All sense of time had been lost, but I'd guessed that we had been sitting in that small room for over an hour. All of the options that we could think of to escape had been exhausted. The crank on the steel door would spin freely but nothing would happen - it was a useless mechanism and it was even more useless wasting our energy trying to make and sense out of its purpose other than to seal off the wall to the library. If the door opened at all I assumed it would only open from the other side.
The native man and I sat at opposite corners against the wall on either side of the steel door. Countless questions that I could ask him ran through my head, after all it looked as though we weren't getting out of here in a hurry - if at all, so starting a conversation seemed like a slightly more pleasant way of passing the time rather than sitting and listening to the rhythmic buzz of the neon light and the tap-tapping of the blood dripping from the corpse that was quickly beginning to slow down in tempo.

"How did you know it was him?" I asked, my voice croaky after a long period without speaking.
"I'm sorry, what?" the native man grunted.
"How did you know it was him.....O'Neil is it, are you sure its him and not someone else?"
"I regret to say that I'm pretty certain that it's O'Neil"
"How can you be so sure? to me that body that hangs in front of us could be anyone - hell, I can't even tell if that is man or woman".

The native man unclasped the chain around his neck and tossed it toward me.

"The cross, turn it over" he instructed. Engraved into the back of the cross was the name Victor.
"What does it mean?" I asked as I tossed the cross back to him.
"Victor is my name. We each have our own."
"So the one you found in the library..."
"Belonged to Jacob O'Neil, correct" Victor interrupted, "I can't be 100% sure that this is him, but it definitely doesn't look promising. I know that if this really is him he wouldn't rest in peace without his cross around his neck.......we should never have come here, we should have listened".
There was a slight quiver of fear in Victors voice - how much did he really know about the house?

"So what did bring you here?" I asked, pushing for more information.
"Its a long story, and I mean a real long story".
"it seems to me like we have some time on our hands"
"I guess you're right, I guess somehow we were destined to cross paths at some stage, how it all ties in together I don't know, but we're all connected".
"I don't quite follow - what do you mean?"

Victor scratched his head, took in a deep breath and exhaled slowly, and so his story began:

As children, my sister Maria and I had been sent to an orphanage for troubled kids. The Sacred Heart home for children it was called. We'd been sent there after our parents had been murdered - the innocent victims of a home invasion. I never had a chance to say goodbye properly, I find it hard sometimes to remember their faces. Detective John Beringer - the cold hearted fuck suggested that Maria was the likely suspect. She was only 7! A bloodied butchers knife was found under her pillow and blood splatters consistent with the crime scene placed her in the room at the time of the murder. The autopsy found childlike bite marks on my mothers chest but were never proven to be either mine or Maria's. They sent us both away for psychiatric analysis, and while I was determined to be mentally stable, Maria on the other hand had completely shut down. She wouldn't talk or respond to anyone, she went from being a bright, happy and energetic child to a soulless husk literally overnight. I refused for us to be separated, I was a protective older brother but for the sake of both of us we were all one another had left so it meant a great deal to have the opportunity to stay together under the one roof, no matter what the circumstances - so the authorities figured the safest place for us to stay together would be an orphanage where by under the care of the sisters there, we would be able to live together and monitor Maria's behavior closely.

