There was a face staring up at him from the ground, the hair matted flat with blood. The eyelids were peeled back, the dark eyes staring up into the upper reaches of the tree. The man’s severed neck had been planted into the snow, and unlike the rest of the bones, the skull was still covered with its original flesh. The mouth hung slightly askew, parted to allow for the swelling tongue. The pale, almost bluish, flesh was littered with spatters of blood like freckles.
Scott inched forward, fixed intently on the face.
“Stay right there!” Harry snapped. His voice lowered slightly and leveled off. “Look at the snow around it. There aren’t any footprints.”
Scott was barely able to shift his gaze from the head even long enough to note Harry’s observation.
“For some reason, we were meant to find it like this. Why else would there still be skin on the face?” he said, turning to Scott. “You know who this is, don’t you?”
“No,” Scott said, snorting, “How the hell should I—”
“Look very closely.”
“Listen, there’s no possible way that I—”
“Look!” Harry shouted, pointing his finger directly at the face.
Scott stared straight at it, studying the eyes, the line of the cheekbones, the curve of the mouth. And all at once, it felt as though the ground dropped from beneath him, the air in his lungs seizing and growing stale as he fought to draw a single breath. His heart raced and his hands began to tremble at his sides, the keys falling into the snow. He collapsed to his knees, his jaw growing slack as he stared with sudden recognition into the face of an old friend.
His hands stung in the snow, the ice ripping into his hot pink flesh. He stared blankly up at Harry, and then back to the ground.
“Tim…” he whispered, his gaze creeping back to his friend’s lifeless face.
“How did you know him?” Harry asked, stepping between Scott and the head.
“I haven’t seen him in years.”
“How did you know him?” Harry asked, placing his hands to either side of Scott’s face and raising his head so that their eyes met. “Was he here that night?”
“What night?”
“The night that I pulled you from that car.”
Scott just stared at Harry.
Harry breathed deeply, trying to collect himself.
“Was he with you that night?” he asked, very slowly, enunciating every syllable.
“Yeah,” Scott said, brushing the man’s hands from his face and easing himself to his feet.
“Listen to me very carefully,” Harry said, his wild blue eyes so wide they looked as though they might pop free from his skull. “It was no accident that I was there when you wrecked that night.”
“What do you mean?”
“He led me to you.”
“Who’s he?”
“It would be far too hard to explain, you’re going to have to let me show you.”
Scott stared at him for a moment, sensing Harry’s anticipation. The thoughts in his head all jumbled together, and the only answer he could muster was a simple nod.
Harry brushed past him, slipping into the shrubbery. Wrenching his gaze from Tim’s blue-rimmed, swelling eyes, Scott pushed himself to his feet and stumbled through the underbrush after him. The tips of the branches ripped at the skin on his hands and face, but he could hardly even feel it, the shock having numbed his flesh. His eyes could hardly focus on anything as he bumbled through the scrub oak, stumbling onto the path beyond. Harry was already well ahead of him, slipping into the brush on the far side of the path.
“Wait!” Scott shouted after him, suddenly remembering that his keys were buried somewhere in the snow back by where the head rested.
Harry turned to look at him as he whirled as scrambled hurriedly back through the undergrowth. Watching his feet, he hurdled the interlaced trunks of the trees, bursting through the final mass of branches and into the thin clearing behind. Following his footprints in the snow, he ducked beneath the low, drooping branch of the pine and scrambled into the small gap where his footprints stopped. He found his hand prints to either side of the large matting of snow where he had knelt, running his fingers along the frozen ground beneath the fresh layer of powder, working in and out of the buried layers of pine needles beneath. His knuckle slamming into his keychain, he bundled it within his palm and hopped back to his feet, his eyes automatically glancing toward the center of the small clearing.
There was nothing there.
He could still see the small line of dripped blood across the white surface, droplets scattered to either side, and the red-stained hole in the center where the neck had been inserted… but the head was gone. And there were no other footprints anywhere close to where it had been. Harry’s tracks were still fresh, but he never got closer than three feet from it, and there was nothing else. Not a single print.
He frantically scoured the area, searching for any sign of whoever had absconded with Tim’s head. Nothing. Not a jostling branch, a broken twig, nothing to betray the direction in which the killer had fled. But he had to be close. Scott had only stepped from the clearing for a few seconds, if that. He had to be close, had to be within his view.
Scott looked up into the trees, searching for any sign that someone was up there, a trembling, bare branch; falling snow; bark that had been stripped from the trunk as someone had rushed to climb it. Still nothing.
“What’s taking so long?” Harry asked, creeping up behind him. “Is everything all right?”
Scott just turned and looked at him, stretching out his arm and pointing his index finger straight toward where the decapitated head had once been.
Harry wore a stern look of understanding, as though he had already known that it would be gone. Nodding, he grabbed Scott by the sleeve of his coat and urged him back through the scrub oak and onto the path. Looking back one last time, Scott checked to make sure that his eyes hadn’t merely been playing tricks on him, before turning and following Harry.
The sky darkened overhead as a dark mass of clouds crept over the tops of the Rockies, threatening to spill down the face of the mountains, burying the front range beneath a new, more ominous looking storm.
home • order • blackest death • authors • community • contact • submissions • auctions • message board • live chat
mail list • customer service • bargain bin • free fiction
THE BLOODSPAWN
Michael McBride
© 2004 Michael McBride. All rights reserved.
PART SIX
PART VI
Chapters 7 and 8
VII
Sunday, November 13th
Noon
Scott’s Grand Cherokee slowed in front of the small blue house, the gravel of the driveway rumbling beneath the heavy tires. Harry clambered out of the passenger side door as Scott killed the engine, slowly opening the door and slipping from the seat onto the snow-covered red gravel. He stared at the little bungalow as he eased from behind the door, closing it behind him. It was an older house, and one he had never known even existed.
