“You’ll have to excuse me,” Harry said, sliding the stethoscope back into the interior pocket of his coat. “This sounds really interesting, but I think you’ve just about lost me here. All four of these children appear to be the picture of good health. The cast you’ve made for that little girl looks a little ragged, but there are no signs of infection. That’s the job that I’ve come here to do.”
“Not a believer,” she said, glancing up at him before lowering her chin and shaking her head.
“I was raised a church going kid,” Harry said, zipping his jacket and producing a pen from the outer pocket and handing it to the sister with the paperwork from the envelope. “Please sign here and here…”
“Now, believe me,” Catherine said, scribbling on the forms. “I found her story quite fantastic as well, almost comical were it not for the fear in her eyes. The thought of a biological farm set up to breed the antichrist was something of a mockery. I was in the process of inspecting her arms for tracks or some other signs of drug use when I found the… cuts.”
Harry turned around and tucked the envelope beneath his armpit.
“What kind of cuts?”
“She had long… tears… in the flesh on her back, jagged rips through the skin. They were deep, but they were old. The edges had already clotted, but the striations of the muscles beneath were still visible within the wounds.”
“I’ve seen a lot of that kind of thing, kids falling out of trees, branches snagging their skin and—”
“In two set of four parallel lines?”
Harry began to gnaw on the inside of his lower lip, his brow furrowing.
“I was just about to continue examining her when she jumped up from the table and ran for the door. There was nothing that we could do to stop her. Before any of us were able to follow, she had disappeared into the woods.”
“I’ll go ahead and have social services look into this commune, if there are any other signs of abuse, I guarantee you that they will handle the situation very quickly and decisively. In the meantime, Sister, please continue to take good care of these children. If there is anything that you need from my office or me don’t hesitate to call. That’s why we’re here.”
The Sister stared down at the polished floor, her cross clutched tightly in her right hand, her lips moving as though she was speaking, but no sound came out.
“Good day, Sister,” Harry said, nodding as he slipped past her into the hallway and headed for the stairs.
The two other Sisters who had been in the room when he had arrived were standing right outside of the door, huddled in conversation. They both peered up at him from beneath their habits, glancing only momentarily before heading back into the children’s room.
“Doctor,” Sister Catherine said from behind him. “Please, allow me to see you out.”
“Thank you,” Harry said politely as the two walked in silence down the staircase at the end of the hallway and onto the main floor.
They stopped at the front door and Harry offered a parting handshake.
“Good luck with those children,” he said. “Believe me, I can imagine how difficult it is to have four children all at once. That’s why my department and social services are here. If there is anything that you need, any kind of help whatsoever, don’t hesitate to call.”
“Thank you,” she said, smiling curtly.
“I really mean that… here, take one of my cards,” he said pulling a crumpled card from his pocket.
“I appreciate your assistance, doctor, and your offer of help, but I believe we know what we need to do.”
“Well then, Sister,” he said stepping out the open front door and turning to face her. “It was a pleasure meeting you, and best of luck.”
She just nodded and closed the door, the latch sliding audibly into place behind the thick door.
Shaking his head and smirking to himself, Harry headed across the courtyard, stopping at the edge of the iron overhang to pull his collar up to his ears. The wind blew the immense snowflakes sideways in front of him.
He must have been in there longer than he had originally thought, as his footprints from earlier were already filled, just dimples in the quickly accumulating snow. The forest beyond the road straight ahead had grown almost pitch black as the sun had begun to set behind the white-capped Rockies to the west. Quickening his pace, he stopped in front of his snow-covered car and pulled his hand into his sleeve. With his forearm, he brushed the thick, wet snow from his front windshield before circling the vehicle and doing the same to all of the glass. The back windshield was covered in a thin layer of ice from the wind blowing straight against it, but he figured once the inside of the car warmed up that it would melt in no time.
Pulling the keys from his pocket, he opened the door and climbed into the car. His breath clouded the inside of the windshield as he thrust the key into the ignition and brought the car to life. A dark brown cloud poured from the exhaust pipe as he revved the engine several times before sliding the levers on the dashboard to start the heater. Slipping the car into reverse, the snow crumpled aloud beneath the car’s weight, sounding as though it was driving on Styrofoam. Backing around the other snow-mounded car in the lot, he eased forward, the tires slipping as they fought for traction on the buried dirt lot. Finally, they caught, and he headed out onto the main road.
The bright orange setting sun behind him stained the gray cloud cover an almost reddish color, amplifying through the layer of ice on his back windshield. Flipping the latch on the bottom of his rear view mirror, he pointed it upward to keep the glare from reflecting directly into his eyes. It was only a few moments, however, before the setting sun slipped behind the jagged peaks, and the sky was overwhelmed by darkness.
It was barely half past five, but it appeared as though it were closer to midnight. The only visible light was from the thin beams of his headlamps, which were completely congested from the enormous flakes that danced in front, threatening to block out the light.
