See No Evil By: Ashley H.

Jacob's Apprentice

Chapter 1

It was mid day when Dandra Stevenson came upon the old Blackwell Hotel on her daily walk around town. The building had been burned on the last two floors; the roof still covered in black coal. Dandra scanned the entrance and followed her desire to explore dangerous places. Her knee high black leather steel toed boots pounded quietly on the cement stares as she walked towards the front door, reaching out for the doorknob. It opened with a loud creek and a cloud of dust and as she stepped in a small rat ran between her feet.

"Gross," she said, closing the door behind her. Dandra searched the large lobby, shadows covered most of it, but a very large long stare case was before her, leading up to an elevator. "I wonder how many floors this shit hole has," she said aloud, heading for the stares.

Inside the elevator, Dandra saw that there were nine floors, knowing that the burned building must be the worst on the ninth floor, she pressed number eight, wondering if she'd see any dead bodies without falling through the floor. The elevator went up, she didn't expect it to work, but it stopped right at the eighth floor. The doors opened and a smell of rot and decay flew up her nose.

"Jesus!" she shouted, blocking her nose with her right hand and waving the other around in hopes of brushing it away. When she finally peered around the corner of the elevator door, she heard a noise, like someone was whimpering. Quirking a brow, Dandra wearily stepped into the hallway and looked to the left where the noise was coming from. She began to walk down the hall cautiously, trying hard not to make any noise herself, but failed when the floorboards began to creek beneath her feet.

"Hello?" she called when she stopped at the door of the room the whimpering was coming from, which had been left wide open. Dandra looked inside the room and there, sitting on a bed, was a very large bald man in dark dirty clothes holding his body in different places as if he was hurt. "Are you alright?" Dandra asked, walking towards him. The man looked up angrily, his eyes over shadowed by his brows, but they didn't hide the fact that his eyes were different colors, one blue and one dark brown.

"Are you hurt? Do you need help?" she asked, her left-hand reaching for the man. Suddenly, the man's huge hand flew up and caught Dandra's wrist, holding it tightly. "Hey! What…" the man stood up, towering over her and looked down into her green eyes with hate. He grabbed her by the throat with his other hand and pinned her to the wall behind them.

Dandra choked and gagged beneath his grip; the man scanned her face and neck, noticing the small golden cross she wore on her necklace. The man huffed and lifted Dandra off the ground, throwing her over his shoulder. Dandra screamed and bashed at his back, but when he turned the corner to leave the room, her head flung back against the wall, knocking her out.

When Dandra woke, her head throbbing wildly, she found herself in a cage, a large black rusty cage and the smell of death she smelt before was now strong as ever. She groaned in pain, reaching behind her head to feel for blood, but there was none. She slowly eased her way forward, grabbing the bars on the door of the cage and looking around the room. Candles were lit in various places, there was old furniture and book shelves, all dusty, but worst of all, there were bodies of dead people lying on the floor around her. Dandra didn't panic nor even find herself sickened by this, but brushed it off as if she'd seen it all the time.

"Hello?" she yelled. "Will you let me the fuck out of here!" her hollers attracted the attention of the beast in the other room, who burst through the door at the sound of her voice. An axe in one hand, he stared down at Dandra, huffing and puffing with anger.

"Who the fuck do you think you are?" she screamed. "Fuck'n let me out!" the man put the axe down on an old leather chair and walked closer to the cage, placing one hand on top of it, he leaned down to look in. His expression seemed all most curious, like a child watching animals at the zoo. His gaze traveled down her body to the large amount of cleavage sticking out of her black and red corset and then back up at the necklace again.

"What hell are you looking at?" Dandra said, watching his eyes wander. "If you let me out you can get a better look," she said, pressing herself up against the bars. The man backed up and, looking down at her once more, he picked up the keys to the lock from the table behind him. He unlocked the cage and allowed Dandra to get out. She stood before him, dusting off her corset and looking back up at the giant.

"So, you got a name, muscles?" Dandra asked, her hands on her hips. The man looked down on her, his face emotionless.

"Jacob," he answered, his voice low and quiet.

"Jacob, hu? Well, Jacob, you know you shouldn't go around shoving people in cages," she said, scowling at the monster without fear. Jacob's frowning brows returned and he grunted with displeasure, stepping forward as if he were going to turn on her again. "Take it easy, I might look like I'm not scared of you, but on the inside I'm terrified. So please, don't freak out on me."

Dandra scanned Jacob's clothes, noticing how they were dirty and also that parts of his shirt were stained with dark blood. "Jacob, are you wounded?" she asked, staring at him. Jacob looked down at the places on his shirt that Dandra was looking at and remembered the disputes he had caused only a few days ago and how he had fallen out a window onto spikes.

