HELLS GRACE

Part 13

Chris screamed first before a wide splatter of his blood caked the left side of his face.

Some of it went to Eliza; she could feel it enter her mouth and stick to her teeth. Maxine sliced through muscle, fascia, ligaments and then the bone. One hand gripped hard on Chris’s wrist while the other sawed through flesh.

The sight of the blood made me dizzy. Not because I had vasovagal syncope (I had grown accustomed to the sight of blood for the past few days) but because of the euphoric fear seeping out of every pore in his body. That’s new. More and more, I’m growing as a dungeon, feeling and experiencing new things and literally tasting fear almost sent a shockwave through my brain. And then there’s another feeling.

Pain.

Fear AND pain.

Appetizers to their essence.

The two major things that battered their Resolve into a deep red, and Chris’s Resolve was hugging the border of it. Fear and pain led to despair and suffering, the two things that feed a Death Core. A fulfilled dungeon is a happy dungeon. Isn’t that what Elvis said? Feed the core with suffering, and the System becomes reliable to my whims.

How old am I now? Three days old? What would fear taste like when I am eighteen, the same age as my former human self? I could feel the knife tearing through Chris’s flesh, but instead of screaming maddeningly at the pain (as Chris was doing), it was like eating a good movie theater butter popcorn or drinking a damn good milkshake. It’s like sitting at the beach in the summer with a great book in hand, feeling the warm water and sand wrapped around my ankles as the tides reeled back into the sea—a happy day.

A good day.

“More,” I told the demon, my breath shaking. “Make this one last.” It surprised me I said it out loud, but the decision had been made. Maxine did as she was told, taking her time sawing through Chris’s arm and the pain was another jolt down my spine, and I reveled in the violence; my vision dimmed for a moment as the thrill of it washed over me.

Chris was not part of the cult, I thought. He was not a criminal like Leo and his goons. In the System’s eyes, he was deemed an innocent (and not a target of Elvis and the Elders). His pain and suffering shook my domain. It’s the same pleasure I experienced during Maxine’s murder spree in Green Hill, only a hundred-fold stronger and much more potent. The innocents who died there fed me right up until sundown. I still had the aftertaste of the old man who shed off two essences when he died. He had been the best meal I had since. There was also Eddie, and he came a close second.

Would Chris shed two essences for me?

I swatted the idea away of killing him right now. It's too soon for that. He had other purposes, one that involved a cop and her lover, and the despair she would experience would be glorious.

As if the demon could feel my intentions, Maxine pulled hard on Chris’s half-dismembered arm and pressed the blade harder through the last bands of muscle and, in one loud squelch, tore off the limb from his elbow. A final spurt of blood splattered through the gap as Zack finally pushed against the end table and shut the door.

“Got your arm!” Maxine sang excitedly, waving Chris’s arm around.

Chris couldn’t—wouldn’t—stop screaming. He scooted away from the door across the end table and jumped. Eliza shrieked when she saw the bits of flesh still dangling from Chris’s crimson stump. Zack turned a much paler shade of white like he would be sick.

But Chris didn’t notice the pool of blood (and there was a lot of it) on the floor, and he slipped. He tried to hang on to something, reaching out for the end table with his left arm, until he realized it was the limb with the missing hand. A cross of confusion and shock flickered over his expression for a split second before gravity pulled him under, and the side of his head hit the bedpost. He lay on his back, unmoving.

“Chris!” Zack shouted and ran toward him, and he, too, forgot the pool of blood. His right foot sprung outward, and he fell on his back.

Eliza was closer to him and checked his pulse. “He’s still breathing!” She said.

Zack got up on his knees and pulled out his belt. He then put it around Chris’s left arm to form a makeshift tourniquet. “Rags. Get me some rags!”

Eliza nodded and started looking through the drawers. They couldn’t hear Maxine anymore. She must have walked away somewhere, and the couple had been watching the window in case the woman tried to get in from there. They must be wondering if Maxine was that strong; could she open the window?

