Dark Creations: The Hunted (Part 4) (17 page)

Melissa decided that a trip to the bathroom would be a good idea given that they’d been out for much of the day, and would be out for several more hours before returning to their hotel room.  Jeff and Carol had been delightful.  But the fact that they were not expecting was a source of concern.  They did not appear to be the work of Dr. Franklin Terzini.  They lacked the spectacular beauty Gabriel maintained.  She wondered why they were on the list Gabriel had found at all.  She supposed they would find out along the way.  After using their bathroom, Melissa walked down a hallway with several doors lining it.  A strange odor lingered in the air.  She could not place it.  It was unfamiliar, but distinct.  As she walked toward the living room, the scent diminished, so she turned in the opposite direction curious about the odd smell.  Faint at first, she immediately noticed that the smell grew stronger as she neared the end of the corridor where the last door stood.  She debated opening the door, wondered whether she wanted to know what had created the now acrid odor.  She decided to turn and go back, to rejoin the group.  Perhaps an animal had died, a mouse or squirrel, and was trapped beneath the house in that vicinity.  Jeff and Carol were likely aware of it and were embarrassed by it.  She took several steps, then turned impulsively and strode back to the door.  She was not sure why, wondered whether it was a gut instinct or just curiosity, but she could not ignore the foul smell.  Jeff and Carol did not seem like the kind of people who would simply leave a decomposing animal somewhere in or around their home and ignore it.  Something was not right.  She turned the knob and took a tentative step forward as she opened the door. 

The fetid odor assaulted her nasal passages.  Rank and putrid, it was unlike anything she’d ever breathed in her life.  One hand went to her face immediately to cover her mouth and nose, while the other felt along the darkened wall for a light switch.  When finally she found it, she lifted the lever and a staircase was illuminated.  She leaned in further, her eyes burning from an unimaginably sour stench, and allowed her eyes to adjust to the light.  Then she saw it, the source of the smell.  Three bodies, with various expressions of torture permanently etched into their features, were splayed on the floor below. 

“Oh my God,” she murmured then turned to run, to get Gabriel and leave.  But as she turned, she was confronted by Carol.  And Carol was no longer smiling.  The corners of her mouth had twisted into a sinister sneer and she gripped an object in her hands.  Melissa, reluctant to break the unnerving eye contact they shared, froze and didn’t dare lower her gaze to look at it.

“Nosey bitch!” Carol spat then raised the shovel and swung with such incredible speed Melissa could not move from its path.

The metal of the spade was undoubtedly intended for her head but met with Melissa’s shoulder instead.  She twisted in time to avoid being skulled and took the brunt of the strike in her body.  It knocked her off balance, sent her tumbling down the staircase.  Each step that connected with a different part of her brought a new pain, sent it searing through her hips, knees, back and already smarting shoulder.   She landed beside the body of a woman, who in life, had likely been attractive, but now kept the eternal expression of torment and a grayed, bruised pallor.  She would have recoiled from the horror before her, if she’d had the strength.  Every part of her ached and throbbed as she tried desperately to roll from the corpse and felt herself bump into something cold and rigid.  She turned to face it and screamed.  Another battered body lay beside her and screamed silently along with her, in perpetual anguish.  She rose up on her hands and knees, despite the intense pain that shot through each of her limbs, then stood.  She took several shaky steps backward and screamed again.  The overwhelming smell, the sight of three corpses, mangled and maimed, was more than her mind could process.  The room began to spin.  She held tight to the railing alongside the stairs and climbed as quickly as she could to the door.  She tried the handle and found it locked from the outside.  She pounded at the door, screamed, “Help!  Gabriel, help me!”  But no one responded.  Footsteps did not approach to aid her or harm her further.  What she heard was utter silence.  She was trapped.

***

Gabriel sat and anxiously waited for Melissa.  Too much time had passed.  He worried she’d become ill.  Carol and Jeff had chatted with him about the lovely stretch of weather the area had been enjoying then Carol excused herself and disappeared.  When she returned, she looked frazzled and clutched a small handgun. 

“We have a problem honey,” she said. 

Though she used a term of endearment toward her husband, her voice was anything but endearing.  In fact, she had snarled the word.  He watched in shock as both of their eyes went black.  The act had ended.

“Nosey bitch went snooping and found the cellar.  And our guests,” Carol hissed.

“I told you we should’ve gotten rid of them,” Jeff argued with Carol.

“I know, I know, I just like looking at them, smelling their disgusting, useless bodies decompose,” she whined.

