Page 43 of Grotesque

E verything hurt. Pain radiated from my back, my ribs, my forehead. The drop down the stairwell had been so long I was pretty sure I’d hit every part of my body multiple times. I vaguely remembered Quint careening over me mid summersault.

I blinked, letting my eyes adjust to the darkness. I wiggled my fingers and toes and slowly, very slowly, tried to move the rest of my body. As far as I could tell, nothing was broken, just banged to Hell and back.

I gripped something cool and smooth to my right as I forced myself to sit up. Something rigid was digging into my back. It felt like I had landed in a pile of wood, rocks maybe? Whatever it was, was sharp and jagged.

The sickly smell was more intense down here. So putrid I had to cover my mouth with the back of my hand to keep from gagging.

Shapes slowly bled from the darkness. I could see mounds of something at the bottom of the steps, to the side– that might be a table. I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes and blinked again.

“Oh fuck,” I hissed as I shifted to my aching knees.

Somewhere to my left Quint answered with a groan.

I had to get up. The light at the top of the stairs was my only goal. Once I got up there, I could lock Quint in and deal with him later.

I braced myself as I eased onto my hands and knees.

One of my hands slipped into something wet, and mushy.

I jerked back on instinct as I fought off the urge to imagine what exactly would feel like that.

Something round with two small, evenly spaced depressions met the underside of my other hand. A bowling ball?

Macky had been an odd lady. Perhaps whatever was down here was a part of weird hobby. Yes, that’s what it was. Something weird. But not too weird. Weird enough, though, that I didn’t want to think about it.

I stood just as a weak light popped on.

Quint was standing off to the side with his phone held out in front of him.

He swiped his thumb across the screen until a brighter, smaller light illuminated on the back of his phone.

He panned it in front of him. I took a step to the side, hoping to somehow slip past him before he saw me, when my shoe scraped one of the hard things against the ground.

That light swiveled toward me, momentarily blinding me.

“Get that out of my face.” I held my hand up.

Quint inhaled sharply but he didn’t move the light. “We have to go,” he said.

“You have to go. Do you have any idea what you’ve done? I was just going to call the cops on you before, but you have no idea what Corban is going to do to you.”

“Do you? Do you know what he’s capable of?”

I reached for the phone, trying to shove it out of my face. “I’ve been living with him for the last month. I know exactly what he’ll do when he finds you. He would have killed you if I hadn’t stopped him the other night.”

Quint grabbed hold of my wrist and pulled me to him. I snagged the front of his shirt as I stumbled into him. “You know about this?”

“If you don’t stop grabbing onto me!” I slammed my fist into his chest while simultaneously trying to free my arm. “I’m going to break your nose this time.” I wound my fist back to do just that.

“Sorcha.”

Something in the way he said my name made me halt. So hushed and gentle, like he didn’t want to startle me. There was no aggression, no bite to his words.

I turned, following the dusty path of the light through the blackness. Stacks of greyish white objects littered the floor. At first it looked like rubble. Weird, elongated rubble. Some were more rounded, with uneven holes in the middle.

My stomach dropped.

Not sticks and stones. Skulls and bones. These were bodies.

I looked down where I imagined I had been sprawled out moments before.

A man, or what used to be a man lay propped against God knows what else.

Chunks of his rotten flesh were missing, like they had been bitten out.

Distinct holes marred his torso, torn clean through the blood-encrusted overalls and flannel shirt.

His arms were stripped clean of flesh and tendons. His head was missing.

A pair of yellow leather gloves jutted out of his pocket.

The groundskeeper. The man that had been sent to ready the house for me. The one the librarian had mentioned.

Bile rose from my gut and I hunched forward as I hurled. What I had compared to the scent of off fruit earlier had been the sweet decay of bodies. Quint grabbed the top of my shoulder as another wave of nausea kicked me in the stomach, and I hurled again.

“Come on,” Quint hissed. He pulled me back, but I couldn’t move. Not when I was still taking in just how many bones were scattered around us. How many bodies were there?

Quint tugged me harder and I slapped his hand away.

“Sorcha, what the fuck? We have to go.” Quint rounded in front of me and tried pushing me instead.

My breath was shallow, too shallow. Every time I blinked, I saw a new face, or what was left of one. Another burst of air from my lungs turned white in front of my lips. It was cold. So cold down here in the dark.

