In the light of the candles there could be seen a young Negro girl, terribly thin, and no older than at least twelve or thirteen. Lashed to an angled wooden table, she was stark naked, her ribs and collar bones showing through her skin. Thick hemp ropes bound her down securely at the waist, arms, wrists, neck, knees, and ankles, and she was straining, writhing, the tendons in her neck and arms standing away with the desperation of her efforts.
Lee was frozen, he couldn't not look into the centers of her brown eyes, which were wide-white, and gone totally wild. A frenzied panic registered across her features as she looked down at herself, her body secured, but her fingers writhing and struggling, struggling frantically as off to her side, concealed in the shadows, a hunched figure in a long, bluish medical coat could be seen working applying some silvery instruments to her lower abdomen.
Causing his mouth to suddenly go dry, Lee watched in the reflection rendered in the glass of the reunion photograph as one spidery hand carefully placed a scalpel down on a tray and then retrieved some type of shiny, clamp-like medical instrument.
Still with its back to them, the figure used his other fingers to spread apart a freshly bleeding incision cut into the meat of the girl's lower belly.
Now suddenly close up, as though he were no longer in his den, but standing right there and actually looking over the man's shoulder, Lee could see the red blood and the sickly yellow-white of the flesh within. The slit was obviously very precisely placed, as despite the size and position, only a meager trickle of her blood was seeping out. And as Lee watched, employing the tool between his spread fingers, the man reached in through the slit and drew out a portion of what Lee could only guess was a section of the girl's intestines. Terrible in its realism, the bowel was fat, slick, and worm white, streaked with fresh, raw blood and traced with smears of some kind of yellowish goo. Inch by inch he pulled it from the incision, the length of bowel trembling in close up detail, mirroring the girl's struggles as she too could do nothing but watch. As though oblivious to his victim's struggles, the obscured figure to the side had snatched up a large fat candle from beside the instrument tray. And while meticulously drawing out a sizeable length of her intestine with his free hand, he was busily singeing the intestine, passing back and forth underneath the flame from the smoking candle.
Lee was transfixed, unable to not watch. Patty, trembling terribly, had ceased her whimpering, undoubtedly shocked into silence as she surely had to be witnessing this, too. Clutching her brother, she had a death grip with both arms around his leg.
With the dizzying flashing from the TV never ceasing, the steady mumbling, like a growling, had been growing louder and louder. The strength of it was becoming oppressive. The timbre was so deeply masculine, the droning cadence sounding every bit as though someone was preaching or reciting a diatribe from a black litany of anger and hate.
And the pitiable little cries, pleas and sharp, quick terrified shrieks, were still there, too, rising sharply in the background, the pitiable cries even worse than the ugly rumbling. Recognizable to Lee's ears as pleas for mercy, the words could not be understood, but Lee could not escape the emotion, the anguish, and the despair resonating in each sorrowful syllable.
Suddenly, the all sound abruptly ceased, the heavy sound of emptiness momentarily echoing in Lee's ears. Tearing his eyes away from the scene reflected in the glass he looked down to Patty, and she looked up to her brother. He could read the question in her eyes. “It's not over,” he hushed. “Feel it?"
She bit her lip and nodded.
Lee put a hand in her hair and pressed her cheek to his stomach, telling her, “Don't look, Patty.” Though he didn't heed his own advice. “Shut your eyes, Patty, and it'll all go away. It's not real. It's just something—"
Lee was cut off, starting at the forceful blast of sound. Quickly it escalated in force and volume, causing the glass to rattle and the floor to shake beneath their feet.
Patty had tucked her face into Lee's shirt and was covering her one exposed ear with her free hand. She was screaming, though Lee could barely hear her over the din. The deep, rumbling of the incoherent muttering was no longer a hollow rambling, but blisteringly angry; and the streams of pitiable crying and weeping echoing within the mutterings were nothing but misery, a sonic personification of pure despair and hopelessness. Lee sensed what he was hearing were the echoes of the emotions of that young girl. These were her futile cries and pleas for mercy as she suffered, watching helplessly as she was slowly and methodically being disemboweled and cooked alive.
