The Blood Singer_A Haden Church Supernatural Thriller

by Patrick McNulty

  “How much?” she asked again digging the wad of bills out of her pocket, her fingers straying across the hardness of the pistol digging into her hip. Her lizard brain leaped at the thought of another idea. An idea that ended this conversation with a bang. She paused. Adding up the odds. Calculating the risks and then shoved the thought away.

  “Just you?” he asked again.

  “That’s what I said.”

  The clerk licked his lips.

  “Sixty.”

  “Your sign outside says forty a night?”

  “That’s for locals.”

  “Why would locals stay at this shithole?”

  “It’s sixty.” He said, crossing his thigh-sized arms across an expansive belly. “Or you can hit the road, Debra.”

  Gloria’s stare forced the larger man to look away, suddenly interested in his laptop as she peeled three twenties from the roll. She laid the bills down on the desk, and the clerk handed her the key to room number three. She reached for it and at the last second, the clerk pulled the key back leaving her hand outstretched. With her right hand outstretched the sleeve of her coat rode high on her forearm revealing the end of her tattoo. The tattoo was the bottom three-quarters of a cross. Nothing too original about that. Lots of people had a cross tattoo, but the clerk had seen this one before. Christ, everyone with a tv set had seen this tattoo. The cross was made up of twisted thorn branches dotted with blood. For a beat long enough to make his mouth go dry his eyes were pinned to the woman’s right wrist. He had seen the woman too and the realization of who had just checked into his motel snatched his breath away as quick as a kick to the nuts.

  “The key.” She said again, snapping him out of his stupor.

  “R-r-r-right…remember,” he said, swallowing hard and forcing his eyes away from her wrist. “Uh…no smoking.”

  She snatched the key from his chubby fist and spun on her heel. The woman, Debra, slipped through the glass door and the dented cowbell clanged above.

  As the sound of the cowbell died Johnny Lee Baker let out a breath he had been holding since he saw the woman’s tattoo. When he was sure she was clear of the glass doors he hoisted himself out of his rolling desk chair and shuffled to the front door, twisting the lock.

  He held his face close to the glass and watched her angle her vehicle right up tight to the door of room three. With the door locked he hid behind his desk and snatched the phone from the cradle. He was breathing so fast and hard that when Margie Anderson answered at the Sheriff’s station, it took him a solid minute of deep breaths and Margie’s calm, motherly coaching for him to get the words out.

  3

  Sheriff Buford was sipping his way through a flask full of Johnny Walker Blue. A gift from his wife last Christmas. His cruiser was parked just inside the Sherman Cemetery, his headlights and all interior lights either dimmed or down right killed. Everything, except the engine to keep the cold away.

  He took another sip and felt the last of the warmth leak down his throat into his stomach and sighed. He twisted the cap and set it in his duty bag on the seat next to him. He checked his watch. Only four hours to go in the night shift. He always took the night shifts during the week, as they tended to be the least busy during the early hours and he found on good nights he could get up to seven hours sleep. One time nearly eight until some Yankee tourist got drunk, got lost and drove into the ditch surrounding the Peterson’s farm. He said a little prayer asking the big man upstairs for a quiet night and closed his eyes. He felt the warm sting of exhaustion beneath his eyelids and then a burst of static cut through the silence of the cruiser like a chainsaw.

  Sumbitch

  “You there, Sheriff?”

  Margie sounded half asleep herself, although she would never admit it.

  “Sheriff?” Margie asked again, “Sheriff?”

  Buford grabbed the radio and keyed the mike, “I’m here, Margie.”

  “Johnny Lee at Big Bob’s needs to talk to you. Says it's urgent.”

  “Urgent how?’

  “Says he got a woman checked into room number three.”

  Buford’s buzz was fading fast leaving him feeling foggy and tired without the pleasant warmth that usually made up a set.

  “It’s a motel, Margie, that’s bound to happen.”

