The Devil's Blood (Part 3) nosleep

Link to Part 1.

Link to Part 2.

Little happened for nearly five years following the night my brother was killed.

Nicky’s death was big news -- not just in our county but across the state as well. Even a few out of state newspapers ran the story about the teenager killed at his home in rural Indiana once the news hit the wire. Neither my parents nor I ever said a thing to the authorities about the devil’s blood because...well, who would believe it? The story offered was that Nicky had been attacked by a pack of animals -- wild dogs, coyotes, we didn’t know for sure -- and we’d found him in the very spot my father had lay him. A few animals remained, gnawing at the limbs (the story worked well because the coroner agreed in his autopsy report that the limbs appeared to have been chewed off), and Dad had taken the hose to them to get them to scatter. We put out a statement asking for privacy and understanding as we grieved the loss of our son and brother. The authorities and more than a few locals hunted for the animals for months, but after their efforts failed to find anything, the story faded. It eventually drifted to the back page of the newspaper and into history.

It’s probably little surprise that my father slipped further into his alcoholism. He did end the post-work stops at the Deer Track for a few beers with the fellas, but he drank just as much, if not more, at home. I was lucky to get more than a nod and a “Hey, Henry” from him between his coming through the door, grabbing a half-dozen beers from the fridge, and falling into his chair. The TV would be on, but he stared through it with glassy eyes, quietly taking long pulls from bottle after bottle of his beer.

Mom didn’t bury her grief. For a while, she just went into my parents’ bedroom, closed the door, and wept. I could tell she tried to do so quietly, for my benefit more than my father’s. But as I lay on my bed and gazed at the ceiling fan in the room that I used to share with Nicky, I could hear the occasional wail break free. And yet, despite the grief of losing her firstborn son, she still did her best to maintain a presence in my life. She would often knock on my bedroom door, come in, and ask me how I was doing. We would talk -- about me, about her, about Nicky. Sometimes we laughed, but -- at least for a while -- we mostly cried, holding each other as we sat on the edge of my bed, my father quietly drunk in the living room as he watched nothing.

As a result, Mom and I grew closer. She spent less time knitting those afghans and more time with me. The pain of losing Nicky never went away, of course. It never would. But we grieved, and we learned to cope. The days slowly became easier to bear.

One evening, quite shortly after Nicky had died, my father told me about the devil’s blood. He sat in his chair, but the side table was free of any beer bottles. He hadn’t been drinking. At least, not yet. He asked me to take a seat for a few minutes as I was going into the kitchen.

I sat next to my mother on the couch. She forced a smile. “It’s okay,” she said.

My father spoke. “Not your fault what happened to Nicky, Henry. Not what this is about.”

His voice was strong, clear. It wasn’t often I heard him sober. “I’d hoped you and your brother would never find it, but you did, and that’s over and done with.”

Nicky’s death certainly wasn’t just “over and done with,” but I guess it felt that way if you drank enough.

“Found that shit back in the winter of '71-'72, six months or so after we moved into this house,” he continued. "It had snowed, and I thought I'd walk around the woods a bit. That’s when I saw it.” He cleared his throat, and his left hand instinctively moved toward the side table. I could see he wanted a beer, but they were still in the fridge. Whether it was his decision to temporarily put off the nightly drinking or my mother’s, I wonder to this day.

“Anyway, I saw it. Pool of bright red blood. I thought it might be from a fresh animal kill of some kind, but there was nothing else around it. And there were two things about that blood that didn’t sit right with me.” He cleared his throat again. “First, the ground around it had no snow. I mean none. Think there was around three or four inches on the ground at the time -- not that much in the woods, of course -- but it sat within a circle of grass that didn’t have so much as a snowflake on it. Wasn’t like it was warm and had melted through the snow, either.

“Second, it wasn’t frozen. Didn’t look anything close to being frozen. Should have been, too; the thermometer next to the back door said it was 15 degrees. No trail of blood leading to or from it. Came back to the house thinking, well, something’s got to explain it. And I forgot about it.”

