by John Everson
“That’s her,” Austin whispered.
The nun and the cross and the bishop behind her all disappeared into the Sacristy. After a dozen or more people behind them filed into the room, the procession finally ended, and Austin and Father Vernon were alone in the hallway.
“Now what?” Austin moaned. “We’re too late.”
“It’s never too late for hope, my son,” Father Vernon said. “We must wade in where angels fear to tread.”
“You sound like a bad scripture.”
“There are no bad scriptures,” he said. “Only bad people.”
Austin grinned. “If you say so.”
He reached into his pockets and withdrew the vial of holy water and the blessed candle he’d brought from home. And a silver crucifix that Angie had gotten from her aunt who had bought it at the Vatican while on a vacation trip to Rome. She had always kept them in a special box in her closet.
“I don’t have much to go in there with,” Austin said.
The priest looked at the items and nodded. “They will have to do. The Lord will provide.”
Austin raised an eyebrow at that platitude but said nothing. Faith and prayer were the only tools he really had right now, and he had precious little of each. He pulled out a lighter and lit the candle, holding it in the same hand as the crucifix.
“I’m not sure what this will do, but it’s all I could think of,” he said.
The priest nodded. “It’ll bring the eyes of God upon us and blind the minions of Satan.”
“I think I’d rather have a gun.”
“Violence is not the way of the Lord,” Father Vernon pointed out.
Austin nodded. “Well, prayer alone won’t get my baby out of there.”
“Action is needed,” the priest agreed. “But we don’t have to take another life to save Ceili’s.”
“The point is moot anyway,” Austin said. “I don’t have anything that can be used as a weapon. We need to go in there and surprise them. I’ll grab Ceili, if you can help me distract them?”
“I’ll do my best.”
Father Vernon held his hands out. “I can hold the blessed items so your hands are free,” he offered.
“Good idea,” Austin said, handing them over.
The priest took them and smiled thinly. He held the cross out in one hand and the candle in the other. “We will walk into the den of iniquity, with the Lord before us.”
Austin looked at him, not sure what to say. The priest said it for him.
“Let’s do it.”
Austin nodded. He stepped forward, grasped the handle and pulled open the door to the Sacristy.
Chapter Thirty-One
A cloud of incense hit them as soon as Austin opened the door. The air was ten degrees warmer than in the hall and filled with the acrid smell of burning herbs and the buzz of dozens of voices. A crowd gathered around the bar talking and drinking in small huddles, but a larger contingent had gathered near the altar on the far side of the room. They stood around highboy tables and left a center aisle open, which led to the wooden altar itself. The Irreverent Mother stood behind the altar near the large upside-down cross, conversing with a man in a bishop’s hat. At the front of the center aisle, in front of the altar, a baby’s wicker bassinet sat on a small table. The bassinet had been painted black, and a witch’s star was painted in white on its side.
Lying in the center of the basket was a tiny babe, eyes blue and wide, staring up at the painted ceiling above, arms reaching and fingers grabbing at the sky. She didn’t make a sound, but Austin felt his heart crack in half when he saw her eyes darting this way and that.
Ceili just wanted to be held. By Austin or Regina or…. Someone who would love her and take care of her. Not someone who would sacrifice her to the Devil for black magic power.
Austin started to make a beeline to her bassinet, but just before he reached it two men suddenly blocked his path.
“In a hurry?” one of them asked. He was at least six feet tall with a haze of beard across his face. His shoulders and chest were broad; he looked like a linebacker.
“Just going to meet my friends,” he lied.
The linebacker shook his head. “I don’t think so. I don’t know you.”
“So…you know everyone here?”
The man nodded. “Pretty much. Nobody is allowed near the altar until the ceremony begins.”
Another guy suddenly stepped up behind the linebacker. And then a woman flanked him on the other side. “Is there a problem?” the woman asked.
Linebacker shook his head. “No problem at all,” he said. “Just a man who doesn’t know his place.”
There was a couch to his left, so Austin moved to the right, intending to get away from the linebacker and go around the woman. However, she stepped right with him, blocking him. He started to turn in the other direction, but then felt someone pressing against him from the other side. And then from behind.