The road was growing slicker with each passing second and he was forced to slow the car down to barely more than a crawl to keep the back end from fishtailing as it had been doing roughly every twenty yards. The road opened into the small straightaway in the middle of the meadow that he recognized from the journey in. The small house set off on the right side of the road caught his eye as there was dim light peering out at him from behind the drawn curtains, flickering light as though from candles.
Focusing back on the road, he tapped the brakes twice, quickly, testing the slickness of the road, wanting to know for sure exactly how his car was going to perform coming into the woods ahead. The last thing that he wanted to do was to wrap his car around some tree in the middle of nowhere in what had to be the worst snowstorm that they had seen yet this season, quite possibly in the last several years, as well.
He couldn’t have been going more than five miles and hour now, hardly rolling down the tractionless country road, but that wasn’t to say that he had more than just the smallest fraction of control over the spinning tires on the ice covered road. It seemed to move with a life of its own out from in front of him as he watched it, darting in and out of the blackened forest that had grown closer and closer to the road. Crusted snow had begun to thicken on the windshield wipers, leaving arcs of frozen water across his view as they scraped back and forth against the clouding windshield. He was going to have no choice but to get out of the car and clean them off if he were to have any chance of…
Two small yellow lights reflected his headlights back at him from the center of the road ahead as a large black shadow appeared directly in front of the car.
Harry tapped the brakes twice in rapid succession before finally pinning the pedal to the ground. The back end slipped out from behind the car as he yanked the wheel into the slide to try to correct it. Buffeting back and forth, the rear end on the right side finally clipped the trunk of a tree, sending the front of the car careening off the side of the road.
His arms s
traightened and his fists grew tight on the wheel. Closing his eyes, his teeth clenched tightly together, he waited for the loud thud as he either slammed into the animal that had wandered in his way, or into a tree. The muscles in his back tightened ferociously as the car came to a jerking stop.
Slowly, Harry opened his eyes, his bright white knuckles gently easing their grip from the wheel. He could barely see the front hood of the car through the snow-covered windshield, but could smell the cloud of smoke that he was sure billowed from beneath it. The engine had stalled, but the heater still blew, though little more than the warmed smoke from his motor.
Taking a deep breath, he placed his hand atop his jackhammering heart that he could feel clear through his down parka. He could hear his own breath escaping in rapid spurts. Reaching for the handle of the door, his trembling fingers fumbled with the metal latch for a moment before finally seizing hold, and throwing wide the door. Forcing his shaking legs from the confines of the vehicle, he stepped out into the thickly falling snow.
The white powder on the side of the road came nearly halfway up his shins, soaking through the bottom of his slacks and into his far-too-thin socks. Shuffling through the snow, he approached the front end, from where the enormous gray cloud poured from the engine, staining the storm-throttled sky an even deeper black. The front bumper appeared undamaged, as the car wasn’t even leaning against a tree. He was sure he must have hit one head on. There appeared to be nothing in front of him that had stopped the car, maybe, he had just gotten lucky and the car had stopped all by itself—
And then he noticed it.
A clump of red-stained fur caught beneath the corner of his bright green license plate. Very carefully, a pained wince wrenching his face, Harry knelt and looked beneath the car.
Two glazed brown eyes stared right back at him from beneath the vehicle. The nose of the animal was pressed into the ground; jagged shards of bone protruding from the compressed, blood-matted face. The front hooves were braced against the underside of the hood, bent backward behind the large stag’s antlers, which jutted straight up into the undercarriage of the vehicle. Fragments of the shattered antlers littered the crimson-spattered snow around the animal. Some sort of oil or engine fluid ran black down the antler from the hole it had popped in what he hoped was only the oil pan, and down onto the animal’s lifeless face.
“There was no thud,” he muttered quietly to himself as tears welled in the corners of his eyes.
Trying to force the image of the disfigured and blood drenched animal out of his mind, he trudged through the snow to the trunk of his car, popping it open with the keys he gripped tightly in his hand. Brushing aside a pair of blankets and the briefcase he never seemed to be able to remember to use, he yanked out the heavy metal jack and headed back towards the front of the car. He kicked the thick snow from a patch of earth behind the right front tire. He slid the unit beneath the car and looped the thin metal rod through the hole in the jack. It was a very slow process as he cranked the rod in circles, the jack creaking as it barely raised the car a paltry quarter of an inch at a time.
The frame of the car groaned as the jack tipped slowly backwards, toward the undercarriage of the vehicle, but still it rose slowly, and with enormous effort. Sweat poked through his snow-drenched forehead, his bangs matting to it. He had to wipe them frequently from his eyes. Slowly it rose, the front right tire ever so gently climbing above the white groundcover. It was as if the jack was starting to wear itself in, and he was able to turn it faster and faster, spinning the rod like a baton in front of him until the bottom of the front tire was nearly half a foot off the ground.
With a little tap from his toe, he tested the stability of the jack. Nodding his satisfaction, he walked back around to the front of the car and knelt before the hood, bracing his foot against the left front tire. Gripping the stag by the antlers—and it had to be a five or six point rack—he tugged with all of his might, his face turning bright red as he fought with the lifeless corpse. His eyes felt as though they were going to pop right out of his head as he strained against the great weight, alternately yanking and then tugging, as the body finally gave just the slightest bit and slid a few inches. While the progress was at first promising, his next handful of efforts caused no appreciable change in the positioning of the beast as the antlers were lodged somewhere beneath the hood of the car.
