The Everborn - Nicholas Grabowsky [78]
“You go up,” Mr. Yellowjacket instructed. “I gotta stay down here and tend to things. Just go up the stairs past the choir room until you reach the door at the top. That’s Simon’s place. That’s where they should all be doin’ their thing.”
“Thanks very much,” Matt told him and proceeded forward to begin his ascent.
“God bless you, brother,” Yellowjacket said, he himself proceeding down the center aisle of church-pews and towards the remaining worshippers before the pulpit.
Matt wasn’t as wary as perhaps he should’ve been. Yet with Max having long gone before him and in the good company of the pastor, Matt suspected he would walk into nothing more than halfway into an interview between Max and Simon with the pastor in their midst, the pastor more than likely perplexed with the contents of Max’s questionings. But Matt was sure that Max would keep his cool in the company of Pastor Bradshaw, at least partway sure. Given the nature of Simon BoLeve’s past and its seriously bizarre relevance to Matt’s own past, its profound and chilling relevance, Matt faced a certain deep, foreboding fear. To top this off, he was faced with his mounting suspicions of Simon’s involvement at the motel. Given the instincts and experiences of a cop, his journey upwards to the head of the stairs was plainly reminiscent to his attempts to locate and apprehend the suspected felons of escapades past.
Given the evidence, he wondered whether his visits would end with Simon’s arrest.
And given who Simon supposedly was, he wondered what would become of that.
These contemplations were by no means any comfort to him as he approached the closed door at the end of the miniscule walkway he came across at the top of the stairs. If there was any comfort at all, it was in the Smith & Wesson holstered between his breast and the inside lining of his jacket.
He halted at the door. Listened. There were no voices, no noise. It was abnormally quiet. Deathly so.
He leaned forward against the door. He raised a hand, and with his knuckles, he knocked softly.
He waited.
No answer. Nothing.
He was about to speak, but instead willed his opposite hand to rise to grip the doorknob. It turned in his grip; the door was unlocked.
He opened the door unto the decadent dark.
***
Matt McGregor did not expect the onrush of stale sweatshop pungency to welcome him as he opened the door, as if he’d opened the door to a men’s locker room after a sweaty day in the summer heat.
Darkness broke into the lamplight of the far center of the room and fell upon the Stygian surprise party that awaited him. His vision canvassed the morbid exhibition uninhibited and ghastly underneath the vista of frolicking particles of light-washed dust and discolored dimness. These were the first things he saw, three bodies, one nude and bound and stretched upon a queen-sized bed like an unconsenting victim to a ghoulish game of bondage and masochism, another contorted and lifeless and drained of the blood now a bloodbath still drawn from a gaping black slit across his neck, the other slumped at the foot of the bed and equally bloody, equally lifeless...
...Max....
Reality at once collided with the seconds-long inability to focus upon it and upon such an unexpected scene, but it was only within seconds that Matt acted and a cop’s instincts kicked in, instincts blurred with emotion and dislocation and the awareness of the identities of the other two, of Bradshaw and of Bradshaw’s young daughter upon the bed. Matt was quick to rush towards them and towards Max, insanely distraught as he did so but alert enough to reach into his jacket and