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NOTE: These stories are
intended for a mature audience.

Sunday Bloody Sunday
A Vorare story
by
Ivan Ewert
Start at the beginning of the Vorare series

It was honestly a relief when the door came crashing in.

He had expected it since the Ally's mindings - prayed for it in his weaker hours. There had been a pressure in the air that could not be released, as Gordon's refusal to show his face for more than an hour at a time shook his mother's tenuous faith in him. He would take to the hills before she woke, his Ally wrapped in stained and clotted sheets on which he no longer slept, and he would watch over Whitmire's streets like a vulture over the damned.

In the evenings the blood would dry and retreat back into his veins, he would fold the sheets and return, sitting to a dinner he would not touch, telling her only this no matter how many words he spoke: I love you, mother. But I'm going away.

The time for the Farm's subtle actions had passed, this much he knew in his heart of hearts. The next blow would come in force, and it was this thought which kept him perched at the top of the basement stairs through every hour of the night, his eyes on the casement windows, his back to the cellar door, and his grip on the duct-taped wrapping of an axe handle, brown and sticky from his Ally's constant bloody weeping.

Seconds after the sound, he slipped from his tiny domain. The cheap wood frame around the little brass lock had splintered under the work boots of a Ghoul. The next kick swung the door wide open, and the man stepped quickly in from the porch light.

Gordon swung the axe handle from the darkness, catching the Ghoul full in the jaw. Blood and teeth struck the immaculate walls of his mother's little home, spraying in an arc as if the club were a brush and the ivory walls a canvas. The Ghoul's head snapped backward and he crumpled, falling silent to the ground.

Gordon knelt and grabbed the man's leg with his free hand, hauling him quickly into the foyer. It was the unconscious work of a moment to notice that his stigmata had stopped in the sudden, furious action, allowing him to work without the slick coating of his life's blood on his hands. A door opened within the house, followed by the fearful voice of his mother: "Gordon! Gordon!"

"Get back!" He shouted, without turning, "under the bed! Go, go!"

He did not tell her she would be safe, made no effort to comfort her. It was a command, and he smiled tightly to hear her withdraw back into the room. It would not protect her if he fell - nothing would - but it would keep her out of sight, and perhaps more importantly, would keep her from seeing what must come next.

It was less than a minute before the second man came through the doorway, but this time Gordon's swing connected with something more solid than flesh, sending a jarring shock up both his arms.

The approaching Ghoul grinned from behind his translucent riot shield. Porch light glinted off the sweat which covered the skin of his close-cropped scalp, and he pushed hard with the shield to throw Gordon against the wall, pinning him as the sound of racing footsteps came from outside.

"A stick?" He laughed. "You've got to be kidding." Yet the flat tones of the Midwestern Farmers was vanished, replaced with the heavy southern cadence which Gordon had grown up with and left behind.

"A shield?" Gordon sneered back, and threw his Ally - his free forearm - against it.

Blood splattered across the riot shield and through it, burning away the plastic in an acid nightmare and slapping against the Ghoul's face, the blood steaming and burning even in the darkness. He screamed, stumbling backward through the door and clutching desperately at his eyes, burning from the Ally's hellish energy. Two more Ghouls, racing from the street to the porch, tossed their packmate aside. The streetlight glinted on metal, and Gordon threw himself behind the shattered door only a moment too late.

The sound of the shotgun's blast was followed by Carol's screams within the bedroom, by the sudden blaze of light across the yard as the Velander's neighbors raced for their houselights. Gordon didn't feel the shot rake through his side, only the impact which spun him toward the wall and threw him from his feet.

"Inside!" barked the shooter, and the second man - bearing his own shotgun - ran on heavy work boots toward the bedroom, toward Carol's hiding spot.

Silently gritting his teeth, Gordon threw up his arm, willing the powerful blood from within to hurl itself forward, to do something, to burn the man running as it had burned away the second Ghoul's shield and eyes.

In the midst of the violence, the Ally was singing.

It was not the croon with which it placated Gordon, nor the muttering babble to which it sometimes resorted before some complex working or warding. It was a single note, as high and violent as an eagle's cry, the torn edges of the wound flapping like moth's wings as the blood boiled within.

It caught the Ghoul in the small of the back, spear-solid as it flew through the air, and pierced through flesh, kidney, and liver alike. His body spasmed, pulling the trigger on the shotgun, and the shot brought a new scream from behind the bedroom door - a man's scream.

"Harris!" Carol screamed, and Gordon's brow knotted itself together. His mother's lover had spent the night, had not obeyed his order to hide. No doubt he had stood in front of the bedroom door with a pipe, or an improvised club, or even a gun of his own, guarding Carol in a way that Gordon could not.

By the agony in that scream, he had paid for it in a way that few could bear.

"Shit," muttered the last Ghoul in surprise, reversing his grip on the shotgun and driving its butt between Gordon's shoulders. Gordon no longer needed breath, and he was not stunned, yet the force behind that blow drove his face into the floor. He heard a small sound, a crunch which trembled through his upper body, the sound and feel of a free rib cracking against the hardwood.

The Ghoul's work boot came down hard on his wrist, pinning arm and Ally to the floor at his side - then the right knee came with all its weight onto his back, keeping him from writhing or pulling away from the vicious heel.

"I don't know what you're playing at, boy, but you're none of us," said the Ghoul nervously, "and I seen that you bleed." He let go of the spent shotgun and drew a large knife from the sheath at his hip, then took a handful of Gordon's hair and jerked the head back to reveal his throat.

Gordon saw her step from the bedroom, heavy pistol awkward and foreign in her trembling hands. There was fresh red blood on her modest, cream-colored nightshirt, dark crimson on the yellowed lace at her sleeves.

"Put it down," she said, her voice small in the darkness. Louder voices came from outside, neighbors calling to one another in the streets, hounds baying in their wakefulness, the wail of a distant but approaching siren.

The Ghoul looked up and snarled, baring perfect teeth. "Put it down, woman. I got nothing to do with you."

"The police are almost here." She stressed every other word. "You drop your knife and you don't cut him any more."

"Carol!" The voice of a neighbor from without. "Carol! Are you all right in there?"

"Stay out!" The Ghoul shouted, "I've got the old lady! Stay out!"

"He's lying! Help us!" Carol shouted back.

The edge of the knife slipped through Gordon's flesh and sank half an inch into his neck before the gunshot brought three neighbors rushing in, their concerns for self overwhelmed by the fear of leaving a neighbor in terror. The Ghoul lay alongside Gordon, knife useless on the bloodied floor. The Ghoul's neck had been laid open by the bullet, and Carol Velander did not lower the gun.

"He was hurting my son," she said, "and he's killed my man."

The neighbors were silent a moment, taking in the terrible image. Five men lay on the ground, broken, bleeding or beyond this world. Carol stood in the now-lit room, unable or unwilling to drop the pistol from her uncertain grasp.

"He's killed Harris."

"Carol," said one, "give me the gun, Carol."

She complied as he came forward, moving dully toward Gordon, prone upon the floor atop a puddle of blood. The flow was slowing to a trickle, and his own lips moved in concord with the muttering of the Ally, as though the words were his own.

"Gordon? Gordon, hold on. The police are coming. The ambulance is coming." Her words were short and flat, empty of emotion or fear.

"I can't go," he whispered.

"I can't hide you any longer," she said dully, gesturing to the small knot of neighbors gathered in her home. "You're going whether you want to or not."

Story and image by Ivan Ewert, Copyright 2008