“Well, we’ll deal with that later,” Jeff warned then turned his attention to Gabriel. “We have a more pressing matter at hand.  And we’re going to have to call Jarrod, find out what to do with them,” he gestured to Gabriel.  “You know who they are, right?”

“Of course I do,” Carol replied.  Their names and faces were part of our original educational download.”

“Alright
Gabriel
,” Jeff snarled.  “I suppose we will have to hold on to you until Jarrod tells us what to do with you and Melissa.”

“Melissa is with our other visitors,” Carol said cryptically.

“Is she alive?” Jeff demanded.

“I guess.  Though, she did take a rather nasty fall down the cellar steps.”

Gabriel wanted to attack them, tear each of them limb from limb but could not.  A gun was trained on him, and he doubted Carol ever missed her target.  He would be powerless to help Melissa if he were dead, so he needed to be as compliant as possible.

“Let’s go,” Carol commanded and nudged him with the gun.  “Down the hall, last door on the left.”

He did as he was told and walked down a dimly lit hallway.  An odor permeated the air the closer he got to a haloed door.  Beyond it was undoubtedly the culprit of the stench, and Melissa.

“Turn the knob,” Carol ordered when he finally stood before it and she had unlocked it with a key.

He turned the knob and heard shrill screaming, Melissa’s screaming.  Somehow, sound did not travel beyond the confines of the basement and he had not heard her cries for help. 

“Gabriel!” she cried.  He watched as her expression changed when she saw Carol following him with her pistol.

Then, before he could turn and charge at Carol the door slammed shut behind him.

Jack resisted every urge he had to speed to the address Gabriel had given him. 
Gabriel
, he thought.  Days earlier he would have dismissed him as an absolute nut, yet hours ago, he had accepted what he had said.  Though Gabriel’s words should have seemed illogical, his argument irrational, Jack had known there was truth in them.  The truth Gabriel proposed was hard to believe, that a man existed among them who had begun experimentation on pregnant women and somehow had members of the police department working for him.  It all seemed unreasonable.  But reason had escaped him the moment police officers had taken his pregnant wife, ripped her from her home; from his life.  The people who were sworn to protect and serve the community had deceived him, and had held in their hands the person most cherished by him.  He did not know where they had taken her.  Their secrets had died with them.  All he’d been left with was a cryptic list of names in a computer file.  He had no idea what the connection between the people named on the list and the now-dead police officers was, but was determined to find out.  A deep-seated presentiment prickled inside him, warned that he was approaching the cusp of a great precipice, and that once there, for Dawn and his unborn baby, he would be flung headlong into an abyss where the line between reality and nightmare blurred so completely, one could not be distinguished from the other.  In the shadowy corners of his mind, he knew that a truth awaited him that could threaten life as he knew it, and held within it more complications than any war or life experience he’d ever faced.  

As he considered what his gut cautioned him of, his grip on the steering wheel tightened.  By the time he reached the street name of the person listed, his knuckles were white.  He saw the house, slowed briefly, then continued past it.  Parking in the driveway and strolling up the walkway to the front door was not an option.  He would park several houses away on a different road one street over.  He did not want neighbors to see the make and model of his truck, and he did not want them to see his face.  If he were to obtain any answers regarding his wife’s whereabouts before alerting the local neighborhood busybodies of his arrival, he knew he needed to move on the house with discretion.  He also knew that backyards in the neighborhood shared a common strip of woods, that they shared the same view.  He could park at a lot on the other side that was under construction, cut across the property into the wooded area and enter from the back of the house he needed to check out.

