by Simon Parker
What had happened to his pride and joy? How had Brad ended up like this? He’d been found at 3am, collapsed on the roadside, bleeding from just about every orifice. The police thought it was a hit and run driver, but why? Why would anyone do such a thing to his beautiful boy and why did the police have no idea who the hell it was?
Damian’s emotional reverie was broken by a gentle knock and the heavy room door swung inward.
“Mr and Mrs Matthews?” The consultant strode confidently into the room, extending a hand to Damian. Damian rose from his seat to return the gesture and a firm handshake.
“Doctor?”
The doctor smiled, a comforting smile that never reached his eyes. “I’m so sorry for the delay in getting back to you. We’ve only just got the results back for the MRI.” He paused, sighing heavily and blowing out a stream of air through pursed lips. He stared at his paperwork a moment longer, as if trying to delay the inevitable. He looked at Damian, then Louise and finally Christa. Christa was the only one who was not staring at him, waiting for answers, ready to grasp any hope available from what he had to tell them.
“I’m afraid, Mr and Mrs Matthews, that it’s not good news.” He made eye contact and grimaced. “The x-rays seem to confirm that it was a hit and run. The injuries are what we’d expect to see in such cases.”
Damian realised this was the same doctor who had treated Christa in A&E after her suicide attempt. The doctor swiped the touch screen, surveying whatever chaos showed there about Brad’s internal injuries.
“The MRI results show trauma more extensive than we had expected or hoped for.” He sighed heavily and looked at the floor.
His meaning became clear without any more words Damian saw Louise’s chin crinkle as she fought back the flood of tears, but she lost the battle and sobbed into her husband’s shoulder, barely managing to squeeze out a whispered “no” through her emotionally restricted vocal chords. Damian’s breath caught in his throat. No, he thought. This can’t be it, this can’t be how it ends.
“I’m so sorry Mr Matthews, Mrs Matthews. I wish I could bring you better news. Good people like you deserve better news.” The doctor paused but then plunged ahead as if trying to get all the bad news out at once. “The trauma your son suffered has caused a host of complications. We managed to stem the bleed in surgery but his brain has been severely damaged and his organs are beginning to fail. I’m afraid…I’m afraid it’s only a matter of time.” He sighed again. “I’m so sorry, I truly am. If there’s anything I can do for you, please, don’t hesitate to have me paged.” He put a hand on Damian’s shoulder. “I’ll leave you and your family to talk. You’ll need some time. I’m here if you need me.” Then he gathered his papers and quietly left the room.
Damian’s world was crashing in on him. He had never felt like this, even when Christa had tried to kill herself. By the time he’d arrived at the hospital, the threat was over. There was only the physical and emotional recovery to deal with. For Brad, that recovery seemed elusive, but Damian was tenacious, he would not, could not give up hope. There had to be some hope.
He clung to his wife as she shuddered, silently sobbing into his shirt. He could see his daughter’s eyes, fixed and staring, her lips moving in a silent prayer. Bless her heart, he thought. Guiding his distraught wife back over to the seats, he took her hand and whispered soothing words to her as she sat. He sat between her and Christa, taking both their hands in his. His wet eyes met his wife’s but Christa wouldn’t look at him. He squeezed her hand
“Let’s pray together. Maybe God will hear us and help our Brad to come back.”
He bowed his head and began reciting the Lord’s Prayer. It was as good a place as any to start. He would personalise his litany in the following moments and continue to pray for however long it took. It somehow felt like the last efforts of a desperate man, but he had to do something and he didn’t know what else there was. Louise bowed her head too, mouthing the prayer silently. Christa sat stone still, staring blankly at her brother, her lips also moving in prayers of her own.
5. The Chamber
A shaft of light had entered the chamber from high up in the roof of the room in which Brad found himself. It wasn’t bright enough to fully reveal his surroundings, but in the amber glow, he could make out that the chamber was huge, like an auditorium with a dome that looked like it was made of dark wet stone. Brad’s bed sat in the middle of the room, and as his eyes adjusted to the dim light, he could see tiered seats hewn from the same rock stretching away into the distance.
But it wasn’t the room or the benches that laid icy fingers of fear on his heart. Seated on every bench were amorphous shapes, mere outlines, bound in gauze, the aged wrappings of corpses, thousands of them. They sat silent, rocking and swaying in time with one and other. Brad’s wide eyes took in the rotting forms, moving impossibly, their faces draped with the same grey mottled gauze shrouding their bodies.
Brad’s voice was constricted, his screams strangled by the hands of terror gripping his throat. He fought for breath as hard as he’d fought the rising tide of bile from his gut. His jaw hung slack as he began to pant. He wanted to run but his muscles were jelly. Where would he run anyway? These things surrounded him on all sides like the audience in some macabre circus.
The figures began to chant, a deep resonating sound with no discernible words. A sound so deep that he felt it as much as he heard it. A sound that sent a new wave of ice crystals coursing through his veins. The chanting grew in intensity like the clanging before it, burrowing into his mind and body like a parasite. Brad clutched and clawed desperately at his ears, but the sounds invaded and violated him still.
