Sacred Blood of the Sacred Night

(Back in 2023, a new horror magazine had a call for stories. The magazine, Carnage House, stated they were looking for hardcore horror. I liked their website and their no BS attitude, so I figured I'd write a new story entitled Sacred Blood of the Sacred Night and send it to them. Since then, I've sold 4 stories to Carnage House. If you enjoy your horror with more than just a drop of blood, please check the website/e-zine out at carnagehouse.com!)

The sign, hand-painted in deep, crimson lettering, read: "Sacred Blood of the Sacred Night. Come Give Gratitude with US Tooday!!!"

Cara read it aloud in her little-girl voice as she and Gary Ivan Sanderson III drove across the back roads of Iowa on a sweltering, hot, late-July day. She turned to Gary with a manic smile on her pale, white face. "Isn't that the most dope name for a house of gratitude?"

Gary glanced at her. Eighteen at most, he figured, even though she had told him the night before at the truck stop that she was twenty-one. She had a thin, angular face and dirty-brown hair, and wore black shorts and a dark blue tank top with no bra that showed off prominent nipples. On her skinny chest and shoulders snaked a myriad of runic tats and scarifications.

Why in the hell do kids these days put crazy shit like that on their bodies? And more importantly, why is she still alive? Back in my prime I would have choked out this little slut after I fucked her senseless. Hell, back in the good ol' days I would have sliced her open from throat to ass and fucked her steaming guts. Last night, I couldn't even get it up, and here she is, still talking and driving me crazy.

"It's interesting," Gary finally muttered. Interesting if you're a New Age nutcase.

"Look," she said, pointing out the windshield. "There's another sign for it, and this one says it's only a couple miles away. Can we stop, check it out?"

Gary shrugged his meaty shoulders. Stopping anywhere was the last thing he wanted to do, and yet, maybe he should. Maybe the novelty of it would get him out of his mental funk so he could live up to the moniker the media gave him—hell, gifted him—seven years ago: The Midwest Ripper.

"Yeah, we'll stop," he said. "But only for a few minutes. Remember I have to get to Omaha by this evening for a very important meeting."

"You're the best!" Cara gushed, squeezing Gary's thigh. "I promise I'll be a very naughty girl tonight!"

Here's hoping I can find my mojo so that you'll be a very dead girl tonight.

Gary turned his late-model blue Impala from the two-lane blacktop onto a rutted dirt road, following signs that were almost obscured by the unending rows of green cornstalks.

How could anybody live in this rural shithole?

Even with the air conditioner on high, Gary sweated through his white cotton short-sleeved shirt. That morning, he had attempted to tuck his crisp, pressed shirt neatly into his equally crisp, pressed blue chino slacks, but his expanding gut hung uncomfortably over his belt line, and now, he felt the shirt riding up his back. At fifty-seven, he missed his once muscular, six-foot-tall body. Arthritis and disintegrating spinal discs were slowly chipping away at his height, and his arms and middle grew progressively flabbier—just like his late father. I'm turning into you, Daddy-do. Except I'm not a cucked spineless prick like you were and never will be. When I go out it's gonna be guns blazing, not lying in a shit-stained hospital bed whining about how unfair life is. Having a pussy like you for a father was—

"Look, look!" Cara cried, pulling Gary out of his thoughts. She pointed to where the dirt road ended. There, a large, gravel parking lot sprawled next to the Sacred Blood of the Sacred Night Gratitude Center. The lot sat empty except for one other vehicle, a faded, yellow pickup.

Gary gazed at the building, a small, simple one-story wooden structure painted entirely white except for a massive gray moon with one disproportionally small blue eye floating in the middle of it. An exaggerated smile drawn in a single line spanned the lower half of the lunar surface. Like a fucking smiley face cyclops! That is fucking-A hideous. While Gary held no illusions that he was anything more than a murdering psychopath, he took solace in the fact that there were other people in the world even more fucked up than him. Who in the hell would paint something like that and expect people to come to drop their hard-earned coin?

"That'so wig!" Cara gushed. "Let's go in."

