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  The Bloodspawn

  Michael Mcbride

  For every generation there is a child born of such evil as to claim hundreds of lives. Cast from the very fires of Hell, the Bloodspawn's sole purpose is to summon death and bathe humanity in bloodied carnage.

  Harry Denton knows that such a child has been brought unto this earth, for not only has he seen him, but he spared the boy's life when he had the opportunity to destroy it. Now, years later, Harry is called back to the decrepit convent where he saved the baby's life, knowing full well what he will find...

  The Bloodspawn has a destiny to fulfill.

  Let the slaughter begin.

  THE BLOODSPAWN

  By Michael McBride

  © 2004 Michael McBride. All rights reserved.

  PART ONE

  1989

  I

  Wednesday, November 10th

  9 p.m.

  The thin light of the waning moon filtered through the rolling fog. Snow swept down the front of the Rocky Mountains, the tiny crystals dancing atop the crisp, frigid breeze. Frost glittered on the tips of the pine needles that surrounded him along the winding, snow-dusted path, shedding more light than the early November night sky itself in the thick of the dense woods. Pines, spruces, and barren aspen were packed tightly together, their trunks nearly touching, branches bouncing gently, the flakes slowly piling atop one another on the ever-whitening foliage. It was a winter night in Colorado like most others this time of year: every inhalation bringing with it a stab of bitterly cold air that threatened to seize the chest; a plume of steam that dampened the face with every exhalation.

  And then there was the silence…

  It was the sound of absolute solitude; so quiet it almost stung the eardrums from the lack of audible noise. The wind, which gusted every so often, spoke with mute voice, his own footsteps muffled within the accumulating snow. Were it not for the sound of his own breathing within his head, he was sure he could have heard the snowflakes landing one atop the next, deafening amidst the stillness of the night. Every so often, he could feel the tip of Edgar’s tail swat at his left leg while the dog jogged dutifully in time beside him, never straying more than a few feet from the path, following his nose into the thick underbrush, hoping upon hope, that he might flush something from the thicket worth chasing. At least something that would allow him to give chase. A small bird would dart from beneath the snow-crusted twigs and disappear into the darkness beyond as though it had never existed, but a squirrel would taunt him mercilessly from one tree trunk before racing to the next, staying only a fogged breath ahead of the dog’s snorting nose.

  They made this trek every night about this time, he and Edgar. He always put this off until the very last thing, right before bed, because he knew that one of these days he was actually going to find what he knew he was destined to. He wasn’t sure exactly what it was, but every fiber of his being, from his flesh straight through into the marrow of his bones, knew that he was indeed going to find something. It was his whole purpose for being here. Maybe it was some sort of misplaced sense of responsibility or some form of cosmic penance, but he knew with every ounce of surety that it was the reason he still drew life from the emptiness. Why else would God or fate—or whatever divine hand tugged at the strings of his marionette existence—have brought him to that house… on that night.

  The path opened up slightly ahead, the thick wall of trees to either side peeled back from the line beaten through the coarse buffalo grass, signaling that they were nearly there. Stars sparkled overhead, but only momentarily, fading quickly as the clouds rolled in tufts of steam across the sky, spreading wave after wave of white crystals in their wake. But the blackness above was nothing compared to that which lurked behind the trees to either side. That darkness leeched the light from all around, wrenching it back into the shadows that ate it up mercilessly. It was a blackness that was almost tangible, as though it were a living entity that would rush from the underbrush and tear at his legs if he dared to step even an inch from the path. And he knew… within that darkness there was something else, something that he had seen, albeit only on that one occasion, but it had left a scar on his soul. And night after night, he passed through here, only inches from that darkness, whose icy breath he could feel in the hackles on the back of his neck, for no other reason than to show it that he was not afraid.

  But he knew that the only person he was fooling was himself, and most days, he wasn’t even very good at that anymore.

  Harry Denton had lived nearly all of his days within the shadow of the Rockies, having traded the smell of pine on frost for brine on pollution only long enough to complete his undergraduate studies between walls supposedly more hallowed by the ivy that crept up them. It had been four tediously long years. The speed of life in Colorado was much more relaxed and even-paced than the frantic pace with which Bostonians raced through their lives. They shot like lasers from one point to the next, slowing only long enough to make the effort not to allow your life to impede their own. He had felt like an outsider from the start, never getting the punchline of the joke, before finally resigning to the fact that he really wasn’t sure he wanted to.

  It had been a triumphant day when he had returned to Colorado to enter medical school. He could remember vividly pulling the Chrysler over on the shoulder of the road and sitting atop its hood in the midst of a dust storm. Dirt and debris scratched at his face like sandpaper while he just stared at that bright green sign that stated everything so simply: “Welcome to Colorful Colorado.”

  “It’s all right, Edgar,” Harry said, patting the yellow lab on the ribs with his gloved hand. But he knew the dog could feel it too.

  The faint whistle of the wind drifted down the path from ahead of them; the formerly gently bending branches beginning to sway more violently. Still, they pressed forward. The snow, which had once fallen straight downward, was now coming at angles, forcing Harry to wince his eyes to shield them from the small shards of ice, tucking his chin to his chest and peering up from beneath his frozen brow. Edgar no longer darted between the path and the edge of the thicket, his mood no longer playful. He stayed even with Harry; his body maintaining a slim one-inch gap, constantly glancing up at his master, a timid whine creeping from his panting jaws every so often.

