in front of him and into the living room.
Harry’s heart felt as though it was going to burst and he fought to breathe through the onset of panic. Every muscle in his body seized at the exact same moment, twisting him from the inside out, tying knots in his back and neck. His fingernails drew blood in the middle of his palms from his tightly clenched fists. It took every iota of his courage to shuffle his feet into the kitchen so that he could peer around the corner and into the living room.
The shape stood in the open doorway, silhouetted against the falling snow beyond, his back to Harry. Long, matted hair framed the head and extraordinarily broad shoulders. Long fabric, almost like that of a trenchcoat, fell from the shoulders to an inch above the floor, the edges flapping like a cape from the wind. His hands were open at his sides; the long, thin fingers writhing like worms.
“I’ve seen you before,” Harry sputtered through his bone-dry mouth. “That night…”
The figure slowly turned, his face drenched in the thick shadows. His hair tossed from the whipping wind that screamed through the valley. He stood motionless for what seemed an eternity, and though Harry could not see the man’s eyes, he could feel their stare crawling on his skin.
Slowly, the man inched towards Harry. He seemed to glide across the floor. There was no sound from his footfall on the hardwood. Stopping a mere foot from Harry, he cocked his head and slowly extended his arm, taking Harry’s trembling hand within his own.
Harry could taste the man’s foul, pungent breath, could feel its heat on his face as the man positively towered over him. The man’s skin felt like parchment, dry and stretched taut across his bulging, knobby bones. His blood boiled like fire. It felt as though Harry’s hand was being held directly above a campfire.
Raising Harry’s hand up past shoulder level, the man leaned forward and kissed it, right in the center of the palm.
Harry dropped to his knees in pain; his face clenching tightly as tears spurted from his squinting eyes. His teeth bared as he fought back a scream. Gripping his left hand tightly in his right, he breathed as though going into labor, struggling to climb to his feet without using his hands.
The man was already through the entranceway and descending the stairs at the edge of the porch.
Crawling on the floor, using his right elbow to propel himself, Harry got to the front door and used the wall for leverage to get to his feet. Breathing heavily, his hand curled into a ball against his chest, he shuffled onto the porch, fighting back the swell of unconsciousness that tried to rip free from within, pain and shock threatening to sweep him beneath the dark swell of blackness.
The man glided across the white field, the snow swirling around him like a cyclone, heading for the edge of the trees.
“Hey!” Harry shouted through his tightly clenched teeth, but the man didn’t even turn around as he entered the wall of evergreens, disappearing behind the mass of needles.
Harry fell to his knees on the porch, the searing pain in his hand more than he could bear. Toppling onto his side, Harry’s last conscious image was of the row of foliage where the man had disappeared. A large stag with an enormous rack of antlers walked through the open field, standing at the edge of the tree line, turning to stare directly at him, its gaze lingering. Its eyes glowed beneath the thin moonlight.
Darkness rose from the depths of his soul and swept Harry beneath a black wave, the snow falling damply atop his unmoving body.
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THE BLOODSPAWN
Michael McBride
© 2004 Michael McBride. All rights reserved.
PART TWO
II
Thursday, November 11th
3:10 p.m.
Matthew Parker climbed down the two tall stairs of the long yellow school bus and stepped into the nearly foot-deep snow on the shoulder of the road. The flashing red lights from the stop sign on the side of the bus blinked across the white sheet of groundcover in front of him. He could hear the heavy thud of footsteps from behind him, thundering down the stairs of the bus as he quickly began to walk up the steep culdesac, shifting his heavy blue backpack onto his right shoulder, tugging the sleeve of his jacket back over his wrist.
He turned the black cap with the Atlanta Falcons logo atop his head around, tipping his chin so that the brim shielded his eyes from the enormous flakes of snow that fell straight down. The back of his dark blonde hair was long, falling just over his shoulders in front, his hazel eyes peering up from beneath the lowered brim.
Muffled voices chatted in excited whispers behind him, causing him to quicken his pace, walking faster to create some sort of separation. There was a whistling in his right ear as an object flew only inches from his head, landing in the snow in front of him and bouncing up the street. Before he knew what it was, there was another, coming straight over his head and landing in the street, bouncing into the air before disappearing beneath the slush. This time he got a good look at it.
It was a rock.
His teeth tattered the inside of his lip as his ire rose, his legs threatening to go limp. Shoving his trembling hands into his pockets, he stared straight ahead at the end of the culdesac, eyeing the gap between the houses at the end, where he would slip through onto the street beyond. It was another good half-mile walk to his house, as he rode a bus on a route that was not his own. The constant bullying and torment of the other kids on his bus had made the twenty minute ride so insufferable that he had been forced to find an alternate way to get to school. Sure, at seventeen he was of legal age to drive, but in order to do that, he needed to have permission to drive to school, but that was a concession his parents were unwilling to make since he had been caught skipping class.
Another rock tagged him squarely in the back, echoing through the street as it hammered the books in the pack.
“Don’t turn around,” he whispered to himself beneath his breath.
“Come on, faggot!” a voice shouted from behind him. “What are you going to do about it?”
Keeping his head down, he walked as fast as his legs would take him to the side of a tan two-story, trudging through the thick snow on the lawn to the short, twin-rail fence at the back of the yard. Scaling it, another rock nailed him in the left shoulder, knocking him face first into snow-covered buffalo grass of the field behind the house. His shoulder stung as though his scapula had cracked, and he was forced to use just his right arm to scramble to his feet. He brushed the cold mat of ice from his face and hurried on, consciously trying to keep himself from running.
Another rock zinged past his right hip, skipping off the asphalt beneath the accumulation in front of him at the end of the barren, dead-end street. Ahead, there was a deserted intersection. To the left, the steep hill that led up to his house, to the right the large grass field behind the elementary school. Once he made that turn, there was really no reason for them to follow him any longer.
Their names were John Allen and Devin Larkin, and he knew that they both lived in the block to the right, just across from the field. They had played soccer and basketball together growing up, but apparently Matt was the only one that remembered. They had never been close friends or anything like that, but had always gotten along well enough, at least until the start of last school year, Matt’s junior year.
It had all started one day, a warm and dry September morning early in the school year. Matt had met his best friend, Scott Ramsey, at the bus stop, which he could remember surprised him considering Scott lived close to a mile away and rode a different bus. They had decided that it was far too nice of a day to spend it in school, and had opted instead to go over to Scott’s dad’s townhouse, as they knew that he would be at work all day.
Scott’s parents had divorced years earlier, and he lived with his mom the majority of the time, but he still carried a key to his dad’s place. After spending the better part of the morning hanging out at Safeway, eating chocolate-covered peanuts and sour balls from the bulk bins, they had walked down to the taco place to play some
