There was a time when Barry Rockford hadn’t been able to stomach the sight of blood. A minor cut could bleed and make him queasy, his head spin with alarming lightness.
That time was before he and Amelia had moved to Castle House. Once he had been totally immersed in the study of cells—really the study of subcellular structure—and how to rebuild that structure in a lattice that would unfold its new blueprint across the body, enacting wholesale change from the tiniest particle to influence the entire body.
Now…he only wanted to destroy that body. He slid his hands inside the open belly of the woman on the table and reveled in the heat of her uterus in his hand. It pulsed and trembled at his touch, and with one quick motion he sliced through the meaty membrane to expose the amniotic sac inside. Here,
here
was life, he thought. The ultimate beginning. A smile slid unconsciously across his face as he pulled the fetus from the ruined womb. “I give you the ultimate end,” he said, and handed the small, wriggling creature to Amelia, who voiced something in Arabic and invoked Ba’al.
“I would never have believed just a year ago,” he said. His nurse laughed, and licked at the lobe of his ear before taking the baby to an incubator across the room.
“If we hadn’t come here, you might never have believed,” she agreed. “But here…” The shadows on the wall seemed to move in answer to her unspoken words.
“I hear them every night,” he said, slipping his arm inside the woman up to his elbow, resting his body half inside hers. She felt so good, oozing around his forearm like hot jelly.
“Astarte is here with us now,” Amelia whispered. “Listen.”
Rockford listened, but could hear nothing except the woman on the table’s labored breathing. If he didn’t close the wounds he’d inflicted soon, he’d lose her. And that wasn’t the plan. He needed twelve mothers for the ceremony tomorrow night. And then, of course, the Thirteenth.
“You’re still more sensitive to them than I am,” he admitted. “Come help me stitch her up.” His voice grew deeper, more uncontrolled. Beneath his bloody doctor’s gown his cock was painfully erect. “I want to bathe in her now.”
Amelia was back at his side then. Her arms caressed his cheek. One finger slid across his lip and then inside his mouth before she trailed his saliva down his chin. He sucked the iron taste from her fingers greedily before her hands grasped his arms and followed them into the gore. Gently her hands gripped his wrists hidden deep inside the woman on the table, and began to pull him back from the edge.
“Not yet, love,” she said. “Just a little while longer. And then we will bathe in all the blood you can imagine. All the blood you can ever desire. Just a few more hours.”
She produced the sutures, and both of them began to stitch the unconscious woman’s womb and belly back together.
Rockford’s breath continued to hitch and sigh
with every stitch. Amelia only smiled and licked her dry lips with anticipation. Around them, the shadows pulled together, an oily cloud that strained from the walls to leer over Rockford’s shoulders at the ravaged woman on the table. The room filled with the whisper of anxious breath.
David heard the front door open downstairs, and the murmur of voices trying to be quiet. He didn’t think Aunt Elsie had been expecting anyone; usually she’d tell him if she was having company. He pushed back from the blurry photos on his computer monitor and cocked an ear to try to recognize who might be downstairs. He had spent the past hour surfing the Net, trying to track down some more history on both Dr. Rockford and the Castle House Lodge. Rockford had a thousand write-ups, but they all seemed to be the same. “Famous genetic scientist gets in Dutch with medical ethics over embryonic stem-cell research.” Castle House had been a little more difficult to pull information on. Many of the search returns were simply ghost-story mentions in blogs or irrelevant connections to Stephen King and his “Castle Rock” mythos.
But David had found one report that detailed in bloody clarity the mass murders that had occurred inside the old hotel a quarter century before. The screen ran red with the horror as he scrolled down the police blotter-like pictures of a dozen dead women. He recognized the room in which they lay
in varying states of dismemberment—he had been in that basement just yesterday with Christy.
The article said that E. E. Morgan—a rich, but militantly private businessman—had purchased the hotel in the late ‘70s with the intent of returning it to its former glory. The man had been in failing health and reportedly planned to recuperate in the country, while at the same time founding a new luxury hotel. Yet, after years of renovations, the only guests who were ever allowed on the grounds of the revived Castle House Lodge were those who were part of an elite monthly social club that met there.
That is, until the bloodbath.
There were photos of some of that “social club” running wide-eyed from the hotel, blood speckling their faces like freckles. The photo reminded David of one of those “end of the world” book covers where a frenzied mob is dashing pell-mell away from a giant lizard, or away from a city with a mushroom cloud blast behind them. A newspaper clipping about the murder bust was headlined:
DEN OF DEVIL WORSHIP DISCOVERED; DOZENS DEAD AND DISMEMBERED
.
