My Little Ventrue Pt. 05 Ch. 06

"Um... uh... what do we do?" Jen said, backing up toward the exit.

Triss sighed, and held up a hand. "We wait... Malachi here is going to show you... well, some strange shit."

"Malachi?"

The old man walked up to Jen, hooked an arm over her shoulders, and pulled her back toward the bowl. "An old name I sometimes used when communicating with the other side."

"... the other side? Like... the Disney song?"

"Shh!" Jacob shuddered, and pressed down on her shoulders, so the two of them started creeping along. "Don't say the D word!"

Ok, Jen might have been annoyed and scared by the whole situation, but Triss couldn't help but laugh.

"I... I..." The Ventrue winced as she looked down, and shivered as the black ooze started to pour over her feet. "Is this... what happened when you... did this, Triss?"

"Nope, Jacob had already done his madness when I arrived." Her turn to wince, as the ooze started to coat her feet. It felt cold, and alive. "Or at least, some of it."

"Indeed my beauties, indeed. But this ritual is not always done in the same manner. There are many ways to break through the wall. Especially when you have help from the other side."

"You sound like a cartoon villain," Jen said. But, even as she tried to make jokes, come off strong, she was staring down at the cold, rippling liquid creeping up her ankles. Past the ankle, to the shin, and she started to shake. "I... I still don't know what's going on. You mention Black Blood, but... I thought we were here to learn crúac? I thought we were going to... to delve into... the dark arts of the Circle?"

"Oh, but we are." Jacob hugged her shoulders again, and gestured to the bowl.

The skeleton sculptures beneath the bowl were crying black tears. Heavy, thick globs of the onyx liquid fell from their empty eye sockets. If a skeleton could make a facial expression, horrified would be the word Triss would use to describe them now, as if their eyes had widened, as if their lips had pulled back, as if their pupils had dilated, mouths open and screaming their fear.

The ooze started to climb. Not up the girls anymore, or Jacob, but up the walls, the same walls it'd bled from. Defying gravity, it started to climb the stones, the symbols, the crevices, until all the walls were a mix of black flowing both up, and down. The ooze that surrounded them, covered their feet in the cold, started to creep along the ceiling. Gravity reversed, the ooze covered the stone above in the same way it did their feet, and, as if to taunt them for being bound by physics, it started to rain black. And then the pool of black around them started to rain upward.

It was no longer a question of avoiding or dodging the drops; they were coming from everywhere. The lantern fell from Triss's claws, and she cursed as she reached for it. Too late, it fell into the black, and floated. Thank god. Or, not floating, but rather, hands, obsidian hands rose from the goop, and kept the lantern aloft, four hands together, palms up. The only source of light, and the black ooze knew to keep it above the suffocating blackness.

Triss and Jen each turned around, slowly, stopping to stare at the floating hands for a minute, then looking at the raindrops of cold darkness going up, and down, up, and down, and then back to the floating hands. The skeletons holding up the ritual bowl continued to cry tears, but the skeletons on the top layer of the metal bones cried tears downward, and the skeletons beneath cried tears upward. A pattern.

Then the screams erupted.

Triss and Jen threw their hands up to their heads, and covered them as best they could as a woman's shriek split the soaked, dark air. A man's followed, a bellowing holler that caused the black ooze to ripple. Another woman's, and another man's cries bounced around in the cave, echoing over the death water and into the Earth.

No wonder people called Three Kings Cemetery haunted.

Black mist began to roll over the area, swallowing everything as it crept over the black water. This part she recognized, this part Triss was here for last time. She forced herself to hold still, except for a couple steps toward Jen to get closer to her, as the rising onyx fog grew. There were screams in the fog tonight, far louder than last time, and Triss took Jen's hand, squeezed it, and closed her eyes as the mist swallowed them.