His eyes darted over to the side table. I knew he wanted a beer. Needed a beer.

“Couple days passed, and like I said, I’d forgotten about the damn thing. I was out putting some stuff away in the shed when I looked at the woods and remembered that blood. Curiosity and the cat and all that, I headed back into the woods to see if it was still there. And it was, looking exactly as it did the day I first saw it. Still the same size, still inside that weird circle, still fresh. I saw little waves moving across its surface.”

He nodded toward Mom.

“Came home and told your mother all about it. She wanted to see it for herself, and although I said no, no reason to do that, she had none of it. So we walked out there together, and I showed her. We came back here and talked about it. You and Nicky, you all were just little ‘uns back then. We didn’t think keeping you away from it would be a problem. We’d never let y’all get that far from the house, not at your ages. But as you got older, we talked more about it because I’d sometimes go out into the woods to see if it was still there. And it was. It never disappeared. Never changed so much as a drop, far as I could tell. So I told y’all to stay out of the woods and not go past the tree line, but there were times I thought I saw a bit of a spark in Nicky’s eyes when I said it.” Dad’s voice hitched, and he forced down a sob.

“Nicky was a good kid. Great kid. You too, Henry. Always were and still are. But I know kids don’t always listen to their parents. Thought he might decide one day to forget about listening to his drunk of a father and spite him. Hell, your mother and I talked about that damn devil’s blood and whether or not we should tell you and Nicky about it just a couple nights before…”

Another hitch in his voice, another sob choked down. As much as his drinking had driven a wedge between us, I felt a brief wave of sympathy for him.

“Son, I’m so sorry you and your brother found it. Should have said something to you boys before, and that’s my fault. It took Nicky from us, and I don’t want it to take you, too, Henry. Stay away from it. Don’t even think about it.”

I saw tears welling in his eyes, but he got up and wiped at his face before any broke free. He headed to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. I knew that signaled the end of the conversation.

As time passed, I focused on school. I knew I could do better, and I felt Nicky would be proud of me if I did. I stayed away from the devil’s blood, but it didn’t stay away from me. It slowly crept into my dreams. Sometimes, it was all just a replay of what I saw that awful night. But sometimes, I watched as the devil’s blood oozed across Nicky’s body and slowly ate away at his arms and legs.

“Henry, why aren’t you helping me?” he asked, his voice full not of pain or fear but disappointment. “I always help you, Henry. Why aren’t you helping me?”

That always bolted me from the nightmare, and I’d lie in the dark, bathed in sweat and my heart pounding in my ears. I kept the nightmares to myself -- I wasn’t yet awaking to my own screams -- as I felt it wouldn’t do any good telling my parents about them.

And then, on an abnormally warm Sunday in March of 1987, my world changed again.

I took a break from writing a paper for school and stepped outside the back door to enjoy the beautiful spring-like weather. Mom had been hanging sheets on the clothesline, but now she was as still as a stone, staring at the woods at the far end of the yard.

“Henry,” she said, not breaking her gaze, “do you think it’s still there?”

“I don’t know,” I replied. But that was a lie. I hadn’t been into the woods since the night Nicky died, but I was prefer sure that damn pool of blood was still there, fresh as ever, those ripples slowly undulating across its surface. Mom didn’t reply. Instead, she began walking quickly toward the woods.

“Mom!” I yelled. “What--what are you doing? Mom, no! No!” I caught up to her and pleaded for her to go back to the house.

She spoke as she walked. “Henry, that thing killed my Nicholas. I’m no longer just sad about it. I’m angry, and I need to see if that fucking thing is still there.” My mother wasn’t known for her profanity, and that, along with the cold flatness of her voice made it clear just how angry she was.

We reached the tree line and entered the woods. We made our way through the ground clutter, and there it was, of course, a large pool of blood in a small, circular clearing a bit further into the woods.