It suddenly dawned on Austin that in a matter of seconds, he had quietly become surrounded. There were at least two dozen people now standing between him and the entrance. It couldn’t be an accident.
He turned away from the linebacker and tried to face the back of the room. Where was Father Vernon? He couldn’t see the priest he’d come in with, only the black robes of the imposters. There was a mob around him now three bodies deep. And they all were staring at him. Smiling silently.
“We’ve been waiting for you,” a voice said from behind.
He turned. The linebacker had faded back and the Irreverent Mother now stood between him and the bassinet. She held up her hands to the air, as if calling on the gods above.
“You are a difficult man to contain,” she said. Around her, there were cackles of laughter.
“But in the end, you are here with us, and that’s what’s important now.”
“I am leaving,” he said. “With my baby.”
She shook her head, and the tall hat of her “office” wobbled so much that it looked like it would fall. “I’m afraid not,” she said. “You’re both part of our ceremony. For tonight is the Devil’s Equinox. It’s the night we’ve been waiting for for a decade. And you’re here to share it with us.”
“No,” he said. “I’m not.”
Austin slammed his fist against the woman who gripped him on one side, and then did the same against the grip of the man on his left. Both released him, and he found himself suddenly standing free in the aisle. But all around him were throngs of men and women in black robes. Everyone in the club must be here. They blocked any exit. He couldn’t go forward, back or sideways.
“In just a few minutes, we will begin the ceremony,” the Irreverent Mother said. “There are only two ways that this can go. You will either be the one who sets Ceili free, or you will be the sacrifice yourself.”
Austin shook his head. “There’s another way. Ceili and I leave here tonight and never come back. End of story.”
Regina suddenly stepped out from behind the Irreverent Mother. Her face glowed in the dim lights like a moon. “This story never ends,” she said. “And no matter what happens, you are now forever a part of it.”
“And so is Ceili,” the Irreverent Mother said. She stepped aside then, gesturing at the man behind her, a man who wore black priest vestments – the real kind, that weren’t see-through. In his arms, Ceili shifted and cooed. Austin saw the white hair and wrinkled cheeks of Father Vernon and sighed with relief. Somehow the priest had gotten around the crowd to the altar and grabbed the baby. All was not lost.
“Thank God you got her,” Austin said. He pointed to the door and yelled, “Don’t worry about me, just get her out of here.”
The priest did not move. All around him, people started to laugh.
Father Vernon shook his head slowly and began to stroke the face of the child with the back of his hand. Th
e white tufts of his eyebrows shifted and his smile broadened. For a second, he reminded Austin of Clarence, the bumbling angel from It’s A Wonderful Life.
“Ceili is ours now,” the Irreverent Mother said.
Father Vernon held the child up, above his head. Then he brought her back down and kissed her forehead. And embraced her again in his arms.
“What are you waiting for?” Austin hissed. “Get her out of here while you can!”
Regina stepped back from her position next to the Irreverent Mother to put her hand on the priest’s shoulder. She touched a finger to the baby’s chin and Ceili’s arms waved excitedly in the air. Then Regina looked up to catch Austin’s eye and smiled.
“Father Vernon has been a child molester his entire life,” she said. “He was one of the founders of Equinox. If we end up needing to make you our sacrifice tonight instead of her, Ceili will grow up here, in Equinox. But during the days, she will live with him. He will be the man who teaches her what it is to be a woman. Which death do you think will be worse?”
Austin’s chest suddenly felt like a vacuum had touched his heart. All this time the priest had been a plant? A fake?
He let out a long wail as all around him, the laughter increased.
Father Vernon lifted Ceili up again, and this time bent forward to kiss her on the lips.
Austin leapt forward, fist outstretched, but hands grabbed him at the arms and waist and pulled him back.
“You asshole!” Austin yelled. “Don’t you touch her again, or I swear I’ll kill you.”
The priest looked up from Ceili’s innocent face and grinned. “I don’t think you’re in any position to do that.”
“I will hurt you,” Austin said. “I promise I will.”
