The Bloodspawn

by Michael McBride

  “Yet.”

  Harry stopped talking and stared over at him. His furrowed brow and projecting lower jaw betrayed his sudden and overwhelming sense of frustration.

  “Sorry,” Scott muttered as he turned out of the development and headed towards the cloud- blanketed mountains.

  There were no other tracks in the deep snow that covered the road, nothing but the lines of thick trees to either side to even signify where the road was. He just stayed to the center of the channel of trees, the tires knifing through the virgin white surface. His mind raced so fast, and through so many different topics and ideas that none of them lingered long enough for his conscious thought to catch up with them. It was a jumble of concentrated fear and the onset of panic that raced by so fast that it was all he could do to grip that steering wheel as tightly as he possibly could and keep that car on the icy road.

  Harry just stared straight out the window at the rows of trunks as they drove past. It reminded him of sitting in his father’s truck as they drove past cornfields when he was a kid. He could remember vividly just leaning his head against the passenger’s side window of the old, beat up truck, watching the rows of golden stumps as they extended back as far as he could see. He had tried to look for the bright red and green heads of pheasants between those rows, making something of a game of it in his own mind. But as he stared between those quickly passing trunks, watching the gaps between them, he was looking for something far different. He was looking for the harbinger of his own death, the monster who he knew that, be it today, or years down the road, would bring him to his ultimate demise.

  Silently they rode, each of them lost in their own minds, struggling with their own demons, as the trees peeled back to either side, revealing the lone white house in the middle of the meadow. The towers of the old convent loomed over the tops of the snow- covered trees on the horizon against the mountains.

  Scott slowed the Jeep as the wind pummeled them from the side, the snow blowing parallel to the ground. Fighting for traction, Scott coaxed the car across the white sheet towards the house, driving it right up onto the lawn next to one of the barren, dead old deciduous trees to the side of the house.

  He stared past Harry through the window at the side of the house for a moment before finally killing the engine.

  “Well,” he said, taking a deep breath. “We’re here.”

  His heart already racing, his trembling hands tugged on the handle to open the door. The wind raced up to greet him, blowing masses of frozen flakes at him as he climbed down from the car and into the deep snow. Having learned from the slipper episode, he had worn snow boots, the fake fur rising from the tops of the tan gortex covering.

  Staring up into the sky, his eyelids batted at the racing flakes, as he sought to see the sun one final time through the thick, dark clouds to no avail. Every muscle, every tendon in his body was taut with anticipation causing his whole body to ache. Each step he took through the deep snow on his way back to the trunk felt like a thousand. Every fiber of his being cried with a voice of its own for him to get back in the car and take Harry up on his idea of a trip to the tropics.

  It wasn’t a matter of whether or not he would be able to live with himself if he turned tail and ran like a coward, because he knew, deep down, that he would have no problem living with that decision. He was still there because of one fact alone. It wasn’t just that he had a tendency to take responsibility for everything around him; that was in his nature. It was that he had been unable to take responsibility for Matt. He had failed to be a friend when Matt had needed one the most, and he had failed to save Matt’s life when the time had come to do so. He had been forced to see Matt’s face, his arm reaching out for him, as the car sunk beneath the frozen waters, every night in his dreams, and it was permanently engraved in the backs of his eyes so that it was there every time he closed his eyes. Matt was now his responsibility. It was because of his failures that they were there today. And in his mind, he knew that if he had found the courage to stand up to his friends for Matt so many years ago, that they wouldn’t be here today.

  “None of this is your fault,” Harry said softly, placing a hand on Scott’s shoulder. “Don’t even think that for a second. I’d like to think that this would have happened regardless. What we’re dealing with here is something far beyond our limited understanding and comprehension.”

  “I know,” Scott said as he opened the trunk, pulling out the Winchester and handing it to Harry. “Deep down, I know that. But I can’t help but feel in some way responsible.”

