Chapter Six
Night Kings: The Lady in Red
Gregory Blackman
The Lady Cometh
Before Elsa could question the nature of the ominous figures outside the home, Lukas dashed off towards the front door with eyes of steel. He barricaded the door with little more than his hands. Whatever he thought would happen, he believed it to be soon.
At first there was no sign of the growing horde outside. Then they came and they wouldn’t cease until an entrance had been gained. Lukas barely kept the door for swinging wide open with rotten hands aflutter, all in attempt to jam the doorway and gain access. He knew not where these monsters came, nor their purpose, but he knew enough to fear their wrath.
“And these things would be?” a less than enthused Elsa asked. In one night her entire world had come apart at the seams. Everything she’d known to be true was put to question. Salem always had its dark roots; she knew that well, but to read of, and to witness were two entirely different realms of conception.
“No time,” Gemma said. “We can’t stop them from getting inside. Let’s get Lukas. We need to get out of here—.”
Gemma was cut short as two hands broke through the window. They clasped around her chest and pulled her backwards as she fought them off to no avail. It was Elsa that came to her rescue with a kitchen knife in hand. She hacked at the leathery flesh, and hacked, and hacked, but this was a monster that could feel no pain.
In fact, this monster could feel only one thing in this world. Not anguish, hatred, love, or compassion. Hunger was all it knew. All it could yearn for. After what felt an eternity to the young woman, running nonstop on pure adrenaline, Elsa saw her task complete when her attacker’s arms had only bone to hold itself together. She pulled Gemma from the monster’s grasp and the two of them fled to the living room.
Lukas hadn’t fared any better on his side. Nearly a dozen hands had managed to insert themselves inside the doorway and made it impossible for the door to close. He tried as best he could, but it was clear to both Elsa and Gemma that he only proved to delay the inevitable.
“Get the door!” he shouted with a fleeted glance backwards. “C’mon, there’s no time!”
Lukas needed a weapon; a bat, a knife, anything of use. He needed something supernatural, but the fear of this dark revelation coming to light was a fate near indistinguishable from death. It wasn’t until his friends aided in the blockade of the doorway that he was able to obtain such a weapon, albeit one with considerably less bite.
He returned a moment later with a butcher’s knife in his hand and words of caution for his female friends. A war cry broke out in the living room as Lukas charged forward with the blade high in the air and a fire in her eyes. He whacked at the exposed flesh without abandon until both his friend and he were painted in red mist.
“We need to go,” maintained Gemma at a fervent pace. “We need to get the hell out of here!”
Gemma had every reason to fear what lay beyond the door. It meant more than a few dozen undead men parked on her front lawn. It was the figure above them, the one unseen, and if word spread of what these monsters laid eyes upon once inside, the Kohl bloodline would be but a whisper in the wind come sunrise.
Lukas paused in his assault on the front door and turned towards the kitchen. More undead men and women were climbing inside the kitchen window. They crawled on hands and knees, unaware that they could rise to their feet, and all the while they closed in on the disorientated group of friends.
“Now!” Gemma cried. “And I mean right fucking now!”
They ran from the front door and out of the living room, narrowly missed by a number of outreached hands as they headed to Gemma’s bedroom. It wasn’t the best of plans and even those less clairvoyant than her could see that. Even the obstinate lug head she let accompany her to the dance noted the plan as such the moment her bedroom door slammed shut. They needed to escape, but without a window in her room that proved impossible to do in an easy fashion.
The attic was the only safe way out and Gemma saw to the preparations immediately.
“Does someone want to fill me in?” Elsa demanded. “I know this seems the norm to the two of you, but I’m here, and I’m going out of the damned mind!”
“Calm down,” a sullen Lukas said. “We can talk this over when the sun rises.”
“What does the bloody sun have to do with anything?” she asked with her hands flying every which way. “Someone better start with the answers. If I’m to die in whatever bloodbath this is I’m doing it with a clear conscience!”
