“Taste the blood. Go ahead. Taste me.”
The struggle within my mind was more than I had ever experienced. I would have run out of the room under any normal circumstance; however, there was something guiding me toward what seemed like an immediate destiny.
Salpsan chanted in my mind. “Taste me. Taste Me. Taste me.”
There was nothing I could do to stop myself from what I did next. My actions were not from a woman of a stable mind, that I now understand. Salpsan had been playing me like a fiddle, using me, molding my thoughts with his mental feelers. He seduced me, but it wasn’t sex he wanted, and if it had been, then he’d been greatly disappointed.
Mouth dripping like a starving man confronted with a steak right off the grill, I made a move so quick it was a miracle I didn’t slip a disk. My head dropped, mouth open like an animal and I grabbed his erection with my teeth, clenching tightly. Salpsan screamed and then laughed, squirming in his restraints as I gnawed, blood spilling out and squirting with the throbbing pulse that matched my heartbeat. My eyes rolled back and I could taste the goat and I laughed and he laughed and I drank blood from a phallic gusher, warm and salty.
But this was no dream for me to wake from. The part of me that had been hiding away fought to regain control of my body. I had to get out of that room and as far away from Salpsan as possible.
We breathed in heavy gusts as if in the aftermath of a bout of wild sex. All we needed were a couple of cigarettes. My mouth felt awkward, and the taste on my tongue was vile. Salpsan’s body was covered in his blood, still spurting from his mangled, flaccid penis. The walls were splashed in dripping crimson as was the floor and the ceiling. So was I, from head to toe, but I couldn’t be bothered to wash up. There was no time for that. I had to get out of there and that was it.
I didn’t even look at Salpsan before exiting the room. In my mind he said, “The straps! Aren’t you going to remove the straps? I gave you a pleasure you haven’t had in years and you won’t remove the straps!”
I ran to the end of the hall, fully expecting the door to be closed and locked. I pounded on it with my fists softly for fear of agitating my arthritis, but there was no pain. I pounded louder, more furiously, and still no response or pain.
I screamed, “Adler! Adler!” to no avail. If Mister Adler heard me, he ignored me, perhaps assuming that the monster he’d been holding in captivity had been set free. Maybe Adler had already fled after what happened to Blake.
From my room I searched for the something hefty. There wasn’t a whole lot to choose from that I would be able to heft, so I decided on the candelabra. I couldn’t remember how many times I’d gone for that particular piece in the past week, mostly for protection. It was sturdy and heavy and should do nicely to break the handle to the hallway door, and if there happened to be someone waiting on the other side, it would do nicely to bash their skull in, for I was past the point of contention and no longer fearful of conflict. I had been a mild mannered and selfless woman before coming here. I lived my life to help others, to treat the sick and serve my community and somehow Mister Adler had lured me here to Spain, away from everything I knew and loved. I’d begun to think that my life as a pariah was the lowest point, but I was terribly wrong. Standing there with the blood of the Devil’s son drying on my body was lower than low. If I could just get back to the States I promised myself I would do everything I could to better society, no matter how much people associated my name with the human monster the media had created of me. I had been living in my own sorrow for so long without even entertaining the idea that I could make a difference through the guise of anonymity.
With every slam of the candelabra on the door handle I expected a shot of pain to embrace my hands and shoot up my arms, but I felt strong, almost numb. My focus was on the door, but also on blocking out Salpsan. He tried to gain entrance to my mind, chiding me with pleas to return to his room, but I was nominally successful in avoiding him. If I were to be drawn into his room again I feared it would be the last time. Salpsan could not be trusted. His eagerness to be let free was understandable; however, his malice overshadowed any sense of pity I may have mistakenly felt for him. He was a monster, and should be treated as such.
