“I’ve been here before.”
I snatched the flashlight from him, aimed it at the front of the building and swept the beam across the first floor until I located a doorway. The large doors that had once constituted the main entrance had rotted and mostly fallen away, and a partially decayed wooden plank that looked like it had fallen from above and landed there ages ago was wedged diagonally across the doorway. It was all exactly as I had seen it before.
“There,” I said, stabbing with the light. “That’s the way in.”
Squatting at one end of the plank was an enormously plump rat. Making odd grunting noises, it sat back on its hind legs, reared up and bared its teeth.
Everything was the same, the same as that night.
“Shit, dude,” Rick whispered, “that is one bulbous motherfucking rat.”
I trained the beam on the animal, and it reflected off its eyes, causing them to glow fire-red. As before, the standoff continued until, after a few contemplative sniffs, the rat turned, waddled to the end of the plank and dropped from sight.
“Let’s go,” I said.
We carefully climbed over the plank and through the doorway, and immediately slammed into a host of nauseating smells. I stepped over a pile of rubble and garbage and panned the light slowly in front of us. The nearest wall was covered with graffiti, and the floors were thick with debris.
“All this trash and shit, I bet some homeless dudes squatted here,” Rick said, his voice echoing through the empty bowels of the building. “You think there’s still any around?”
“There’s nothing alive in this place anymore,” I said. “Except them.”
A group of rats a few feet ahead of us scattered, escaping into darker corners as the pyrotechnics resumed. Fireworks exploded and roared overhead like thunder, and multicolored shafts of light spilled through various holes and wounds in the building, shooting through the open spaces and puncturing the darkness. As one round faded, another followed seconds later.
I could hear the nervous cadence of Rick’s breath beside me. “Now what?” he asked.
I looked up. The ceiling was so high I couldn’t make it out. I turned to my right, brought the flashlight around and followed the beam to the far end of the large room. “This way.”
We walked through the debris and clutter, the ray of light bouncing with each step, and as the fireworks subsided for a moment, I focused on a hallway I knew would be there. My heart began to race as memories of the night in that factory—this factory—beckoned me. A clammy sweat broke out across my forehead. “Down here,” I said.
Moving through the hallway, the building seemed to close in around us and become much smaller, and although once the fireworks started up again we could still hear them, we were no longer able to see them. The confined space rapidly became overwhelming, the walls narrow and the ceiling low. I swept the light up and down repeatedly as we continued on, trying to reveal as much of the hallway as possible.
The stench grew worse here.
We reached a smaller room off of the hallway. An old plaque to the right of where the door had once been caught my attention, and I focused the flashlight on it. “Looks like this was some sort of office.” I wiped at the filthy plaque until I could make out a few letters. “Personnel, I think.”
I slipped through the doorway. The room was the same one the woman had lured me to that night. There was garbage strewn from one corner to the next, and as I moved the light about the room, I saw the familiar symbols painted in red paint or blood smeared across the walls. What was once the door to the office had been suspended between two small stacks of cinderblocks to form the same makeshift altar I had seen that night.
The same as before, something lay beneath it in a heap on the floor, dark and unmoving, but I couldn’t make out what it was.
“What the fuck’s that shit all over the walls?” Rick asked from behind me.
“Hexes or spells—God knows.” I sighed. “I have no idea.”
“Is it blood?”
“I think so.”
“Jesus.”
“I think it’s some sort of announcement, or a marking, something like that.”
“Maybe it’s a warning.”
A chill of fear reminded me I hadn’t thought of that. I nodded, swung the light over to the door across the cinderblocks. “That’s supposed to be an altar, I think.”
“What’s that on the floor?”
I swallowed so hard I nearly gagged. “Not sure.”
“I got a bad feeling about all this, man.”
“Yeah, no fucking shit, do you really?” I shot him an annoyed look, crouched a bit and crept deeper into the room, toward the altar. When I was within a few feet of it, I realized that whatever was beneath it had been covered with an old wool blanket. I waved Rick over and handed him the flashlight. “Shine it here,” I said, pointing.
He did, and I noticed it trembling slightly, along with my hand, as I reached for the blanket and yanked it free.
“Oh, Christ.” I dropped the blanket and backed away. “No.”
Rick kept staring, the flashlight pointed at it. “It doesn’t look real.”
I ran a hand through my sweaty hair. “It’s destroyed.”
He shook his head, his lips moving rapidly but soundlessly.
“That night in the factory,” I said, “the woman lured me to this room and showed me her little boy. He was dead. They were—they were both dead.” Memories of that night flooded my mind, but I no longer needed them, they had become truth right before my eyes. “Bernard’s victims were all single mothers with sons. The killings were rituals, and Claudia told me the final victims, the final ritual sacrifices before he committed suicide would include not only the mother, but also the son.”
“Why would he do that to a… a little kid?” Rick mumbled. “Why would he do that?”
“Goddamn bloodbath,” I said. “He slaughtered him and painted the walls with his blood. He butchered a helpless little boy.” I forced myself to look back at the small body crumpled beneath the altar, tossed there like the rest of the garbage littering the floor. That which Bernard hadn’t savaged, the rats had. What remained was mutilated and battered to the point that when I had first seen it I wasn’t entirely certain of what it was. I could only imagine the terror the child had suffered, the abject terror. Anger joined the fear coursing through my veins. “You motherfucker!” I screamed at the darkness, my voice echoing eerily in the empty space. “Motherfucker!”
Rick grabbed my shoulder, hard. “We need to get the fuck out of here.”
I shook free of him, reached down and threw the blanket back over the body. “We’re not going anywhere until this is finished.” I faced him. “This ends here, tonight.”
Just then, Rick noticed something in the darkness. His eyes slowly lifted, and I could tell from the look on his face that there was something above us. “Jesus—Jesus Christ,” he babbled. “Sweet Jesus Christ in Heaven.”
Following his stare, and then the flashlight beam to the low ceiling overhead, I saw the woman—the boy’s mother—floating in midair.
CHAPTER 34
I was either in shock or frightened to the point where I was incapable of running. Instead, I stood gawking, struggling to prevent my mind from splintering, and a moment later realized the woman was not floating after all.
She had been crucified to the ceiling.
I heard Rick vomit as I moved closer and gazed up at the carnage. The woman had been gutted, and her emaciated torso lay open and empty. Nails roughly the size of railway spikes had been driven through her hands and feet. Her eyelids had been sliced away, and her eyes were sunken and covered in gray mucus, forever forced to look down upon her maimed child. Her face was drawn and sallow, just as I remembered it.