Gemma didn’t know what to say to her beleaguered friend. Lukas could do as he pleased, she’d let him for some time. Yet, for Gemma some secrets weren’t hers to share. All she could do now was focus on the task at hand and see it through to that sunrise Lukas had spoke of. There wasn’t an access outside of the kitchen, but if there was one thing this home had been over the years it was unreliable. With Lukas’ butcher’s knife in hand Gemma began to carve her path to escape.
The moment Elsa quieted down was the moment she started back up again. This time it was Lukas alone that took the brunt of her questions. It was a scene that’d taken place a hundred times between them, but never before had it come at such expense to their friendship.
“Is that a bite?” she asked.
Lukas fumbled around to see the mark Elsa mentioned. It was hard to see what she’d seen past the blood spattered across his lanky frame, but there it was, on his forearm and once noticed it couldn’t be unseen.
“It appears so,” Lukas said.
“Well,” said Elsa, “what the hell? Are those zombies? Were you bit by a freaking zombie?”
“No,” he said matter-of-factly and went back to his guard on the door. “They’re not zombies. At least they’re not zombies in the conventional sense.”
“What the hell, man?” she asked yet another question that wouldn’t be answered. “How can you be so sure of yourself?”
“They’re called ghouls,” said both Lukas and Gemma in near perfect harmony.
They shot one another a glance before they turned back to Elsa with blank expressions on their face. They hadn’t meant to reveal themselves, but the persistent Elsa Dukane managed to grind them down to the point of exhaustion, where they’d blurted out what was obvious to some and alien to others.
“That’s fantastic,” Elsa blurted out as she threw her hands into the air. “Now I know the politically correct name for the flesh-muncher that’s going to eat me!”
“Wait,” Lukas said, soothingly.
“You can wait for a damn minute,” Elsa said. “I’m not going to stop until I get some answers—.”
“I said wait for a second,” said Lukas, now more forceful. “I don’t hear anything.”
“And I sure as sin don’t hear any explanations,” Elsa pouted.
“That’s not what I mean.” Lukas threw his hands up in the air in a similar manner as Elsa had once done moments earlier to drive home a point. He wasn’t sure if it landed, but it provoked a sour response from Elsa so he took that as something done right. “You’re impossible. You knew that, right?”
“Stop fighting,” said Gemma as she lowered the knife from the ceiling. “I hear it… or rather… I don’t hear anything at all.”
“What are you two talking about now?” Elsa asked.
Gemma and Lukas spoke of the other side where the ghouls had taken root. No more did they scratch at the door and no more did they stumble along the lone corridor towards her room. Wherever the ghouls had gone it was no of their own accord. Not while the chance of warm flesh lay on the other side of the door.
“You can’t,” a panicked Elsa cried out as Lukas placed a hand on the doorknob. “Don’t do it!”
But it was too late for Elsa’s words of warning. Lukas threw open the door and struck as intimidating a pose he could, hoping for the best while he prepared for the worst.
It turned out to be neither the best nor the w
orst case scenario for the three friends previously locked up in a bedroom. Sprung from their cage the group exited the bedroom and slowly began to make their way down the lone hallway of the Kohl home. They bunched up close in case any stray ghouls jumped in their direction, but there were none left to spare, at least none capable of harm.
Gemma’s living room was awash in crimson from hardwood to plaster. It was from the rotten, oxidized blood of the now lifeless ghouls. They littered the room, or rather what remained of their eviscerated corpses, cast aside seemingly one by one as they were drained of blood. It was at the center of the living room that a man stood, but no ordinary man it was, for they’d all seen this man before.
It was the man in black and he stood as unassuming as any man could be while holding the forearm of another to his lips. It wasn’t enough to drink of his enemies, as mindless they may be, he had to gorge himself on their blood.
He turned his head leisurely in their direction and flashed Elsa a toothy smile of row upon row of razor-sharp fangs. They sunk back into his mouth and soon the face of a monster unlike she’d ever seen became that of the mysterious man she once swooned over.