out the ring that hung on a hook just inside the old wooden door. “If you could get it for me…”

  “What, I’d be your hero?”

  “Something like that.”

  “You’d drop all charges against me, from now until death do we part?”

  “How about I promise to drop all charges against you up to now?”

  “What charges do I have now? I haven’t done anything.”

  “How about aiding and abetting a mass murderer.”

  “Good point,” Billy said. “So you’d drop that?”

  “If you get me out of here, Castle Point PD will not ever mention your name in regard to this case, except as a victim,” she promised. Deep inside, she had a feeling the chief would kill her for saying that. But…if she didn’t get free, it wouldn’t really matter anyway, would it? She’d be dead, regardless.

  Billy crawled toward the door and once at the wall, used its solidness to prop himself up. Inch by inch he levered himself upright against the cool masonry, until he could easily snatch the key ring. Then, taking a shallow breath (and gasping at the sharp pain that resulted) he shuffled slowly across the divide.

  “The step that they used to hang me up here is still there,” Christy said, gesturing with her face at the small step stool just a foot or two away from her feet.

  Billy finally made it to her side, and then stopped, putting one burning hot hand against her bare thigh.

  “You promise me that you’ll come back for me?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I can’t help TG, but I will come back for you.”

  “Okay,” he whispered, and then grunted as he groped his way up the wall and stepped up on the stool. Then she felt his hand on her wrist. He groaned as he touched her and repeated, first in whispers, and then in louder more agonizing tones: “Fuck, fuck, fuck, FUCK!”

  Something clicked and Christy felt her hand slide free so that she was dangling from one arm. And then Billy warned: “I can’t catch you.”

  Fingers touched her other strangely distant hand and something clicked again, and Christy was falling.

  The ground only hurt a…LOT.

  Behind her someone hurt even more, as Billy lost his balance from the step stool and collapsed right behind her to the rock floor.

  The words he screamed are not printable in any intelligible sense, but aptly reflected an enormous amount of pain.

  Christy still was blinking back the stars as she crawled over and touched the damp curls of his head with a needles-and-pins-tingling hand. “I WILL be back for you,” she promised.
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br />   Billy only answered with a moan.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

  The gunshot stopped the chanting like…a gunshot. The crowd turned away from Rockford and Amelia and Brenda on the stage and tried to find the source of the noise.

  David grinned when he found it. There, at the base of the stairs to the exit from the ancient hotel stood Christy Sorensen. She wore a black T-shirt and a baggy pair of gray shorts, and in her hand, she held a black revolver.

  Captain Ryan suddenly separated himself from a young woman at the front of the stage and moved toward Christy.

  She didn’t hesitate a second. The report echoed through the basement room so loud some people held their ears.

  Ryan fell to the ground, grasping at his right leg. “You can’t shoot a fellow cop and get away with it,” he wheezed at last, looking up at her.

  Christy only shook her head. “It’s your gun, Captain. How do I know why you shot yourself? Maybe you just don’t know how to handle it. Small town like this, you probably don’t practice much.”

  “You bitch,” he complained, but she only pulled the trigger again, and bits of Ryan’s brain spattered against the people behind him. One heavyset man looked down and saw the policeman’s eyeball glued to his belly with hot blood and a yellowish paste, and began to scream.

  But Christy didn’t waste time. She moved to the stage before the mob could decide how to react, and pointed the gun at Rockford. “Back off, asshole,” she said.

  The doctor turned away from Brenda and looked confused. “How did you…” he began, but Christy only shook her head and fired.

  Bits of his shoulder colored Brenda’s face, and the girl bellowed at the hot spray. “What the fu—”

  Amelia moved fast. With the echo of the first shot she had faded from the stage and took up a torch from the back wall. She moved up the side, knowing that the source of the attack had come from the stairwell. As Rockford got plugged, she moved into position, grinning with a knowing look.

  Rockford had always been just a tool, and now the voices spoke to her. They were here; the blood of the mothers had paved the way. She could taste their pleasure in her mouth, and knew their anger on her ass like a drill point. They kissed her and paddled her in equal measures, and she jumped to make sure that their will was carried out. The doctor was inconsequential now; they had created the twelve mothers and then sacrificed them and their offspring. Now…his contribution was ornamental.

  Amelia slunk along the wall toward the source of the attack, a ninety-degree angle between her and the Thirteenth. She saw Captain Ryan go down, and shook her head. The captain had been useful.

  Above her the ceiling roiled, as the shadows of a demon flickered and moved toward the source of the attack.

  She knew where Christy was. She knew the basement of this old hotel as if she’d grown up there. Amelia shook her head and edged to the corner. There was no question about what she had to do; there were only moments left in the hour of the Thirteenth. No matter what, she had to get rid of this distraction.

  Amelia turned the corner like a pole-vaulter, both feet in the air and hands leveraging the corner of the wall as she threw herself at the woman with the gun like a bullet herself.

  Her right foot connected instantly with Christy’s elbow, and the gun clattered to the ground like a broken plate, as the two women both went down beside it.

  David saw Amelia’s gambit. As he watched her steel herself for her attack on Christy, he made ready for his one chance to escape his aunt. A collective gasp filled the room as Christy and Amelia hit the ground, and David used the moment to roll out of the grasp of his aunt. Before she realized he was gone, he’d thrown himself across the floor and come up in a crouch near the stage. He sprang.