  They were close now. Once they reached this point, Harry had to make a conscious decision each and every night: was he going to continue and traverse the last quarter mile or was he going to turn around and scurry back home? He knew that if he continued down the path, he was going to have to relive that night. But it wasn’t the fear of seeing the horror again, playing like a movie in his mind. Nothing as tame as that. No, it was the fear that tonight might be the night that he had been dreading, preparing for; the night where once again he found himself face to face with…

  He stopped dead in his tracks.

  Something was definitely wrong. He could feel it in the base of his spine; taste it on the howling wind.

  His frozen breath frosted the stubble on his face as he stood at the end of the path. To either side the trees just seemed to fearfully stop, the path opening up into a sloping, snow-drenched meadow. The tips of the untended wild grasses danced atop the mat of white, the walls of snow blowing first one way, and then the next at the whimsical shifting of the wind.

  Edgar whined beside him, pleading up to him with those large brown eyes.

  Harry’s heart hammered in his chest, and he unconsciously wiped the runoff from beneath his frozen, brick-red nose with the back of his gloved hand. His eyes fixed intently straight ahead, his breath suddenly seizing within his aging chest. Slowly, his lips parted and his lower jaw dropped slack. He could hear his pulse in his temples, throbbing rhythmically with the gusting wind.
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  Harry looked down at Edgar, resting his open palm atop the dog’s head, a thin strand of his lightly graying bangs falling in front of his eye.

  Nodding gently in unspoken communication with the retriever, he once again steadied his gaze straight ahead and took a long, deep breath, closing his eyes while it swirled coldly within his lungs. Calmly, he peeled open his eyes and allowed the air in his chest to creep past his pursed lips. He stared straight ahead.

  The slope in front of him, leading down into that still meadow, was steep, with only a few saplings creeping from the cracking soil. This was generally as far as he came, just close enough so that he could see the house, just give a quick glance to verify that everything was as it should be, and then scamper home as quickly as his legs would take him. He was certain now that tonight would not be that easy.

  A thin paved road ran from the foothills to the west toward the plains in the east, cutting through the valley at the base of the hill right in front of him. Just past the other side of the road, a small, white house sat amidst a cluster of trees that threatened to consume it, their branches wrapping the old wooden bungalow within their bare limbs. The decaying white paint peeled in layers from the pale wood beneath, betraying the years of abandonment that had begun its slow road to dissolution.

  Biting the inside of his lip, Harry started with a lurch, forcing himself forward, his unblinking eyes still fixed on the house. Each breath came increasingly quickly, his chest shuddering, bordering on the verge of hyperventilation. Stumbling down the hill, he fought with his trembling legs, urging them onward with nothing more than the meek resolution of his feeble will, akin to an inmate’s final stroll down death row en route to his execution.

  Thoughts came in jumbles, fragmenting within his reeling mind. He was unable to even begin to comprehend them. It was all that he could do to keep himself moving forward. If there were anybody else who could do this task, he would have more than willingly stepped aside and allowed them to do so. But this was his curse, his cross to bear… and his alone.

  Stumbling up the shoulder of the road from the bottom of the hill, he gingerly planted that first step atop the asphalt, shuffling his feet slowly across the ice-covered surface. The wind raced down the road, shoving him with what felt like human hands from his right, trying mercilessly to knock him to the ground, to break him.

  Harry eased from the street onto the stone walkway leading up to the covered front porch of the house and stared, unbelievingly, straight ahead, his breath catching in his tight lungs. Thick roots from the mighty maples encircling the dilapidated house jut forth from the frozen earth, protruding from the long, untended lawn like fingers. The walkway in front of him was layered with several inches of snow, uninterrupted as far as he could see to either side. Bare branches rattled atop the roof of the house, scraping like fingernails on a chalkboard from side to side, bending to the will of the wind.

  Inching forward, he shuddered his way to the pair of wooden steps leading up to the porch. Grabbing hold of the thin, ratty railing tightly with both hands, he urged himself up the crumbling steps and onto warped wooden planks, bowing in attempt to pry their own rusted nails from the supports. The brass lockbox he had placed on the doorknob himself nearly two decades ago, rested on the porch between his feet, the solid metal loop that wrapped around the doorknob snapped right down the middle. He just stared down at it, fearing what he might see if he looked up.

  Reaching down with trembling fingers, he gripped the useless piece of brass tightly in his right hand and shoved it deep into the outer pocket of his dark blue parka. His lower lip squirmed against his upper, fists clenching at his sides, pumping and releasing several times before wrapping themselves into one final knot. A shot of pain ripped through his mouth at the beckoning of the frozen teeth that ground fiercely atop one another, tearing a sliver from the inside of his lower lip in the process. His breath shot like a bull from his nose while he summoned his failing courage, and with one quick motion he lifted his head and stared directly through the open front door and into the darkened house.