The crashing waves of ugly sound ceased as suddenly as the clanging had.
Only silence remained, a silence so profound that Brad wondered momentarily if he had clawed away his ability to hear. The grisly figures still rocked eerily but made no noise. Then he heard a voice, one he felt he should know but that was alien to him.
“Bradley Matthews, this is the day you have feared more than any other.”
The voice echoed around the chamber, its source unseen. Deep, dark tones that bewitched and beguiled whilst simultaneously striking like a white hot iron to the core of him. Brad’s voice returned, meek and fearful.
“Judgement?” he whispered.
The gauzy wraiths began to convulse at his utterance as if excited by the word. Once their terrifying convulsions had returned to a gentle rocking, the voice spoke again.
“You have led a life of lies and debauchery and for that you will be judged. Behold a jury of souls like yours to determine your fate.”
Brad trembled like a mouse in a snake pit, but he saw a faint glimmer of hope.
“So I may get out of here alive?”
6. The Darkness in Brad
Their bedside vigil had been consistent for eight hours now, and as much as Damian couldn’t bear the thought of leaving his son’s side, he was drained. He needed a coffee and the toilet or he would be asleep in the chair when it happened, when the moment arrived and the angels gathered to claim his boy’s soul for heaven.
Without saying a word, he touched Louise on the shoulder and raised a hand as if to say “coffee?” She nodded gently, watching him through her red puffy eyes. He repeated the gesture to Christa, but she stared coldly ahead, fully focused on the prayer she was still mumbling.
Poor kid, he thought, concerned for her, wondering how much more help she would be needing after this was over. The thought brought renewed needle pricks to tear ducts that were pathetic sluice gates against a surging tide of emotions. He smiled at her, a weak gesture of his sympathy for her. Then he turned and left the room in his quest for caffeine and bladder relief.
Christa’s eyes flickered at the harsh sound of the door clattering shut, a cacophony compared to the hush of the ventilator and the beep of the monitors, but she was too lost in her thoughts to care where her father was going. For as long as she could remember, Brad had made h
er do things she didn’t want to do. He used to bathe her as a child and touch her in ways that felt wrong even to one so young and innocent. Then there were the endless nights when he was supposed to be helping her with her homework but was too busy playing ‘grown ups’ to notice or care that her homework was wrong or incomplete. He’d hurt her so many times and made her feel dirty.
Mum and Dad didn’t seem to care or notice. Brad told her they would hate her if she told them and they would kick her out of the house. The ‘games,’ as he used to call them, continued right through upper school, getting more depraved and painful each time. She could not bring herself to tell her parents, half-afraid that Brad was right and they would kick her out or hate her. Besides, they were always wrapped up in their own troubles anyway, too busy to be bothered by their disgusting daughter.
She’d managed to numb the pain one night when a friend had given her a bottle of vodka. The alcohol made her life almost bearable for an hour or two. It had relaxed her and made her forget the disgusting things her brother made her do, but it didn’t last. She needed to drink more and more to block the pain, and the more she drank, the worse she felt about herself.
At fifteen, she had been a hardened drinker when she suddenly began puking. A lot. To her horror, she’d found herself pregnant by her hateful brother. Of course Mum and Dad didn’t know it was his. They’d been trying to help her stop drinking and had assumed she’d been drunk one night and some lustful teenage boy had taken advantage. She’d come close to telling them the truth the night they found out about the baby, but it had seemed easier to go with their assumptions than rock the boat when Dad was ranting. She was afraid to let them know how disgusting their daughter really was, afraid to disappoint them and end up getting herself kicked out. That’s what Brad said they’d do if they found out what a sick little slut she was.
They’d helped her make a difficult decision to get rid of the baby. Difficult for them. She wanted no part of the hateful seed growing in her. They had been the most supportive she had ever known them afterwards. For a while.
Brad had even left her alone for a while, and she managed to stay sober for a few weeks. Then Brad started again. He burst into her room one night when Mum and Dad were out. No gentle words, no games, no false affection. Just violence, force and pain. God the pain! It was unbearable.
After that, Brad had been a frequent visitor again, normally when Mum and Dad were out or in the middle of the night when they were both in their Valium-induced comas. Whenever Mum and Dad were around, Brad was the sweetest brother she could wish for. It must be her, she must make him different somehow. Mum and Dad were always saying how great he was and how she should be more like him.
She’d stayed on that path until she was nearly eighteen and Brad had come home from work one lunchtime. He’d known she was off college that day and expected his disgusting needs to be sated the moment he walked in the door. God, the rage he’d flown into when she plucked up the courage to say no, enough was enough! Despite her kicking and screaming, he dragged her upstairs by her hair and had thrown her onto the bathroom floor. He grabbed the scissors from the shelf and held them to her throat.
“Yes, you fucking will!” he spat in her face.
“No, I fucking won’t, you fucking arsehole!” she screamed back at him, opening the floodgates on years of pent up anger and resentment. He hadn’t hesitated. He moved the scissors to her wrist and slashed it open. While she panicked, gripping her wound and splashing around in her own blood, he’d forced himself on her again. Once he was done, he’d bound up her wrist and driven her to the hospital. Super Brad had praise heaped on him by the staff and her parents for acting so promptly and saving the life of his sister. Brad the hero. Brad the great.
