Chance Damnation

by DeAnna Knippling

  Blackthorn ignored him; no worse counter-insult could have been delivered, in Liam’s book. “Celeste! Celeste Marie! You get back here!” Blackthorn shouted.

  Liam charged toward Blackthorn and whacked him over the head with his cane. Blackthorn fell, holding his head.

  Sebastian dropped everything in his arms and rushed to Blackthorn. “Jim!” With his arm over his head, he blocked another blow from his father and pulled Blackthorn’s hands from his head.

  A bright slash of red gushed from his hands. There was no situation so bad that Liam Jennings couldn’t make it worse.

  Sebastian glared up at Liam. “Father. Is striking a man down in anger what the Lord asks of you? Even if that man offends you?”

  “I turn no cheek to no Indian. They’re lazy, money-sucking, stealing sons of bitches and always will be.” He looked over his shoulder and yelled, “Now where’s my son?”

  When Liam used that word, he always meant his youngest, Jerome.

  “Peggy loaded up the kids and drove off with them,” Honey said quietly. “Jerome and Celeste Marie both. The—demons or bison or whatever—were about to trample them. Jerome got paint all over them somehow.” She pointed toward the parking lot, where a splash of green coated the gravel.

  Aloysius couldn’t help raise his eyebrows at that one. Honey, so shocked she was acting almost ladylike. He’d have to put something in the books about today, and that would be one of the things he’d have to note down.

  Liam inhaled to start up again, and Aloysius found himself saying, “We lost Maeve.” As soon as he said it, he tried to send Theodore an apology with his eyes, but Theodore was looking at the church, watching the flames lick up the sides of the building.

  “Damn it, Aloysius. Who’s going to do the books?” Liam said.

  “It was too late when we found her. She was in the basement, already had a beam straight through her chest.”

  Any minute now, the flames were going to spread to the dry grass outside the church, and all hell was going to break loose, if it hadn’t already.

  “Aloysius! You look at me when you’re talking to me.”

  “Yessir,” Aloysius said. He started running toward the church and pulled off his jacket. “Get the fire truck, Honey!” he yelled as he passed her.

  The propane tank was behind the church, thank God, so nobody had been standing nearby when it had blown. But it was on the opposite side from the pump, and they didn’t have hoses or anything to run water around the burning church.

  Sure enough, the grass had caught. Twisted chunks of the tank smoldered on the ground. Aloysius took a second to tie his handkerchief over his mouth—it wasn’t wet, but it would have to do—and started beating at the flames in the grass with his good jacket, the one with the leather patches at the elbows. He hadn’t even worn the real elbows out yet; it had just come like that. Honey had picked it out.

  At least his momma had brought him up right, to always wear a jacket to church, no matter how hot it got.

  Three days after the attack, Aloysius, Theodore, and Sebastian went into the church. The main floor was completely destroyed from end to end. All that remained were the consecrated hosts, gold-plated chalice, and Bible that Sebastian had carried out.

  But when they crawled down the back steps to the basement, they found that it had fared a little better. Shreds of half-burnt paper—all of it looked like it was from the same file, asking for donations—were scattered over the floor, tucked under burnt beams. Bodies of demons smoked and steamed under piles of gray charcoal, their teeth jutting nakedly from their baked jaws. Twisted tin pots and coffee urns black with ash.

  Theodore led them to the office. Back in the corner where they had planned to put the indoor bathrooms, it had suffered the least.

  Aloysius had hoped the fire would destroy Maeve’s body beyond recognition, but no such luck. The three of them pulled the paneling and beams off her, one by one, until her face peeked out from under.

  Aloysius hissed under his breath, stopping himself from whistling at the last second. Her hair had shriveled from the heat, and the blood had turned black, but it was clear what had happened to her, with the beam still driven through her chest and the bullet wound through her eye. A streak of blood had run down her face and chest. Flecks of paper ash had stuck to it; they quivered in the slow breeze blowing through the gutted church.

  They wrapped her up in a tarp and carried her out.

