Vampires in Devil Town (23 page)

Forty

The soul must consume itself. That was the realization Bones came to that night. Whether it is through dreams or nightmares, the soul must consume itself. There is not a third party who can extinguish that vital essence of life. That night, Bones’ soul did just that. He saw things he never wanted to see. And he realized his soul had no place else to go.
  He entered the girl thinking he had beaten her. Wouldn’t it have been something, for her to have burned him up, thinking she had won some small victory, only to realize he was in her head, destroying her from the inside? But as soon as he entered her he knew something was wrong. There was blackness. And a door stood in front of him.
  On closer inspection, it looked like the door was made of hundreds of bird skulls. There was an intense odor coming from the door. It was worse than death. It was the stink of his soul rotting. He knew that without consciously grasping it. It was an all-pervasive stink and seemed to induce a physical reaction in him only there was no longer a physical part of him to act. He opened the door because there was not any place else to go.
  The door opened into a room filled with murky light. The stink, if that was possible, was even greater in the room. Once across the threshold, the door slammed behind him. He saw things he never wanted to see. Beneath his feet, maggots squirmed across the floor. The whole floor was white-gray with them and he could feel them squirming up his legs, getting thickly caught in his leg hair. He wanted to retch but he couldn’t. It was like all the nausea just got caught in the back of his throat.
  The room didn’t make any sense. There were tables nailed to the ceiling and chairs nailed to the wall. There were bones strewn across the floor, maggots squirming over them. Thin spiderwebs brushed his face, something that had always caused chills to shoot over his spine and panic to scream through his veins. He tried to brush them away but his arms wouldn’t work. Fat spiders with skinny legs danced down his back.
  In the center of the room he saw his father raping Rain, holding the severed head of his mother in his right hand.
  He knew this was not happening but he also knew it
was
happening because there was not any going back. He tried to turn his eyes away from the atrocities in front of him but every time he turned his head it kept whirling back to the same disgusting image.
  The walls around him were black and glistening, breathing and oozing. Bulging. A hundred different shapes stretched out of them, rending the wall outward until it popped like a bubble of tar and Bones recognized the decayed corpses that emerged from it.
  They were his victims. All come to join him in this final dance of insanity.
  Bones’ soul could have lived. He knew that. If he was willing to spend eternity in this room, he could have stayed until that horrible girl died.
  But he didn’t want that. He
couldn’t
want that. And even though there was something inside of him saying this was it, this was his price for wanting to live in an eternal state of life, he chose to close the eye of his soul, blacking everything around him.
  And that was the end of Bones—soul and all.

Forty-one

His vision stained red, Jacob wondered how it was still possible he was conscious. There was not a single part of him that had not been somehow broken or mutilated.
  “Now I think it’s time we destroy his brain,” Ernst said.
  Jacob thought he would be beyond horror but he cringed at this thought. He didn’t know how they intended to do it. Would they stick something in his ear? Would they open up his skull and remove just enough gray matter to be brain damaging?
  “The Dark Fire,” he heard Ilya mutter.
  “Yes. The Dark Fire. We’ll take him in there and once he sees it he will not be able to think about anything else. Like a junky always going through withdrawal.”
  Ilya reached down and put her hand upon the stone belt holding Jacob fastened to the altar. It vanished beneath her touch and Ilya and Ernst were on either side of him, carrying him through yet another door.
  “Zack will be here shortly,” Ernst said. “And then it will be over.”
  Once through the door, Jacob heard a deep rumbling and knew this was the same fire he had seen in the video or whatever he had been shown last night. Then he remembered that the fire was never actually seen. It was implied. He hadn’t actually laid eyes on it. Last night seemed so very far away. He could barely hold his eyes open but the fire was impossible to miss.
  They dragged him across the stone floor and let him collapse in front of the fire.
  “We’re not finished with you,” Ernst said, running a long fingernail beneath his chin. “We’ll be back later. Or someone will be back later. We have better things to do than deal with weak little meddlers like you.”
  Jacob heard their footsteps retreat into the distance. He lay there on the floor, staring into the fire. It didn’t take him long to realize this wasn’t an ordinary fire. There were things behind the flames. There was a whole other world behind the flames and, suddenly, things made a lot of sense to Jacob. In a way, it was like Ilya and Ernst weren’t even responsible for all of this. It was whatever lay beyond the fire that had soiled them. It was that place or that person beyond the flame they longed for.
  Jacob wanted to laugh. This was the reason for all the disappearances. This was the reason for all the legends and all the terror. In a way, it was like an entire religion spread before him. It was a religion that both intrigued and terrified him.
  He felt the Dark Fire, or whatever lay beyond the Dark Fire, working on his brain.
  There was a green depth beyond the flame, lush grasses and thick trees, a perfect blue sky, people too beautiful to imagine and he had the distinct feeling that if he were to cross over he could have any of those people he wanted, or all of them. But he didn’t want them. He didn’t want the Dark Fire, he didn’t want Heaven or Hell. The only thing he wanted was Rachel.
  He could not die like this. He could not
become
what the man and the woman had set out to make him become.
  Yet, he had no choice but to lie there. There wasn’t any way possible he could move and that was the most disturbing thing he had encountered, coming this far only to be rendered utterly powerless. Somehow, he managed to draw a little closer to the fire. He didn’t know how he did it. His bones were gone, shattered and broken. It felt like he did it by wriggling his skin and moving like a snake. There were people behind the flame. Surely, someone could help him. Surely there had to be something.
  Within a foot of the fire, Jacob stopped, knowing it would not burn him if he continued. But it would kill him and, by killing him, it would make him its servant.
  He looked up into the towering wall of flame. A multitude of people looked back at him, their faces sallow and forlorn. They all looked relatively young. Jacob made eye contact with a frail looking boy toward the front.
  Their eyes locked and energy shot through Jacob.
  Completely unlike looking into the empty eyes of the man, Jacob saw everything within this boy. He saw how he had been lying in his bed, afraid of everything, when Ernst had entered and dragged him away.
  He let his eyes trail to other members of the pack. Jacob saw more of the same. And behind every set of eyes, Jacob could sense something else.
  Anger.
  Raw and hurting, intense as everything he had ever felt. Their stares could not put Jacob back together again but, maybe, he would be able to reach out in some way toward them. He strained his mind to think as clearly as possible.

