S. Cedric - Of Fever and Blood

Lifting her eyes toward the staircase, Eva can see her sister waiting for her on the top step. Vision or reality, that is what she points toward as she crawls up the stairs on her hands and knees.

“No!” the woman screams behind her. “Come back!”

Eva hoists herself up each step.

When she was six, she had crawled up the steps the same way.

The steps were so high.

But she climbed them all.

Toward the door that led out of there.

Toward life.

That’s what she is doing again.

And the steps are just as high.

She’s going up yet again.

One step.

After the other.

All the way to the top.

Surrounded by the heavy buzzing that will not leave her alone.

Behind her, the woman’s cries turn into beast-like howls and then into barks.

The front door. The key is in the lock. Eva grabs it feverishly and turns it. The door opens into the night. She sees a small garden with well-tended trees. Behind the hedge, there’s a street lined with suburban houses. Street lamps flood them with light.

Eva makes her way across this garden, dazed, naked, numb from the cold. She grabs the gate, gropes to open it, and when it does, she almost falls to the ground. Eva staggers onto the sidewalk. She sees a lamppost a couple of feet away. If she can reach it, she can rest for a few seconds.

She miscalculates and falls into an icy puddle.

Pain shoots though her body.

She knows she must get hold of herself.

Right now .

Stunned and shaking, she calls out for help. But as though she were in a dream, only breath escapes her tight throat. She tries to force a sound from her chest. A small grunt gathers momentum and emerges as a deep, moan.

“Help!”

A sound is coming from the house behind her. She is unable to turn around. All she can do is muster the last of her strength.

“HELP!”

Finally, a light comes on in the house next to her. She can see the drapes being pushed aside and a man pressing his face at the picture window.

“Help me!” she screams. “Help!”

She is so weak, she can’t even raise a hand toward him.

She breaks into a coughing fit.

That is when she hears the growl.

The sound of an unearthly beast.

Glancing back, she can see it. The wolf. In the driveway of the house she has just left. The animal is crouched, legs flexed, ready to lunge. A black wolf that isn’t a wolf. A look of red flames that is not the look of any creature from this world.

And suddenly she recognizes him in that shape of an impossible animal, in that look filled with cruelty.

“Claude?”

Eva swallows. The black beast lowers its head. Its hungry eyes stare at her. And in the flames of those eyes dance images from the past. One year earlier, the madman had sent her the same look.

“Claude Salaville?”

The beast bares its fangs in a parody of a smile.

You can’t do nothing against us, bitch.

Its chest is close to the ground. The animal is ready to spring at her.

“Leave her alone,” a little girl’s voice orders.

And Eva feels the small hand resting on the nape of her neck.

“Run. Quick.”

“But…”

“You have seen. Now you know. The souls must be freed,” Justyna says.

Eva is unable to respond. The world is spinning around her. She senses that lights have gone on in other windows along the street. A door opens. A man has come out on his front steps. Maybe.

The little girl with white hair walks away from her and toward the black beast with the eyes of red lava.

“No, don’t,” Eva stutters. “You can’t do anything… against him.”

Justyna keeps walking.

And the monstrous animal leaps out, its jaws open wide, and engulfs her in a mass of fur.

Eva begins to scream.

The beast snaps the little girl in two. Then the girl and beast intertwine and merge. The world spins faster and faster.

“Miss? Miss? Oh my God!” someone cries.

“Call for help! Hurry!” someone else shouts.

Eva can feel the blood leaving her body.

There is no more trace of her ghost sister, nor of the wolf that was not a wolf. She is lying naked on the wet sidewalk. And as more people come out of their houses and gather around her, she passes out.

Tuesday, dawn

The first light of day in the frost-coated countryside gave the dozen or so police vehicles parked around the Saint-Clair house a bluish tinge. The entire Rodez force had come out, and the officers were standing dumbstruck, their faces red from the cold and their eyes wide, not knowing what to do. One of them, unable to stand it any longer, laid blankets over the mutilated bodies of his colleagues. Then others, finally coming to their senses, began to secure the perimeter. Another officer resolved to bring out the yellow evidence markers, not knowing where to start. A female procedural officer turned on a camera to start making a video of the crime scene.

They were still numb, but their hesitation would not last. They were familiar with the dance. Already, the pace was picking up. Finding their footing on the rocky soil beneath the tall grass, the dancers were becoming more confident. They would soon find the rhythm, frantic and reassuring, of the anthill. Vauvert had no doubt about it.

The only difference was that this time he was not part of it.

This time, he was sitting in the back of a van.

He had been confined there with Leroy and forbidden to go anywhere. He was not really considered a criminal-at least not at this point-but in the eyes of the local force, he certainly was not a colleague.

It was the first time he had been in this kind of situation, and he did not like it one bit.

He gestured at a young officer as the man walked by.

“Excuse me. Do you know where Captain Nadal…”

The officer kept on going without talking to him, without even looking at him.

“…is?” Vauvert finished, clenching his fists.

He was itching to hurl insults, but he had gambled enough with his luck. He had no doubt that these men would make things way worse for him if he opened his big mouth. Instead, he fished a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and lit one. He took a long, burning drag that warmed him a little, then exhaled the smoke through his nose.

Beside him, Leroy sat waiting, his phone against his ear.

“Did you finally get a signal?”

“Yep. The connection sucks, but if I don’t move, it works.” He abruptly changed his tone. “Ah, boss? Yes, yes, this is Erwan speaking.”

Even from across the van, Vauvert could hear O screaming.

“Yes, boss, I know… I can explain everything… Detective Vauvert was right… We’ve IDed the killer… We’re at her house in the Aveyron area.”

Vauvert decided to leave the man alone while he explained the situation to his superior. He slipped out of the van and took a few steps in the grass glittering with frost. Now that the sun was rising, the sight of the blue mountains and fir trees was idyllic. A thin layer of fog hovered in wisps over the countryside.

Only the wizened old sheepfold house, with its thick walls of black volcanic stones, marred the landscape. It was a stain on this country field.

Stoic officers left the house, one after the other, carrying black plastic bags.

“I thought I ordered you to stay in the van!” Nadal shouted.

The captain was coming his way. His face was pallid, and his eyes were bloodshot.

“Don’t worry. I’m not going anywhere,” Vauvert said, trying to calm things down. He pointed his chin at the plastic bags. It was a question.

“In the back of the house, we found…” Nadal got hold of himself. “For heaven’s sake, there was another room where we found more remains. There have to be twenty corpses tossed like garbage in the back of that house. I’ve never seen anything so fucking disgusting in my entire life.” He looked lost. He shot Vauvert a wary look. “I don’t know how the hell it happened, but we were victims of a collective hallucination. The shadows, the darkness… We thought we saw things.”