Blood Lust: A Supernatural Horror Read Online Free PDF

no conscience. He could be a very dangerous man. He would strike again under our very noses just to play his perverted games. Such killers drew their own boundaries and played by their own set of rules. This one seemed to have decided to work within a confined area of the city. This went against most criminal thinking that widening the crime area increased the search area. Even so, we had had no luck with either neighborhood stakeouts or walking patrols. A bit of old-fashioned luck would come in handy.
    “We’re here , ” Lew announced , interrupting my thoughts .
    I looked up expecting to see an old church like the Catholic cathedral downtown. Instead, we parked in front of a massive walled compound. A gaping wound where enormous wooden gates had once hung provided the only entrance into the compound. Rusty metal hinges with shards of weathered wood , all that remained of the gates, dangled from rotting frames .
    I turned to Lew. “I thought you said monastery . This looks like a fort. ”
    “It’s an old Jesuit monastery built in the late 1700’s … 1780s, I think. They liked their privacy. The Jesuits abandoned it in the late 1800s. The Catholic Diocese built a church here around 19 4 0 but closed it down in the 50s when the neighborhood changed.”
    I looked at my partner with more respect. “You’re a veritable fount of knowledge.”
    He shrugged. “I did some research on the internet. You could too if you knew how to turn on a computer.”
    “That’s why I’ve got you,” I retorted.
    I exited the SUV and stood looking at the monastery. Its blank stone walls and massive gate only reinforced my first impression of an old fort ress . I t sat apart from the surrounding neighborhood, across a bridge that spanned a dried up river bed , almost as if intentional ly removed from the neighborhood . Through the gaping wound of the entrance , the newer attached Catholic church had that majestic façade of churches of that era – plastered concrete block construction, bell tower thrusting heavenward topped by a weathered leaning cross . L arge arched , stained glass window s fram ed a wide , wooden double-door entrance fronted by broad stone steps . Empty n iches in the pockmarked wall once held marble statues of saints but were now the resting spots for beer cans , a pathetic Columbarium wall for dead dreams . Grotesque stone gargoyles heaped with decades of bird droppings squatt ed on the roof , doubl ing as rainspouts , returning my gaze with cold, patient eyes .
    Over the centuries, the monastery adjoining the church had fallen into wretched disrepair. Many of the outbuildings were now mounds of weed-grown rubble. The new er structure added by the Diocese during WWII attached to the old er stonework of the monastery by some Frankenstein ian surgical procedure. The crumbling , faded plaster walls clashed with the weathered, native gray stone of the monastery . The newer structure bore none of the architectural details of the old monastery , its box-like design a pae a n to the speed of modern construction rather than finesse of earlier times . At that time , the neighborhood had been predominately middle - class Irish , but over the years, it had fallen on bad times. Waves of Eastern European immigrants, displaced Russians and Greeks after WWII gave way to latecomer Latinos, Koreans and Somalis who now comprised the majority of the population. Attendance had dropped and the Diocese had reassigned the priest and closed the doors about sixty years ago . Vandals had mercilessly riddled the windows and walls with bullet holes . A chain and padlock secured the front door s of the church and the main building of the monastery and local gangs had tagged the steps of both structures with colorful graffiti and gang signs . The entire compound l ooked dark and uninviting , much like the surrounding neighborhood .
    In contrast to the depressing , dilapidated structures , a tangle of rose bushes grown wild from lack of pruning