The Bloodspawn

by Michael McBride

“Oh, God, please. You have to help me.”

  Slowly, Scott slid his back up the wall; both hands pressed to it as he shied away from the overwhelming image that hovered just a few feet away.

  “Don’t listen to it,” Harry whispered from across the room. He had just now been able to clamber from the floor to his knees. In the dim light, Scott could see that his forehead was covered with blood, matting his light gray hair. A thin stream of red ran straight down the bridge of his nose before rolling to the side and clinging to the edge of his split lip. He cradled his right arm against his chest, the bone protruding straight through his ruptured flesh. Wincing, he staggered to his feet, each pained breath bringing with it a wave of pain that rippled across his face as tears burst from his eyes.

  Scott whirled back to the apparition, staring intently into the face of the friend that he had known as well as he had known himself so many years ago, and for an instant, he was once again that same child as well.

  “Please help me, Scott,” Matt whimpered.

  “What can I do?” Matt choked through the tears that ran down his dirt- covered cheeks from his shimmering eyes.

  “Don’t listen!” Harry shouted. “That’s not Matt! That’s not your friend!”

  Matt’s young eyes locked tightly on his own as Scott felt himself step from the wall towards the cloaked figure.

  “Don’t do it!” Harry screamed from the other side of the room, but his words appeared to fall on deaf ears as, entranced, Scott took another step forward.

  “I never wanted this to happen,” he whispered, staring into the familiar eyes of his old friend. “All I wanted was for all of us to get along.”

  “But you abandoned me when I needed you the most,” Matt said, the corners of his lips bending into a snarl. His arms raised to either side, his fingers bending into claws.

  His face soaked with tears, Scott took another step forward, his face now less than a foot from Matt’s.

  “It’s all my fault,” Scott whispered as the tears clung in drops at the line of his chin.

  But as he watched, the light in the eyes that had been there but momentarily faded. Where there had briefly been life, there was now nothing more than the promise of death as the eyeballs faded back to the cracked, yellow marbles that had been there before. The formerly fleshed face reverted to the tautly stretched, dried face that resembled the mummified remains of an unearthed Egyptian.

  Feeling his jaw drop to his knees, Scott could do little more than watch as the clawed hands were raised even higher, peaking briefly before whistling through the air towards his head.

  “No!” Harry shouted as he lunged through the air, tackling Scott at his midsection like a blitzing linebacker.

  The two slammed to the ground, kicking up a huge cloud of dust. The jacket tore away from Scott’s shoulder as it was the first to land, bearing the brunt of the load. His head bounced off the ground twice as they slid before finally coming to rest.

  Matt roared from the center of the room as the house rattled atop its foundation.

  “Get up,” Harry sputtered through the blood that filled his mouth, clinging to his teeth.

  Grabbing Harry by the collar of the jacket, Scott clambered to his feet, stepping backwards into the dense shadows as he dragged Harry along the ground. Turning from the enraged apparition he yanked on Harry, trying frantically to pull him from harm’s way.

  “Do you think there’s any prayer for you!” Matt shouted in a voice no longer his own. It was demonic in its tone, resonating from every molecule in the room. It was a combination of what sounded like a thousand damned voices all crying out at once through the one mouth.

  The shadows sprung to life, the darkness twisting and writhing in pained ecstasy as it tugged at their flesh.

  The slick collar of Harry’s down jacket slipped from his hand, his head landing on the hard ground with a fierce crunching sound. Scott immediately bent over, trying to grasp onto anything with his hands, but before he was even close, Harry was gone.

  He slid across the ground towards the center of the room on the waves of shadows, his right ankle caught firmly in the tight grip of the bloodspawn.

  Scott was helpless but to watch as Harry was heaved feet first into the air, where he dangled in front of the black cloaked monster. Blood seeped from his open mouth, running along his upper lip and over the rim of his nose as his face reddened with the sudden rush of blood towards the gravitational pull. The look on his face betrayed the pain that he was in, but there was something in his eyes: a glimmering look of understanding that almost brought with it something of a smile.

