I entered the room, the smell of a decomposing body wafting out through the hallway. Nearly retching, I put my face into the crook of my elbow, trying to breathe through my shirt, smelling the fabric softener and cologne I used. It didn’t completely cover up the disgusting odors. It reminded me of putrefying meat with undertones of rotting tomatoes.
I saw the man sitting there, his throat slashed from ear to ear, his head barely connected to his torso. Backing up quickly, I turned to get the hell out of there- and then saw the silhouette. An arm with a huge butcher’s knife was raised in the dark, about to come down on me.
Screaming, I flailed my arms, backing away quickly, and falling over the stairwell balcony. I landed hard on my side, hearing something in my left arm crack. A wave of nausea and pain overtook me. Hyperventilating on the floor, I wondered how it could have come to this.
***
I went to visit my aunt after years of not seeing her. She lived on the West Coast, and I lived near Boston. But as I got more and more news about her declining health from my extended family, I realized I probably would have only one last chance to see her.
“Jake!” she said, hugging me tightly as I entered her home. I hugged her back, noticing how stooped and frail her old body felt. She trembled slightly with every breath, coughing as she pulled away. Her eyes looked sunken, her cheekbones extremely visible in her emaciated face. She looked like she had aged twenty years in the last five. “I am so happy to see you again,” she continued. I nodded, smiling back at her.
“Where’s Uncle Bob?” I asked, referring to her husband and my uncle. She waved her hand dismissively.
“He’s upstairs. He hasn’t been feeling too good lately. Getting old isn’t for sissies, you know,” she said, laughing slightly before being overtaken by a coughing fit. I nodded again, happy to see her in such a good mood. “But come in, come in! I was just making lunch.” The smell of freshly baked bread and turkey rose from the kitchen, making my stomach growl. I had eaten some peanuts and drank a couple beers on the plane ride over here, but that hadn’t done much to satiate my hunger.
Walking in, I saw photos of my father and mother lining the hallway. They had been killed by a drunk driver a few years earlier, and just seeing their happy, gleeful faces here made me feel depressed about it all over again. I turned my head away, looking at the photos on the other side of the hall. They showed a much younger Aunt Gretchen and Uncle Bob riding horses in Montana with her younger sister Aunt Beth, posing in front of the Great Pyramids with my grandparents and standing next to the Grand Canyon with my father. They had always loved to travel.
“How was your plane ride?” she asked, making small talk as she poured us both some iced tea.
“Terrible, as usual,” I said. “I got sat next to a fat guy, and he just kept on passing gas the entire goddamned plane ride.” She laughed uproariously at this. “It wasn’t that funny. Everyone around was getting pretty mad, actually…”
“Well, at least it’s over,” she said, grinning, showing me her false teeth. For some reason, that grin sent shivers down my spine.
“Yeah, at least it’s over…” We talked about work and her retirement and our extended family as we ate. I kept wondering if Uncle Bob would join us.
“Doesn’t Uncle Bob want any food?” I asked near the end of the meal. She waved her hand at this.
“I’ll bring something up to him,” she said. “He has been working on a project upstairs.” Huh, I thought to myself. First he’s not feeling good, and now he’s working on a project. I got up, patting my full belly. My keys jingled in my pocket. I had a rental car and had put the key for it on my keychain, next to my police mace, Swiss army knife, tape measure and other random trinkets.
“Auntie Gretchen, I’m going to go smoke a cigarette,” I said. She was zipping around the kitchen, cleaning up the meal and humming to herself. I knew the song- We’ll Meet Again by Vera Lynn. It gave me chills.
With shaking fingers, I fumbled a Camel from my pack, stepping out onto the porch and lighting it. The sweet odor of the Turkish tobacco mixed with the smells of spring outside. The peace and tranquility of rural life was in full display here. Across the street was a small pond filled with geese, weeping willows surrounding it. Ancient groves of trees extended as far as the eye could see in both directions. Her nearest neighbor was over a half mile away.
As I smoked and contemplated, sitting on the old rocking chair on her front porch, I wondered about Uncle Bob. I would have to go up and see if he was OK. Something was not sitting right here. My instincts were going wild, telling me to get out- but I didn’t know why.
I threw my cigarette in the ashtray, getting up and going inside. Aunt Gretchen was nowhere to be seen. Slowly and quietly, I went up the stairs.
They creaked with each step, but no one came out. I couldn’t hear Aunt Gretchen in the kitchen anymore, and I couldn’t hear water running either. I got to the top floor and began checking the rooms.
That was when I found Uncle Bob, his throat slashed from ear to ear. He had clearly been dead a long time.
Yes, I thought to myself, something was very wrong here.
That was the moment I was attacked.
***
I awoke on the hardwood floor after what I thought might have been a few seconds of unconsciousness, my arm bent in the wrong direction. I could see bone poking out through the skin. I wanted to vomit. Dark blood dripped out of the torn skin and splintered bone, staining the floor.
“Jake…” someone said, coming down the stairs. It wasn’t Aunt Gretchen. It was a male voice, deep and slow. I looked up as the newcomer reached the bottom step of the curved staircase and came into view.
“Who… who are you?” I asked weakly. “Why are you doing this?”
“Me? I’m your cousin,” he said. “Your aunt is my mother.” I looked at this maniac with my head askew. What he said was impossible.
He looked young, maybe twelve years old. He stood very tall for his age. A purple, wine stain birthmark marred the back of his right hand. It was shaped almost perfectly like an eye, with a purple pupil in the center of the outline of the lids. But his eyes were the most memorable part.