Slamming the door handle over and over I realized that I just didn’t have the strength, but I did, amazingly, have the agility. I brought the candelabra down swiftly, again and again, and finally the doorknob loosened up, the rivets in the lock plate around the doorknob jiggling out of place. I smashed and beat down on it, focusing my anger not only on this entire desperate situation, but all those who had shunned me into seclusion for the past five years. I could see them in my mind, the news outlets and swarm of reporters, yellow journalists who had made their decisions before even hearing my side of the story. In that battered doorknob I saw my so-called friends, my superiors, the doctors who glared and scoffed, that fat bastard New Jersey mayor who publicly humiliated me. They were all there, and soon enough the doorknob dropped to the ground.
I dropped the candelabra, chest heaving in and out from exertion. I felt the faint tingling of irritation in my joints and knew that I would be completely incapacitated were my pain to be revealed to me. It was there, had to be, but I had remained drenched in the powerful ether that Salpsan radiated.
The door now opened with a push. The room on the other side was silent and dimly lit by candles in sconces on the walls. I would have liked to find out what Adler had been doing with Salpsan, but I wasn’t raised a fool, so I passed the spiral staircase and entered the kitchen. There were pots and pans on the stovetop that looked as if they hadn’t been cleaned since my arrival. The odor in the air was of moldy fruit and rotten meat.
I hadn’t been through the kitchen since my arrival, but if I remembered correctly there was another room and maybe a hallway before I reached the front door. From there I planned on risking the outside world and taking the dirt road I came in on. I could only hope that my disheveled and grisly exterior would attract attention enough for me to get help. If I couldn’t manage to communicate with the locals I would have to request the American consulate for protection.
With each step my body weakened as Salpsan’s mental ranting faded away. It was going to be a difficult walk, but I continued to tell myself that I would manage. I had to.
Beyond the kitchen the room was dark, devoid of lit candles. I cursed myself for not bringing one with me. I inched through the murk, but I could not remember how the room was situated. I bumped into furniture, redirecting my path until a voice spoke in the darkness.
“Going somewhere?”
My body trembled at the sound of Blake’s voice. After what I’d done to him he should have been dead or in serious pain. Of course, he would be royally fuming and angry with me.
My eyes adjusted to the dark. Blake sat in a chair, staring at me. His arm appeared to be wrapped in some kind of cloth or perhaps a t-shirt.
“Look what you did to me.”
He lifted his arm, the white rag soaked with blood. I could see by his wavering that he was on something, perhaps a cocktail of painkillers and booze. There were certainly enough painkillers in Salpsan’s room to drop an elephant. The wound was probably becoming infected. By the concave appearance of the wrap, I’d injured him just as severely as I had remembered.
“Without medical help you’ll die of infection or even blood loss,” I said.
“Then why don’t you help me, nurse?” His voice slurred. It was then that I noticed the bottle in his other hand, almost drained. I couldn’t see the label, but assumed it was liquor not wine, considering his state of inebriation.
“I’m going.”
I walked past him. Now that I had taken the time to adjust my eyes to the dark, I could see salvation in the form of a large set of arched doors, the ones Blake had opened allowing me into the house when I arrived.
“No, you’re not,” came another familiar voice, but before I had a chance to turn around and confront Adler, he grabbed me with one ar
m and thrust a rag into my face and I was out cold in seconds.
Chapter Ten
Adler’s Domain
I came to in Adler’s domain. He’d used a chloroform-soaked rag to subdue me.
On the ground, hands tied behind my back, feet bound with a strip of cloth, I lay on my side. In front of me Adler stood before a wooden podium on which was a massive volume that he’d been flipping through as if searching for a specific passage. On the wall opposite of Adler and his cryptic podium were strange markings and dark splatters. On the floor beneath the odd markings were an abundance of candles, all aglow, wax having melted and mingled together like some abstract sculpture. The room smelled heavily of wax, yet I couldn’t get the odor of Salpsan’s blood out of my nose.