  “Get up,” he demanded when he reached Brenda, who lay still, eyes clenched closed. When they blinked open at his voice, her mouth opened in shock.

  “Later,” he said, and grabbed her hand. “Let’s go. Now.”

  “Déjà vu,” she whispered.

  “Not this time,” he promised.

  Above them, a swirl of dark spirit coalesced and reached with dirty tendrils toward the ground, struggling to find a purchase in this place that could support whatever magic that a demon wielded in hell. David felt icy fingers at his back, and he leaped over a fat man who still lay on the ground of the basement, lusts apparently so sated that the glutton couldn’t stand.

  The air around them buzzed with hate and desire, and David felt the two at war in his mind, in his heart. The feeling bristled like electricity sparking in water; conductive and opposite. He wanted to explode with the sensation, but instead, blinking past the yellow glare that seemed to cascade over his brain, he grabbed Brenda’s hand hard and yanked her forward.

  She stumbled over bodies and blood and when they reached the stairs and saw Amelia, the nurse stopped in her tracks and laughed.

  “You’re ours now.” Amelia grinned.

  David shook his head. “Not on your life,” he answered. He dragged Brenda past her, but the nurse didn’t back down.

  “The Thirteenth is ours,” she said. “You’re just a problem.”

  With that, Amelia grabbed at David’s waist and then dragged a razor down his side. Christy launched herself from where she’d fallen seconds before and grabbed the nurse by the throat. The two collapsed in a kicking, clawing heap once more, and David pulled Brenda past them, just as the pain began to register at his side.

  He was up three stairs before he turned back and saw Amelia straddling Christy, hand in the air above the policewoman’s face.

  From the room beyond came a chorus of wails, as the crowd realized both their priestess and their goat had gone, but David ignored them. He only saw the matted blonde curls stuck to Christy’s face, and her worn but determined eyes as she forced her hand to grab Amelia’s hair as the nurse tried to turn away.

  “Do me first, bitch,” Christy demanded, and then her eyes met David’s for the last time. “I told you to get her out of here,” she screamed.

  Then Amelia’s arm came down and blood zagged like lightning across Officer Christy Sorensen’s neck. It cascaded across the hollow of her throat and down the dark shirt she’d found in a pile upstairs. It sprayed the cheek of her murderer, and painted the floor in the color that could only be described as the color of love.

  David pushed Brenda up the stairs. “Go,” he said, but as she took the first step he turned back to Amelia, who already had risen from the body of her latest kill.

  “You fucking bitch,” he said, and ignoring the razor she wielded in the air like a dare, he kicked out and connected with her cheek.

  Amelia’s eyes popped open wide as a game-show winner’s moment of surprise, and she dropped. But even as she went, David followed, dropping on her body to follow his kick with a punch and another punch and then, picking up the razor that had fallen next to her, a cut.

  And a cut.

  And a long, deep slice.

  Tears ran from his eyes as he saw Christy’s motionless body inches away, and his hand came down with the razor again and again, as somewhere just a few feet away, a chorus of bodiless voices wailed and laughed in equal measure.

  When Aunt Elsie grabbed him by the hair to pull him away from the bloody mess that Nurse Amelia had become, he instinctively punched out with a razor-adorned hand and stopped his aunt from ever speaking again.

  She went down holding her throat and wheezing in crimson bubbles that began at last to clothe her old skin in something other than air once again. He felt no remorse.

  A cool hand gripped him by the shoulder and pulled, and David almost whipped the razor around again.

  It was Brenda, and the screams grew louder behind him as she screamed at equal volume in front. “David, we have to go! Now!”

  He stood and saw the bloody bodies of the townspeople rising to move toward him with something warped between fear and rage and hate and disgust in their eyes.

  “Yeah,” he said, and ra
n with her up the stairs.

  The air outside of Castle House Asylum was cool and crisp and somewhere down the mountain, a chorus of locusts sang about the dreams of night.

  Inside the old hotel, the wisps of demon limbs faded like fog at noon, disappearing with the life of their invokers.

  As fast as hell had begun to materialize in the basement of Castle House Asylum, so now did it dissipate, just like dreams in the light of morning. And with it slipped the violently erotic spell that had colored the basement in invisible red. Released from that unnatural grip, the screams of the night continued, as one by one the townspeople woke from a succubic nightmare, saw the blood coating their hands and bodies and realized where they were, and what horrible things they’d done.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

  The townspeople who survived had exited the hotel like rats from a sinking ship; some held hands across their faces to hide their identities as they went, but the rev of engines and faces of fear filled the night outside the hotel just seconds after Brenda and David fled the scene.

  The bodies left behind were…left behind.

  Castle House Lodge again became a place outside of time or consequence. Dead men tell no stories. Down the stairs from the reception desk, behind the door with the red X, bodies began to rot; but nobody was there to smell them.

  When the Innovative Industries truck pulled up outside the front door of the hotel a few days later, Greg knocked and when he didn’t get an answer, shrugged.

  “I guess Dr. Rockford meant what he said last week,” he mumbled to himself. “Don’t know how he could quit; stem cells are good money!”

  But Greg got back into his truck and drove away. And after that, all that came to Castle House Lodge were weeds.

  EPILOGUE

  The best part of a nightmare is waking up.

  And the best part of waking up, for David, was waking up next to Brenda.

  For the past few days, every morning had beamed through the window like a light sent specifically to illuminate the pink strand of her hair that invariably sprawled across their shared pillow like a stain of bliss.