  “No,” Scott whispered as he reached out desperately with both arms.

  Harry closed his eyes, a peaceful look of bliss trickling across his face.

  “No!” Scott shouted, lunging through the air towards Harry’s dangling body.

  A clawed fist burst right through Harry’s chest, sending a spray of fluid throughout the room. Bone and tissue littered the floor as a wave of crimson fluid poured from the hole that had been punched straight through his lungs and ribcage.

  Smiling, the bloodspawn grabbed hold of Harry’s spinal cord, ripping it straight out the back side and allowing the mere pile of spent flesh to slough from the bone, falling into a heap on the floor. He stood there, triumphantly holding the red length of clustered bone above his head into the air.

  Scott slammed into him, right in the hips, but before he even knew what was going on, he had been clubbed on the back of the head several times with the remnants of Harry’s shattered spinal column. Feeling the tight grip on the back of his jacket, he was suddenly hurled through the air. There was little more that he could do than just throw his arms out in front and prepare for the impact with the furnace that was coming directly at him.

  There was a loud boom and a metallic crunch as he slammed into the furnace, the sheet metal buckling against his momentum. Slamming to the ground, something heavy, with a sharp edge, fell atop his head from where it had rested in the dust atop the furnace, tearing a seam beneath the hair in the flesh on his head.

  Wincing in pain, Matt grabbed the object as it bounced to the ground, the bloodied edge still damp with his own viscous filling. He stared down at the red, rubber- coated handles, the blackened, dust- covered cutting blade of the garden shears dripping in red. Slipping his fingers into the prefabricated loops, he held it out in front of him as the bloodspawn floated above the ground straight towards him, its toes barely an inch from the ground.

  Scott’s fear widened eyes, stained by lightening- like red streaks, fixed on those of the bloodspawn, pinched tightly beneath the lowered brow as the face curled into a snarl. Swinging the clippers through the dank air, he succeeded in slicing through nothing but air, caught in his backswing by a hooked claw that grabbed him by the center of his chest, seizing hold of a handful of shirt and cleaving him into the air. Raising its bloody fist into the air, the curled fingers dripping with the dark blood from Harry’s core, it prepared to drive that same hand straight through Scott as well.

  There was a sudden shift of the thin breeze in the room, growing in ferocity as it swept from one side to the other, circling the center of the room as though on the verge of creating a cyclone. There was a whispering on the wind, quiet at first, but growing in intensity as it whistled across the breeze. It wasn’t a single voice, more like a combination of several that all spoke at the same time, not one standing out above the others.

  The bloodspawn turned frantically in the direction of the blowing wind, cocking its head so that its ear was directly in the path of the growing breeze. A look of confusion dripped down his face as his cracked lips mouthed words that Scott could no more decipher than the words that whispered through the cellar.

  Seeing his opportunity, Scott capitalized as the breeze had provided the distraction that he needed, opening the shears as wide as he could get them and clamping them down on the exposed wrist of the bloodspawn at the end of the hand that held him in the air
. With all of the strength that he could summon, Scott squeezed his hand together, the sharp blades slicing straight through the dried, yellow skin that extended from the frayed edges of the decomposing shroud, crunching audibly into the brittle bone beneath.

  With a howl of pain, the bloodspawn dropped Scott to the ground before he was able to complete the cut. The hand dangled limply from the wrist, which pumped out blood in spurting arcs. The wrist was visibly bent; giving no support to the hand that twitched and fidgeted as nothing more than bone fragments and the few tendons that hadn’t been completely severed held it to the rest of the body.

  His lips peeled back from his yellowed, jagged teeth, his head snapping away from the wind so that he could stare directly through Scott as he scurried backwards along the floor, kicking up a cloud of dust in his wake. That intense, cold stare knifed right through him, chilling him to the very bone as he scrambled to his feet behind the furnace, trying to use the giant metal box as a shield between them.

