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Just in time for Halloween! Here is my popular horror story
Satan's Blood in its frightening entirety. It has scared millions, appearing in several magazines, but as a thank you to all of my loyal readers, I am presenting it here as a free read. Enjoy, and please be kind and share the love (and the horror!). By the way, I suggest you read it with a friend... with all of the lights on!
Happy Halloween!!!
BJ
Satan’s Blood
BJ Neblett
© 2005, 2014
October 30,
2000 11:16 PM
My current address reads Atlanta
Federal Penitentiary, Atlanta, Georgia. I’m doing a five year bit for drug possession.
The feds enhanced my sentence because I was caught carrying a gun. A stupid
little chrome Berretta .25 more suited for a woman’s purse. The damn thing
didn’t even belong to me. It was my girlfriend Anna’s. She insisted I take it
along. You never know what kind of weirdos and low life you’re gonna’ run into
these days when you are dealing.
Not like the old days.
Then, a little weed, a couple of
blotters of acid, some Boone’s Farm apple and its peace and free love for
everyone. If you were lucky some cutie hippie chick in torn jeans and tie-died
halter would invite you to join the party. Hell, you didn’t even have to smoke.
Just take a deep pull of the Maui-wowie atmosphere and chill to the Dead.
Not today.
Today you meet some hyped up street
thug who is shakin’ so bad you could use him to mix paint. And you know he’s
packin’, too. As are his two homies sitting in the purple juke box with the 20”
rims across the street. As is the skinny chick in the blown afro and hot pants.
As is the prismatic pimp leaning on the light pole, she’s rubbin’ against. As
is the old dude in dirty Tee shirt and suspenders, leaning out the third floor
window, watching as daddy shakes-a-lot stands in front of you trying to count
his Benjamins.
Everybody’s packin’. You gotta protect
yourself. The feds don’t care. They’ve got a real hard on for gun cases these
days.
Actually, I’m anything but a
drug dealer. Sure, I sell a few tabs of ecstasy and maybe a tiny amount of
coke. But I’m small potatoes. Very small. One or two buys a month max, just to
supplement my income as a free lance photographer. Man, I don’t even use the
stuff. Not since Carter went back to being a peanut farmer and disco crawled
back into the slimy pit it slithered from. Honest. It’s strictly a business.
These days you do what you have to do to survive. Am I right?
The gun charge also upped the ante
and landed me in a federal pen instead of a low or medium facility. Thanks,
Anna. Being in prison is bad enough. Pens are the worse, and Atlanta is the
worse of the worse.
Built over a hundred years ago,
Atlanta has maintained it’s hard as nails reputation as well as its foreboding
appearance. Other joints have been remodeled, modernized, updated or torn down.
Not Atlanta. Indoor plumbing, running water and electricity are its only
concessions to civilization. Even the tall battlements capped with gun towers
were left unchanged. Together with the rough stone construction, they give the
place a medieval feel. Like something out of the Marquis de Sade’s nightmares.
Inside it’s downright creepy. The
dark narrow corridors echo and ring eerily. The antiquated pipes scream and
belch. And the cold stone walls bleed a dark rust red color. Satan’s blood the
inmates call it.
This is the place that broke the
likes of Al Capone. Alcatraz must have seemed like a picnic after Atlanta. Here
James Cagney and Edward G Robinson get the chair in old black and white flicks.
This is the place no convict wants to go. In the entire world there is no more desperate
place than Atlanta Federal Prison.
I rolled restlessly in my bunk. The
hard plastic mattress crackled like fire, beneath me. I have two years and two
months left on my sentence as of today. The crude calendar etched into the
bottom of the bunk above told me so. I took the homemade scribe and marked off
another day, then returned it to its hiding place. The scribe is only an inch
and a half long, made of soft aluminum scrounged from a wall rivet, and barely
sharp enough to scratch the flaking layers of decades old paint. But it’s
considered contraband. If you are caught with it, and if the guards aren’t in a
good humor, it could be considered a weapon. Then you find yourself in the hole
for thirty days. And when you get out some of your hard earned good time has
evaporated into thin air. And here at Atlanta the guards are rarely in a good
humor.