Jacob placed his hand upon one puncture in his side, but he had been taught that pain was only in his mind and learned not to even feel it. "Come here," Dandra said, walking towards him to lift his shirt and get a better look. Beneath the tattered stained clothing were three bloody half-healed wounds all in a row up his left side. "Oh, my god, aren't you in pain?" she asked. Jacob shook his head and pulled the shirt away from her grip on it.

"Come on, you have to clean those or they'll get infected," Dandra explained. "Where is there a bathroom?" Jacob lead Dandra down the hall to the bathroom, inside there was a shower, which had no curtain, a toilet in the corner and a sink with a medicine cabinet above it. Dandra made Jacob sit on the closed lid if the toilet as she search the room for bandages; she looked under the sink and found rubbing alcohol, then in the medicine cabinet there was a bundle of gauze and a roll of tape.

"Okay, this might sting," Dandra said as she took a cotton ball soaked in alcohol and dabbed each of his wounds. Jacob made a contorted face of discomfort but was otherwise unfazed. Dandra carefully wrapped Jacob's abdomen with the gauze, using every bit of it. "There, good as new," she said with a smile. Jacob stared at what she had done, she had helped him, something no one had ever done for him before, not even his mother.

Jacob looked up at Dandra with innocent eyes. "Thank you," he said, standing.

"No problem, I took a class not to long ago when I was thinking of joining the marines," she explained. Dandra began to leave the room, Jacob following.

"Where are you going?" Jacob asked.

"Hu? Oh, nowhere, actually I was planing on staying here sense I had thought this place was abandoned and I knew my parents would never find me here," she explained. "Yeah, that's right, I ran away from home. My folks are always trying to control me, I mean for gods sake, I frig'n nineteen years old!" Dandra kicked a fallen peace of wood, it hit the wall hard and fell back to the ground. "What about you, what did you do when your mother gave you shit?"

Jacob froze in his tracks and stared at Dandra, then walked back down the hall into the room they had been in. Dandra followed in confusion. When Jacob had stopped, she peered around his huge mass to see what he was looking at. There was an old woman hanging from spikes on the far wall to the right of the cage; she had white hair and wore a light blue sweater and a salmon colored skirt.

Dandra walked out in front of Jacob as he stared in a trance to get a better look at the woman. "Jesus, Jacob, is this your mother?" she asked, turning to look at him. Jacob nodded. "She must have been some bitch. What did she do to you?"

Jacob turned away and walked out the door again to head down the hall. Dandra followed again with a sigh. "Man of few words, I suppose," she said to herself. In another room, Dandra found Jacob staring down on a table covered with jars filled with a yellowish, orange liquid. As she stepped closer she realized what was in them. Settled at the bottom of the jars were small round objects. "Whoa! Human eyes," Dandra gasped, leaning over the table to look closer. She looked around the room and saw that the walls were covered in money, though he didn't seem to care as much as she was interested in the jars.

"Jacob, you're probably the coolest person I know," Dandra said with a grin. "So, are these the eyes of your victims?" Jacob looked over at Dandra as she stared at the glass containers, wondering why she wasn't scared or disgusted by anything she had seen like all other people he had been around or killed.

"So, why'd you kill these people?" she asked, looking back at him once again.

"They were sinners," he said, still looking over the table.

"And why didn't you kill me?" her voice was now a whisper.

Jacob looked over at her and stepped forward, reaching out for her neck. Expecting him to choke her again, Dandra flinched, but then calmed when she realized he didn't. She looked down and saw that he had grabbed her small cross necklace. "My cross?" she asked.

Jacob nodded and let her pendant go, watching as it fell back above her cleavage. Dandra was confused, Jacob spared her life over a religious symbol and yet he killed people. She didn't understand, but let it pass; she didn't want to take the risk of angering him with questions.

"So, you kill the nonbelievers and spare the righteous?" she asked. Jacob nodded. "I have faith and I believe that the sinners should die as well…It's good to find someone like me." Jacob's head flew to her direction; he was fascinated by her response as well as slightly aroused; he wanted her, wanted her now.

Dandra looked up at the giant, he had a good foot and a half on her, she was scanning him, his body, and his features and realized how handsome he was, in a creepy, demonic way of coarse, just the way she liked her men. Jacob was about to make a move on her when he heard one of his trip wire bells begin to ring.

Jacob growled in anger, this always happened when he was busy. Becoming enraged, he stomping off angrily to the other room, grabbed his chain and hook and headed for the elevator, leaving Dandra behind. "Hey, where are you going?" she yelled, but he had already left.