Crypts & Cannibals: A Collection of Short Horror Stories

Blood Sacrifice {Part 3 of 5}

I coughed and tried to wet my mouth by swallowing hard, but I was completely parched. My voice sounded raspy and my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. I wanted to keep talking, but my body appeared to be rebelling against me.

She stood up and walked to a bookshelf. I hadn't seen the pitcher of water sitting there. She refilled my water glass, and I thanked her before downing most of it. To say I was confused and surprised would be an understatement. She was listening. She wanted to hear what I experienced. We weren't sitting here talking about techniques and strategies for identifying what's real and what's not.

"What happened next?" she asked with genuine interest.

"Well, I picked that lock, pulled the chain off the bars, and opened the gate."

She leaned forward in her chair, resting her arms on her desk, looking deeply into my eyes, searching, scouring like she was digging for something that only she could see. I heard the air flow out of her nostrils after a deep breath. Here it comes, I thought, the moment where we switch gears and try to manage my insanity.

"Then what?"

"What?" I asked her like a fool. I was ready for the gentle words designed to calm my reactions so that we could discuss the misbalanced chemicals in my cranium. I could barely believe that she wanted me to go on — continuing telling this tale that sounded like a 1960's B-horror flick.

"What happened after you opened the gate?"

"I stepped through and walked down the stairs."

"And?"

"At the bottom of the staircase was another room, smaller than the one upstairs, but big enough. It was longer than it was wide. On one end were two square stone pillars about six feet apart sitting on a little raised platform. It was weird, that platform had a hole about the size of my fist, right in the middle between the two pillars. And on each pillar were two chains... with chains and handcuffs. It looked like you could shackle someone's ankles and wrists between the two pillars forcing them to stand there in the shape of an X."

She leaned back again, pensively running her hand across her chin, "Sounds pretty chilling."

I took another swallow of water. Her gaze burned into me like she saw something deep within me that only she alone could see. Had we reached the end of her patience with my story? At some point, her attention to my account would turn. It had to shift back to her professional opinion and duty. Every shrink wants to fix their patient's broken mind, or at least teach them to function normally ... Whatever the hell that is.

The thought hit me like a ton of bricks, I'm an entertaining psychopath. She was indulging me in sharing what happened because she's amused by me. But I couldn't see amusement or entertainment revealed on her face, but that had to be it. Otherwise, she would be working to reconnect me with reality, not listening to something like this.

She removed her glasses and set them on the desk, looking at me intently as if she wasn't exactly sure she whether or not she wanted to turn the next page of this story. Her lips pursed together, revealing that look of pensiveness and deep thought.

My shoulders slumped. I knew that I should be relieved to finally tell what actually happened, but the leash grew too long, and she was preparing to yank me back from my fantastical retelling of that fateful day. If she could find the slightest, tiniest bit more patience, I could tell her what else was in the room, and how hard I ran away.

A stabbing pain poked through my forehead as she asked her next question. A zap of disbelief on my part as if I'd been stunned by what I least expected to hear. "What else was in that room?"

A few moments passed before I could find the composure to answer. We still traveled down the path of my experience rather than shifting gears and focusing on developing a new "treatment plan."

"Another doorway, well, an arched doorway. You know the kind with stones set one on top of another, then bending and meeting together at the top with a bigger keystone?"

She nodded her understanding.

"That doorway was on the opposite end of the room from the stone pillars. The entire wall around the doorway was like upstairs. Nothing but skulls. I realized that the light that I'd seen was not like a fire or light bulb. The walls of this room glowed. I can't really describe it. If you looked right at a point on the wall, all you saw was the stones that made up the wall, but in your peripheral vision, you could see that the walls gave off light. Bizarre, but not as bizarre as that arched doorway."

I paused waiting to see if she wanted me to go on. Her head bobbed up and down slightly, and she raised her eyebrows as if asking me to continue, so I did.

"Black darkness. I don't know how to describe it. Nothingness... An endless void... Not just the absence of color, but like it would suck any color and life out of anything that entered that space. At first, I was mesmerized and curious. I walked toward the opening. Standing there staring into absolute empty eternity. Then the wind or something blew out of that space. How can something be so hot and so cold at the same time? When it hit me, I felt like I'd been tossed into a fire, scorched all over my body, but also dunked naked into the coldest water ever."

My hands shook as I spoke, and I held them together in my lap trying to keep the shaking from spreading, but it didn't work. The shiver ripped across my shoulders and back. I inhaled as deeply as I could, trying to emotionally grab hold of a space in time that was calm. Exhaling, I clamped my mouth shut, commanding my body to stop rebelling. Someone was listening. I needed to finish this story.

"I tried to scream into that black endlessness, but when I opened my mouth, it felt like my whole body exploded. Dizziness hit me, and I stumbled forward and tripped over my own foot, thank God. It made me veer sideways, and I slammed my shoulder into the side of that arched doorway. If I hadn't, I'd have fallen through that doorway into ... to ... well, into hell itself."

I heard her exhale as if she'd been holding her breath while I told her this. Mesmerizingly good story-telling psychopath, I told myself. At least, I kept her attention — a small victory for me. I got to share what really happened. I know she can't believe me, but the sense of relief practically overwhelmed me.

"And then what?" she asked.

"I ran. Harder and faster than I've ever run in my life. Through the forest, all the way to town. Right to the front door of St. Thomas. But it was the middle of the night, so everything was locked up. So, I ran home and grabbed a bottle from my parent's liquor cabinet and drink it all. Next thing I remember, my parents were shaking me awake."