Clearly the newspaper editor had been feeling just a little too jaunty with the alliteratives that day. David grinned.
But now he pulled his attention away from the carnage on-screen, and listened instead to the tone of the voices downstairs. They seemed to be moving closer. David stood and walked to the window and looked at the street. It was the kind of deep dark out as it can only be in a mountain ridge town. The glow from the streetlight three doors down faded into the velvet black of night as fast as an ice cube dissolving in a McDonald’s coffee. Most of the street remained well hidden in cozy shadow, but David caught the slightest glint of chrome on the
car parked on the street just outside of the house. And that silvery reflection helped reveal the quiet but official red and blue glass on top of the car.
There was a cop downstairs, David knew immediately. For the third time this month. Only this time, he knew it wasn’t Christy.
This time, from the intense but whispered dialogue downstairs, he had an overwhelming sense that it was not a friendly visit.
David glanced at the story on the computer and on a whim, hit the print button. Just as the printer whirred up and into action, Elsie called his name. “David, could you come downstairs for a minute?”
The first sheet spit out of the printer and then he heard Elsie’s voice from the bottom of the stairwell. “David?” There was a creak that he knew all too well; she was on the second step.
“C’mon, c’mon, c’mon,” David whispered, yanking the second sheet out of the creaky printer before the last line had quite spooled out. The spindle whirred and a third sheet fed across the drum. In hindsight, David couldn’t have explained why he did it. Some unconscious self-protective instinct. When he saw the dark cop car on the street, he just…knew. And so he didn’t think twice when he pushed up the screen on the bedroom window above the garage, and then when the window was fully open, quickly dashed back across the room to yank the last sheet of paper printing out of the printer. He folded it with the other two pages and stuffed it into his back pocket. He had one foot over the window ledge in five seconds flat. His timing was right, because as he ducked his head under the bottom of the window, his aunt knocked on the door, again calling his name.
His feet dropped to the slope of the shingles and he steadied himself on the sill before letting go, just
as the doorknob to his bedroom began to turn. Not waiting to see whom Elsie was escorting into his room, David slid down the slant of the garage on his butt fast enough to feel the heat through his jeans. At the bottom, he flipped over to rest on his chest and carefully let his feet dangle over the edge until they found the top of the giant green yard-waste container. Then he let go and launched himself from the trash bin to the ground. He ran around to the side door of the garage, let himself in and rescued the old Huffy from the dark. In the distance, he heard Elsie’s voice, but didn’t look back as he kicked the pedals forward down the driveway. In seconds he was flying down the hill toward Main, and on his way out of town.
If he had looked back, he would have seen the man in the second-story window, watching him ride away. The man didn’t look perturbed at all. He only nodded slowly, as if he’d been expecting this.
The invitation had arrived two days ago. Even now, Alan couldn’t believe he held it in his hand. How long had he waited for this? Half of his life. He’d barely been nineteen the last time someone had tried to invoke the Thirteenth. And that had ended very, very badly. He could still feel the warmth of the blood running fast between his fingers, the sensation of the guiding spirit running violent hands through his hair as he had laid the bodies of the Eighth and the Ninth to final rest on the floor of the old hotel.
The touch of those hands had never been far from his mind, ever since. All this time since.
Now he was forty-five, felt like he was going on sixty, and the invitation shook in his fingers. Actually,
he
was the one who shook; the invitation was neutral. It only said one thing:
THURSDAY NIGHT
, 11
P.M.: THE
13
TH
.
Someone not in the know might have pointed out that Thursday was not, in fact, the thirteenth, nor, in fact, was any other Thursday this month or next. But to Alan, those words could only mean one thing: the hotel was alive again.
Alive with death. And life beyond death.
His groin ached at the thought. It had been years since he had been inside Castle House…but the memory never faded. There were events in your life that formed you, and events that broke you. Castle House had done both to Alan. It had given him his taste for blood, which never abated; when he saw an accident on the street, he didn’t slow down to gape at the shocking site, he pulled over and knelt down at the scene, thirsting for just a taste of what the victims had left behind on the vinyl seats, and windows and asphalt.
Alan set down the invitation and decided to dress for the evening. It would be something of a walk down memory lane, he thought. But he knew his outfit still fit; he tried it on every few weeks, just to relive that night twenty-five years ago, when the blood flowed so fast you could taste it in the air like hot fog. It made him shiver to think.
