still hanging on the wall. It was so filthy you could not read what year it was from. The only good thing they’d found so far was that many of the boards had fallen from the windows and light came in. Dreary grayish light, but light all the same.
“This way,” Alona said, slapping the crowbar in her hands.
They followed a passageway near the stairs and it led into what might have been a dining hall in the old days. A few long wooden tables arranged in the center. A variety of initials and profanity were scratched into them. Probably by kids, but certainly not while the orphanage was in operation. The place had been closed before Chrissy was born, but there were plenty of stories of it floating around Witcham. And they all agreed on one thing: Bleeding Heart had been a grim, unpleasant place.
Alona led them away and through a high stone archway.
“The chapel,” she said.
Yes, of course. It had been a Catholic-run orphanage and you could almost hear the swishing of the nun’s habits, hear the sound of their sticks colliding with the backsides of naughty children. This was not a place that had been intended to be charming or comforting. It had been rigid and well-ordered and utilitarian, run by stern women who saw no love or joy in what they did.
The chapel was dusty and dirty in there, cobwebs hanging from the ceiling. The plaster walls rotted through with great holes. Things scratching and skittering in them. You had to descend a few short steps to get in there and Alona did, of course, dragging Chrissy with her. Not so brave now, but clutching her close like a girl with her kid sister in tow making her way through a carnival haunted house.
The smell in here was not just animal droppings and plaster rot and seeping water, but the overpowering reek of decay. Fleshy decay.
And they both saw why in the dim light that filtered in.
They were in a nest of the undead.
“Oh, shit,” Chrissy said.
Alona clamped a hand over her mouth.
The dead were everywhere, but they were not moving. Dozens and dozens of them were sprawled around like heaps of laundry. They laid singly and in piles, many right on top of others. Men, women, children. Even a few babies clutched in the spidery arms of their mothers. All of them were a ghastly white, their faces and arms and exposed parts set with sores and contusions and lumpy, cancerous growths. Many were covered in flies and some were riddled with worms and crawly things. Some wore dirty clothes, others were naked, and still others had draped themselves in mildewed sheets. They looked like they were just sleeping…some in fetal positions, others with arms thrown over their bosoms or over their faces, limbs awry…but they weren’t sleeping.
Chrissy and Alona were absolutely silent and they could hear things scuttling in the walls, but no breathing. Not so much as a whisper. Nothing but the buzzing of flies. This was some form of cold dormancy. They were essentially dead, but they would not stay that way and they might wake at any moment.
Alona tugged on Chrissy’s arm, pointed.
There was something up on the altar.
A form leaning up there like a wooden dummy, as dormant as the rest. A man…or something like a man. A wraith dressed in an oily leather coat with a bloody gray shift beneath. His feet were bare, bloodless and mottled. But what was worse was that you could not see his face, for he wore a mask. A death mask that must have been peeled off a corpse…a seamed and cadaverous thing with the eyes cut out and an intact scalp of greasy black hair that hung to the shoulders. The lower portion had been cut away so that its wearer’s mouth was unimpeded. Chrissy could not see much of the face beneath, only that the skin had been peeled away from its jaw and mouth, and what was left was muscle and ligament and sharp yellow teeth clenched together.
The sight of that thing made her want to scream.
Made her want to slit open her wrists and drink lye and gouge out her eyes with a dull knife. Anything, anything to be spared the horror of looking at it and the horror that would come when it actually moved.
There were flies crawling all over it, buzzing and droning, rising in a dark, busy mist and descending once again to feed and lay their eggs. Already, it seemed, some of those eggs had hatched and you could see them moving under that mask.
Yes, this was the messiah.
She could not know that, but she did not doubt it.
This was the messiah and scattered at his dead feet were coffins. Well, maybe not coffins, more like simple wooden crates, but they no doubt served the same purpose. There were no lids on any of them and even in the dusty light, you could see the awful things that slept in them, waiting for their master to call them up like genies from bottles and evil spirits from beyond the grave.
No, no, this was too much.
Just too fucking much.
Chrissy could not let herself be here when they began to wake, when those corpses rose and grinned at her with melting, marble-white faces. And she must be far away when that wraith pulled itself down from the altar. For if she saw such a thing move…what mind could remain intact after such a vision? It would be like gulping down a bottle of Drano and expecting your guts not to burn and liquefy, come splashing out your mouth in a blue foam.
She would go insane.
And, yes, she would welcome it. Because the deepest, blighted depths of her mind would be infinitely preferable to what would come next. If that monstrosity got its hands on her, her end would be legendary in its agony and duration.
Alona guided her quietly from the chapel and back into the passage beyond. The need to run was strong, but Alona would not have it. Chrissy could feel how tense she was next to her, her muscles standing taut under the skin.
When they got back to the lobby, Alona directed her towards the stairs.
“Maybe we should just go outside,” Chrissy suggested.
“No, we’ll stick to our plan. We’ll hide amongst them. Help will be coming. It’s only a matter of time. I want to be alive when they get here.”
They started up the stairs, pressing their feet down carefully. The steps creaked, but held. Some of them were in such terrible shape, it did not seem as if they could hold much more weight. They went up slowly, tense and expectant, not knowing what they might be walking into. You could hear the water falling outside, hear it running through cracks and crevices and dripping. Rats scuttled and scratched in the walls. But rats were hardly a threat to them.
Chrissy held onto Alona as they went up. She was trembling and sweaty, literally on the verge of falling to pieces. Fear had not just entered her through every pore, but had consumed her. She could almost smell its thick, noxious odor clinging to her. If any place in the world could realistically be called haunted, it was this place. Yes, maybe it was just brick and wood, mortar and nails and marble…but it seemed so much more. You could almost smell the evil seeping from every crack and wormhole, a gassy and violent odor like the excrement of ghosts, a spiritually rancid emanation that made your guts curl-up in your belly.
Nothing wholesome, nothing good could smell like that.
Up they went, expecting the worse but getting nothing but the sounds of rats scampering and scratching in the walls. The corridor at the top was very shadowy, the air moist and almost slimy. They checked it out room by room, but saw nothing dead or nothing pretending to be that way.
“Listen,” Alona suddenly said.
Chrissy did, her heart hammering. She heard nothing at first, but she was feeling everything. The orphanage was like some rotting coffin they had been thrust into. All around them she was sensing movement, crawling shadows and creeping things. It was all brewing darkly in her soul, making her want to scream so badly that she had to press a hand to her mouth.
And then she heard it.
Behind them, maybe coming up the stairs, a rustling and secretive sound as something dragged itself upward. As it came, a hot and flyblown odor wafted from it, becoming stronger and more nauseating by the moment. She could hear something like fingernails being dragged up the staircase banister. A clotted, rasping noise that might have been breathing. Dear God, any moment now it would be upon them, a grinning and morbid