Actually, five years isn’t too bad a
stretch these days. And for a place like Atlanta it’s a walk in the park. The
sad reality is many of these guys will never again see a sunset that isn’t
crosshatched with chain link and razor wire.
My cellie, Nathan leaned over from
his top bunk. “Hey, School, lets me check your radio, man.”
I handed him up the small, overpriced
Sonny Walkman that’s sold on commissary. Nathan’s not a bad kid, for a
murderer. When he was nineteen he knifed a guy during a botched drug deal. That
was five years ago. He’s looking at twenty five more.
There is a kind of perverse
unwritten code among inmates; a status and pecking order. Take Nathan for
example. According to the code, anybody can shoot a person. It takes balls and
nerves of nails to gut a man up close. Nathan is shown respect and fear. Even
by some of the guards. I know he’s just a scared kid surviving the only way he
knows how, in a world he didn’t create and doesn’t understand. Then again,
aren’t we all?
“Thanks, School.” Nathan settled in
above me. I could hear the vulgar, repetitive hip hop lyrics hammering out of
the tiny ear buds. I wondered which would blow first, the cheap speakers or his
ear drums.
Inmates speak a language all their
own. Anyone over forty is School as in old school. It’s a term of
respect. For the most part the older guys are looked up to and treated well by
the other inmates. I’m fifty-four and white, a definite minority in the system.
For the last few years the feds have busied themselves trolling the city sewers
for serious offenders. Mostly what they’ve caught are street punks in their
teens and twenties. Obnoxious and usually illiterate, toss them in with harden,
older criminals who are only interested in doing their time quietly, and you’ve
got the makings of real trouble.
To make matters worse, the system is
overcrowded to the max. Three men in two man cells isn't unusual, especially
when you heard in a bunch of temporary hold overs. That was the situation this
Monday night.
Lights had been out for about ninety
minutes when the door to my cell creaked open. A tattered green mattress hit
the floor. It was followed by an old wool army blanket and a stained sheet. A
lanky figure in orange overalls three sizes too big for his needle frame stood
silhouetted, as the guard removed his handcuffs.
“You can’t treat me like this,” he
screamed in a cracked, scratchy voice.
The solid steel door slammed shut
with the heavy ominous metallic clunk common to jail and prison cell doors
everywhere. The stranger gave the door an ineffectual kick and cursed.
“Welcome to the block.” Nathan had
one ear bud out and was hanging out of his bunk like a hungry vulture. “Whats
you gots for me, homie?”
“What?” The stranger turned. Gold
shone from between two fleshy lips in the dim light. “Whats you say, boy?”
“You can’t come into my house empty
handed,” Nathan spit back.
The stranger’s eyes flashed white with
anger. “I gots nothin’ for you, bitch. Nothin’!”
I wasn’t worried. I’d seen Nathan’s
jail house act before. For the most part that’s all it was, just an act.
He rolled over, replacing the ear
bud. “Sokay. For now. But your corn flakes are mine, pops.”
The first thing every con does when
he hits a new facility is try to establish his toughness, his manliness, his
street cool. Peacocks struttin’, it’s always ninety-five percent show and five
percent blow. It’s a prison ritual as old as prison itself.
The stranger grunted and looked down
at me. “And what’s your friggin’ problem?”
I stared back up at him, “Three men
in a cell for starters.”
He kicked at the mattress then
turned around and punched the cell door harder than he meant. Stifling a
chuckle, I could see the grimace on his face in the pale yellow moonlight
filtering in through the small window.
“Yeah, well, I ain’t doing this!” he
barked, then raised his voice. “You hear me you dumb ass bastards, I ain’t
doing this!” And he kicked the door again.
“Hold it down,” I said. “You’re
disturbing the rats.”
The stranger spun around, his eyes
searchlights in the dark. “Rats? They ain’t said nothin’ ‘bout no rats!”
“It ain’t the two legged kind,” I
said.
“And it ain’t the rats you gots to
worry about, pops,” Nathan quipped and let out a sick giggle.
I smiled to myself and rolled over.
Inside, a cold shutter shook my body.