Forty-two

Autumn screamed hysterically as Zack and Charlotte dragged her through the door. Ilya and Ernst sat on that strange blue couch, staring toward them. The sight of them sent fresh waves of panic though Autumn. Ernst stood up and came toward them. Autumn quivered at the sight of him. He did not look like the type of person who had ever had wholesome intentions. She was surprised when he reached out to touch Charlotte instead.
  “You brought her,” he said, running a finger down her cheek. “Are you ready to begin?”
  “Yes,” Zack said.
  “The other one is on her way.”
  “The other one?” Zack asked.
  “Yes. You didn’t think you got to
choose
who you crossed over with, did you?”
  Zack looked down at the floor.
  “First we need to gather our strength.” He turned to Autumn. “Two for the price of one.”
  “Yes,” Zack said once again.
  “What?” Charlotte said. “What’s going on, Zack?”
  Close to Ernst, Autumn saw he was covered in blood, it glistened on the surface of his black garb, ran in streaks down his cheeks.
  She wouldn’t have time to think anything else.
  He reached out one large hand and slashed her jugular with his sharp fingernails. Blood shot out of her neck, covering him. Zack and Charlotte let her fall to the floor. Ernst was on top of her, sucking hungrily at her neck. Ilya sauntered across the floor, kneeling down and following suit. Charlotte and Zack stood watching them as they drained Autumn, the color leaving her face, the life leaving her body, absorbed into Ilya and Ernst.
  Zack wanted to drop and join them but he knew this was not his place. Not yet. Not until the ceremony. After the ceremony, the blood would be his. His and Charlotte’s.
  But Charlotte tried to get away. She didn’t understand. Zack gripped her arm.
  “You’ll be okay,” he said.
  “I wanna go,” she said.
  Ernst sprang up from the floor, renewed and powerful, taking Charlotte down.
  “No!” Zack shouted.
  Ernst continued to sit on Charlotte, who was now screaming. He looked at Zack. “You knew she wasn’t the one. You’ve wasted your time with her.”
  “Just... let her go then,” Zack said.
  “Let her go,” Ernst laughed.
  He turned to look at Charlotte. “Do you want us to let you go?”
  “Yes,” she said.
  Amazingly, he stood up from her.
  “Well,” he said. “There you go.”
  She stood up, straightened her shirt, looked around the room, trying not to see Autumn at the mouth of Ilya. Slowly, she walked toward the front door.
  “Do you really want her to go?” Ernst said. “If she was dead, she could be your plaything. Your slave. As it stands, you may never see her again.”
  “Charlotte?” Zack said.
  And she turned. Perhaps because she thought he had changed his mind and was going to come with her.
  He crossed to where she waited.
  “One last kiss,” he said.
  “I need to go, Zack,” she said. “This is all... unreal.”
  He bent toward her and she held up her hands noncommittally. He brushed them away, leaned in, and tore out her throat with his teeth.
  Behind him, Ernst clapped and guffawed.

