A Legacy in Blood

 

Chapter 1

Tampa, Florida

October 3, 1992

  

The cell was as dark as death.

Terror…hunger, spreading around him, emanating from the cold stone; searching. Can’t breathe. Helpless. Waiting…

It was coming now–he could feel it–the air charged with its searing need. Molten red eyes…consuming his will; mindless obedience. Death was the only hope.

–Come to me

Hands–greedy, bony splinters–clutching, hungry for the warmth of his flesh. The presence was everywhere now, surrounding him, inside of him. Feel it–evil. Completely evil. Smell of reeking flesh; age and death and decay. No escape.

Fingers locked in substance, flinging the snarling beast aside, hands flailing; connecting. Cool metal, and golden light explodes. 

♦ ♦ ♦

Mark Samuals’ eyes raked the familiar walls, fear still driving his heart while reality slowly reasserted itself, running its comforting fingers through his mind, massaging away the last ragged remnants of the nightmare. On the floor, the big orange tabby blinked at him accusingly.

“Jesus Christ, Oscar, you scared the hell out me.”

Mark untangled his lanky frame from the damp sheets and pulled himself to the edge of the bed; drenched, exhausted, gulping air like a thirst-crazed runner. The dream–always the same. He stood up, grabbing for the wall. Steady.

The clock lay face up on the floor where it had landed after his blind thrust for the lamp–three a.m.–and he was stumbling down the hall, christening the house with electricity as, room by room, each light blazed to life. In the kitchen he interrupted the covert greed of two cockroaches; they scurried into the wall, disappearing like sprites, much to the cat’s dismay.

The maternal hum of the refrigerator drew Mark like a bug to light; food, nourishment, security.  He poured himself a glass of milk and opened the back door for Oscar. Outside, the air was as sticky as that in the house–the choking heat of the Florida summer had persisted into October–but after a few lungfuls of it, Mark felt control returning.

In the back yard, he was swept into the relentless heartbeat of the city; the high-pitched singing of insects and night birds, the distant whine of a siren on I-275, the deep-bassed rumble of rap on a car stereo the next street over. He stared up into the northwestern sky where he knew it was, even though the moss-draped arms of ancient oaks blocked it from his view; the white specter that had stood sentinel over the Tampa community of Sulphur Springs for over sixty years, an enigma to residents and visitors alike.

The tower.

Even now, fully awake, he felt its pull, just as he had as a boy growing up in its shadow, in this house where he had lived his entire life. And now it pursued him into his sleep.

It had been nearly a month since the first time, and now, every night since, he was seduced by the driving terror of the dream, the same hellish scenario imprisoning his mind from the moment he closed his eyes until the alarm clock shattered its beguiling spell.

The dark hollows under his eyes grew deeper with each passing day, his complexion more ashen as the strain took its toll. People who knew him had begun to ask if he was all right, and as he became irritated with their questions–they could not understand–he alienated them, one by one, until now there was no one to talk to about it, even if he had wanted to. No one but Smyth, his oldest friend, and Mark was sure he didn’t want to hear about the vixens that pursued him into his sleep each night. The only vixens Smyth cared about were the flesh and blood kind that his bronzed good looks allowed him to bed with indiscriminate regularity.

Mark drained the glass of milk and felt steadied by its wholesome presence in his stomach. He glanced back in the direction of the tower and an icy shudder rippled through his body. Someone’s walking over my grave.

Mrs. Randall, the woman who had cared for him as a child after his mother had died, used to say that. He never understood the expression, nor any of her other disjointed, superstitious beliefs. She believed in the unseen powers beyond the three physical dimensions in which most of humanity existed.

There had been dreams then too; visions populated by faces and lands he did not recognize, charged with messages he could not comprehend, but they had been random, irregular snatches of disquieting insight sandwiched between spells of normality. He had been frightened then, not because he felt threatened, but because he did not understand the strange messages they conveyed, messages he forgot as soon as he awoke. Once in their embrace, he longed for the safe, the familiar–for Mother–and it was ever an odyssey to return to the known.

Mrs. Randall used to tell him that those dreams were a sign, a message from beyond this world. He once thought perhaps it was his mother trying to warn him of something from which she could no longer protect him, but even as a child he knew his mother could not be in such a place. Her place was in heaven, sent there by a drunk driver on a rainy night just before his fifth Christmas. Whatever the origin of these dreams, he knew it was not heaven. He knew this place was as close to hell as any living person could get.

Despite all efforts to the contrary, his mind dwelled obsessively on the images of that world; on the cold, lifeless evil of those eyes that burned from that pitch‑black cell, nightly drawing ever closer, consuming all hope, knowing that soon, perhaps even tonight, he would be forced to look upon what lay beyond. He shook off the image and went back into the house, its blazing incandescence providing a temporary haven from the darkness in his mind.

Switching on the TV–fifty‑eight channels of phosphorescent wasteland, flipping past an old John Wayne movie, the all-night news, a TV evangelist panning for money, still another talk show, a heavy metal music video, and on and on, like nameless cities whipping by on the interstate–he found The Hound of the Baskervilles just starting on HBO and stopped there, fighting the heaviness of his eyes. Three more hours and the sun would be up, and he would be free for another day. The TV droned on, lulling him back to sleep, and beyond it the dream beckoned again like an insatiable lover.

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