Brad the fucking liar! Brad the fucking, batshit crazy!
But still she’d kept it quiet. She still couldn’t bring herself to destroy the family and alienate herself from all of them. They might be fucked up, but they were all she had.
For two more years, two fucking years, she’d put up with Brad’s shit before she snapped again. She’d been driving home from the pizza shop where she worked part time. He was bouncing along with his cocky fucking swagger on his way home from the pub.
Fucking wanker! She’d thought as she tramped on the accelerator and steered towards him. There had been a satisfying crunch when she hit him. She’d watched in ecstatic awe as his ragdoll form had sailed out of sight in slow motion. She’d felt exhilarated as she drove away, free for the first time in her miserable existence, the darkness gone in one brief, impetuous action. Why hadn’t she done this years ago? She’d been lucky that the street was empty, that she’d escaped detection, but she wouldn’t have cared if she had been caught. It would have been worth it to be finally rid of that worthless twat.
Now she was sitting here turning the tables on fucking super Brad. Playing the dutiful sister, the shining example of supportive family love. She clenched her hands together tightly and continued murmuring her dark prayers.
“I hope you die, you sick mother fucker, and when you die I hope you burn for eternity and have your every orifice violated by all the demons in Hell, you twisted fuck!”
She rocked gently and repeated the profanity, almost chanting inside her head, willing her dark mantra to come to fruition.
7. Opening the Gates
The deep voice gave a deep and hearty laugh. “Don’t feel hope, fool. There is no hope. You have seen to it by your deeds that all hope you had is lost.”
Brad shuddered as his last glimmering prospect faded. Fuck…This is it! He thought. The shrouded revenants began to sway again, stiff and jagged, but in perfect time with one another.
This is really it? I’m really here and I’m fucked. I prayed this day would never come. Oh God, oh God, oh God, please help me!
In his ears, buzzing and throbbing from the racing life fluids in him, he could hear a voice, different from the others. A voice he recognised somehow. He couldn’t make out the words quite, but he heard the repetitive pattern and watched the revenants swaying in time to it. He began to make out the odd word here and there as the voice grew clearer. Fuck, it was Christa! Was she here to punish him for his sickness? To twist the knife in him? What was she saying? Fucking little bitch, what was she saying? Didn’t she realise he was ill? Didn’t she know he couldn’t help himself when he was around her? It was her fault, not his.
Then he heard it. “Burn for all eternity.” Silence fell again until the booming voice echoed round the chamber.
“Prayers answered, Christa. He’s ours now.”
The revenants convulsed at this, gnashing through their wrappings, straining for release from their bindings, excited by the prospect. Panic set its icy claws into Brad’s pounding heart, and desperation drew its serrated edge across his screams. The sound of stone rumbling across stone filled the chamber now and a square edge of light pierced the gloom. A huge doorway was opening in the ridged wall. Blinding light poured in.
Brad’s screams died out. He sat in silent terror as he beheld the world he was about to enter - towering pillars of dripping lava, flames that poured like a swirling waterfall from molten walls and every surface bubbling with faces that rose to the surface, their tormented screams echoing around the chamber. Creatures that defied the limits of Brad’s imagination began to slither and crawl over the door as it reached its final position, a monolithic drawbridge to a world that reeked of pain and torture. A world that Brad still hoped was just a bad dream.
The revenants now stood. They had gnawed through their feculent rags and snapped their decaying jaws, dripping with a sickening blend of blood, puss and drool as they began to shuffle towards Brad. They crowded around him, surrounding him. He sat in stunned silence, unable to move or to scream, his fear way beyond the point where any other reaction was possible. But he found his voice when they slashed, bit and clawed his flesh, tearing it apart as he writhed on the bed that became slick with his blood. He screamed until the
blood vessels burst in his eyes.
8. Free at Last
Damian and Louise wailed as Brad’s body finally gave up. The monitor emitted a high-pitched whine until the nurse came in to switch it off. In their eruptive outpouring of pent up emotion, Damian and Louise clung together, holding each other in a futile attempt at comfort where there was none.
Neither of them noticed Christa, a hint of a smile passing like a cloud shadow over her features. She could have sworn she heard the legion coming to collect. Was it her imagination or was it really warm in here?
The Red Devil
Based on a true story
Liverpool, England- 1857.
“Gentlemen, thank you for joining me tonight,” Abraham announced to the small gathering in his drawing room. He was a gentleman of good standing, a jeweller in the city, a freemason, and a member of the Brimstone Society, a club that met on the last Sunday of every month to relieve the boredom by telling each other tales of ghosts, ghouls, monsters and debauchery. This was the first time Abraham Harris had held the meeting at his house, and he was about to regale these gentlemen with a grotesque tale of devilry that happy coincidence had brought right to his doorstep just two days ago.
They all turned to face Abraham, each of them, to a man, with a brandy in one hand and a cigar in the other. Their chairman spoke first.