  “He says it’s that woman. The one that abducted her kid, and killed all them people. The kid’s foster family.” She said, “The one from the city.”

  The temperature dropped in Buford’s cruiser by a good ten degrees. His hand curled around the microphone, and before he keyed the mic, he took a slow deep breath. He had heard all about the crazy woman who left the psychiatric ward of the local hospital, and high tailed it to the home of the foster family that was keeping her boy. Snuck in through an open basement window and stabbed them all to death. Everyone had heard about it. That crazy bitch was on every news show for the last three days, twenty-four-seven.

  The burrito he ate for dinner did a slow roll in his stomach and threatened to make an encore appearance.

  “How sure is he, Margie?”

  There was a crackle of static as she returned with, “Damn sure is what he said, Sheriff. Damn sure. Said he saw the tattoo. The cross made of thorns. That mean anything to you?”

  When the Sheriff didn’t respond right away Margie’s voice followed the static and asked if he wanted to call in Colton and Henry, the two deputies scheduled to relieve him in the morning. Buford answered in the affirmative, okaying the overtime, and dropped the Ford Explorer into gear.

  His warm whiskey buzz, nothing but a memory.

  4

  In the motel room bathroom, Gloria sat on the closed toilet and set her gun on the counter. She pulled out the remaining bills and counted out seven dollars and a handful of mixed change. She frowned at the little pile but had faith that God had delivered them to this place for a reason.

  She closed her eyes and massaged the back of her neck. She was exhausted and needed sleep. In the morning she would kill the motel clerk and empty the register. The money would last until she was shown the way.

  If only she were shown the entire way she could plan better and strategize. But who was she to doubt the will of the Lord? She was not about to question Him now. She was all in as they say. She would do anything. Anything at all to save the immortal soul of her son. Gloria was sure of very few things in her life, but she knew two things with absolute certainty: God directed her every move and two, something evil had taken root within her son.

  She slipped onto the chipped tile floor and clasped her hands together over the cracked toilet seat. She prayed for guidance. She prayed for strength. When she opened her eyes, she felt better, refreshed, after conversing with God. She left the money on the bathroom counter, switched off the light, and carried the gun into the motel room.

  Haden paced back and forth across the worn carpet, working out the kinks in his arms and legs and back. Finally, the blood was returning to his limbs after being folded into the trunk for so long.

  His mother had closed the heavy drapes that covered the view of the parking lot, leaving only a sliver of pale yellow light to leak into the room. She was still in the bathroom. He could run. He could go. But where? He moved closer to the door.

  After moving in their shopping bags full of clothes and supplies, his mother had locked the door with the deadbolt and stretched the chain across the jamb.

  Could he remove the chain, unlock the door and be out into the parking lot before she caught him?

  His knees shook, his empty belly soured just thinking about how the scenario would play out. His little feet slapping against the asphalt, his mother's sputtering breath and heavier footfalls bearing down on him. Her fingers hooking into his clothes, twisting into his hair, clawing him back.

  He stepped to the window instead.

  Through the gap in the drapes, he saw a slice of the empty parking beyond their stolen car. The wash of yellow light from the flickering motel sign didn’t reach very far
, but it was enough for Haden to see the boy. The same boy he saw back at Jim and Lorraine’s. The boy in the coveralls.

  He stood silently at the edge of the light pool, watching. Beyond him, Haden could see that the darkness was in motion. Shapes and shadows had followed the boy and were now marching across the parking lot. He felt them as they drew near. As more of them assembled, he could feel it on his body. It started with a chill. A drop in temperature. Then, as more circled closer, he could really begin to feel them. Their names slithered beneath his skin, rising and falling, pressing against his flesh. He couldn’t move. He was pinned to his spot on the threadbare carpet, staring out at the army of wraiths that stepped silently out of the darkness and into the light.

  “What do you see, child?”

  He hadn’t heard her cross from the bathroom, but he felt her breath on his neck. He could smell the cigarettes and stale coffee as she said, “Who’s out there, Haden.”

