“My God,” Harry whispered, surveying the blood-stained ground, his eyes recoiling in horror as they caught a brief glimpse of the lines of intestines that dangled from the branches of the pines like a Christmas garland.
Scott turned, looking over at Harry as his shoulders began to shake, the tears streaming from his eyes. He began to sob uncontrollably. Harry crossed the snow, kneeling beside him and resting his hand on Scott’s back, comforting him as he brought his other hand to his face to cover his mouth and nose.
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THE BLOODSPAWN
Michael McBride
© 2004 Michael McBride. All rights reserved.
PART ELEVEN
Part 11
Chapters 14 & 15
XIV
Tuesday, November 15th
10 a.m.
Harry peeled back the thick, hard- bound cover of the old yearbook, thumbing through the pages that were all nearly stuck together. Rifling past the freshmen, sophomores, and juniors, he settled into the senior section. All of the pictures were large and in color, unlike all of the other sections where the pictures had all been so small and in black and white. He looked over the faces one by one, until he came to page 267. There were twelve pictures to a page, three rows of four. Bringing the book closer to his face, he stared at the right hand page.
Matt Parker was the top, left picture, and the first on that particular row of four. His long hair hung over the collar of his gray and black flecked sport coat. He had an off white shirt with a blue and black marbled-looking tie. His arms were crossed across his chest, his chin tilted upwards so he appeared to be looking down at the viewer. A thin smile traced his lips, his right eye hidden behind his long bangs. He stared into the one visible eye. The page seemed to melt away behind it as a certain blackness rose from within that lone eye, resonating throughout the living room as the faint sun crept through the clouds outside, arching a thin line of light through the bay window and onto the plush carpeting. The hackles rose along his spine as he grew suddenly quite aware of how cold he was, his breath coming in short bursts.
Breaking his stare from Matt’s picture, he easily identified the one just beneath it. It was Scott Ramsey, dressed smartly in his late eighties splendor. He wore a dark suit, from the lighting it was unclear whether it was black or a navy, with a thin black tie, his chin resting on his right hand. He wore a pleasantly sincere smile that barely showed his bright white teeth, his eyes warm and charming. And compared to most of the faces he had seen so far just flipping through the book, these two should have done quite all right as far as the social scenario went.
The pipes in the walls hummed as Scott started the shower upstairs. Harry had insisted that he try to sleep, or at least lay down for a couple of hours to try to get a little shut eye, but he knew that there was no way that he was going to sleep. His face appeared to have aged close to a decade since he had met him, barely more than a day ago. His eyes, which from the start had been so filled with life that they positively sparkled, had faded to a duller hue, more akin with his own.
He knew how difficult all of this was for him to suddenly not only have to comprehend, but to have to accept on nothing more than blind faith. After all, he himself had been forced to do the same thing so very long ago, but at least he was there for Scott. Back when he had first been forced to reckon with the evil that walked the earth, he had been completely and exhaustingly alone. Not that his plight had been any more difficult than the one that Scott now fought through, but at least there was someone to talk to, someone to sympathize with him as his world turned upside down over and over again.
Turning his attention back to the book spread out across his lap, he scanned the color pictures with his eyes, watching the names for any that he might recognize. He started at the beginning of the section with the two- page spread that featured a class photo on what appeared to be bleachers outside at the stadium. Above it was a large heading in bright blue letters, outlined in white: “Class of 1990.” His eyes wandered across the tiny faces lined up along the bleachers, but he couldn’t make out either Scott or Matt.
Flipping the page, he first scanned the listing of names along the left- hand column of the page, and then perused their faces. He crossed page after page, focusing on the pictures with first names similar to those that Scott had used to identify the friends who had died at the hands of the bloodspawn. After passing a handful of Brian’s, he finally came to the picture of Brian James. As he stared at the picture, a thin line appeared to pass over the picture from the top right corner down to the bottom left. It looked like a thin line of gray like that of the lead from a pencil, but it slowly widen, separating the colors of the picture with the white from the page beneath. It looked as though someone had torn the picture diagonally without removing it from the page.
Harry looked up, staring into the still living room, the yellowing Norfolk Pine drooping terribly, the needles falling in a circle around the hand crafter pot onto the carpet. A bewildered look etching his face. He stared back into the open yearbook at the picture. Not only was the tear mark still there across the picture, but another was in the process of forming, running diagonally from the other side to form a large “x” across the picture.
Slamming the book shut, he rifled his trembling fingers through his hair, the book falling from his lap onto the floor. Placing his quivering hand across his mouth, the air from his nostrils whistling over his knuckles, he stared down at the book on the thick carpeting.
The incessant tick- tock from the grandfather clock in the corner filled the otherwise silent room. Dust floated in swirling clouds in the stream of light from the window, but only for a moment as the next wave of the dark front rolled over the Rockies from the west, choking back the sparse rays of sun behind the black, rolling clouds. A dull whine echoed from within the walls as the water from the shower was turned off.
Harry stared down at the cover of the book. Mustering his courage, he shifted his weight, leaning over the edge of the couch with his outstretched right arm to grab the yearbook from the floor. Right before his slowly steadying hand could grab the heavy annual, the front cover peeled back, the pages flying past before finally opening wide. It stopped of its own will on one of the pages with the color pictures, the smiling faces beaming up at the vaulted ceiling of the living room. Squinting, he tried to make out the names along the line to the left. Barely able to read more than just the capital letters at the start of the first and last names, he crawled from the couch onto the floor, careful not to so much as breath on the book.
Placing a shaky hand to either side of the book on the floor, his shuddering breath blew down on the pages as a thin line began to trace across one of the pictures, just as it had the one he had been watching a moment ago. His eyes shot to the left to read the name as the line continued to scratch right through the picture from the inside of the page.
“Williams, Tim,” he read aloud.
The first diagonal line had finished its course, the second beginning on the upper right corner of the picture. Before that line was even half way across Tim’s face, another line started in the picture directly to the right. His eyes jumped to the left, landing on the line below the one he had just read: Jeremy Willis.
The tearing continued until both pictures were etched under a thick, white “x.”
Harry had only a moment to stare at the page before it changed on its own, the pages flying past until finally coming to rest between the B’s and C’s. There were only three bodies that he knew of, one corresponding to each of the three “X’s” that the phantom had had scrawled across the pictures. Staring into the smiling lines of faces, he watched for anything at all: any movement, the beginning stroke of any of the tears across the page.
But there was nothing.
There was no movement at all. Not even a single “x.”
Starting with the page on the left, Harry’s eyes stared from one face to the next, lingering just long enough