  Harry pulled out his jacket from the trunk, slipping his arms into the navy blue down jacket. He grabbed two boxes of the shells and shoved one into both of the front pockets of the jacket.

  “You have to push that out of your mind now. You have to focus solely on the task at hand. Think about nothing but what you are going to do when we come across the bloodspawn. If you can’t do that, then I can assure you that neither of us are ever going to come out of this house again.”

  Scott just nodded in silent agreement as he donned his own dark blue jacket and tried to shove one of the boxes of shells into his pocket, but it wouldn’t fit. Opening the box, he dumped the contents into the front left pocket of his coat. Grabbing another box, he filled his right, tossing the empty cartons back into the trunk. Pulling out the Remington, he held it in his hands for a moment. The wood on the stock and the pump were both damp with the pine oil that he could smell all the way in the back of his sinuses. It was slick with the oily coating, and he had no choice but to wipe it off as much as he could on his faded jeans. The sweat from his hands alone would make it as difficult to grasp as he knew he could bear.

  Harry didn’t even look up as he grabbed both of the pocketknives from the storage cubby on the side of the trunk, handing one to Scott before shoving the other into the pocket of his pants. Producing the other pair of much larger and far more intimidating blades, he held them out in his open palms, feeling the sheer weight of the deadly instruments. Scott snatched one out of his hands, staring at it only briefly before slipping it into the inside pocket of his jacket as Harry loosened his belt and slipped the end through the slots in the leather sheath.

  “You grab the rope, I’ll grab the gas,” Harry said as he pulled the can from the trunk and immediately turned to head towards the front of the house.

  Bundling the rope beneath his left arm, Scott closed the trunk and shoved his keys back into his pocket as the little voice in the back of his head questioned why he would take the time to do so knowing that he may never get to use them ever again.

  By the time Scott rounded the front corner of the house, Harry was already clambering up the rickety front steps, the wood creaking loudly beneath his footfalls. Glancing to his left, he studied the bowed wood of the panels on the front side of the house, the faded, stained wood appearing from beneath the chipped and peeling white paint. The plywood sheets that covered the windows had enormous water stains on them and they bowed and buckled as they tried to peel back from the rusty nails that held them in place.

  Gripping the wobbly black iron railing, Scott ascended the shaky front steps to the rotting wood porch, nearly bumping into Harry who stood motionless outside the front door.

  “What…?” Scott started, but the question choked in the back of his throat.

  He stared past Harry at the open entryway, the door standing wide open. The hardwood floors in the entryway of the house were damp from the snow that had blown in and melted there. The lock box lay on the floor in the middle of the small puddle. Dust swirled in the dim light that issued into the room from the thin cracks around the seal of the plywood on the boarded windows. The crumbling walls were stained with the fading letters of years of graffiti, enormous holes revealing the decomposing wiring and warping studs.

  Harry turned around and looked back at Scott, who feigned a short smile and nodded. With a deep inhalation, Harry stepped across the threshold and into the house, his damp feet squeaking on
the floor as the mounds of snow atop his boots fell to the floor to mark his footprints. His knuckles grew bright wide as he gripped the shotgun so tightly that it looked as though they might split open. Reaching into his left pocket, he opened the box of shells, producing three that he loaded into the bottom, shucking one into the chamber. The wooden stock twitched noticeably in his trembling grasp.

  Following suit, Scott loaded his gun as well, placing his finger atop the safety button several times to make sure he knew exactly where it was so that he could press it in just a split second and begin firing when the time came. It felt heavy in his grasp.

  “How do you want to do this?” Scott whispered, standing beside Harry as he stared through the doorway into the kitchen.

  “We need to try to seize the element of surprise. We’re only going to get one shot at this.”