Eliza dropped half a dozen shirts on Chris’s chest. “This is all I could find.”

“This is fine,” Zack said, picking one of the shirts and ripping it apart. He tried to stop the bleeding on Chris’s arm, but it kept getting soaked with his blood.

“Don’t worry,” I said to them, even though they couldn’t hear me. “He’ll be fine.”

I spent three hundred crystals for a lesser healing potion to stop the bleeding. Purchasing healing items as a Death Core was mighty expensive and bank-breaking. The good ones alone were the price of five kills. After all, my purpose was not to heal but to slaughter.

Potions, especially magical potions, did not exist on Earth, so I weaved the item to make it look like Zack’s makeshift tourniquet. Zack and Eliza were piss poor at detecting arcana, even when it was happening in front of their eyes. Eventually, Chris’s bleeding stopped.

What would Rebecca do if she found her husband was missing an arm? That should break her Resolve. Humans have great empathy for the people they love or the ones they consider important to them. Though she was cheating with another man, she still thought of Chris as someone important in her life. If her Resolve doesn’t break from this, I will have a tougher job getting rid of her. She had better training with weapons than the other surviving cultists.

Rebecca was going to die first.

“He’s out,” Zack said, pressing two fingers under Chris’s jaw.

“How are we going to get out of here?” Eliza cried. “We have to get Danny!”

Zack’s brows furrowed, and he marched toward the vanity, picked up the chair, and smashed it against the window.

A tiny spider-web crack spread from where the chair’s leg hit the glass. Zack stepped back and approached the crack, touching it with his hand.

“The hell? Who puts tempered glass for a cabin?” Zack muttered.

Eliza started praying under her breath, a comfort to her as fear took hold of her body. Her Resolve stripped away faster than she could roll the prayers off her tongue.

Still, no gods nor angels to protect her.

A child’s excited giggle broke through her prayer, and she and Zack whirled around to the door. Danny knocked loudly before running toward the living room.

“Danny!” Zack bellowed. "No! Don’t go out there!”

Zack ran toward the door, pushing away the end table, and ignored Eliza’s squeaking cries to stop, tears flowing down her cheeks. She was smarter than she let on, though she couldn’t warn Zack properly, the words stuck in her tongue, but she knew that Danny was not Danny behind that door. It was something else.

Something demonic.

Zack managed to push the end table away and open the door, pausing inside the door frame. Now that the door was out of the way, the hallway was empty, and Zack had second thoughts. Eliza crept toward him on tiptoes and peered into the hallway behind his shoulder.

“Did you see Danny?” Eliza whispered a small hope that she was wrong.

Zack shook his head. He gestured over to the now dimly lit living room where, no doubt, Maxine was waiting.

“Oh God,” Eliza sighed. “That wasn’t Danny.”

Zack remained silent.

“There’s a back door,” Eliza pointed out. “Should we—”

“—Yup,” was all Zack said.

They crept along the hallway, careful not to make a sound. It’s pretty obvious that they were outside the room already, given Zack was very loud when he pushed the end table aside and grabbed the doorknob. But Maxine stayed where she was in the living room, waiting. The demon aimed to strip away more layers of the delvers’ Resolve.

Zack and Eliza reached the door. I’ve never seen a man grab a doorknob and pull it open so fast it almost gave him whiplash. They barely made it five steps out of the door when Eliza yelped and pointed at something—someone—by the tree line.

Goliath stood halfway out from behind a tree with his faded white fox mask, holding his giant double-bladed axe on the side. He tilted his head as if curious and almost amused to find the couple out of the cabin.

Like they did something wrong.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Like they broke the rules.

“Fucking hell,” Zack whimpered and stopped in his tracks. I could read the gears turning inside his head on how strong (and fast) he could knock the big man down.

Zack was neither big nor small, leaner than average, though I reckoned he must be fast. He might be able to avoid Goliath’s axe swings and escape. But then he had Eliza with him, and he didn’t have a weapon.