He pulled his pickup truck to the curb of a dirt-filled lot.  A foundation had been started, but beyond that, little in the way of progress had been made.  A truck such as his would not be uncommon or out of place and therefore would not raise any suspicion.  He grabbed a worn baseball cap from the front seat and placed on his head.  He pulled the brim down low over his eyes before climbing out and circling in front of his truck.  He moved about confidently, with purpose, as if he belonged at the site, looking at the progress that had been made as he passed by.  He then walked to where the backyard of the property would someday be.  Save for the sound of an occasional dog barking, the street was quiet.  He continued to the edge of the land, where sun-bleached dirt met with dense foliage and underbrush.  He thought it strange that such a finite line existed between sections of land, how he went from barren dirt to plant-rich soil in a single footstep.  He took several more steps deeper into the wood and assessed his route.  He scanned the undergrowth and low-lying shrubs first then the branches and boughs that protruded at chest-level.  He discovered he would have little trouble negotiating any of the growth.  Trees and vegetation were sparser inside than it appeared from the road.  He would not need to proceed as carefully as he’d thought and set off at a trot before quickly traversing the wood.  A well-kept lawn met with the tree line.  The house on his list was just a few hundred yards away.  He surveyed the area, allowed his eyes to sweep from side to side and looked for any sign of activity.  He saw none and moved stealthily across the property, careful to keep his body crouched and his feet moving as fast as they could.  A patio with a retractable awning offered concealment and he peered in a window.  A kitchen waited beyond the glass.  It appeared empty, and dark.  But he knew that one darkened room did not mean that the house was empty.  He sidled along the vinyl siding of the exterior, past shrubbery and hedges until he was the front door.  He knocked and waited for a reply.  No one answered.  He knocked a second and third time, and still, no one answered.  He looked around to see if any neighbors milled about and saw that the area was deserted.  The main entrance was free of a storm door and instead had an ornate, glass window inlay which he promptly broke with the small, metal tube he’d confiscated from the house he’d just left.  The glass broke and fell inward.  Alarms did not sound and no one rushed to greet him.

He stepped inside, cautiously, and shut the door behind him.  It closed soundlessly and he quickly studied the layout.  The room was lit only by sunlight and appeared still.  He froze and listened intently for the faintest of sounds but heard none.  As he waited and listened, he noted that the house looked like any other: living room, dining room, and kitchen.  Every room was uncluttered and furnished accordingly.  Once he was confident that no one awaited him immediately and that the initial rooms had been secured, he began searching the rest of the house.  Off the dining room, a long, narrow hallway loomed.  Along its walls were evenly spaced doors.  He systematically opened each with vigilance, with care, starting with the door closest to him.  In any he could find his wife, or someone who knew of her whereabouts.  Two bedrooms and a small bathroom proved empty.  A final door lay at the end of the corridor.  He pushed it open slowly.  The room was darker than the others despite the brightness of the afternoon sun.  He felt along the interior wall for a light switch and found one.  An institutional-style fluorescent overhead fixture with a protective wire covering flickered several times before remaining fully functional.  What stood before him was nothing short of horrific.  Tiled, walls and floors, sectioned off into five foot by three-foot areas, looked like shower stalls.  And bloody handprints were scattered along the walls.

The room, the metallic smell of gore, and the blood itself, all of it charged at him.  The room began to spin.  His breath came in short, shallow pants.  He reached his hand out, rested it against a wall to stabilize him, only to retrieve it with a sticky, ruby coating.  He looked to it, gasped then immediately tried to wipe it clean on his pant leg.  His pulse began to race dangerously, and the boundary between past and present became muddled.

Vivid memories of Fallujah, Iraq came rushing back, the room its trigger.  He and his troop, along with a Special Ops Marine unit, had been dispatched to storm a haven of known terrorists.  As part of their mission, they had overtaken several buildings simultaneously.  But they had not found guerilla enemies. What they had found instead was a human slaughterhouse.  They had unearthed a rebel enclave where extremists had set up shop, carried out horrific deeds, then abandoned.  Dubbed “Fallujah’s Death Row” by his marine counterparts, the building had not been a sprawling penitentiary, but a series of middle-class homes side by side.  In each, bedrooms had been converted into iron bar jail-cells.  Some had been equipped with wooden blocks, saturated in blood and hardened matter, used for beheadings, while others had blood sprayed on the far walls that outlined a nearly clean silhouette where a person had once stood.  Each had been gruesome, nightmarish, and rank with the odor of blood.  Each had been a display of the absolute basest of human behavior, of violence.  The worst of them, however, had been the last house they had stormed.  There, he and his platoon had found twelve male bodies, six in the living room and the other half-dozen in a bedroom.  In the living room, the bodies had been stacked atop each other, limbs tangled and entwined in a macabre display of barbarism, each face fixed eternally in abject horror.  The bedroom had been equally horrid.  What had set it apart from the other torture rooms they’d discovered though, was that a crib had been situated in the far corner of the room; a crib in which a baby had still slept.  In that moment, Jack had felt something deep with his psyche
give way, as if the shock and intensity of their exercise, punctuated by an innocent child sleeping among a pile of fetid corpses, had fractured his mind irrevocably.  In total, twenty-seven executed bodies, some with hacked-off arms and legs and some without heads, had been counted in the homes on Death Row, but none of the gruesomeness had affected him as deeply as seeing the baby among it had.