Instinct told me to plead for my life. I opened my mouth to say something like please let me go, or let me go and I won’t tell anyone what you’re doing here, but my better mind prevailed and I remained silent and watching. I didn’t want to make any overt movements, but I had to get a good view of my surroundings if I was going to make a run for it. The room was spacious and dark, cluttered with books and candles and old furniture. There were wine bottles and musical instruments, ropes and chains and knives scattered with no semblance of order. In the far corner was an iron railing: the spiral staircase.
“What in the world did you do to him?”
Adler’s voice startled me. I didn’t know he’d realized that I had awakened.
Paralyzed with a mix of fear and shock, I was at a loss for words.
“I saw what you did to him,” he said. “What the hell is wrong with you? You’re covered in his blood. What kind of crazed bitch are you? You nearly ripped Blake’s arm off and then you mutilated Salpsan’s cock!”
He shook his head, eyes closed, reminiscent of a parent furious with the behaviors of a problem child.
“I didn’t choose to do that to him. He willed me to do it.”
“The Devil made me do it, huh?”
“You don’t have to believe me. I’m just telling you the truth.”
“What worries me is that you mutilated the son of the Devil. How am I to contend with that? What am I to do if Hell sends demons in search of him and he’s the way you left him?”
“You really believe all that, don’t you?”
“And you don’t?”
“I don’t know what to believe.”
“But you believe that Salpsan willed you to rip his cock to shreds with your teeth, is that it? How do you think he could do something like that, and why?”
All I could do was shake my head.
“I never expected to bring Salpsan through the portal, let me tell you. I didn’t even know who Salpsan was until you told me his name. Thought he was just another demon, monster—” He threw his hand in the air. “I don’t know. I don’t even really know what I’m doing or why. It’s just…”
My eyes returned to the symbols on the wall and the spattered stains. Adler returned to the massive book, mumbling as he scanned page after page.
“Thing is, I can’t read everything in this book. Some of this stuff is written in ancient languages that have been forgotten. Some passages have been updated in a variety of more modern languages. By whoever owned the book at the time, studying it and making notes.”
“What is it?”
“The book? Magic, spells, incantations, stories, notes, lies—it has no title, and it’s one of a kind. Some of the few people who even know if its existence call it the Bible Black. Many of those few would kill me for it if they knew I was the one who’d come into possession of it.”
It was hard to believe what Adler was telling me. I partly listened to what he said, but another segment of my mind focused on how to get out there.
“Why don’t you just let me go,” I said. “I don’t want any money. I just want to go.”
I hadn’t wanted to plead with him like that, but it was inevitable.
Studying the book, he said, “Ah. I think I’ve found what I’ve been looking for.” He looked at me over the reading glasses that now rested on the bridge of his nose. “I can’t let you go after what you did to Salpsan.” He then looked at the symbols on the wall and said, “I hope a sacrifice will make up for your actions.”
Adrenalin surged at the word sacrifice. Whether his book could really bring forth beings from beyond, which, as crazy as it sounded, could be the only plausible explanation for Salpsan, Adler was mad enough to kill me ritualistically. It could all be for naught, my slaughter. What about Salpsan? Was he dying from the savage wound I’d given him?
Adler’s voice startled me from my own mind. He’d begun to recite passages from his book in a language I didn’t recognize. It sounded Latin; however, I had only been schooled in Spanish and French and retained very little of either languages. As he spoke I felt something in the air like electricity, kind of like walking in the midst of a lightning storm. The hair on my arms stood on end and I could feel a tingling throughout my entire body. It was then that I realized there was no pain. From the moment I had awakened there had been no pain at all in my hands, elbows, my ankles that should have burned considering my binds.
Voice rising, focused, Adler seemed to be making commands at the wall. The splattered fluid, dried in long running strands, bubbled and dripped as if the wall was becoming hot. The symbols quivered. My eyes grew wide as I witnessed magic, something even as a child I had a hard time believing. He was opening some kind of door, and to wherever it led only my imagination could speculate. If Salpsan was what Adler had insisted he was, it could very well be a door to Hell.