They were dead and flat. They didn’t look like any human eyes I had ever seen. They were far more similar to doll’s eyes. The irises were a dark shade of green. He stared ahead, making constant eye contact with me, smiling widely as he walked forward with the knife in his hand.
Aunt Gretchen was nearly sixty-five years old. This biologically couldn’t have been her child. But maybe he was adopted? Maybe she took in some psychopath? None of it made sense.
“How are you my cousin?” I asked. “Aunt Gretchen is too old to have kids.” He laughed.
“I’m not a normal child,” he replied, walking forward slowly. “My father was an incubus who came through the hidden doorway in this house. Your Aunt got pregnant with me only a few years ago. But we cambions grow fast. She was pregnant for a couple months before giving birth to me, and now I’m growing. I need lots of meat, though, to grow at this rate. I need lots of blood for energy. You will provide me with both. And, of course, my father loves to eat the pineal gland…”
I reached into my pocket with my right hand as he talked. In a blur, I pulled out the police mace canister, raising it and sending a spray right into the cambion’s face. His pupils seemed to expand to cover the entire eye, even the whites. His eyes were suddenly pure black and full of hatred.
“Oh my God,” a trembling voice said from behind me, “did you hurt Kain?” I turned to look, seeing my aunt standing there, horrified that I had maced the psychopath who was about to stab me.
“Aunt Gretchen,” I screamed, “call the police! I’m hurt! And this kid is going to kill all of us!” She shook her head sadly.
“I can’t call the police, Jake,” she said. “That’s my boy. My child. My beautiful Kain. He needs blood to drink to get big and strong, and I’m going to make sure he gets what he needs.” Kain had fallen to the ground, retching and trying to wipe at his eyes. I used the opportunity to get up slowly, pushing myself up with my good arm. I saw spots and felt dizzy. Aunt Gretchen was standing there, weeping, not paying attention to me at all. I pulled my phone out of my pocket with my right arm, dialing 911 and quickly putting it back in my pocket. Hopefully they would be able to track the location if I didn’t make it out of here.
I tried running towards the door, but Kain reached out one of his long, slender arms towards me, grabbing my ankle. I nearly went flying forward, but his grip was so strong that I just fell instead. I smashed my broken arm on the floor. My vision turned white as I shrieked in pain.
“Where do you think you’re going?” he asked, grinning, his black eyes still streaming tears. “You’re food. You’re not going anywhere.” He brought his face down towards me, showing me countless sharpened teeth. Then he bit into my left hand, tearing off my pointer finger, shaking his head side to side as the last tendons and bones separated.
The pain was unimaginable, a sharp fiery sensation that rushed up my arm. I was working to free the small knife from the Swiss army knife when he bit me, and it flipped open just in time. I shoved the blade into the side of his neck, mashing it back and forth and trying to slice up towards his face. His expression turned from glee to fury and pain as he opened his mouth to scream, showing me the half-chewed, bloody finger on his pointed tongue.
I thought I might lose consciousness at any moment between the compound fracture, the pain and the blood loss. As he backed up, I pulled the phone out of my pocket. There was a woman’s voice on the other side, asking questions and saying, “Hello? Sir, can you hear me?”
“Send help to 33 Roadrunner Avenue,” I yelled before the attack commenced. Kain smashed his foot into my hand with the phone in it, pinning it to the ground before spitting a bloody wad onto my face. The screen shattered and went black. Dark blood flowed down his neck in rivulets, soaking his shirt. His eyes seemed to shine with hatred.
My aunt was standing in the doorway, watching it all with dumb disbelief.
“He’s going to kill me!” I yelled. “Do something!” She just shook her head from side to side, looking blank and dissociated.
“He’s a good boy,” she said. “And his daddy’s coming.” Using the last of my strength, I rolled over and brought my legs up into the back of his knees. He buckled to the floor as something huge in the kitchen stomped its way across the floor.
We were scrambling on the floor, Kain trying to quickly get back up and me trying to recover my only weapon. Then I saw he had dropped the butcher knife in the fall. Grabbing it up, I stabbed it as hard as I could into Kain’s thigh. It went deep, striking bone. I pulled it back out.
He was crawling away from me now, yelling in pain. I had gotten back to my feet, dizzy and swaying. Behind my aunt, I saw a horrible creature approaching. It had its wings folded down, like those of a bat’s, and its skin was a sickly gray. Its eyes were pure black, just like Kain’s when he grew mad, and its fingers and toes were all sharp claws.
Then, before my eyes, it began to change. It took the form of a handsome man with flowing blonde hair. He looked like the stereotype of something from the cover of a romance novel- except for the sheer black eyes he still had. They seemed dead and emotionless as they looked down at me, then back up at my aunt.
“My love!” it said, wrapping its arms around my aunt. It began to kiss her, then started sucking through its mouth full of pointed teeth. She tried to fight it off, to separate, but she couldn’t escape. Before my eyes, she shriveled up, the last of her health being siphoned off by the incubus. She withered into an ancient woman, her hair falling out and her head lolling as she died. Her wide, staring eyes looked more sunken than ever, as if I were seeing them out of a deep well.
I ran then. My arm felt like it was on fire, and drops of blood from my missing finger followed behind me, but I ran. Sprinting down the street, I heard the first sirens a couple minutes later.
The police sat me down and called an ambulance, giving me water to sip as we waited. Other squad cars went to the house, finding the bodies of my aunt and uncle. But there was no sign of my supposed cousin or the demon father who had spawned him. They had both escaped out of the house, and were likely somewhere in our world, mixing among people who would never guess their true nature.
So if you see a tall boy with dead, flat eyes and a birthmark in the shape of an eye, you might want to go the other way.