  The three brothers didn’t say a word about it. Luckily, both the Sheriff and Liam assumed that Theodore had shot her. A husband could put his wife out of her already-fatal misery without too much trouble, but there would be no end of grief if anybody ever found out that the priest had had to do it for him.

  Aloysius and Theodore left the rest of the family huddled around Maeve’s body and went back down to the basement. Sebastian was saying something about the blameless life that Maeve had led. Aloysius doubted that anybody questioned Theodore’s stony-faced silence; Theodore rarely spoke at the best of times and couldn’t be expected to break down in tears now.

  Theodore couldn’t hold the beam from his tin flashlight steady as they stood at the edge of the pit and stared down, and that said more to Aloysius than anything else.

  Aloysius glanced at his brother but couldn’t read anything on his face. “You ready?”

  Theodore waved the beam of the light toward one end, where the cement had left a more or less natural ramp downward.

  “Maybe we should get a rope,” Aloysius said.

  Theodore waved the beam again.

  Aloysius stuck his flashlight in his belt and stepped one boot onto the cement. With the ash, it was so slick that he almost tumbled down headfirst. He caught his breath, sat down, then pulled off his boots and socks and lowered himself down barefoot.

  Theodore clucked his tongue at him, so when Aloysius reached the bottom, he put his boots back on. Didn’t bother with the socks.

  He flashed the beam around in the pit; it looked like the demons had collapsed their tunnel behind them. He saw two bodies, one sticking out from a pile of rubble, and another lying half-on the smashed remains of the machine.

  Aloysius picked up gears, metal plates, copper wire. He didn’t know anything about machinery other than what was necessary to keep a tractor running, but the stuff he picked up didn’t look like the stuff that he idly toyed with in the shop.

  “Looks like they dug their way in,” he shouted up to Theodore.

  He aimed his flashlight at the front of the machine, which looked like a disk with a big “X” on it, the “X” covered with smaller, two-inch-thick saws.

  “They smashed up their machine, though,” he said. “We should get some pulleys down here and pull it up. I bet I could get it running again.”

  After a few more minutes of nosing around, Aloysius pulled his boots off and tried to climb up the cement slab, but he kept sliding back down.

  Theodore disappeared and returned a few minutes later with a rope. Aloysius had to jump to catch hold of the end; Theodore pulled him up the slab quick as a wink. Aloysius had to run up the last few feet of the slab to keep himself from getting scraped up at the edge of the pit.

  In all, Aloysius guessed that about two dozen of the critters had come up through the basement, and another dozen had stormed the church from the outside, according to Honey. Where they had come from and where they had gone (other than Hell) was anybody’s guess.

  As for what they wanted, the only theory Aloysius heard, later, was from Jerome: they wanted Celeste Marie. What the hell a bunch of demons wanted with a little half-blood girl, Aloysius couldn’t imagine, but he told Jerome to keep his mouth shut. Things were tense enough between Liam and Blackthorn—between Liam and everybody else, truth be told—as it was.

  Chapter 5

  Crow Creek Reservation and Buffalo County being somewhat short on priests, Sebastian had other churches to say mass at, and, therefore, other churches at which to hold the funeral. Luckily the Gray Hill c
hurch had been the last one on his route the previous Sunday.

  On Sunday, they gathered at the Fort Thompson church to hold Maeve’s funeral. Liam wasn’t happy about having Maeve’s funeral on the reservation, but the other church on Sebastian’s route, Duncan, just wasn’t big enough. Afterwards, they’d have a luncheon in the hall and drive in a cavalcade back to Gray Hill to bury Maeve in the family plot. Liam had paid for the plot and headstone the day that she and Theodore had gotten married, a morbid but practical gift already engraved with their birthdates and the phrases Sleep on, sweet mother and wife, and take thy rest, God called thee home for Maeve and His true wealth was in his generous heart for Theodore.

  Honey whispered, “They didn’t carve in the date on her headstone yet.” She wasn’t family, officially, but Aloysius had dragged her along to the second pew, where he and Peggy and a few others sat, the family’s second tier. Theodore, who normally stood at the back of the church, cowboy hat in hand, had been promoted to the front row, and looked about as uncomfortable as Aloysius could have expected.