"We've stopped and seen it," Gary said. "Now we're leaving. I told you I need to—"

Cara leapt out of the car and ran to take a closer look.

Gary sighed and opened the door, took a step out, then reached under the seat and slid his trusty 9mm Glock semiautomatic—locked, cocked, and ready to rock—into his back belt, covering it with his shirt. Maybe I'll just cap her right here and be done with it.

"Can I help you folks?"

A balding, overweight old man—Gary guessed ten past his own years—in denim bib overalls and a dirty white T-shirt stepped out of the building.

"We saw your signs on the road and just had to stop," Cara said, walking over to Gary where he leaned on the hood of the Impala. "It's so unique!"

"Not unique enough to keep going," the man said, wiping sweat off his sunburned brow. "I'm closing it up."

"Oh no," Cara said, eyes wide.

Gary looked at her and shook his head. Killing you here and now is feeling more and more likely. I can cap this fat pig too, just for grins.

"I know," the man said, his expression forlorn. "But as the leader of this center, I've done given it my heart and soul for the past twenty years. All it's given back to me is a wife who ran off with one of my followers a year ago, a bank account south of zero, and a whole fucking shitload of—." He stopped, put a hand to his mouth, then sourly laughed. "There I go, reverting back to my old, nasty ways."

"Nothing wrong with that," Cara said, snuggling up to Gary and putting an arm around his waist. He sidestepped, putting distance between them. Cara kept on running her mouth. "Me and Gary here were quite nasty last night."

The old man frowned then shrugged. "Maybe you're right, 'cause whatever I've been doing isn't worth jack shit."

Gary stepped back. He was profusely sweating in the heat, nauseous from the smell of cow shit fertilizer wafting in the air, and ready to move on.

Alone.

"Not much in this world is worth jack shit," Gary said, reaching behind for the pistol.

It wasn't there.

It was in Cara's hands.

Pointed at him.

"What the hell is going on?" the old man croaked.

"This is the Midwest Ripper," Cara said, "and I bet he was getting ready to blow both our asses away."

"She's crazy," Gary said to the man in a calm, even voice. "I picked this poor girl up last night and—"

Cara pulled the trigger. A 124-grain, hollow-point bullet traveling at twelve-hundred feet per second slammed into Gary's right knee, sending a spray of blood and bone into the humid air. The second shot took out his left kneecap, leaving nothing but torn tendons and ligaments holding his lower leg to the upper.

Gary dropped, writhing on the dry earth like a snake on fire, hands clasped over his tattered knees, and vomited his morning breakfast of pancakes and bacon. "Fucking crazy bitch!" he screamed after his esophagus ceased spasming. "I'm gonna gut you like those other sluts!"

"See?" Cara said smugly, looking at the old man. "The Ripper."

"Damn," the man said, starring at Gary as if he were an alien from Mars. "What are we gonna do with him?"

"Can you tie him up?"

The old man nodded. "Missy, this fat old man can still tie a mean Tom fool's knot in his sleep. Just watch." He lumbered into the building, returned with a rope, and got to work under a barrage of obscenities from his captor. Five minutes later he had Gary tied up like a hog ready for butchering.

"Now what?" the old man panted.

"Yeah, now what?" Gary spat. "If you take me to the nearest hospital I promise I'll—"

Cara's third shot, at point-blank range, split Gary's lower jaw into two ragged pieces; one half held his ripped tongue, jerking with involuntary contractions like a fat worm on a sharp hook, while the other sported pieces of cosmetically straightened teeth that, under the blood and puke, shone pearly white as that of a Hollywood actor.

Gary passed out, silent at last.

"Now," Cara said, "we wait for darkness."

She walked to the old man and rubbed his crotch. "We'll mix the Ripper's blood and entrails with your seed. Then I'll show you what you should be worshipping—gods that have been around since time began, gods that require much but give much more in return."

The old man put a hand over hers as she continued to rub him. He slowly took a deep breath, exhaled, then grimly smiled. "Sure. Why not? About time this-here center started living up to its bloody name."