  “I’m going to rip you in two!” the bloodspawn growled as he suddenly shot through the air at Scott with a speed and ferocity never before witnessed.

  Lunging backwards, Scott slammed into the wall behind him, banging his already stinging scalp against something hard projecting from the earthen wall. The bloodspawn ripped through the furnace with its bare hand, shredding the metal casing on the front as though it were nothing more than tissue paper.

  Taking his eyes from the bloodspawn only long enough to turn to face the wall, to see what had jabbed him in the back of the head, his heart began to race so quickly that everything else seemed to be in slow motion. Scanning the darkened wall, he caught the briefest of reflections from the powerful steel blade that was buried in the wall. The white, ivory handle was coated gray with dust. Without a single thought as to how or why there was a knife sticking out of the wall, Scott grabbed the handle. Squeezing it tightly in his right hand, he leaned a shoulder against the wall to use as leverage to pull the wide blade out of the wall that had apparently encased the blade for quite some time.

  He fell backwards as he finally pried the knife free from the wall, slamming into the furnace with a loud bang. Whirling, tears bursting from his eyes as the pain in his back blossomed from the tear in his flesh from the corner of the unit. Scanning the dimly lit room, he tried to find the bloodspawn, who had apparently just vanished.

  There was nothing there but the settling dust and the thin breeze as Scott stepped out from behind the furnace, his vision frantically tracing the room from one side to the next and then back again, but there was absolutely no one there. He stepped slowly towards the center of the room, the sound of his footsteps as the raked the sandy floor echoing throughout the hollow cellar. His pulse exploded through his body, beating so loud that he could hear it throbbing in his temples, could feel his heart in his chest, pounding so fiercely that he feared his ribcage may no longer contain it.

  His rapidly panting breath plumed in white clouds from his parched mouth, dissolving into the dust that hovered in the room like a thick fog, masking the shadows that clung to the corners of the room. Reaching the center of the room, he stopped and spun in a circle, trying to see anything that resembled a human form hiding in the blackened corners.

  With a thin crackle, the light bulb that dangled nearly directly overhead slowly faded, the filament glowing orange momentarily before fading into the darkness that swelled from all sides.

  As his eyes had grown accustomed to the light, there was absolutely no way that he could see anything, other than the faint impression of the glowing filament that scarred his vision no matter where he looked. Holding the knife straight out in front of him, he tried to compensate with his other senses, listening as intently as he possibly could to the muffled sound of the breeze that filtered in from around the window, hoping to discern even the slightest sound from the dim whistling.

  Pressing forward, he inched across the floor, his right foot colliding with something lying on the floor. Kneeling, he kept his head facing forward in case any movement were to somehow catch his eye. With his left hand he felt at the floor, his fingertips running over the soft, fleshy surface of the object that had nearly sent him sprawling to the ground. As his fingers rifled through the dampened, sticky hair, he knew right away what he had encountered and leapt into the air to get to his feet. Panicking, he wiped the wetness from his hands on his jeans, trying hard to fight back the wave of nausea that gurgled from his stomach, the sudden smell of the disemboweled innards that coated the floor rising up, accosting his senses with its putrid stench.

  Cackling laughter filled the air all around him as he choked back his body’s inherent, automatic response.

  Cringing, he stood perfectly still, his frightened eyes flashing through the darkness praying for something, anything to stand out from the blackness.

  The laughter continued, mercilessly booming from everywhere at the same time until it seemed to surround him, closing in on him as he flashed the blade from side to side, trying desperately to slash through anything that may come close.

  “Don’t have the stomach for this, I see,” a deep voice said from the darkness that surrounded him.

  “Why are you doing this?” Scott whispered through the tears that poured down his cheeks.

  More laughter echoed through the room.

  The sound of raking gravel came from the side of the room just to his right. Whirling, he stared into the darkness trying to peel it back if only for a moment as he held the shaking blade out in front of him in his trembling hand.