The odor of charring meat and roasting feces was choking. The heat, that terribly oppressive heat was back with a vengeance and the air was as stifling as a heavy woolen blanket on a hot summer's day.
Patty and Lee were both rooted exactly where they stood, and he was aware of streams of sweat rolling down his necks and ribs. The flashings from the strobing T.V. were wild and insane. And the scene was everywhere in every piece of glass. The torture of this girl shown forth in horrific detail as a live image with smell and flavor and in full-living color.
Acrid, nasty, and green, the smell of blood, decay, and wet roasting flesh was sickening. Along with the smell, now could be sensed a feint sizzling and crackling. In the images in the glass, close up, Lee could see the length of bowel was blistering, and bubbling, in spots beginning to steam and char. And all the while, the mumbling, that awful deep muttering kept on and on. And with it were the pleas, becoming screams, frantic, terrible, hysterical screams.
The man bent lower. Lee could see everything but his face. He could see the girl, too. Somehow he could see everything. He could see what was in her eyes. He could even see the roaches scurrying in the shadows amongst the filth littering the floor of the pit. In the smoldering, smoky light of the candle, drops of clear liquid were dripping away from where the flesh was cooking. Now, he caught a revealing glimpse of the lower half of the man's drawn face, the lips, the teeth, gray, crooked, and dirty. Then the tongue, blood red against the blue-gray lips, flicked out.
"Lee!” Patty shrieked. “Make it stop!"
Lee though, was riveted, mesmerized, unable to move.
In the dim yellow light from the lanterns and candles, he could see it all, every terrible detail, even the slivers of the rough-hewn boards forming the ceiling of the pit itself, and thick patches of black soot from hours and hours of burning kerosene stained the ceiling's wood above each lantern. But regardless of where his attention momentarily fell, there was never any escaping the girl's eyes, as she too looked down, watching, as helplessly as Lee.
The stench had grown so awful, Lee had to fight back the strong urge to gag. And he watched unbelievably as the man set the candle down, then leaned forward while stretching out the length of bowel with the tongs and snatched a bite, one, quick snap.
The girl on the table went wild, thrashing as she strained, raw, red stripes showing from under where the ropes were cutting into her skin. And as she looked down, the man held on, chewing and grinding with those teeth. Lee could see his teeth! Those awful teeth!
Suddenly pulling and leaning back he tossed his head and wrenched a sizeable length of the bowel free from her gut. And as he fed upon it like some kind of animal the blood from the wound was no longer a little trickle, running in rivulets down the girl's lower belly and legs and streaming down onto the table.
A low wail rang out Lee could feel in the pit of his stomach. It kept on, growing in strength and intensity until it seemed to pierce the walls as one long, terrible scream. He knew it; this was her agony. The beast with the tongs must have heard it too. He seemed to be driven to a frenzy by her cry. Snatching his head side to side, like a cur worrying a bit of rag, he finally bit clean through the bowel. And rearing back triumphantly, he spread his arms, the end lengths of her entrails dangling from each side of his mouth.
For some reason, Lee could also notice the man's feet in the shadows. He was wearing square-toed, shiny leather boots and blue pants below the coa
t. The manifestation of his delight was being translated to his feet as he danced some frightful, spastic jig. And his mouth! God Almighty, Lee didn't want to see, but there was no escaping any of it, no averting his eyes. There it was, worse than a beast, with bloodied lips he swallowed a piece of her, reveling in his victim's horror.
Yet just as suddenly, he ceased the maniacal dance and leaned in, bringing his lips but inches from his victim's face. Still chewing on her tauntingly as he came in closer, he rubbed her own gore on her face, smearing around his lips and obviously lavishing in the pleasure of her reaction. Then he pulled back to face her eye to eye.
Still, Lee could not see the man's eyes, everything but his lips were in shadow. But he could see the girl's eyes. The close up gaze, which passed from the monster to his victim, was the final touch. This was torture, hateful, malignant, cruelly evil.