But it had changed. No longer was it the bright red of freshly-spilled blood. Now it was a dark crimson, and as we neared it, I noticed something else, too: I felt it. It was emanating an emotion that was unmistakeable and pure: Hate. Raging, burning hate. From what my mother said, I knew she felt it, too.

“I hate you, too!” she bellowed. She picked up nearby rocks and hurled them into the dark, bloody pool.

“I hate you, too! You took my son, you took my Nicholas, and I HATE YOU, TOO!” I don’t think she noticed that the rocks she threw didn’t bounce out of the pool and tumble off into the brush. They simply stopped where they landed, then slowly sank below the surface as if it were quicksand.

That hate, so full of rage and anger, erupted in intensity. It pulsed from that pool of blood like a throbbing migraine, and it made me feel sick to my stomach. And suddenly, it made sense: It was stronger. It had fed, and it was stronger.

“MOM!” I yelled. “We have to go! We have to get out of here!”

A spinning, thin cone of blackish maroon grew out of the pool. It stretched upward, growing, rotating like a bloody whirlwind, until it formed a long tendril every bit as tall as me. Then it shot toward my mother with incredible speed, the end of the tendril catching her in the middle of her face. Smaller tendrils snaked out across her cheek, her mouth, her eyes. Before I had time to react, the thing snapped back into the pool, yanking my mother through the air and slamming her face-first into the black blood. Her head instantly sank almost to her shoulders.

“MOM! MOM, NO!” I screamed. I ran to her, grabbed at her waist, and tried to pull her out. I had trouble getting a good grip on her because her body was convulsing terribly.

“Let her go!” I screamed. “Let my mom go!” But the pool flared with hate, a hate fueled by so much rage, so much anger, and it pulled harder. I could feel Mom slipping from my hands. Her body spasmed in agony, and a crazy thought entered my head: At least I’m not able to hear her scream. At least I don’t have to hear her screaming the way Nicky had screamed, and thank God for that.

I wept as I tried to pull my mother from the pool of blood. “Please...please let her go,” I cried. “Please....don’t take my mom...please…”

But it was useless. With each flare of hatred that the devil’s blood radiated, it pulled harder and my mother sank deeper. As her lower legs were pulled from my grasp, I collapsed to the ground and wailed. Her legs writhed for a moment longer, then stopped. The last of her slipped beneath the surface, and she was gone.

I got back to my feet. Tears streamed down my face. “WHY?! WHY, GODDAMMIT?!” I yelled at the pool. “YOU TELL ME WHY!”

And then, amidst all that hate and rage and anger, I felt something else. It was brief and left as quickly as it came, but I felt the answer to my question all the same.

Revenge.

When I told my father what happened, he covered his face with his hands and cried. I went to my room, closed the door, and lay on my bed. Despite having lost my brother and now my mother to this thing -- this “devil’s pool” as my dad had christened it -- I was strangely calm. I felt filled with a quiet, determined resolve to figure out what it was, beat it, and end it forever. That seemed a strong possibility after I felt it emanate that feeling of revenge. After all, revenge is retribution against someone for an act of wrongdoing inflicted by his hands. If I could figure out who -- or what -- that someone was, maybe I could somehow make things right and end this madness.

I must stop for today, but I believe I can wrap this up in one final writing. I must, for my sanity’s sake, as reliving these details are taking a toll. The Ambien no longer conks me out like it used to do. And when sleep eventually takes me, the nightmares are more vivid -- more tangible, more real -- than they’ve ever been. My wife...God bless her. I don’t know what I would do without her.

Until then, I will leave you with this: I unraveled the mystery of that damn devil’s blood that had taken half of my family. And in doing so, I unearthed a secret, a terrible secret that festered for years, never quite healing -- just like that blood, slowly rippling in the woods.

Submitted September 05, 2015 at 05:05AM by reaper70 http://ift.tt/1FoonKl nosleep