I turned.

Where was she?

Quint cursed under his breath. He followed me across the room as I flailed amongst the bodies. Death burrowed its scent up my nostrils. Where was she?

Quint grabbed me and started to pull me back to the light waiting for us at the top of the stairs.

“Let go,” I whispered even as I let him drag me to the steps. Where was she? Where was Macky?

“You’re going into shock, Sorcha. Let me help you. Will you stop fucking fighting me,” he ground out when I twisted in his grip and kicked him in the shin.

“Let her go.”

The voice poured down the stone steps, radiating power.

Corban’s tall silhouette dominated the doorway to the ground floor, blocking all but a glimmer of light.

He took each step slowly, deliberately. His feral red gaze slid from Quint to me.

He looked my body up, down, and up again as he made his assessment.

What must I look like amongst the horror?

He had a strange look in his eye I’d never seen before.

Quint’s grip tightened on my arm again, drawing Corban’s attention back to him.

“You’re a fucking monster,” he said.

Corban cocked his head. “You’ve always known that. It’s why you ran away the first time.” Blood was splashed across his face and hands. In the twinkling light of Quint’s phone, I could see it glistening on the black fabric of his clothes.

Quint must have noticed it the same moment I did. “Where are they? Where are my friends?”

“Don’t worry, you’ll be joining them soon.” That look simmering in the crimson light of his eyes, it was cold rage. Icy and lethal, so much more terrifying than the fury that had ruled him the last time he tried to kill Quint. And we all knew it.

Quint audibly swallowed. “Let us go, and I’ll never come back. Let me take her with me. We’ll never speak a word of this.”

“A little late for that, isn’t it? If it wasn’t for your words , your little friends wouldn’t have joined you on your, what shall we call this, quest?

That’s what this is, isn’t it? You thought you were saving a damsel in distress?

” Corban’s teeth flashed. They seemed larger, sharper than I remembered them being.

“I hate to break it to you, but the princess likes the monster.”

Quint let go of my arm and dug into his waistband. He pulled a dark wooden hilt from the holster hidden beneath his jeans and held it out. Didn’t he know a knife wasn’t going to do anything? The blade would shatter before Corban did.

“He’s stone,” I said quietly, almost to myself.

Quint turned to look at me, his brows furrowed. His eyes flickered between the two of us before they narrowed in on me. His lip curled, as if he had just realized something, something that disgusted him.

He was shockingly fast for a human. The movement snapped me out of my daze, but I was still too slow to block him. Before I could lift a hand to defend myself Quint had grabbed me by the shoulder and hauled me against him. The blade of his knife pressed against my throat.

He was using me as a literal shield against Corban’s rage.

Somehow that was still less frightening than the creature that stood before us.

Corban cocked his head unnaturally, the points of his horns glinting in the dimness.

Red light brushed the top of his cheeks where his eyes quite literally glowed.

It made the blood splatters on his face shine like rubies.

“You want her, you can have her, but you’re going to let me go first,” Quint said.

“Quint, you fucking–” I made to grab hold of his fist, but it only served to push the blade closer. I felt the sharp sting as it split my skin. “You fool .”

“Shut up, shut up ,” Quint hissed. “You know what this thing is, and you don’t seem to mind him or whatever fucked up shit he gets up to in this creepy fucking house.

” His voice was shaking now. “He’s a demon.

He’s possessed you or something. So,” he directed his words to Corban now. “You let me go, or I kill her.”

Corban’s head tilted downward as he let out a menacing hiss. He seemed to be looming larger, filling the cellar, sucking all the air from the room. “No more saving the damsel?”

I opened my mouth to spit some choice words of my own, but the blade pressed harder, and I swallowed them down.

Surely Quint wasn’t stupid enough to try and bargain for his life.

Not when the evidence of Corban’s lack of mercy was piled all around us.

There had to be the remains of one hundred bodies in this cellar, or more.

“Fuck no,” he spat. “She’s clearly as crazy as every other bitch that’s lived in this house if she would choose you.”

Oh no he didn’t…

Consequences be damned. I threw my elbow back into his gut with as much force as I could muster. The impact jolted the blade across my throat, a warning bite, but Quint only tightened his grip. I could feel him steeling himself.