  The light sound of falling sand landing on the ground was barely audible over the hum of the wind, but Scott could tell it was coming from the same direction. Focusing on nothing but that side of the room, he eased forward, the sound of the cascading sand trickling down the face of the wall still in his ears. Slowly the sound changed. The falling sand was still there, but it no longer bounced down the face of the wall, it just fell straight to the floor as the sound came closer to him, growing louder and louder in his ears until finally and without warning… it stopped.

  Scott stood there towards the middle of the room, his head cocked towards the wall where the sound had come from.

  He could feel someone in the room with him, could sense the heat from their body in the cold room. Opening his mouth, he tried to quiet his own breathing in an attempt to silence everything that he possibly could. Trying to calm the heavy rising and falling of his pounding heart in his chest, he breathed very slowly and deliberately, becoming in tune with each of the waves of shadows that rolled from the walls, swirling like the onset of a fog all around him.

  The knife quivered at the end of his outstretched arm, reflecting the small line of light that crept into the basement from the cracked seam of the window, flashing as he jerked the blade slightly from side to side.

  He could taste the decomposition on the bloodspawn’s breath on his lips, his tongue, could feel the warmth of the acrid breath on his bare flesh, but he couldn’t see it. Barely able to discern the outline of his own arm in front of him, he stood motionless, surrounded by nothing more than his own dry wheezing.

  There was a dull splat, like the sound of a drop of water that had been clinging to a faucet finally falling to the basin. He looked around, fighting with the darkness for even a fleeting glimpse. But there was nothing.

  Shivering, his knees began to knock, his arm growing weary from being held straight out. Inching closer to the wall, all of his senses in tune for even the slightest movement, or the softest of sounds.

  There was the splat again, somewhere close to him in the darkness.

  Creeping even closer to the wall, he held his breath, the sound of his own hammering heart pounding in his ears. He licked the dried dust from his parched, cracked lips, fighting back the tremors that crept up his spine.

  Something hit his face. It was warm and wet, and slowly running down his cheek. His mind churning with the onset of panic, his instincts took over, seizing hold of
his body. He brought the knife clenched tightly in his right hand towards his body, wrapping his left hand over his right to solidify the grip. With as much force as his body could generate, he leapt into the air, slamming the tip of the blade upwards towards the ceiling.

  There was a sickening crunch as the blade met with soft resistance, a waterfall of the same warm fluid falling straight down on his head from above. Batting his eyes against the wave of blood, he held his breath and closed his mouth tightly so as not to inhale any of it.

  Landing back on the floor, he could feel an enormous weight on his arms, the blade still sticking within the limp form that he had pinned to the ceiling.

  His legs buckled beneath him as the weight bent his arms, landing squarely on the top of his head. Releasing the handle of the knife, he thrust his arms behind him in a futile attempt to catch himself as the weight of the body slammed down on him, crumpling him to the floor.

  Trying frantically to scramble out from beneath the squirming pile of bleeding flesh, his right hand caught on the ivory handle, latching on tightly. With his left, he followed suit, grabbing that knife so tightly that his fingers felt as though they might break from the pressure that they supplied, he yanked upwards, all of the muscles in his arms tensing uncontrollably. Grunting, he tugged, and tugged, ripping the tearing edge of the blade through the flesh, cracking through whatever bone dared to resist.

  There was a fluid filled gurgle from the cold lips of the face that was pinned atop him, right next to his ear as gushes of the warm fluid issued forth, splattering across the side of his face. Yet still he cranked that knife upwards, tearing through the all too frail humanity until one by one he could both feel and hear the thin ribs as they snapped. The soft tissue of the lung beneath tore to the tune of the breath whistling through the hole on the chest rather than from the lips that no longer drew life near his ear.

  With a crack, the knife met with the clavicle, knocking the blade out of his grasp as with a groan, the inside of the creature poured out all at once, covering the entirety of his clothing and spilling out across the floor.