  The little boy dressed in overalls was the first to approach. He was at their car’s bumper now, aiming his dark eyes into the room. Into Haden.

  “No one, momma,” Haden whispered.

  Haden heard a click, as his mother moved her tongue around in her mouth. A sound he had come to think of as her built-in lie detector. He tried not to flinch when she slid her hands over his narrow shoulders.

  “Let me see your hands.”

  “It’s nothing, Momma, honest.”

  Haden stared straight ahead and watched as the pale oval of his reflected face was joined by his mother’s in the window glass. The boy in the overalls had crept closer now. His face was right outside the glass. Haden could open the window and they could shake hands.

  Gloria eased Haden away from the window and stared down into his eyes the color of smoke. He could feel his mother tense. Her posture, her face, everything seemed to harden when she saw his hands.

  “Hold them out.” She whispered.

  Haden slowly brought up his hands until they were chest level palms facing the matted green carpet, tiny fingers outstretched. He closed his eyes, squeezing them in concentration as he focused on hiding the dark symbols and characters written in a tight black script that swam up to the surface of his flesh. The harder he tried to control it the stronger and more apparent they became. Twisting and growing around his wrists, and disappearing under the cuffs of his shirt. He opened his eyes and saw that his mother’s mouth was a thin, pale line, her jaw set.

  “Take off your shirt.”

  “Momma ple…” He didn’t even see her hand move. He barely squeaked out the words before she slapped him across the face. One minute he was standing in front of her and the next he was on all fours, the left side of his face hot and stinging as tears fell from his eyes.

  “Now.” Her voice was iron, issued barely above a whisper.

  With his chin trembling Haden pulled his Toronto Maple Leafs sweater over his head. He heard his mother’s sharp intake of breath and squeezed his eyes closed. He didn’t have to look. He could feel it. The words and symbols and strange characters were crawling up his thin arms, twisting around his forearms and thin biceps like voracious vines. Once they mounted his shoulders, they spread in all directions in wiry fingers across the pale expanse of his back.

  His mother’s hand clamped onto the back of his neck and drove his head down to the floor until his nose was pressed against the pile. Haden smelled carpet cleaner and wood rot and piss. But that didn’t matter now. He knew what was coming.

  “Pray.” His mother hissed, her hot mouth inches from his ear. “Pray for your soul, Haden.”

  Haden immediately began to recite the Lord’s Prayer. The words rolling easily off of his tongue by memory.

  “Our father, who art in heaven…”

  The pressure eased off his neck and then disappeared altogether.

  “…hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come…”

  He heard his mother’s shuffling footsteps and risked a glance to his right. She was standing at the edge of the bed, her hands deep into one of the reusable grocery bags.

  “…thy will be done, as it is in heaven…”

  Haden snapped his eyes forward staring into the carpet once again. She was coming back now with something in her hand. Haden saw it for only a split second. A long length of leather dangled from her right hand, and the words of the prayer snagged in his throat.

  5

  Haden heard the belt whistle through the air a split second before it sliced through the skin of his back. The pain was a white-hot line of fire that spread in all directions. He cried out as his thin body slammed hard into the carpet, curling into a protective ball.

  “Get on your knees, Haden.” His mother hissed.

  Haden buried his face in his arms and drew his knees up close to his chest. His only defence was giving his mother a smaller and smaller target.

  “Get on your knees!”

  The belt whistled through the air again and cut a red line across his left shoulder. Something shifted inside him, pushed to the front of his mind and a voice that wasn’t entirely familiar to him screamed “Momma! Don’t!”

  Gloria caught herself mid-swing, her arm raised and cocked, ready to fly. But there was something in her son’s voice that gave her pause. When he spoke, there was something there that wasn’t begging. He wasn’t pleading. God knows she’d heard plenty of that. This was different. His voice sounded older. Deeper. He wasn’t asking for her to stop.

  He was warning her.