He unlocked the door to the hidden room in the cellar and pulled the soft black leather pants from their wooden box on the shelf. As he smoothed the skin over his crotch, he studied the tiny spots that
marred its perfect gloss, and felt himself stir. Blood secret. Blood sport. Blood evidence. Still here, more than twenty-five years later.
Then he pulled another box off the shelf, this one filled with long, shiny implements of torture. Files that tapered to razor-edged fillets. Curved needles that hooked once they were inside the flesh, making it easier to slip inside your victim and then pull them skin from limb. He slipped those into a small black leather pouch, and then held up one simple tool to study. Unlike the other twisted needles and multi-razor-edged tools he’d picked up before, this one was simple, unadorned. Just a silver staff, and a long, arced blade.
This was his favorite. There was no mystery to it, no false twists. There was a time for art, and a time for terror and a time for long, extended pain. But this was made to sever flesh, fast and easy, pure and simple. He slipped it lovingly into the breast pocket of the skintight leather vest that now covered his chest.
Alan lifted the long, bloodstained white bib from its hook on the wall, and slipped it over the black leather vest and pants. The leather repelled most of the blood, but it was always wise to protect the soft skin from at least some of the harsher sprays. His fingers ached for the touch of the matching gloves, and he rummaged around in the back of the tiny room behind a stack of paint cans until he found them. Secreted in a small nook within the wall.
He didn’t know who had summoned him to the Thirteenth, but if they knew enough to call him, they did so for one reason, and one reason only.
He slipped the gloves on and thought of what that one reason was. Could only be.
In the years since Morgan had found and recruited him to help in the ceremonial bloodletting
that was the Thirteenth, he had worked in a number of rewarding vocations. Coroner, dentist, and his favorite, which had stood as his nickname:
Butcher.
Eager to meet the sender of the invitation, he stepped quickly back up the house steps and into the deepening gloom of his kitchen. He still had two hours to kill before he dared start down the road toward Castle House. He thought of sharpening his knives, but knew there was no need. He had spent years sharpening and honing them for this moment.
Alan could already taste the flavor of the night.
And that bitter taste of iron was good.
…You are sacred, and soon you will be with us. The night is near. Be’wei ne sie’ fo…
The voice told her that she was sacred. Brenda didn’t know what that really meant. She certainly had been no angel in her life so far, and she didn’t like the tone that the voice used. Lascivious. Hungry. It whispered to her familiarly in the darkness. Sometimes it laughed, a high-pitched crazy-cruel kind of giggle. It had spoken to her for days now, and she found it easier to ignore each time she awoke.
…Flesh of our soul, food of our thirst…
She knew now that she was a prisoner, though why, or where, she couldn’t say. The days passed in a blur of foggy grins, and hands on her body and twisted voices. She knew she was being taken advantage of; her nightmares were filled with the leer
of a granite-lipped man leaning naked across her to kiss and fondle her as he thrust between her legs. The image gave her chills, but also gave her a feeling of truth.
Now and then, she broke through the fog and understood that she and a number of other women were being held here, wherever this was. It seemed almost like a hospital, with a doctor and a nurse…but there were not the usual orderlies and astringent-scented hallways and emergency messages on overhead speakers. This felt almost like a resort, she thought.
Wherever they were, Brenda frequently woke from the mist to find herself sitting, not in her room, but on couches and chairs in a long room with other women who seemed as broken from reality as herself. They stared blankly at lamps and walls, or ran unconscious fingers up and down their waists and thighs, as if preening and posing for invisible suitors.
…Give yourself to the night…
Brenda could never stay lucid long enough to explore, to determine why they were here, or where here was. She would stand, perhaps, and stagger down the ornate Persian-design carpet for a few steps, and then, without fail, there would come a faint pinch on her arm, and a comforting voice in her ear: “There, there, hon. Let’s sit down now, shall we?” And before she was even back on a couch the room began to fade from view until only a tiny light remained with her. A focus just before her eyes…Sometimes she stared for hours at her lap, forcing her fingers to fidget as she stared amazed at their movements. Sometimes she slid back against the soft upholstery of the couch and watched Jackie draw. She’d tried to make friends with the girl, in those rare moments when she could actually move her lips to form words, but had never received a
response. The girl seemed to be able to escape the drugs enough to focus on her art, and sometimes mumble tearful questions about her son, but couldn’t maintain a conversation.
…Forever we live, forever we wait, forever in you…
Amelia came every day and set her up at a table to paint with a small kit of colors and brushes. When Jackie wasn’t painting, she stared straight ahead, oblivious to all attempts at speech. But when she painted…somehow she beat the fog and found a way to slip through into the real world again, if only for a few moments.