Lee could feel it, then even hear it. It was laughing. Now standing back and laughing at her as it ate!
"Lee!” Patty cried. “Lee, make it go away!"
As horrified himself, Lee still couldn't find any place to look where the scene did not fill his vision. It was as though it was no longer an image reflected in the glass, but flashed within his mind. But that couldn't be; from Patty's fright, Lee was sure she had to be seeing the same thing as he.
The man stepped back, possibly satisfied in what he'd seen in the girl's eyes, and pinched the end of the bowel which had been left hanging down from the wound. Some of the contents had been dripping out, along with a fair amount of blood, from both the incision in her belly and the jagged end where he had bitten through. Squeezing and running his fingers down to wring out the fluids, to Lee's horror; with both hands he began to twist the end. Lee saw the girl's eyes roll back, and witnessed a convulsive spasm pass across her features as her head lolled to the side, and her mouth fell open. Lee found himself wishing, a quick desperate wish, that if there was any mercy at all in the world, he'd just seen her die.
The thing in the reflection started, having seen it too. Stopping where it was, as though it had suddenly been touched, it stepped back appraisingly, still chewing on a piece of bowel in its mouth. It still kept mostly to the shadows. Lee still had been unable to see his entire face. But Lee could see the man's Adam's apple bob, and the tongue flick out to lick the grease from his lips, when finally he had swallowed his mouthful.
Then with a dexterity born obviously of a great deal of practice, the man quickly and adeptly tied off the end of the intestine in some kind of surgeon's knot. He made it tight, pinching, and worrying at it with his fingers. That done, it stuffed the entrails back into the slit and staved off the flow of blood, pinching the incision closed with a device resembling a thin pair of scissors.
The thing then turned, facing them as though looking into a camera. It was looking right at Lee. One eye was bright yellow, the other white.
"Patty!” Lee came back to life. Grabbing his sister, he pulled her to the floor. “Don't look, Patty! For God's sake close your eyes!"
Keeping Patty below he caught one last glimpse before squeezing his own eyes shut. The monster in the pit had turned toward them, undoubtedly now aware that they had been watching. Lee knew it. He could even feel it. It knew they were here, and now, now it hungered for them. It was coming forward, looking at them through the glass. And now, now it wanted him to see its face.
Lee stayed down, feeling Patty's little body trembling violently beneath him. She was utterly terrified and crying.
Feeling his sister's fear in her shivering, Lee became filled with a sense of grim resolve. There was no damn way in hell he was going to let some monster do anything like what they had just witnessed to her. He was still so dazed, confused, he'd only had the clarity to react. But now, lying on the floor, his mind began to whirl; there had to be something he could do.
All at once Lee was aware of a change. A presence was emerging into the room. The same thing he'd felt last Saturday night. The heat, that awful heat, it was making the air heavy and difficult to breathe. And all around, the heat seethed with a tangible, blinding hate.
The flashing of the television had become an almost constant, flickering, causing the room around them to appear unreal, as if in an old, old movie, and something definitely was coming into the room with them. He could feel it. There was a terrible, terrible presence.
Lee, holding onto Patty, couldn't see any manifestation, but the growing strength of the presence was in the form of a pressure, coloring his emotions and employing fear to enforce its will over his. It taunted him to get up, to run away, abandon his sister, leave her there, alone, unprotected and save himself, save himself, save himself.
Marshalling his inner strength, Lee reached in and pushed back defiantly. But like a candle faced with a firestorm, the malevolence reacted, pushing back in a powerful attempt to simply smother him.
Despite the strength of Lee's will to resist, the force was emerging, stronger and stronger. It was filling the room, laughing through its unfair advantage over him, impaling him upon the promise of it snuffing out his meager spark if he didn't just cave in and abandon his sister and run for it. Either way though, it'd have him as well. He knew it. He could feel it. The malevolent presence was no longer something trapped in that earthen pit. It was physically emerging into the house with them.
The shrieking and mumbling, the cries and the gibberish were becoming deafening. It was as though a great storm had entered the house. It was screaming and swirling in a maelstrom as the smothering heat pressed down and down.