So they said - however, Saint Rose opened doors to new horrors for us. Rather than being the start of a new chapter in our lives, it felt more of a continuation of the past coming back to haunt us.
Dorm number 25 was where Maria and I, along with eleven other children slept under the watchful eye of Sister Ellenor Sutherland whom claimed that she was married to the highest of powers (referring to God I assume) and that all negative influences should never go unpunished.
Like any child we were never perfect, and Sister Sutherland would find any excuse to abuse her power. Any chance she could get, she would lead us off down the hall and down the stairs and into the storeroom behind the laundry room where she would cross that fine line between discipline and abuse knowing that our screams from the torture would go unheard behind the blanket of noise created by the industrial washing machines. She was careful of her abuse at first, keeping the beatings to a minimum and being careful not to inflict injury to parts of the body that couldn't be covered with clothing, however in time she managed to slowly convince the other sisters that she was merely following Gods orders and they should apply the same discipline on the children in their own dorms. Like sheep, they followed. Some choosing to turn a blind eye while others choosing to join in, and with that not only did the abuse continue, it intensified. The abuse became less intended as a punishment and more of an excuse to turn us kids into specimens for her sadistic experiments in torture. She would even go as far as strapping us down on tables or chairs with buckles or tied up with rope and some of the devices she would use where of her own invention, the kind of things only the sickest of minds would invent: Vices used to break bones and re-set them at funny angles, chairs encrusted with razor blades for bloodletting - to which she sometimes drank from, pitch black closets in which she would line the walls with sharp spikes and hang children upside down in and confining the space with more spikes as she closed the closed door like her own spin on a makeshift iron maiden. She would sew mouths shut, eyelids shut, sew fingers together and attempt her own experimental surgeries, all of which resulted in permanent damage and in more than one occasion even death. Which is what became of Blake "Sidd" Siddal. He was a hero if you ask me. God loving to the very end. He believed that Ellanor's reign would come to an end and God would save us all, sparing us from her evil. It was Sidd that made these crosses for his friends......for his family in dorm 25. He made them in the metalwork class taken by Sister Olsen, one of the few non-abusers but certainly one to look the other way. Sidd worked for days melting down the metals and engraving each and every individual cross. Ironically its likely that the very tools he used were the ones used to create the devices that killed him.
Despite Maria's behavior, Sidd had quite the crush on her. In some ways he acted even more protective of her than I was and It was this that triggered the events that lead to his murder.

Because of Maria's behavior, sister Sutherland became infatuated with the concept that Maria was possessed by demons, or even the Devil himself, it almost seemed at times that sister Sutherland was jealous however she always used the excuse of taking Maria away in order exorcise the demons within. It was on one occasion that I lay bed ridden in the dorm (after a bout of abuse) that Maria was taken away by Ellanor. The look on Ellenor's face was a lot more sinister than usual ( if that was at all possible ) which was enough to make Sidd fear the worst. He paced about the dorm listening to Maria's screams as they trailed off down the hall. It was obviously to much for Sidd, he couldn't just stand there and let them do these things to Maria, and knowing that I was too unstable to do anything myself, he decided to take matters into his own hands. He drew a cross in the air and looked up to the ceiling muttering the words "It comes to an end today" before storming off down the hall.

He found Maria strapped to a chair, a vice-like contraption held her head at an uncomfortable 90 degree angle. Ellanor had a funnel embedded deep within Maria's ear canal and through the funnel she poured scalding hot motor oil. To exorcise the demons she said. Sidd took matters into his own hands, kicking Ellanor in the kneecap and dropping her to the floor like a ton of bricks, spilling the motor oil on herself in the fall, covering her face and hands. One would think that would have been enough to bring an end to such a monster, however it was only fuel to enrage her even more. I'm thankful that his actions took Ellanor's attention off Maria but in the end Sidd made the ultimate sacrifice. His own life.

She didn't even wait to heal her own wounds. She rounded up a handful of sisters, took him out to the room behind the laundry and tied ropes to each arm and leg requesting her fellow sisters to pull as tightly as they could while she cracked a whip against Sidd's small frail limbs, eventually the skin gave way the tighter the sisters pulled, ripping with each laceration from the whip.

I can only hope that God numbed his pain, and that he didn't have to endure the torture of his last moments on earth.

He was right though - although perhaps too little too late. It wasn't long after that the Sacred Heart home for troubled children was overrun by police and SWAT teams. It turned out that one of the sisters wasn't as silent as Ellanor had hoped, one of them was on our side after all. Most of the sisters were arrested while some took their own lives during the moment of desperation and then there were those that simply got away - through the back door so to speak. Ellanor Sutherland included.

From that day the remaining twelve of us kids from dorm 25 : Myself, Maria, Jacob O'Neil, Delta Hannigan, Joe Dermont, Vivian and Allan Lee, Logan Buckley, Raine Simmons, Rakesh Chandra and Jeremy and Robbie Walker - were all separated, moved into foster homes well away from Sacred Heart.
We all kept in contact via the mail from time to time (the police and social welfare were kind enough to grant us that much), and while no one even hinted about our times at Sacred Heart in our letters to one another, we couldn't help but not at least think about it with every letter read. We were all a little scared that the monster that inflicted so much pain on us had never been caught.
It wasn't long before age and hormones converted that fear into a taste for justice. Avenging Sidd's death became impor....