  “And what they’re going to do about the word ‘mother’ I don’t know,” Honey continued. “Probably leave it. She thought she’d finally caught, the last time I talked to her.”

  “Theodore didn’t say anything about that,” Aloysius couldn’t help but whisper back.

  Honey snorted. “He never says anything.”

  Luckily, nobody heard her. Peggy had just fallen apart and was crying enough tears for the entire congregation, sobbing and heaving and blowing her nose into and endless supply of handkerchiefs that Honey had brought with her.

  Normally, Maeve would be the one to handle all the arrangements; however, being dead, she couldn’t. Neither could Margaret, their mother, for the same reason. Peggy was a mess.

  So Honey had handled most of it.

  He knew he should ask her to marry him, but he didn’t want to do it until he could give her a ring, the biggest, sparkliest ring he could buy. But with trying to start his own ranch (and with the way Liam couldn’t keep his nose out of his business), he didn’t have the money.

  Damn it, he was just going to have to ask his father for one of his mother’s rings. Later, he’d get her a ring so big she’d insist on getting it insured. He couldn’t imagine trying to get through this without her sense of humor.

  —And thinking about Maeve maybe being pregnant when she’d died wasn’t making him any less nervous, either.

  The casket at the front of the church was closed. Honey had seen the body when they’d brought it out of the church and had wormed the truth out of him without a moment’s hesitation. She’d insisted that Theodore pay the extra expense of getting Maeve’s face as repaired as it could be, false eye and wig and everything, then had stood next to him at the funeral parlor and made him take a good, long look at his dead wife.

  Aloysius couldn’t help but look; Honey had dragged him along, of course.

  She’d told Theodore something then, but it was too low for Aloysius to catch. After she’d said it, Theodore looked at her with what Aloysius could only call horror. Honey had patted his arm, said something else, and walked back to Aloysius, leaving Theodore standing in front of the casket. He sank to his knees and clasped his hands in prayer.

  Honey smirked at Aloysius and wiped a tear from her eye.

  Aloysius had asked, “What’d you say to him?” Knowing that she wouldn’t answer.

  “Nothing,” she said, like a cat caught with the cream. “I guessed right, though, didn’t I?”

  After a few minutes, Theodore had stood up, crossed himself, and blown his nose loudly into his handkerchief.

  Now Sebastian was standing in front of the congregation saying Maeve’s eulogy, and nobody was listening, because, well, it was Sebastian. He’d bragged about being the youngest priest to take orders in five years, but it had done him more harm than good when he’d come back home to serve.

  Sebastian was just ending his speech when the ground shook under the church. Aloysius’s stomach jumped, the altar bells tinkled, and the candlesticks on the altar shook. Sebastian grabbed the candlesticks and blew them out before they could set fire to the altar cloth.

  Then he raised his arms and said, “I ask that everyone remain calm and seated. No doubt we’re feeling the last echoes of an earthquake from California or elsewhere across the nation. We’ll continue in a moment, when we’re sure it won’t repeat.”

  Liam slammed his cane on the floor. “You should be sending folks outside, if it’s an earthquake.” His voice echoed throughout the church.

  Sebastian ignored him. He always was a fool.

  After two breaths, he said, “And now, we will continue—”

  Jerome, from the front row, whirled out of his seat and pelted to the back of the church, where he grabbed Celeste Marie from the chairs in the back and pulled her out the back door.

  “I never,” a woman said.

  Sebastian closed his eyes for a second and repeated, “And now, we will continue—”

  He was interrupted again when a grinding noise echoed through the church, and it shook again.

  “I’m sorry, ladies and gentlemen,” Sebastian said. “Please, folks, if you would start to leave the church single file? I think we’d all feel safer—”

  The church shook again, and everyone bolted for the doors, except the family.

  Theodore turned around in his seat and raised an eyebrow at Aloysius.

  “I’m not sure,” Aloysius said, “but it could be.”

  Theodore raised both eyebrows.