Our guest noisily settled down,
making himself at home on the concrete floor. I was still awake an hour later
when the scratching started. Almost imperceptible at first, it grew louder,
closer.
“What’s that?” There was fear in the
stranger’s voice.
“I told you, rats.”
“You was serious about that, boss?”
I turned over. The stranger was
sitting up in the middle of his mattress, the blanket clutched at his throat.
He looked like a frightened little girl who had just heard the boogie man.
Maybe he wasn’t
that far off.
“Relax. They seldom come in here. If
one does just throw your shoe at it,” I replied.
In the cell’s dim twilight I could
see the stranger was close to my age. He wore a short nappy afro, graying at
the temples. His large nose had been broken more than once and an ugly hook
shaped scar marked his left cheek. The air in the cell was cool, but sweat
beaded his grooved forehead as he tried to settle back down. His road mapped
eyes remained fixed on the large gap at the bottom of the cell door.
“Don’t worry,” I teased, “they don’t
eat much.”
The stranger sucked in a shock of
air and grabbed for his shoe.
The scratching continued. It echoed
off the drab green painted walls. I could hear the stranger breathing on the
floor next to me. Nathan’s words rang in my head: it ain’t the rats yous
gots to worry about.
More scratching.
Closer.
Instinctively, I reached down and
tucked the trailing blanket into the sides of my mattress. Parents tuck their
children in snugly, telling them to keep their arms and legs under the covers.
It breeds a sense of fear into them. A fear of what lurks under the bed. It
wasn’t what might be under my bunk that frightened me.
A clatter of chains rattled down the
hall: the guards making their count.
Midnight.
The stranger shuffled nervously.
Every inmate hears the story of
Satan’s Blood his first week here. The story varies, grows with detail and
intensity…and gore…depending on who’s doing the telling. But the basic,
grizzly, unfathomable true facts remain the same.
October 31,
1934 4:35 PM
Roger Zaha wore an oversized chip on
his shoulder like a medal of honor. He was angry. Angry at life for the lousy
trick it played on him. At least that’s how Roger Zaha saw things.
For seven long thankless years he
worked as a guard at Atlanta Federal Penitentiary. The work was honest and
steady. It provided an ample living for his wife and son.
But Roger Zaha was a malcontent.
He grew up hard and fast in
Atlanta’s toughest tenement. Everything Zaha ever had he fought and scratched
to gain. He clawed his way up to a respectable job and position in a clean,
quiet community. It was the height of the Depression and a man couldn’t ask for
more.
But Roger Zaha wanted more. Hell,
he’d paid his dues, he deserved more.
Zaha resented the other guards. None
of them had gone through what he did, Depression or no Depression. Yet here he
was, almost thirty, and no better off than the rest of them. He hated them for
it. And he didn’t bother to conceal his anger.
He was the one who pulled himself up
out of nothing. He was the one who made something out of himself. It was time
he got what he deserved.
“Hey, Zaha!”
The words came from cell F66.
Molech’s cell. Zaha worked in a section of the prison known as the tombs. Here
the worst offenders remained caged in their 8x10 cells twenty-four hours a day.
None would ever be returned to society. Ahriman Molech was the worse of them
all. Molech had coldly immolated his three young children, burning the house
down around them while they slept, just to collect the insurance.
“Zaha, come here.”
Molech’s voice was crushed glass in
velvet, sibilant. Yet it cut through your ears like razors. His shale black
eyes were the devil’s own, never looking at you but piercing straight through
your flesh. When he spoke, you felt the gelid fingers of his breath on your
throat.
“Zaha!”
“Wa’da ya want, Molech?”
“You know what today is, Zaha?” He
curled one thin, barely perceptible lip into a pointed smile. “It’s Halloween,
Zaha.”
“Yeah, so what?”
“Halloween, Zaha. You know witches,
goblins, and the undead.” He let out a laugh that chilled the guard. “Wouldn’t
you like to be with your kid?”
“Leave it alone, Molech,” Zaha
replied angrily. He rapped the cell bars with the end of his wooden shillelagh.
