Blood Debt by Tom Wood

Author:Tom Wood [Wood, Tom]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-11-22T16:00:00+00:00

THIRTY-NINE

Inside, the den was a little warmer without the wind chill and the drizzle, although Victor could still see his breath clouding if the light caught it at the right angle. The air seemed more humid too. The entrance hallway’s brick walls were painted an off-white so darkened by grime it was closer to a sickly yellow except where calcium deposits had built up from leaking water pipes. They criss-crossed the brickwork, muted brown in colour. Verdigris gave the occasional connection a bluish tinge and rusting screws stained the wall in intermittent, vertical lines.

As he delved deeper into the building he could smell the smoke of tobacco, marijuana, hash, opium, crack cocaine and other narcotics he did not recognise. The hallway soon opened up to what he supposed was once a factory floor, although now it was a warren of rooms, corridors and open spaces separated by temporary walls. Some were the kind of screens and dividers used in offices, others were constructed from stacked wooden pallets, blankets and throws suspended by washing lines, corrugated steel sheets, garden fencing, and anything else that could be used to carve out a degree of privacy.

The first occupied room was strewn with large beanbags and scattered with bare duvets and cushions. Everything was so filthy it was almost impossible to know the true colour of any material. At first, he thought it was empty of people until what he thought was a row of cushions began to snore. He took a step closer to gain a better angle on the sleeper, seeing a young woman with cracked and split lips.

Music emanated from the next room: some soft, electronic music that reminded him of waves lapping against the shore of a lake near to Guatemala City. He had fond memories of the time that followed, of mornings spent in the sunny valleys of Switzerland and afternoons on the ski slopes.

A group of four were sitting in a circle in the centre of the room, cross-legged and facing one another as they shared a glass pipe that bubbled when a naked flame was set beneath it.

Acrid smoke rose into the air.

‘Manny?’ he said, holding back the plastic sheeting that served as a doorway.

No one answered so he stepped inside, circling their circle to check their faces. In the dim light they seemed almost inanimate, showing little sign of life until the pipe came their way.

An emaciated woman propositioned him in explicit detail. Victor politely declined the offer, electing to refrain from criticising the vulgarity of the language used. She had more pressing problems to address than swearing.

He found no one else young enough to be Manny on the ground floor, so he ascended a set of stairs.

Graffiti was everywhere on the walls here. As he moved deeper into the floor he saw some had been sprayed with fluorescent paints, which glowed bright under ultraviolet lighting, providing the only other colours visible. He saw crudely drawn satanic symbols and pentagrams intermingled with verses of scripture.

Unlike the

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.