A State Of Sin Amsterdam Occult Series Book Two, Mark Hobson [notion reading list txt] 📗

Behind him, Pieter heard a general movement, a rustling of bedclothes, and he twisted around, the gun coming up automatically.

All of the patients were sitting upright in their beds. The boy too, he saw.

And in perfect unison they turned their sightless gaze upon him.

The boy started to make that same high-pitched mewling sound again, as though he couldn’t talk properly, and when Pieter glanced back at him he saw for the first time the large white plaster across the front of his throat, just about where the voice box would be.

Suddenly, and again as though at the command of some hidden signal, all of the others joined in, the keening noise sounding like a quiet hum, or like a swarm of angry bees, growing in pitch. It was the weirdest sound he had ever heard and it made his skin crawl.

Pieter instinctively moved away from the boy’s bedside until he was in the centre aisle. Behind him was the blank wall at the bottom end of the room. The entrance, the only way in and out of the ward, was about thirty paces away. Something about the peculiar noise the patients were making, the way it was increasing in volume, seemed to warn him that something was about to happen, something bad, and so he sensed it was best to slowly edge in that direction. Even so, when the attack came it still took him by surprise.

He was concentrating on those patients sitting in their beds to his left and right, wondering whether he should just walk calmly past them towards the door, not thinking about anything else. So when he heard the sudden patter of tiny feet on the floor coming from an unexpected quarter, from behind him, he had no time to react.

He felt something land on his back, and heard a loud hissing close to his ear, and realized in an instant that it was the boy. The next thing he knew there was an excruciating pain in his right shoulder, a sharp agony like something pricking deep into the flesh. Jesus! he thought in shock. The boy was biting him! His sharp teeth were biting down hard, the tiny jaws locked solid onto him.

Pieter cried out, and then reached awkwardly behind, striking out with the hand holding the gun to try and dislodge the boy, who had thrown himself onto his back. But the child had a firm purchase and now his tiny hands were grabbing for Pieter’s face and clawing at his eyes.

He could have fired the gun. It would have been simple just to jab the barrel into the boy’s body or head and pull the trigger. But something made him hold back, a natural revulsion at shooting a child.

Instead Pieter propelled himself backwards fast and crashed hard into the wall behind him, and the boy’s back hit the hard surface painfully, dislodging his mouth from Pieter’s shoulder and bringing a gasp from his lips followed by a slackening of his grip. Then Pieter flung his head backwards, the back of his skull connecting with the boy’s nose. There was a double crack of the boy’s nose breaking followed half a second later by his head striking the wall, and then the hands lost their hold and the child slithered to the floor, dazed and listless.

Pieter flung himself away and looked around.

To his dismay the young face was covered in blood, and he instinctively reached for him, but then the child hissed in fury, spittle flying from his mouth, and so Pieter drew back.

He turned again towards the room full of patients and cried out in shock.

In the few seconds he had been distracted while dealing with the boy, the others had climbed out of their beds and were now crowding together and moving on him down the centre aisle, blocking his escape route. Their eyeless faces terrified him, the way they scowled and snarled, some still making that dreadful keening sound, others shaking their heads and snapping at the air with their mouths, like rabid animals.

Pieter raised the gun and pointed it towards the crowd, swinging the barrel from face to face. “Get back!” he shouted. “Get back now!”

It had no effect whatsoever. They continued creeping forward. It was as though they could see him, and they encroached nearer and nearer with each second. At his feet, the boy crawled away to re-join his fellow patients, and Pieter found himself backed up against the wall with nowhere else to go.

A sudden fury came over him and he struck out with his gun at the nearest face, that of the old man. The painful blow stunned him and the man staggered away with a whimper, clutching his face, but in an instant someone else took his place. Pieter lashed out again twice, striking two more people, and then he kicked a third in the stomach. The woman with the blonde hair doubled over, coughing and retching from the blow, but she continued to face Pieter, her lips drawn back in hatred, and a second later she stood upright and leaped towards him.

Without thinking twice Pieter fired at point-blank range straight into her face, the roar of the gun deafening as it bounced off the walls. The woman’s face exploded in a cloud of blood and bone fragments, and she toppled backwards, dragging down two more people with her, and creating a small gap in the crowd.

The shocking violence stunned the other patients into immobility, and they stood rooted to the spot, creating a chilling tableau that jolted Pieter’s heart. He saw his chance, and he jumped through the gap, trampling over the pile of fallen figures lying on the floor, and in the next moment, he was sprinting headlong towards the door at the far end of the room.

Behind him the patients snapped out of their brief paralysis and they turned and charged after him, a baying and screaming and hissing mob, intent, Pieter