  She blinked and the moment passed, and she raised her arm again. Haden had shuffled crablike away from her across the carpet. Aiming for his back, Gloria took a step forward and whipped the defenceless boy again opening up a six-inch gash between his neck and his left shoulder. Blood boiled to the surface and spilled across his ribs that pressed like knife edges against his skin.

  Haden cried out again, a blood-curdling shriek. His entire body went rigid, his fingernails digging into the pile of the carpet. His index fingernail ripped clean off and a small river of blood pooled under his clawed hand.

  Gloria’s body absolutely hummed with righteousness. The words or whatever they were were an insult to God. She needed to heal her son. To prove to the demon inside him that his body was a temple of good. Of Godliness. She must banish it. By all means necessary. She would exorcise it. She would burn down the temple to rid this world of it if she had to. It was God’s will.

  Haden’s frail body was shaking now, trembling, as the dark words crowded every inch of his ivory skin.

  “Look at you!” she screamed. “Filth. Pestilence. Corruption. Corrupted! You are corrupted, Haden!”

  Haden’s nails were digging through the carpet, and Gloria saw bits of pile and fragments of wood bunched in his tiny fists. The demonic names and symbols of the ghosts crowding around the shitty motel had nearly covered his body now, running rampant across his face. Over his lips and around his chin. The boy’s skin the color of moonlight was now sullied. Poisoned by…

  “Evil,” Gloria whispered, her breath steaming in the cold room.

  She began to tremble as goosebumps ran rampant over her body. She was freezing. She flexed her hand that held the belt and raised it for another strike. She took a shaky step closer to her son. Or what used to be her son as he lifted his face to hers.

  His eyes were closed, and his lips were parted. Thin, bloodless lips and they were murmuring. Whispering something just below what his mother could hear. “What are you saying?” she asked, edging closer, wanting to know.

  Praying? Not likely.

  “Answer me!” she yelled, inches from his face.

  He didn’t.

  “Stop that!” she said.

  He continued. His face serene, his muscles relaxed. Even his fingers were now spread out flat against the carpet. The words slipped soundlessly from his lips in a steady torrent. Gloria inched closer still and raised her belt hand high.

  “Stop that! Right, this instant!”

  Gloria drove her right arm down
with all her weight, as she stepped forward. The belt cut through the air and carved a line across Haden’s darkening face from the left side of his forehead to the bottom of his right cheek. Gloria stumbled back out of breath and braced for the scream that never came. Blood poured from the wound, but the boy didn’t move. The whispering continued. The boy was a darkening statue. A shadow made whole as the words and symbols spreading across his body congealed into a smooth, glossy black sheen.

  Trembling now, Gloria took a shaky step back as the whispering abruptly stopped. The hotel room suddenly shrank in the smothering silence. The boy’s mouth closed as blood from the open wound dripped over his lips and fell in fat drops from his chin.

  Haden opened his solid black eyes.

  Gloria couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t speak. Every word she knew for evil rushed to be the first and created a logjam in her throat. Without a voice, without reason, she raised the belt again and lunged forward.

  Halfway there Haden’s face began to change. His mouth opened incredibly wide as jagged teeth sprouted from his pale gums. Gloria stumbled as her knees turned to water and her heart froze in her chest.

  “DON’T!” Haden roared as he leaped up from the floor and grabbed Gloria’s belt hand. Using her momentum as she charged, he twisted his grip and sent her spinning behind him. For the briefest moment, she felt his hand on her wrist. His grip was iron and so terribly cold. And for a moment she saw who he was.

  What he was.

  Gloria smashed into the dresser knocking the tv to the floor. She ended up on the floor of the hotel room feeling warmth spread across her crotch and smelling urine. Her brain was on fire.

  Her shaking hands reached for the pistol still stuck in her waistband. Her eyes pinned to her son’s back, splashed with blood. The darkness that had overtaken her son was complete now. His skin was an oil slick, rippling and trembling as each symbol, character, each name fought to rise to the surface.