  Scott cocked his head and winced as he peered towards the kitchen. There was a thin breeze, as cold as ice, blowing straight towards them from the gap beneath the door leading to the basement. It was barely enough the stir the piled and balled dust that littered the kitchen, blowing it like miniature tumbleweeds across the plywood floor, but it stabbed straight into his flesh, cutting deeply within to the very core of his being. It resonated in his bones with an expanding throbbing that felt as though it would snap the brittle calcifications like icicles.

  “He already knows we’re here,” Scott rasped in barely more than a whisper.

  Harry, who he could see was visibly chilled as well, nodded in silent agreement, his breath bursting from his lips in damp pillars of steam.

  The two stood there in silence, both fighting the urge to turn tail and flee as the bitter wind rolled across the floor and up their flesh to their faces where the tips of their noses chapped, turning red and threatening to snap right off of their chilled faces. Beneath the door, in that thin crack merely more than a half inch tall, they could see the darkness. It called to them and pushed them away all at the same time. It had a life of its own as the blackness seemed to move, swirling and exploding on the arctic air that gusted from beneath the door.

  “I think we need to set up down there,” Harry said, his voice dry from the growing lump in his throat.

  Scott just stared beneath the door at the darkness. Somehow, he knew that Harry was right, but he also knew that going through that doorway was going to be like stepping straight through the gates of hell.

  With a will of their own, his legs started for the door. His mind tripped over itself as it tried frantically to stir him to head the other direction, to go anywhere else in the world other than towards that cellar door. But in the end, it settled for forcing his finger to release the safety on the shotgun and slip his finger beneath the trigger guard and atop the cold steel trigger.

  Gripping the chipped brass doorknob in his hand, the rust rubbing off in the palm of his hand, Harry twisted it until it disengaged. With a quiet click, the door popped open. Glancing back over his shoulder to Scott, who clutched his shotgun in his white knuckled grasp, his pale white face fixed in a look of extreme tension, he opened the door to the cellar.

  The overwhelming scent of damp earth and mildew gusted up from the darkness, swelling all around them. There was something else buried beneath that scent. It was nothing that either of them could put their finger on, but it was something of a muffled combination of copper and sulfur, just the merest hint of their presence clinging to the backs of their tongues as they could taste it more than smell it.

  Stepping from the edge of the plywood board over the peeled edge of linoleum that was still pinned to the top of the stairs, Harry led the descent down into the cellar. The air grew increasingly cold around them with each successive step down the wobbly, rotting wooden stairs. Freeing a hand from their shotguns, both grabbed hold of the thin railing that ran down the wall, shuddering in its loose brackets as they placed weight upon it.

  Scott heard the hard scrape of gravel being ground atop stone as Harry stepped from the last stair onto the small cement landing.

  There was a sharp sting in the knuckle of his left forefinger as it snagged something along the railing. Fighting the urge to shout his frustration, he rubbed at the peeled flap of skin, resealing it to the wound with the fresh blood that seeped from beneath. Running his fingertips along the wall, he grasped hold of the object that had torn his flesh, yanking at it until he freed it from where it had been pinned between the wall and the railing.

  It had a long, thin wooden handle nearly a foot in length. Atop the handle was an oblong, heavy wooden cylinder, almost like the head of a mallet, but either end was capped with a metal surface covered with jagged, sharp pyramids of metal. Turning it over in his hand just once, he replaced it between the railing and the wall and crept down the rickety stairs to the floor.

  There was but the smallest line of light that trickled into the room on a thin beam from the side of the boarded window, a pinpoint of light resting on the dirt floor. Harry stood beside it, his form a shadow barely standing out from the darkness, the light reflecting from the polished steel surface of the barrel of his gun.

  “Can you feel it?” Harry whispered. “It’s all around us.”

  “Feel what?” Scott answered as the words tore at the parched membranes in this throat.

  “Evil.”

  Scott fidgeted as the cold wave of darkness embraced him from all sides at once.

  “It’s all around us,” Harry whispered in a thin, cracked voice. “It’s in the walls and the floor and the air, so thick I can hardly breathe.”