Molech’s sneer grew. “I know what
you want, Zaha. I know what you think, what you dream.”
“You don’t know nothing.”
The dim cell light cast Molech’s
shadow large and misshapen on the rough stone wall. To Zaha it looked like a
hulking beast ready to strike.
“I know you’re right,” Molech said.
He paused and leaned closer. “You’re better than these illiterate monkeys who
prowl around here in their starched uniforms like zombies, much better than
them.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I can help you. I can arrange it so
you never have to work again…ever.” Molech’s exaggerated face jutted between
the bars. His voice hissed in Zaha’s ear. “Think about it, Zaha. Everything you
need brought right to you…laid at your feet. You won’t have a thing to worry
about.” Molech’s words were sure and quiet as a prayer at midnight. “I can give
you what you want…”
“You’re crazy as a loon, Molech! How
can you do anything for me?”
Molech laughed again then squinted
at the guard. “What’s the matter, Zaha? What are you afraid of? You got nothing
to lose, except this crummy job. Got no faith in your dreams, Zaha? Afraid of
what they may cost you?”
Zaha reared back and spat on the
floor of the cell. “I ain’t afraid of nothin’! Do you hear that, Molech,
nothin’!” he barked, shaking the shillelagh. “You’re as crazy as they come!”
Zaha gathered himself and stared back into Molech’s serpentine eyes. “But I’ll
tell you something, Molech. I ain’t crazy…no, sir. But for what you
said…why…I’d pay any price…any price in hell!”
Molech relaxed back from the bars,
the crooked grin melting into a satisfied smile.
The next morning Roger Zaha awoke to
a nightmare. He was dressed in prison fatigues and stood behind the bars of a
cell. Cell F66.
“What the…hey!” Zaha grabbed at the
barred cell door and shook it fiercely. “Hey,” he screamed, “what the
hell…what’s going on…what is this…some kind of crazy joke?”
“What’s the matter, Zaha?” A voice
from one of the cells called out. “Don’t like the accommodations?”
“Oh, he’s too good for this,” a
passing guard snapped back.
Another laughed. “Yeah, don’t you
know…Zaha’s better than us!”
“Not anymore he ain’t!”
The cell block erupted in hoots and
shouts and laughter. Tin cups raked and rattled against iron bars. Zaha covered
his ears from the rising din. “This can’t be real…it can’t be…”
When he looked up, a uniformed guard
stood outside his cell. But it wasn’t a guard, it was Ahriman Molech! Zaha
lunged at him, grasping through the bars. Molech laughed and turned aside.
“Never have to work again,” he said.
His voice was icy and hollow. “Everything you need laid at your feet…at your
feet, Zaha!” Molech’s footsteps clattered down the hall, the shillelagh rapping
against one iron bar after another, his laughter dissolving in the distance.
Just before he disappeared out of sight, Molech raised an arm, snapping his
fingers.
At that moment a piece of paper
floated down into cell F66. Zaha snatched it up in mid-air. It was a newspaper
clipping dated Friday, January 18, 1935. Zaha’s hands trembled as he read:
(Atlanta,
GA) Roger Zaha, the man known as
the Halloween butcher, began his life sentence
today at the federal penitentiary here in
Atlanta, the same place he had worked as a
guard. After a sensational trial, Zaha, 29, was
found guilty of the brutal Halloween night
murder of his five year old son, Roger Jr. Zaha
allegedly used a butcher’s knife to dismember
the boy’s body before burning it to conceal the
crime. During the trial, a police spokesman
testified that the cellar walls of Zaha’s Fulton
County home were splattered with the child’s
blood. Unconfirmed sources have stated Zaha
told police he sacrificed his son to appease Satan,
making vague references to Leviticus 20 and
Jeremiah 19 in the Old Testament.
The scream reverberated throughout
the prison: the echoing howl of a banshee; the plaintive bay of a wolf caught
in a steel trap; the cries of a thousand faceless tortured souls; the tormented
scream of a madman.
“I’ll get you, Molech!” Zaha cried
out, slumping to his knees. “I’ll get you! As God is my witness, I’ll find you!
