Blood of Youth Chapter 5: The Ghoul’s Embrace

“You’ll get paid well,” she croaked dismally. “It isn’t so bad, really. None of them like it at first but they get used to it. That girl—the pretty one—she didn’t like it. Maybe it’s the blood that frightens them, don’t you think?”

Blood! What was she talking about? The platinum blonde girl had shrieked about blood, too! Blood! Why did they talk of blood?

“Maybe we won’t need the blood with you,” Zhang said. “We haven’t tried it with a young man, yet. Maybe we’ll just need what Dr. Wang said.” She lifted herself out of the chair, hobbled towards Li Wei. She was drooling from the corners of her mouth. “Hold me close to you, young man!” she gasped. “Let me feel the warmth!”

Before Li Wei could move, she was clutching him, pressing her thin, wasted body against him. It was a gruesome, ghastly sensation; a loathsomeness that turned Li Wei’s stomach. He tried to pull away but her fingers were like talons.

“Kiss me!” she gasped. “Breathe your youth into me! You’ve got so much of it!”

Revulsion had nauseated Li Wei to the point of action. He tore away from her clutching hands, his desperate force wrenching her to her knees. She crept toward him again, arms uplifted, her sallow face convulsed with an inordinate frenzy of emotion that was disgusting.

Li Wei reached the door. It was locked. “Let me out!” he shouted.

A motor hummed somewhere outside the room. Before Li Wei’s eyes, part of the wall slid back, revealing thick iron bars like those of a prison cell. Dr. Wang was standing behind the bars.

“You may as well know this now, Li,” he said, his voice ominously unpitched. “Unless you do as Miss Zhang desires, you may never see your wife again.”

Li Wei’s heart leaped to his throat, choked him. He lunged at the bars. Wang stepped back, laughed softly.

“Don’t be a fool, Li. You’ll be paid well for doing what you’re told.”

Li Wei found voice. “I’ll kill you!” he screamed. “Let me out of here!”

The physician stepped to one side, out of Li Wei’s vision. There was a scraping on the floor of the room beyond the bars. A large bed rolled into view. Stretched on it, her restless figure covered only by a nightgown that half bared her breasts and did not reach her knees, was Li Mei!

The name leaped from Li Wei’s lips. “Li Mei!” He gripped the bars, in his hysteria tried to tear them loose. “Li Mei!” he shrieked.

She opened her eyes. They were horribly glazed. She seemed not to recognize him. Dr. Wang bent over her, ran his fingers across her bare shoulder. She quivered, moaned softly. He leaned over, kissed her parted lips. Li Wei saw her slender form stiffen, just as it did when his mouth joined hers, when his fingers stroked that flawless, palely shining skin.

“Unless you do as I say, Li,” Dr. Wang muttered, “you shall have proof of your charming wife’s infatuation for me.” He tore at the neck of the gown, ripping it to bare the upper halves of Li Mei’s high, white breasts. His arms went beneath her, lifted her tensed body as he pressed kisses to the deathly white sweep of her throat. Li Wei gripped the bars frantically, as if by his very anger he could rend iron. “No!” he screamed. “For God’s sake, no!”

Wang looked up. “Miss Zhang is waiting.”

Li Wei turned slowly, faced the horrible old woman. She was still kneeling on the floor, leering at him. He covered his face with his hands, shuddered.

“Quickly,” Dr. Wang barked.

Li Wei dared not face the bars again. How could he look on while Li Mei’s sweet, young body was being profaned by that beast’s touch? He stepped forward, approached Zhang. She rose to her feet, held out her scrawny arms.

“Come,” she rasped. “You’re young—young!” she wheezed. “I want to be young, too!”

Li Wei touched her chill fingers, cringed. The blood in her dried-up veins was cold. She was almost a walking corpse; a thing of skin and bones. It was sickening to touch her…

Dr. Wang’s voice broke in on his thoughts. “Look, Li!”

Li Wei swung around. It was an involuntary motion. At that moment he would have been thankful if something had struck him blind. Anything, only not to be able to see what was going on behind those bars. But no such surcease from horror came. He saw, and his heart was cleaved in two.

Li Mei’s round, soft arms were about the physician’s neck. Her breasts were flattened against his chest. Her body quivered in the sublime ecstasy that he had thought she could feel only for him. Only, now, he was watching those bliss-maddening kisses of hers lavished on another. Something was mad! The fiend had drugged Li Mei! But what was the difference? Each fleeting moment only tore his heart with greater agony.

“Stop!” he shrieked. “Stop!”