She opened her eyes. Just like last time, she could see. The black ooze was gone, no longer raining up and down, no longer coating the walls, no longer falling from the skeleton's eyes. Instead, mist leaked from their eyes, mixing into the gentle haze of darkness that swallowed them all. The lantern was gone. The light was gone, but she could see, and she knew the others could see too. The screams started to fade away, and a calmness settled over them. The sort of calm you'd expect to find by surrendering to hypothermia in an icy river, letting the numbness of your body sink you into sweet oblivion.

A hand snapped out, enormous, solid black ooze with mist dripping from the claws, and the hand ripped the corpse from the hook.

Jen screamed and jumped back, crouching, ready to fight or flight. But, both Jacob and Triss raised a hand, and motioned for her to come back. Impressive that the Ventrue responded that way; Triss figured she'd fall on her ass.

"Oh my, three blood of the undead tonight. Why, I can feel a certain tingle to that, if I may say so." In the darkness beyond them, beyond the bowl, in the black where Jacob's wall of goodies sat, the sound rolled out from, as if the abyss was speaking to them. And, unless Triss was going out of her mind, the abyss had... a bit of a southern accent?

"Trying a new voice today, old friend?" Jacob said to the darkness.

"No, old friend, this is an old voice." The deep, bassy rumble defied gender standards. Multi-layered and thick, the strange sound vibrated through the air, through the bowl and metal, and into the bodies of the Kindred staring, one of them with jaw dropped. "This one, you brought me... a hundred a fifty years ago, Malachi. I remember. A Mister Gardener? What a fine man he was. Fine man." The laughter was deep, melodic, almost soothing, like as if someone gave a blue whale a southern drawl, and a cigar.

"Ha, did I? Christ, that's a fucking long time ago. Was he fat?"

"That he was." Black Blood's laughter drew them in, or Triss at least. The rumbling grumble, from beyond the veil of shadow that swayed in the black beyond the bowl. That was a sexy voice. A sexy, alien, unimaginable voice.

Twitching movement. Flesh, naked, sagging and thick, flopped and stumbled as it came out of the blackness. Unnatural movement was easy to see, for any person. A subtle twitch, a sway that didn't make sense, something that broke what humans learned were common movements to all other humans. Horror movies took advantage of that, made ghosts or whatnot twitch in unnatural or impossible ways. The uncanny valley, something that looks human, but a part of your brain knows it's not.

Jen and Triss groaned, quietly, in disgust at the sight of the sacrifice's body coming forward. The removed leg was reconnected to the pelvis, but hovering maybe half an inch beneath the joint, with black mist seeping out of the empty space. As the corpse came forward, knees crunched, ankles twisted and broke, and the body's right arm snapped back and forth at the elbow, ninety degrees in the wrong direction. Crack. Crunch.

"That... that is... w-what..." Jen stared on, hands fallen limp at her sides, until one hand managed to rise and touch a couple fingers to her bottom lip. Jaw still dropped.

The corpse came closer, and as she—it opened her mouth, black mist seeped from over its teeth. The closer it got, the closer the wall of black behind it came, a second wall of black fog Triss did not want to touch.

As it stood there, one of its arms snapped off completely, tearing, twisting like a crocodile death rolled it. It grew still after, arm now hovering to the shoulder, attached by black mist instead of tendons and ligaments.

"Come, stand by the offering." It waved them in, motion jerking, not smooth at all, as it walked over to the bowl.

Gulping, Triss did as requested, and walked over to stand in front of the entity. Jen did as well, after a moment or two. Jacob was already there, waiting, arms across his blood-soaked chest, and a warm smile on his face. So very, very creepy.

"And who is this fine lady?" it said, nodding in Jen's direction as it leaned over the bowl. Twitching grip found one of the organs, the liver, and Black Blood raised it from the bowl to examine it. Triss was sure the entity would have begun eating it, but, instead, it inspected the liver bringing it up to its face, and eying it.

"... Jennifer."

"Well Jennifer, pleasure to make your acquaintance. I do hope this meeting leads to a grand friendship." The corpse winked at her, and squeezed the sacrifice's liver, until it popped.