“Back. Back,” Zack whispered.

They scrambled toward the back door and closed it shut. Zack peered through the window and saw Goliath standing where he last saw him, unmoving.

“Who is that guy?” Eliza asked.

“Must be the guy who knocked out Chris,” Zack said. “He’s not moving. I think he’s playing with us.”

“I don’t care if he’s playing with us. Danny is still out there.” Eliza’s jaw hung open. “Wh—what if he’s got Danny?”

“Don’t think like that,” Zack hissed. He pulled the car keys out of his pocket. “We’re gonna get to the car.”

“What about Danny?”

“We’re gonna get him, El. Let’s get to the car first.”

“There’s two of them. How are we gonna get past two of them? We don’t even have weapons.”

Zack took out the boxcutter they used earlier to free Chris and gave it to Eliza. There’s still a considerable amount of the blade left inside, which could shiv someone with it and hit a vital organ. Zack sauntered over to the mud room, catching sight of a ski pole sticking out from behind the open cabinet. He pried it loose, bundled in there by a bunch of jackets, boots, and supplies. With a nod, he moved down the hallway again, and Eliza had no choice but to follow him.

They walked past the open bedroom and found that Chris was still lying there in his own pool of blood. His chest rising and falling slowly. Zack gave Eliza a frowning look. They were going to have to leave him. None of them were equipped to protect a fully injured and unconscious man while they had to find Danny. Chris was deadweight.

“We’re gonna call for help,” Zack whispered, trying to reassure her.

Eliza bit her bottom lip; Maybe she thought that wouldn’t happen. If, by some miracle, they managed to escape and get back to Point Hope, Chris would probably be dead already, tortured by Maxine and whoever that big guy was. Guilt warmed her cheeks. She gave Chris a final glance before she and Zack moved toward the living room.

They found Maxine sitting cross-legged in the middle of the room, facing the fireplace. The roaring fire cast her still shadow across Zack and Eliza’s faces. Zack took another step in, and the floor creaked under his weight.

“You are the dancing queen, young and sweet, only seventeen,” Maxine began to sing softly as if singing to a baby. “Feel the beat from the tambourine…” In her cradled arms was Chris’s dismembered limb. Zack and Eliza noticed it right away.

Without turning around, Maxine smiled and forced Chris’s fingers to bend into a fist, leaving his index and middle fingers pointing upward. She parted her lips and took both fingers in her mouth. Letting out an audible moan, she sucked on Chris’s fingers, in and out, going as deep as she could for the back of her throat.

“Possessed,” Eliza whispered. That’s what Chris described it—a possession. No normal person would do such a vile thing unless Maxine were experiencing some psychotic break, but she didn't know the woman that well. Eliza’s eyes flicked around the room as if searching for a demonic face leering over her; goosebumps traveled up her arms to the nape of her neck.

Zack began to approach her.

Maxine straightened her back. “See this, Zack?” Maxine’s sweet, almost Stepford-wife voice was gone, replaced by the demonic entity that had puppeteered her for the past few days. Its resonance reverberated angrily across the living room, sending Zack and Eliza frozen where they stood. “I can suck your big white cock better than your sidepiece.”

Zack raised the ski pole over his right shoulder and slammed it against Maxine’s temple. The force sent Maxine hurtling toward the coffee table and smashed her face on the glass surface. Shards bit into her nose and cheeks; splotches of blood remained where the webbed crack was. Maxine collapsed on her back.

“Is she dead?” Eliza asked.

Neither one wanted to crouch down and check her pulse, but they didn’t see her chest rising or falling.

Maxine was as still as stone.

“I don’t think she’s getting back up,” Zack said.

“Should we get Chris?”

“We should focus on Danny first.” Zack walked toward the front door. He didn’t want to say out loud the part when if shit hit the fan, Chris was going to slow them down. “He’s still out there,” he added. He peeked through the front window, and when he didn’t see Goliath walking around out there, he and Eliza stepped out onto the front porch.