  His mind raced back to that night in 1972, the night that would forever change his life. It was still remarkably vivid in his mind; the smell of the heavily falling snow dampening the freshly shed aspen leaves still resonating in his senses. And more than anything, he could feel the full pangs of the terror, lashing out at him from deep within his chest, threatening to suck the air out of his lungs.

  Professional life for Harry had begun with the most noble of intentions. Like his father before him, he had been drawn into the field of medicine, not by the promise of the largely bloated paychecks, but by the desire to help people. Trite though that may sound, in his case it had been true. There had been those wonderfully long summer days in the small mountain town where he had grown up, riding in the passenger seat next to his father, pipe jutting from his stone jaw, driving down those washboard-riddled country roads. At first, it had seemed like a never-ending series of house calls, but the older he got, and the more he began to understand the intricacies of the profession, the more he became completely in awe of his father. The man had dedicated his life to the betterment of those around him, taking payment in whatever form the patients were able to provide. Be it the tough and stringy meat from their mountain grazing herds of cattle or the often awkwardly designed hand-made garments that Harry had ended up wearing to school to considerable discomfiture. There was even a short period when he had been embarrassed by his father, by the fact that all he seemed to do was work, yet they still lived a mere notch above poverty in that trailer in the middle of the woods. But that had all changed in one single instant after he had witnessed his father climb through the shredded metal of a wicked traffic accident and pull a horribly mangled, blood-drenched man from the wreckage. The man’s eyes had rolled back beneath his crimson-soaked brow, his limp and swelling tongue parting his lips. He looked beyond dead; nothing more than a slab of meat that his father leaned over like a hungry scavenger. But there had been magic in his father’s hands. His old man had stopped the bleeding from the gusher beneath the man’s armpit and seemingly brought him back to life right there on that dirt crossroads in the middle of nowhere without the help of a dozen nurses and surgeons. It was at that precise moment that he knew there was nothing in the world he wanted more than to be just like his father.

  He had raced through his undergraduate studies and graduated at the top of his class in medical school. It had been a rough road; sacrificing his personal life for the sake of his professional. First dates had been few and far between, and there had been only a handful of seconds. But it had never felt as though he had given anything up because his heart had always been in it, at least until he was off on his own.

  It wasn’t until the end of his residency that he got to see the true face of modern medicine, the business of it. And it was enough to turn his stomach. Patients in need of treatment were being turned away because they couldn’t afford to pay. Others were being shipped across town, regardless of the consequences, to the community wards. He had been there at the start of what would become managed care, as doctors and their practices, hospitals, and patients alike were being bought and sold on the open market. Profits were being placed ahead of patient welfare.

  The bottom line was filling the morgue.

  After finishing his tenure in the emergency room, the thought of negotiating his private practice with the financial powers that be was more than he could stomach. His own father had been forced to close the doors of his practice, and managed care had, in all senses of the word, killed him. The now old man’s practice had crumbled in a matter of years and he sat alone in a folding chair in the wild grasses in front of the trailer staring off into the woods, while Harry’s mother had slowly died from abandonment in that desolate double-wide in the middle of nowhere.

  Being a doctor was supposed to be noble. To be able to help give life, to save life, was a gift bordering on the divine. It was never meant to be a business;
never meant to be proprietary.

  And there he found a little loophole, without sacrificing his soul.

  He had taken a post working for the state. They had been bowled over receiving an applicant with his credentials. Understandably, the best and the brightest were lured to the private sector by the calling of fame and fortune. Those that somehow couldn’t cut it were the hiring pool which the state had no choice but to fish from for the low paying jobs and the long hours they were forced to demand.

  Harry became a field operative for the State of Colorado Medical Advisory Board. His first salary had been $18,500 in 1972, paltry even for the times, but it had been closer to the job his father had done decades before, and as close as he was going to come to truly helping people without forsaking the Colorado wilderness for some mosquito-infested grass hut on the snake-infested banks of the Amazon.

  He followed up on the care of children within the system: in orphanages, foster homes, and recent adoptions, providing care when need be, but mainly ensuring that their health and physiological needs were being met by their state provisions. He treated inmates in prison on a rolling schedule, and helped to oversee worker’s compensation claims in some of the larger meat packing plants in the area. These were the dregs of society, the people that corporate medicine would rather see lying beside the road in a gutter full of blood than on one of their pristine, stainless steel tables being treated by one of their overpriced surgeons. These were Harry’s people.

  It wasn’t his initial calling, but it was enough. He could wake up every morning and look himself in the eye. And he knew that he was helping people, especially those who actually needed it.

  Then, one bitterly cold morning, on a day not so different from this one, everything had changed.

  He could remember tossing the manila envelope with the case information onto the passenger seat of his tan Buick Century and sliding behind the wheel. Watching his breath form a frozen cloud in front of his eyes, staining the inside of the windshield, he had turned the key in the ignition several times before the car had finally come to life. The snow had just begun to spit lazily from the barely clouded sky at that point, just tiny flakes at first, and the wind looked bored, simply kicking them across the frozen roads. Everything from the lawns to the houses, to the faces of those that hurried along the sidewalk and the clouds swelling overhead, was the same bland shade of gray.