  “All I can feel is the cold.”

  “The cold is just the start. It feels like it’s crawling across my skin, shoving daggers through the flesh as it fights to take hold of me from the outside. And it’s tangible, like you could just reach out and grab a handful of the air as it crawls towards you.”

  “Then this is where we need to set up,” Scott said through the dryness in his mouth as he stared at the thin line of light as it slowly dissipated. “And we’d better do so quickly because we’re running out of time.”

  XIX

  Wednesday, November 16th

  9 p.m.

  Time meant nothing as Scott crouched in the blackened corner of the frigid cellar. The moist earth was covered with a thin layer of crystallized frost, hardening it and melting beneath his knee, soaking into his jeans. His eyes had struggled to acclimate to the darkness, but all he could see was the diffuse outline of the hot water heater and the furnace against the earthen wall beyond. His own breath moistened his chapped and stinging face as he fought with his weary eyelids, knowing that closing his eyes even long enough to blink could spell his demise.

  His heart pounded somewhere between his chest and the enormous lump in his throat, his trembling finger poised atop the trigger of the shotgun that rested atop his right thigh. His back pressed against the crumbling wall behind him, chunks of earth fragmenting into small cascades of sand and scraping down the surface of his jacket at sporadic intervals. His whole body trembled from the combination of the intense cold and the nearly crippling fear that raced up and down every inch of his skin, the goose bumps painfully erected along his flesh. And while he was uncertain which of the two factors caused the waves of shakes that seized hold of his body every few minutes, he knew that it helped to keep him attentive, helped to keep his focus on the nothingness upon which he gazed.

  Harry was in the corner of the room completely opposite his own position. He was sitting on the ground to the right of the hot water heater; his back wedged into the corner. He had to know that. He had to know exactly where Harry was as the last thing he wanted to do was to raise his gun to fire and end up blowing a hole in Harry’s chest. And Harry needed to know the same thing.

  Over the light whistle of the breeze through the seam of the window, he could hear Harry breathing, the cold rattling in his lungs from his hiding place in the darkness. And that sound was comforting, for he knew as long as he heard that he was not alone down there in
that cellar. That was something that right now was worth its weight in gold as the smell of the rotting earth and the wisps of death that rolled through the darkness across the frozen floor seemed to sap the life from him. All he could do was sit there, trying to peel back the blackness with his eyes and listen to the barely audible wheeze from across the room: his only connection to life.

  Occasionally, the floorboards overhead would creak as though from the weight of unseen footsteps, but that would pass. Initially, they had both bolted up the staircase, which nearly crumbled each and every time beneath their weight. They would burst into the kitchen, the muzzles of their glistening weapons flashing in every direction as they sought to line up the final shot, but there had never been anything there. After the fourth trip to the top of the stairs, they had been forced to reckon with the fact that it was nothing more than the settling of the house. And that what sounded like footsteps was nothing more than the house itself as it continued on the long and somewhat eternal journey back into the earth from which it had sprung through the hands of man.

  Thump. Thump. Thump.

  There was the sound on the floor above. Scott flashed a glance across the room to where Harry crouched in the corner, hoping to see something comforting in his face that would allow him to rationalize the sound, to chase the fear that had crept into a ball at the base of his spine. But there was nothing, nothing but the darkness that encased Harry in the shadows. Biting at his lip, a trickle of blood spilled past his clenched teeth from the split in his chapped lips.

  And just as it had the previous four or five, maybe more as he had lost count, times, the footsteps faded into a hollow resonation above, dissipating into the sound of the breeze that trickled through the poorly sealed window.

  The house, it seemed, had come alive around them after they had settled into their positions, the walls around them seeming to pulsate with a life that was almost sentient, alternately feeling warm and then cold against his back. The air that slipped through the window sounded like the impeded breathing of a sick man, eerily reminiscent of a death rattle as they hid deep within the heart of the house.