Brenda knew that her time in the real world was probably already slipping away. She’d been sitting up in her bed for the past few minutes, holding her head in her hands and willing away the cobwebs in the darkness. But will was not always as powerful as the somnolence instilled by whatever narcotics they were hyping her up on. The voice kept beating away at her brain, promising her sex and love and ecstasy and eternity, and she tried to stay away from that vortex, but already, she felt the clouds returning.
…Live in us and you go with a god. Blood is only a means to our end…
Brenda threw off the covers and promised herself that this time, she would not black out, would not succumb to the fog that threatened to leave her limbs listless and uncoordinated.
Promises don’t bring coordination however, and when her foot caught in the lower reaches of the blanket, Brenda went over the edge of the bed, letting out a slight shriek as she fell and smacked her temple on the carpeted floor. She rolled her face away from the nap of the carpet and stared upward
into the black shadows of the ceiling. Above her, hovering in the dark, she saw the woman.
Busty and barely clothed—wearing only a black strip across her breasts and leading down in a T to her waist, the woman looked like a dark angel. Her cleavage was laved in crimson, and her face speckled with weeping tears of blood. Above her, gray-blue wings gently fluttered in the air, veins bulging in muscles like blue worms on death.
…In the name of the nether and the scum and the syphilitic…
Brenda’s heart froze at the sight of the angel…or demon. Yet, the medicines that numbed her from reality also seemed to save her from fear. She shook her head at the creature’s whispering voice, and gasped only two words in answer: “Fuck you.”
As the blue stars cleared from her head, Brenda crawled toward the faint light she saw slipping in through the bottom of the bedroom door. Above her, the demon continued to speak, alternating from words in some foreign tongue to simple declarations that Brenda could understand—and didn’t at all like.
…Xudei’ ah Siet du ven. I will lick the blood from you like a mother, and you will taste me like a lover…
Brenda slammed her head against the door as she scrabbled to stand up, but the pain helped clear some of the fuzz, and she used the moment to slap her hands on the door and wall and pull herself up to the knob.
…You will open your veins to me, and I will drink your hate forever…
With a trembling unsure hand, she grasped the knob and turned. Ever so slowly, it began to follow the lead of her fingers.
…Every sin I will share…
“Go fuck yourself,” Brenda hissed, and slipped between the jamb and the half-open door to lie under the glare of the lights in a long hallway.
Behind her in the dark, the voice continued.
…I will suck dry every child you bear…
Brenda pulled the door shut behind her, silencing the demon. She pressed her back to the door and took several long, deep breaths, willing the fog to clear. The light from the hallway made her eyes water, and the patterns in the long stretch of carpeting blurred and twined in her head. She blinked and blinked to straighten it (and herself) out, and then slapped her cheek with the palm of her hand three times in rapid succession. The hall echoed with the cracks, but after the bright flashes cleared from behind her eyes, Brenda felt more in control. Holding the wall for support, she rose to a standing position, and cautiously moved down the hallway.
She didn’t know why she was awake now. There was no way of knowing how long she’d been here, but she had the feeling that it was a long time. Regardless, she was awake, and she intended to get out of here.
Wherever here was.
Brenda fought the vertigo and crept along the hallway, one hand on her belly, the other on the wall for support. She counted down her progress with the numbers of the rooms: ten, nine, eight…She toyed with the idea of opening one of the doors to see what or who was inside, but the thought of having to grasp the knob, and turn it, and push the door open…made her opt to simply stagger forward, curiosity unheeded. When she neared the stairwell at the end of the hall, she began to move even slower. The buzz of voices wafted up from below.
Brenda dropped to a crouch, and crawled across
the carpet to rest her head against the cool metal of the stair railing. She tried to see whom the voices belonged to…but the stairs wrapped around, and the landing was invisible from upstairs. It sounded as if there was at least a dozen people down there…maybe more.
Good,
she thought.
If the doctor is occupied, maybe that will make this easier. Of course, going down this way isn’t happening.
Brenda pushed away from the railing and started to turn around to go back down the hall the way she’d come. Her stomach began to feel queasy as she passed rooms nine, ten and eleven. It had probably been days since she’d walked more than a couple steps, she guessed. And the drugs couldn’t be doing her guts any good. Biting her tongue to give her the pain jolt she needed to keep going, Brenda steeled herself and passed room twelve and turned the corner.
The hand came out of nowhere, and clamped around her mouth. Brenda’s eyes went wide and she bit down hard on the skin of the hand that held her, but instead of letting go, a hand yanked on her hair, and pulled her out of the hallway, and out of sight.
Into room thirteen.