Lee's eyes were open; the room was awash, flashing silver and black, creating the illusion of movement everywhere. No matter what he wasn't going to give up; that was all he had to cling to. A plan of action came to him. “Patty!” Lee yelled in his sister's ear. “We've got to run! We've got to get out of here!"
The reunion picture on the wall fluttered. Lee looked up to see it lift away, standing out horizontally from the wall as though it was caught in the winds of a storm, only held back from flying away by its wire.
The goat face was there, now real, not drawn, not wood, but flesh. In the flashing, like an animation, it appeared to be emerging, straining visibly in an effort to pull itself free from the wall. The snout was out, as were the horns. The monster turned its face to look down on the two huddled on the floor, the eyes hungry, flaming yellow, streaked with red, and wild with delight.
Lee tried to move, but it was as if his body wouldn't respond. Like a nightmare come alive it was the presence, pressing down, crushing, enforcing its will.
The room was a dizzying silver-white, awash in the flashing of the strobing T.V. Lee knew full well this wasn't his imagination; everything was moving, seething, crawling. The noise was becoming intolerable, roaring and swirling, the heat and pressure growing. The very air was becoming alive. And the malevolent presence, smug and bullying before, every moment it continued to grow stronger and stronger, gloating, evil; railing at him to abandon his sister or die.
Again he tried to get up, but was thrown back to the floor. He had gained his knees, but was almost immediately dashed back as though a great weight was riding his back.
Wrenching his neck with the effort to look up, Lee saw a hand pull free from the paneling, not with fingers but with claws. The color of the flesh was a slate-gray and laced with deep blue veins. Lines from the tendons were straining, bulging from under the skin as the creature strove to tear itself free from the wall.
Lee looked away. The heat, steamy wet, boiling hot against his skin, was beginning to become too much. His eyes stung, his skin felt near to blister, and his lungs screamed with every breath. Instinctually, he closed his eyes as he marshaled his will, and was shocked to find closing his eyes made no change in his awareness. As in a dream he could still see everything about him. The view was from up in a far corner, near the ceiling, and from there he could see down into the entire room. He could see himself huddling over his sister on the floor. The reunion picture, still held i
n check only by its cord, was now almost touching the ceiling. The thing had worked itself more than half way free from the wood. And on the other wall, the Indian was emerging, too. Somehow, even more terrible than that of the beast, was the intensity of the fire in his eyes. Hate, maniacal and malevolent, it shown forth from the blackness in the center of the flaming yellow pupils. Its left arm was out, and in its hand it was already brandishing the tomahawk.
Clenching his hands in the effort and holding his breath, Lee poured his strength into his will to resist, concentrating on only gaining his feet.
He saw the Indian's arm swing down, and the quartz-stone blade bury into the paneling. The Indian's left leg emerged free from the wall. Time was running out.
He knew they had no recourse but to get out; if it wasn't already too late. A plan for escape sparked in his mind, and instantly he steeled himself, lest the presence was able to read his thoughts.
Envisioning Patty, abandoned, alone, and allowing himself to even feel anger at her for holding him back, Lee kept that emotion and threw himself into action without so much as another thought to expose his scheme. Surprisingly, he rose to his feet. But, never once did he let go of his sister. He pulled Patty up off the floor bringing her with him. He saw Lucky Pup slip from her hand. The toy never hit the floor. Flashing like a cartoon animation as it went, the toy was sucked away, flying through the air, disappearing down into the darkness of the hall.
Angling, leaning, driving into the gale, Lee had Patty. The maelstrom about him was roaring. Infuriated at his trick, it was threatening to snatch him from his feet and drag him down into the darkness at the end of the hallway. Frustration screamed at him; no matter how he tried to move, the force of the presence like a real hurricane-force wind held him fast. In a flash, he remembered dreams like this, darkness, chaos, an unseen evil lying in wait, not dreams, but nightmares, and they had all ended badly. But this was no dream, to lose ground and to be sucked back into that darkness down the hall would be to never wake up.
Evil Heights, Book III: Lost and Found Page 10