Victors story had been interrupted by strange sound that echoed through the small room. It was sound that can only be best described as a cackling laughter, the type of laughter that kept the same rhythm and pitch that could easily have been confused with the sound of hands clapping in slow applause.
It was hard to tell, but between the intervals of light and dark offered by the buzzing neon light, it looked as though smoke was rising and from the drain in which the blood from O'Neil's body was dripping into. The smoke, while only visible in that that brief moment between light and dark ( as if invisible in bright light ) engulfed O'Neil's corpse like a spider spinning its silk around its prey.

"Are you seeing this?" Victor asked as he slid to his feet with his back against the wall. I gave him a silent nod as I followed his lead and got to my feet.

The intervals in which the neon light flickered became quicker - there was a sense that together with the smoke there was a presence within the room which sped around the perimeter of the room creating clicks and popping sounds with each complete circuit. Whispers could be heard throughout the room but they were either too quiet or in a completely different language entirely to be understood, they were just like the rest of the sounds within the room - nothing more than disruptive noise.

And then the sounds ceased - as quickly as they had begun. The light had flickered back on to a more permanent length of time.

"What the fuck was that?" Victor pleaded.
"Truth be told, I have no idea, but I have a feeling that it was just the beginning"

The laughter began once more, however this time it was more direct. It had a source, and the source was indeed straight from the mouth of O'Neil.

The upturned corpse jigged as it laughed despite its absence of lungs. The laugh grew louder, there was no denying what was making it, the impossibilities had been defied, the dead was laughing and more than likely it was laughing at our expense. O'Neil's spine arched back as he coiled around to face both Victor and myself.
Rough butchered flesh hung from his cheeks as he uttered the words that were clearly not of his own spirit, "How many more gallons of blood need to be spilled Victor? how many more lives need to be sacrificed?" O'Neil's skinless jaw permanently grinned as it spoke, "Ellanor expected dorm 25 to make an appearance at some stage, however she applauds you, she really didn't expect all of you to make it"

"How many of us are here?" Victor angrily grunted at O'Neil's corpse.
"Its like one big HAPPY family again, we all here, together under the same roof"
"Where are they? where are the others"
"Consider it a game of hide and seek, I'm aware that you used to like playing that game when you were younger - who knew you'd eventually be able to put those skills to the test - however this time, WE make the rules"
"Oh really? so what are these rules?"
O'Neil's corpse cackled in a fit of laughter, "Our rules? ..... our rules are that WE win - and you DIE!"
With that, the corpse broke free of the chains that held it upside down from the ceiling - the links flying in all directions shattering the tiles lining the walls like bullets as they hit their random targets.
The corpse corrected it's position with a back flip in mid air and landed neatly with both hands and feet pressed against the floor. It's head snapped back and looked at the Victor and I, both standing motionless with our backs against the wall. It crab walked a few steps toward us, foaming white froth and the mouth and exhaling and animalistic growl.
The muscle on its back bubbled and pulsated into large cysts and blisters which gave an inhuman birth to quills and thorns of varying sizes, littering the walls and floor with pus and mucus as they burst through the thin membrane. A hollow crunch rang from O'Neil's skull as the corpse continued its transformation. Two leathery tentacles protruded symmetrically from either side of the forehead, moist like two black eels trying to free themselves from the confines of his skull. The tentacles coiled themselves around at the corpses temples and set like stone, forming horns that resembled that of a ram.
It stood upright on two feet and admired its own mutation, feeling strength in what was once nothing more than human meat and bone on a hook.
Its eye's glowed a dark rose red under the control of of the supernatural parasite that took control of O'Neil's husk.
"Now......who wants to die first while the other watches and waits?", the beast taunted, grinding its teeth as it spoke through its lip-less grin.

To be continued......

Next issue: The Devil's Nest