Standing once again, he rubbed the ache in his lower back with his right hand and gasped to try and catch his breath. His lips tightened over his grinding teeth and frustration began to overwhelm him. The snow was falling faster than ever and accumulating at a rate he hadn’t seen since he was a small child with a sled and a smile full of holes. His fists tightened as he endured the onset of a monster headache, his frustration building with each inhalation until finally he couldn’t take it anymore!
“Damn it!” he shouted, channeling all of his frustrations into a swift kick that landed soundly on the front bumper.
The Buick made an audible groan, the jack rattling against the frozen ground upon which it was braced. There was a loud metallic scraping noise, as the hood suddenly lurched directly toward him.
Frantically throwing himself backward onto the ground, a puff of powder landing coldly on his face, he watched the car lean forward, before coming to a sudden and final halt. The hood dropped as the rod from the jack launched like a rocket from the side of the car, taking a chunk of bark from a tree before bouncing into the underbrush. The deer beneath the car made a sound like a large pop, before a swell of gasses bellowed forth from the body, a wave of blood spilling from the ripped back of the animal and rushing towards Harry like a putrid tidal wave. The warm fluid gushed over his outstretched feet and along his backside, drenching him in the momentary warmth as he leapt to his feet to free himself from the carnage.
Staring down at his blood-sapped clothing, he wiped his hands on the front of his pants before turning to look pleadingly into the sky. Shaking his head in dismay, he walked back around to the trunk, stepping over the fragmented parts of the jack that littered the side of the road. He pulled a blanket from the trunk and wrapped himself like a pupa.
Harry looked longingly down the road in both directions, hoping upon hope that there would be a pair of headlights coming his way through the densely packed trunks of the evergreens. Shivering, he shook his head and walked towards the side of the car, once again opening the driver’s side door and clambering in. Jamming the key into the ignition, he tried one last time to start the car, but it didn’t even make an attempt to turn over. The only sound it made was a faint click.
Throwing the door wide, he hung his feet out the door and stared out into the dark night, trying to figure out what in the hell he was going to do.
“Why me?” he muttered, climbing out of the car and tugging the blanket tightly over his shoulders.
Sighing, he plotted his next course of action. He was probably halfway between the convent and the highway, which meant he had a twenty-minute hike—at least—in either direction. With the snow coming down in sheets as it was, there was always the chance that the state patrol had closed the highway and he could stand out there clear until morning before they pushed a plow through and opened the road. That meant easily another hour walk to get back into town, especially in this weather. The only viable option was to head back toward the convent and play upon the mercies of the nuns. Either way, it sounded like it was going to be one tremendously long night.
Smiling to spite fate, he rubbed his eyes and began his trek back up the road to the convent. Keeping his head down so that the snow and wind wouldn’t freeze his face, he watched the virgin white powder as each footfall blasted a tuft of flakes into the air around his knees. The night was so quiet that he was certain he could hear the sound of the snowflakes landing on the tips of the needles of the pines all around him, their branches slowly bowing beneath the weight of the wet accumulation.
Harry could barely see five feet through the thickly falling snow as
the storm clouds covered the sky, not a single star piercing the dense mat. Not even the halo of the moon produced any light as it had been enshrouded in black like the rest of the landscape.
In the darkness, each grove of trees looked identical to the last, and he wondered momentarily if it was possible that he was walking in circles. The hike he had estimated to be roughly twenty minutes had already taken close to a half an hour, the heavy snow slowing his movements as though he were trudging through molasses. His legs ached. His throat was parched. All he wanted to do was lie down and chase an ice-cold glass of water with a warm mug of coffee, followed by a serious nap. He could remember playing in the snow for what seemed like days straight as a child without any of the symptoms of the fatigue that now ravished him from the inside out. But couple that with the stress and strain of the current situation and he was just thankful that he hadn’t frozen up and laid down in the back of his car and prayed to make it through the night without freezing.
Phlegm worked into a knot in the back of his throat, freezing around the edges of his nose as it ran in lines towards his chapped lips. The edges of his ears burned as though singed, and his cheeks had passed the point of pinpricks.
Stopping momentarily, he squinted his eyes against the large flakes and stared down the road ahead. There was a thin light, like a flickering candle at two hundred yards, fading in and out through the swaying trees ahead of him. Tugging on the top edge of the blanket, he looped it up over his head like a cloak, and with a renewed sense of determination, strode through the eight inches of snow toward the light.
Harry’s eyes fixed intently on the small ball of light, his footsteps falling faster. Nearly to the point of jogging, he popped out of the cluster of trees and found himself in the wide meadow, the carpet of snow glimmering as though from some light of its own. The light he had been following originated from a dark cluster of trees right in the middle of the pasture, where he remembered the small house to have been.
The Bloodspawn Page 3