  “I did,” Aloysius said. “I, uh, I told Sebastian to, too. But who knows? He never listens to anybody, anyway.”

  Theodore nodded.

  “Why?” Aloysius asked. “If it is, that is.”

  “What are the two of you talking about?” Liam demanded. “You should be making sure the ladies are escorted out of the building.”

  “Yessir,” Aloysius said.

  “And find that damned boy.” Only Liam would curse in church.

  “Yessir.” Aloysius offered Honey his right arm, grabbed Peggy around her shoulders with his left, and followed Theodore with Maeve’s parents out the sacristy door, which had been left open to help keep up a breeze through the hot church.

  He tried not to hurry, but Honey picked up on his nervousness. “What’s the matter, Al?”

  “Nothing,” he said.

  “It’s them again, isn’t it?”

  “Get Peggy out of here, all right? And see if you can find Jerome and that girl and get them out, too.”

  “He thinks the demons are after her,” Honey said. “I mean…”

  “Maybe they just don’t like churches,” Aloysius said. “I mean, they’re demons.”

  The floor shook under them again, and they ran out the door, dragging Peggy along. Aloysius took Peggy by the shoulders and yelled at her, “Get the kids, you hear me? Get the kids.”

  Peggy shook and ran off, yelling, “Jerome! Get to the truck!” with Honey two steps behind her. Peggy had been like a mother to Jerome every since their mother had died; the old maid (at twenty-seven) needed Jerome as much as Jerome needed her.

  Aloysius ran around the church to the propane tank, turned it off, and cut the valve. He wasn’t going through that again.

  Chapter 6

  Jerome grabbed Celeste Marie’s arm, that tiny and breakable thing covered in a black sleeve attached to a dress that left her bony, scabbed, and slightly hairy knees sticking out of the bottom, and pulled her. Her father tried to catch her but missed. Mr. Blackthorn couldn’t yell at Celeste Marie during a funeral service, let alone during the middle of an earthquake, so Jerome escaped with her out the back of the church and into the entryway.

  Outside or downstairs?

  The black shapes charging the church were visible from the glass doors. They were running down the street and were almost in the parking lot.

  Outside. You could hide in a basement, but you couldn’t run.

&
nbsp; Celeste Marie stared at the demons and said, “That’s Granata.”

  “Who?”

  “The big demon. Gold ears. He was in my dreams.”

  Jerome burst out the front doors and pulled Celeste Marie hard to the left. The demons had probably seen them, and knew they didn’t have to go inside the church.

  So there was no point being quiet.

  “Help!” Jerome screamed. He took another left, looped around the propane tank, and ran across the big grassy spot behind the church. “Help!”

  Then Celeste Marie pulled him ever so slightly to the side, and they skidded and crawled into a thick mess of lilacs. It was one of their favorite places to play.

  Jerome panted for a few seconds. “Keep going,” he whispered.

  “Shh,” Celeste Marie said. “They can smell your breath.”

  Jerome took a gasp full of air and held it. His heart beat in his ears, and he struggled not to pant. The sticks under the lilac bushes dug into his arms, and even though he wasn’t breathing, he smelled the off-sweet smell of cat poop somewhere close.

  The demons stampeded around the corner and milled around in the open area behind the church. A piece of wood shattered as one of the demons snorted and kicked the old teeter-totter off its fulcrum.

  Jerome hiccupped, trying to get air past his nose, and Celeste Marie put her hand on his arm. He felt a rush like a breeze across his skin, and all the hair on his arms stood on end. His belly stopped gasping for air, and he shifted a hair’s breadth so he could see better.

  One of the demons had what looked like gold cattle tags dangling from his ears. Granata.

  The other demons milled around, snuffling great big gasps of air, circling the edge of the clearing. Granata pointed roughly with his gnarled arm toward a small path that lead toward the river, a couple of miles away, the one Jerome had been about to take. The other demons trampled out of the clearing.

  Granata was the last to go, standing at the edge of the clearing, taking deep, slow breaths that stretched out his nostrils as big as plates. Then one of the demons up ahead trumpeted excitedly, and Granata turned to go.