Forty-three

Still a good distance from the house, Rachel had seen three people wander across the field. A boy and a girl dragged another girl who was screaming hysterically. Rachel had stopped for fear of being seen. Waiting, she thought back to last night and it was almost like looking at the same scene only all of the characters had different faces. She wanted to run up to them right there and stop this, stop whatever horror was about to happen to the girl but she was afraid she would be outmatched and she couldn’t risk that prospect this late in the game. So, feeling helpless, she watched them drag the girl into the house and continued to wait.
  She crept closer to the house, more cautiously now she knew there was somebody inside of it. Were the people she saw dragging the girl the same ones who had brainwashed Bones?
  No, she thought. They couldn’t be.
  Whoever governed that house was afraid to leave. Either they were afraid to leave or they were unable to leave. Maybe they were weak. Maybe their power didn’t extend far beyond the house. Rachel thought she could stand outside the house and think about this for the rest of the night if she wanted to. Or she could crouch out there in fear for the rest of the night, not allowing herself to go in.
  There were only two things that would propel her forward. Two thoughts. The first was that, somewhere in there, there was a chance Jacob was still alive. If the house had remained crumbled after burning down, she wouldn’t have had that thought. Hell, she might have abandoned everything altogether and gone running home. But the fact that the house built itself back up only meant she now had someplace to go. Once again, she had a goal. Her second reason for not merely sitting outside of the house was the fact she
knew
she had been there before. She had sensed its power. That night two years ago when she had stood on the porch. Had that really been the beginning of all this? No, it hadn’t. Only for her. For her and Jacob, that had been the definitive beginning and she wanted to make tonight the definitive ending.
  Still, Rachel found herself terrified at what she might find inside. Would it be worse than last time?
Could
it be worse than last time? Those creatures who had wanted to do things to her?
  She waited for only a few moments, taking in the stillness of the night around her. It may be the last time she saw it, she told herself. She breathed in the fragrant fall air, thought about how much she had always loved the night, and vowed she would come out through the door or she would die trying to kill the things that had terrified her and Jacob and countless others.

Forty-four

The two stood up slowly from Autumn’s corpse, now even more covered in blood than they had been. Zack drank greedily of Charlotte’s neck and sex. His pants around his buttocks, he buried himself in her dying heat, his tongue lapping at the gaping wound in her neck, not caring that Ernst and Ilya were free to look on.
  “Upstairs,” Ernst said.
  “Upstairs?” Ilya asked.
  “Yes,” he said. “That is where it has to take place. Follow us.”
  Ernst moved slowly toward the couch, reaching under the cushion and grabbing the
Leaves of Six
.
  Ernst stood over Zack.
  “Finished?” he said.
  Zack continued to suck and hump away.
  Ernst swatted the back of his head with the book.
  Zack stood up from the corpse, buttoning himself and wiping the blood from his chin.
  “Follow,” Ernst said.
  Zack followed them up the stairs to the bedroom.
  “Shouldn’t the ceremony be performed near the Dark Fire?” Ilya asked.
  “Soon,” Ernst said. “The Dark Fire will be all around us.”
  “Just tell me what I have to do,” Zack said.
  “It’s quite simple really. Ilya and I are going to lie here on the bed and you are going to drink us until there is nothing left. You are to start with Ilya. The other will arrive in a few minutes and you may need my help to subdue her. Together, you will drink. Then our bodies are to go into the flames of the Dark Fire and all will be complete. You will have what you want and we will have what we deserve.”
  Ilya and Ernst lay down on the bed, placing the book between them. Zack didn’t really understand what the purpose of the book was. He could sense their anticipation and he was in a hurry to get this over with himself.
  Ernst said, “You already have the powers of a Devil, although they may need a little refinement. What you will be getting when you drink our blood is immortality. It is up to you how you choose to use that although, let me warn, you there will be great demands placed on your sanity and your morality. Demands that you have never known before. You will become a house for one of the Old Gods.”
  “I’m ready,” he said.
  “It’s best if you drink from the neck,” Ernst said, running his finger down Ilya’s ivory skin.
  “Yes,” Zack said, kneeling down beside the bed, placing his mouth on Ilya’s neck.
  He sunk his teeth into Ilya’s flesh. His eyes rolled back as her blood, centuries old, flooded into his mouth. His tongue came alive. It was like drinking aged wine.
  The house trembled, rumbling from deep down.
  “This isn’t supposed to happen,” Ilya said.
  “We need to finish this quickly,” Ernst said. “Drink. Drink.”