“Are you sure it’s safe?” Eliza whispered, scared that Goliath might hear them.

“Well, we’re not safe either way. Come on.”

One step, then another. Once they reached the porch’s bottom steps and entered the open terrain of the parking lot, their confidence grew even more when nothing terrible happened. No scary arrow coming out of the tree. No one was shooting at them from Chris’s missing gun. The big man didn’t rush at them from the woods. Eliza breathed a heavy sigh when her hands glided against the hood of their car. Their tires didn’t even look like it had been slashed to hinder their escape.

“Our tires are good,” Eliza said. “At least from what I can see.”

“That’s stupid of them,” Zack said instinctively. “But hey, it’s our luck. Get in.”

“What? What about Danny?”

“I’ll go get him.”

“Alone?”

“You gotta keep the car running.”

“What if the big guy targeted me instead?”

“He’s got Danny. I think he’s gonna be busy watching over him than getting you. He can’t be at two places at once.”

“It feels like you’re using me as bait!”

“Danny is the bait, El. I’d rather you be in the car behind the wheel once I grabbed Danny. Then, we’ll drive the fuck out of here.” Zack pushed the keys into Eliza’s hand. “This won’t take long. I promise.”

“But how are you gonna find Danny in the dark?”

As if on cue, Danny let out a wail. “Daaadddyyy!” The boy screeched. “Help! Daddy! Help! El! Help me!”

The boy definitely had it in him, I thought. Even I was convinced that Danny was in danger, though I suspected a little bit of the System exerted some influence to make it look believable. Perception was everything. If not, Danny Bird would make for a great Hollywood child star if he would get over the traumatic events tonight, seeing as he would not remember ninety-five percent of it.

“Zack…” Eliza called out. She could smell a trap. It didn’t sound like Danny was so far away. The boy was maybe two hundred feet away.

“I know,” Zack said, face hardening. “I see a shed over there. Keep the car running, babe. I’ll be right back.”

“Please,” Eliza whimpered. “Come back to me safe, alright? Both of you.”

Eliza climbed behind the wheel and started the car. She watched Zack creep toward the shed and disappear inside. For a moment, she thought that something terrible had happened to him inside, maybe Goliath had gotten him, but he saw the door swing open again, and Zack stepped out. He carried a baseball bat and what looked like a nail gun around his waist.

“Please be safe,” Eliza murmured.

Using his phone’s flash as a flashlight, Zack entered the woods.

----------------------------------------

“Danny?” Zack called out in the darkness, swaying the bat and his phone’s light around.

He was smart enough not to use the nail gun. Those barely could pack damage beyond twenty feet. Sure, it would hurt, but rarely would it stop a charging guy like the Goliath. These weren’t the power-actuated version, as the air compressor’s pressure was too low. They were meant to board nails against wood. Not concrete. It’ll do considerable damage once pressed against something—or someone—if Zack was unlucky enough to be near or in a scuffle. But he didn’t plan on doing that. He was a baseball star in high school (based on the various Facebook posts from fifteen years ago that he posted again on his feed as memories), so he was very comfortable wielding the bat.

“Danny? Where are you?” He yelled out again.

It was a death sentence, he knew. Calling out into the dark would alert the killer of his location. But he was using Danny as bait anyway, and he didn’t care if the bastard knew where he was stomping around. He needed to learn where his son was. The killer would stay closer to his son than him, biding his time until Zack reached the boy, and then that’s when the killer would strike. But Zack would be ready for him. He had to be if it meant saving his son’s life.

“Daddy!” It was faint, but he heard it.

Zack’s heart skipped a beat, and he bolted to where he heard it. “Danny!”

Danny’s cries were getting louder as he headed west. He was cautious where he stepped. For all he knew, the killer might have set up traps, and I watched him check where he was going by aiming the phone’s flash on the ground. Whenever he found a sketchy spot, he would stop and assess it for a few seconds before going around it just to be safe.

Goliath didn’t set any traps where Danny was, but it was amusing to watch Zack stumble around, paranoid with each step he made.

