head rolled slowly from side to side, his eyelids batting as he struggled to regain consciousness.
“Mmphrm,” Scott groaned, his lips peeling back from his bared teeth. His gums were a sickly shade of gray.
“Try not to talk,” Harry said, stroking the man’s forehead with the dampening towel. “Your body needs to rest.”
With a jolt, Scott’s eyes opened wide, a quick breath bursting through his clenched teeth. He sat upright, his head whipping from side to side as he tried to make sense of the situation.
“Where am I?” he shouted, panting, his eyes threatening to roll back into his head.
“You’re at my house,” Harry said calmly. “You just showed up at the door.”
Scott turned to look at him, his brow furrowing while he fought for recognition. Slowly, his look assuaged, his eyes softening. He laid his head back on the pillow. His eyes closed with a will of their own, and he spoke in a whisper.
“I saw him…”
“Saw who?”
“Don’t know… killed Brian…”
“Don’t talk now,” Harry said. “You need to get your rest.”
“Tore him in half…”
“Shhh.”
Scott slipped back into the unconscious, his lips parting for his open mouth to breathe.
Harry stared at him, wanting to know… no, needing to know more. But he knew that he was going to have to wait, as whatever Scott had been through that night was obviously something incredibly taxing, on both his mind and his body.
The kettle whistled from the kitchen, the ringed lids bouncing up and down as the steam burst past it. Rising, he walked into the kitchen and grabbed a potholder from next to the stove, using it as a buffer between his hand and the scalding wooden handle. Walking it over to the sink, he set it down on the Formica, pulling two mugs from the cupboard above. Pouring the tea into the mugs, he set the kettle in the sink and grabbed the mugs by the handles, walking back into the living room.
He set the mugs on the floor, waiting for them to cool, and walked back toward the kitchen, slipping down the hallway into his bedroom. He opened the closet door and changed into a button-down shirt and a pair of slacks. Stepping into a pair of slippers, he wandered into the hallway and took his first left into his study.
He flipped the light switch and walked straight to the back of the room to the desk, pulling open the top drawer. Producing a thick black leather-bound notebook, a pen lodged in the spiral spine, he walked out of the room, turning off the light. He rounded the doorway, and headed back to the kitchen. Sitting on the floor next to Scott, he opened the book to the most recent entry and brought the pen to the page.
He began to write; his cursive tightly jumbled and most likely only legible within his own mind. He wrote down every word that Scott had said as best as he could recall, glancing up at the clock atop the mantle to note the time.
The whole house moaned as the wind seemed to rock it from side to side, a loud thunk coming from the hall closet where something fell from the shelf to the floor, banging against the closed door. Harry flinched, the noise catching him off guard.
The wind ripped the decaying shingles from the roof, dragging them across the wooden surface like fingernails, before tossing them into the rapidly piling snow in the yard. A shutter broke free from its bracket beside one of the windows off the main room, slamming repeatedly against the side of the house, threatening to break through the glass.
Leaping to his feet, Harry raced to the window, sliding up the bottom pane of glass. He grabbed the shutter, not knowing what exactly he was going to do with it once he had it, but sure that the last thing he needed was for it to shatter the window. He gripped it tightly, the fierce wind struggling to tear it from his grasp. There was a loud creaking noise, and then a metallic snap. The wind tore the shutter from the siding and wrenched it from his grasp. It landed atop the snow, the wind picking it up and tossing it into the air several times before it caught in the cluster of branches of one of the evergreen shrubs.
There was movement out there, in the night. Barely visible behind the mat of flakes that filled the sky, but he could tell that it was there. A dark shape stood in front of the cluster of spruces that lined the back of the yard. It was barely visible, and only for a moment as the swirling snow washed it away, leaving only the emptiness of the night.
Closing the window, he pulled his body back through. Glancing one last time across the yard, he pulled the curtains tight, settling back into his seat on the floor. He had just begun to write in his notebook when Scott spoke.
“How did I get here?”
“You tell me.”
“The last thing I remember, I was wandering down the road, trying to keep my arms across my chest so as not to lose any more heat.”
Harry paused, nibbling the inside of his lip.
“What did you see?” he asked, peering up over the top of his notebook.
“I saw him rip Brian in half,” he said, a puzzled look sweeping across his face. “No, I didn’t see him. Brian just floated up into the air and was ripped apart.”
“Who’s Brian?”
“An old friend from when I was younger. Brian James. I haven’t really talked to him in… well, a long time.”
“Start at the beginning, and spare no detail,” Harry said, raising a mug from the floor and handing it to Scott, who sipped loudly.
Harry wrote in his journal, abbreviating everything that Scott said so that he could get it all down without forcing him to pause. His eyes never left the page as Scott spoke, starting with lying in bed trying to sleep. The lines of wear on his forehead deepened, creasing into furrows of shadow on his pale face cast by the dancing light from the flickering fire.
“… And then I just woke up here,” Scott finished, setting the mug back on the floor and looking at Harry.
Setting the notebook down on the floor and closing the cover, Harry rubbed his eyes and stared at Scott, whose heavy eyelids drooped half way over his irises. Sighing, Harry rose from the floor and walked into the kitchen.
“Get some rest,” he said without turning around. “We’ve got a busy day ahead of us tomorrow.”
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THE BLOODSPAWN
Michael McBride
© 2004 Michael McBride. All rights reserved.
PART EIGHT
Section 8
X
Monday, November 14th
11 a.m.
Scott turned the handles on the wall, the water that steamed from the nozzle slowing to a drip. Opening the opaque glass door, the stepped out onto the blue bath mat and hurriedly dried himself with his towel. Wiping a