If it takes me eternity, by hell I’ll find you, Molech! I’ll make you pay…by
Satan’s blood I’ll make you pay! Molech…!”
The inhuman screams continued
through the night. In the morning Zaha was found in a heap on his cell floor.
His bones were broken. His body was covered in thick crimson welts, and ugly
festering purple and black bruises, and dozens of deep cuts and gashes. It was
as if some sinister hand had thrown him about like a rag doll. Dark rust red
colored blood was splattered across the cell walls.
Roger Zaha recovered. He spent the
rest of his life in cell F66. He didn’t work. Everything he needed was brought
to him, just as Ahriman Molech promised.
Zaha died in 1974, still vehemently
claiming his innocence. Shortly after, inmates began to mysteriously disappear
throughout the prison.
Eighteen to date.
Since that January night in 1935,
Atlanta Federal Penitentiary’s halls echo with torturous screams. And its cold
stone walls run rich with the dark rust red inmates call Satan’s Blood.
October 31,
2000 2:25 AM
The scratching continued.
Waxed louder.
Closer.
I could feel the presence of a pair
of cold, unblinking eyes. They stared out from a shadowy corner; searched the
dusky light for an errant cornflake or a few stray bread crumbs.
It’s nothing.
You get used to the nightly
scratching and prowling after a while. Some of the guys save their breakfast
cereal to feed the rats.
Like I said, it’s no big deal.
Unless the scratching stops.
The scratching stopped after a time.
There was a frantic flurry of nails trying to gain traction on the slick,
painted cement floor. A few feckless squeals.
Then silence.
You see, the rats know.
“Thank God, theys gone,” the
stranger mumbled hoarsely. “That’s ok, right, boss?”
From the position of his voice I
could tell he was sitting up again, probably huddled in the middle of his
mattress, the blanket clutched at his throat.
I wanted to speak, say something.
Tell him: no, it’s not ok, ‘cause when the rats run away…
A dry terror crawled up my throat,
silencing my words, stitching my lips together. Above me, Nathan folded himself
into a tight ball. I knew he was facing the wall, covers pulled over his head,
an unavailing defense against the unknown. His usual position when the
scratching stopped and the rats ran away.
I knew the position too well.
Boisterous hip hop blared from the
tiny ear buds. Nathan had cranked the Walkman’s volume. As if music could drown
the fear. From beneath my own covers I cursed for not keeping the radio myself.
The first scream is always the
worse. No matter how many you experience. The piercing shriek grabs you by the
balls. It squeezes so tightly the back of your brain aches, like the first
stabs of the mother of all migraines.
I knew the stranger wanted to say
something, maybe scream himself. He shuffled nervously on the floor. Fear had
stitched his lips together as well.
If you are not too terrified to
listen – if you dare listen at all – you might discern a voice in the truculent
wailing:
“Molech!”
Shrill. Strained. Raspy.
“Molech!”
Tortured. As if imparting pain.
Another twisted howl rent the
stagnant air. Then the pounding began, far down the hall.
“Molech!” Blam!
Hollow. Metallic.
Searching.
“Molech! Blam!
Closer. Four cells down.
“Molech!” Blam!
Three cells…
…two…
A low, algid fog crept into the
cell, like the Avenging Angel.
“Sweet, Holy Jesus.” The solicitous
stranger’s whispered prayer floated up from the floor next to me.
“Molech!”
Blam!
The pounding thundered, as if we
were trapped inside the breech of discharging cannon.
Blam!
Lights flickered on at five AM. The
food traps in the cell doors hammered open one by one. Footsteps scuffled
outside the cell.
“Hey, I thought there were three in
here?”
Bleary eyed I accepted the plastic
trays from the guard. On the cell floor lay the tattered mattress, old army
blanket and stained sheet.
And one lone shoe.
Trembling, I passed a tray up to
Nathan.
“The marshals’ probably yanked his
ass up out of here during the night,” another guard replied. “You know how the
feds operate, they never tell us anything.”
Nathan and I ate our cold cereal and
hard, butter less toast in silence.
It wasn’t the federal marshals.
The stone walls in our cell dripped
silently…
…an icy rust red…