“Danny, where are you?” Zack yelled as he broke through a small clearing. He was sure this must be the place, and he stopped in his tracks, looking around at every dark corner and hoping to catch a glimpse of his son.

“Up here! Up here, daddy!”

Zack aimed the light upward and illuminated Danny, straddling one of the branches twenty feet above the ground. He didn’t know how Danny got up there, and the boy was not known to be a climber. I could see the confusion on his face, but at least he had found his son.

“Don’t move!” He screeched. “Stay right there!”

“I’m—I’m slipping!” Danny cried. He gave me a glance for affirmation that he was doing a good job. That he was the best pirate that ever lived. He made his father scared out of his wits, and for some odd reason, he found it very funny. Still, he forced down the smile that almost crept up his lips and released a shaky breath. “I’m scared!” He said.

A damn great actor, I thought again.

Throwing caution into the wind, Zack began to climb. “I’m coming!” He said. He stopped rationalizing how Danny ended up on top of the tree, but he must have reckoned he was trying to escape the killer—a vestige of a primal instinct ingrained within our human DNA.

To escape a predator, elevation is safety, I thought.

But Zack didn’t have to know that the System placed Danny there. He didn’t have to know that Goliath had been watching Eliza from the treeline while he was out stumbling into the woods. He didn’t have to know that his son was springing him the best scare of his life.

When Zack reached almost seventeen feet, so close to Danny that he could almost touch the boy’s left foot, something caught his eye.

The bulky protrusion hugging the tree’s trunk was not part of the tree at all. Its sinewy limbs detached from it, extending out a pair of claws, the other two javelin-like in shape, stabbing into the bark for leverage. Zack couldn’t believe his eyes. It watched between him and Danny, and for the first time, his boy let out a blood-curdling scream he would never forget.

“No, No—!” Zack roared, reaching outward for Danny’s foot. He could sense what the creature would do, and if he could only pull himself up another foot—

Claws wrapped around Danny’s face and torso, and the creature violently yanked Danny off the branch and into the darkness of the canopy above them, trailed only by Danny’s helpless screams.

“Danny! Hold on! I’m coming!” Zack climbed higher until he heard the unmistakable tearing of flesh and bone, and Danny’s screams suddenly snuffed out.

The momentary pause of his ascent put all his weight in one flimsy branch. It broke under the strain, and Zack found himself flailing for another foothold as gravity pulled him back to the ground. The air was knocked out of his lungs; he barely had time to breathe and register what had happened when blood and guts rained down on him. He caught a glimpse of a small ball after the bloody waterfall, landing between his legs.

It was Danny’s head, mouth agape, tongue ripped out, his left eye wide with fear and the other half-open, and a deep gash across his face. Zack screamed like he never had before, scrambling away from the carnage.

Above the canopy, Old Growth cradled Danny in its arms. The boy tried to stifle laughter but failed at it. At least Zack was screaming. He barely heard Danny up there. Danny was the one who threw his fake head down and aimed it right at his father’s crotch. He was successful with that. The boy attempted to give Old Growth a high five, but the creature did not understand it and merely bumped its head with the boy’s fist. A job well done, it probably wanted to say. Danny gave me a thumbs up, having the time of his life.

Pig’s blood and guts.

I could purchase realistic-looking bloody entrails for only ten crystals for this occasion. The System mainly uses them for macabre decorations, but I thought of other purposes. Also, Danny’s fake head cost me about fifty crystals since I wanted to make it almost like the real thing.

Practical effects and a dash of magic can create a concoction of deadly perception.

Below, Zack tried to get as much of the blood out of his mouth. He crawled on his knees until he found a tree’s protruding root and hauled himself back to his feet. He refused to turn around. Refused to look at his “son.” The fall still knocked the wind out of him, his chest and spine burning from the pain, but he pushed his legs further, one after the other, and ran back to the cabin.

Toward Eliza.

Zack’s Resolve dipped down into a salivating color of crimson.