I wanted no part in this.
Realizing that there was no pain in my joints, I squirmed to free myself from the binds, but they were too tight and I was too weak. The wax-like fluid on the wall became a large oval doorway, opaque like a two-way mirror.
I closed my eyes, trying to think of something I could do to stop him. In the past I’d found that clearing my mind was the best way to see things straight when the trials and tribulations of life became too muddied for me to think clearly, and only then could I find the right path to tread.
In this case I heard a voice from far off. A whisper that transcended the incantations from Adler and the sounds that erupted from the waxen portal, struggled sounds from all levels of the spectrum, what I could only imagine was the very sound of reality splitting open. Beyond that I could hear Salpsan. I had been blocking him out the entire time, having become so used to doing so that it was second nature.
“I can help you,” he said. “I can give you the strength to break the binds. I can give you the strength to get away.”
Without hesitation I said, “Give me the strength.”
Heat surged through my body, magma burning in my veins and through my heart. I’d felt this on the night I killed the goat and again in my room when Blake tried to rape me. It was exhilarating and terrifying, but I knew what to do with his power. I knew how to harness the strength he created within me.
Enthralled with his spells, Adler hadn’t noticed the changes in my appearance, the reddened flesh, the expression on my face that must have been terrifying. My teeth clenched so tight they bled. Salpsan breathed, heavy with passion, in my mind, the sound of which was almost maddening, assisting me in harnessing his power. Fists clenched tight, knuckles of steel, I pulled my hands apart, shredding the rope that had bound them. My heart pumped so fast I thought his power had surged and was going to kill me. I took a moment to gather my senses before I removed the bindings at my ankles.
By the time I was free, Adler had seen me. The portal on the wall swam like a vertical cauldron of boiling water, something that broke every rule of physics I’d ever known. Adler grabbed a knife with a monstrous twelve-inch blade. I was somewhere between a woman and a beast but that knife would have killed me given half a chance. Adler’s eyes swelled. He paused, clearly shocked at the sight of me. I could have rushed him right then and hoped to knock the knife out of his hand, but I wasn�
�t confidant even in my current state.
Something happened in that moment as Adler moved forward, knife raised, ready to slaughter the sacrificial lamb. My eyes rolled into my head showing whites and I felt faint. What happened next I only know from fragments seen through a damaged mind. The only explanation I have is that Salpsan had taken over, seeing through my eyes and acting through my body.
Like a well-tempered animal, I dashed forward, pursuing Adler before he could strike. I grabbed his hand, the one with the knife, and twisted, breaking his wrist. He screamed and I roared. He hit the ground hard. I must have thrown him or pushed him, I couldn’t be sure. The portal called to Salpsan, but he ignored it, instead grabbing the book from the pedestal. In a moment of cognizance I looked at the volume in my hands curiously. I could feel the eyes of Salpsan looking through mine, and he too pondered whether we should throw the volume into the portal or not. I cannot be sure whether it was my action or his, but we decided not to toss away the book. I clenched it tight as I fled.
I didn’t see whether Adler was rousing from his fall to the ground before I took the spiral staircase so quickly that I slipped and tumbled the entire way down. The book was flung from my grip. On impact the spine broke, the book falling to the bottom floor, halved.
On reaching the bottom of the staircase I felt Salpsan’s presence leave me. I had a decision to make. I could run for my life out the front door and flee into the chilled night for help, or I could return to Salpsan’s room and remove his bindings. Though a small part of me wanted to run like hell, I had to admit that he’d trusted me. He could have just as easily commanded my body to walk into his room and remove the bindings, but he didn’t. He’d given me the freedom to make that decision on my own.
His room was as hot as I expected; however, the fire had died down. Salpsan watched me expectantly. There was a mutual respect between us just then that he’d felt all along, perhaps due to my treatment from the very beginning. I really don’t know, and I didn’t have time to interrogate him as I would have liked to do.
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