“He’ll like that,” the Irreverent Mother said. “Why do you think we keep him chained up? He enjoys being punished for his sins. And then…he sins again and again.”
Tears welled and streamed down Austin’s cheeks as hands dragged him around and away from the priest. Bodies pressed against him from behind and to the side as a band of nuns pushed him away from Father Vernon and Ceili toward the front of the room. Toward the altar.
A moment later, the priest passed them by on the side with Regina. She took a position in front of the altar and raised her hands.
“Sisters,” she said. “It is the night of the Devil’s Equinox. The night we have looked forward to for months. Some of us have been preparing for this night for years. At last, the moment is at hand. We have our child. We have our priest. We have the man who will either sacrifice his own life, or his child’s. In a few minutes, the moon will begin to move into position, blocking the light of heaven and allowing the Devil’s eye to see us clearly. We are ready for a night to remember. A night that will bring us…something amazing.”
She picked up a book from the altar. Austin recognized the black leather cover, and silver half moon on the front. It was Regina’s Book of Shadows. She riffled through the pages toward the back of the book and finally stopped on a page, a smile spreading across her lips.
“I have been researching the right way to draw the Dark Eye to our midst. I’ve visited the catacombs of Myridian in Ireland, and the secret library of Damascules in the Vatican. There are references to the Devil’s Equinox, of course. But the words are always veiled and unclear. I have not been able to find clear evidence that anyone has successfully made the calling; it is a very rare opportunity. The last time the ceremony of the Equinox was attempted was 1963. At that time, the Bremen House coven in Bachelors Grove attempted the ceremony, but they were unsuccessful. If there were any survivors, they scattered, and did not leave an account of what went wrong. However, the place itself has been full of restless souls ever since. So, I’d say they were successful on some level. Something changed that place forever.”
She looked at the throng of people gathered around her and nodded. “We will succeed where others have failed. Why? Because we have spent years making ourselves ready. We have defiled ourselves and danced naked beneath the light of the moon to draw his eye. We have followed the teachings of Sister Celestine, the original Irreverent Mother, who founded this order. We have drunk the blood of the innocent and the perverse alike and yearned for the day that we can demand that men fall to their knees simply by a whispered word of power. Tonight, we will have that power, and the word will be all of ours.”
A cheer erupted from a group of nuns nearby, and Regina smiled and paused. Then she raised her hands and the noise quieted.
“In 1698, in a basement below a convent in Philadelphia, there was a secret society much like ours. They called themselves the Feet of Satan. The name was a reflection on the convent above where the order called themselves the Hands of God. And, in fact, the Feet of Satan were actually those selfsame nuns known during the day as the Hands of God. The entire convent was a sham, a front for the Dark Eye. The head of the order was a woman named Elizabeth, and she wrote hundreds of pages about the nights she spent prostrating herself to a man who exhibited the head of goat and the hunger to match. When she talked of the satisfaction he provided, her order grew, as more and more of the townswomen yearned to feel the orgiastic pleasures she described in page after page of poetry and drawing and prose. She was the Devil’s pornographer, and her fame began to spread throughout the world in underground circles. In some places she was known as the Devil’s Concubine. In others, the Whore of Satan. Witches around the world were envious and wanted to know how she drew the goat to her bed. She appeared ready to take on the full powers that the opening of Hell’s Gate would provide during the Devil’s Equinox. She would have become the most powerful witch in the history of mankind on that night. However, when she staged her ceremony of the Devil’s Equinox, she miscalculated the loyalty of her coven. Just at the moment of the child sacrifice, the doors of the convent were breached, and a stream of men poured into the satanic chapel beneath the stairs. The sisters were killed with pitchforks and guns. The child was rescued from the altar and the entire building set afire and left to burn to the ground.”
She paused and looked around. “You would think that that would have been the end of it,” she said. “Every bit of evidence as to what Elizabeth had planned was burned in the fire. Or so everyone assumed. But decades later, one of her journals was discovered in the attic of a descendant of one of her coven. And while it languished unread in a museum for a century, last year, it was finally rescued. I have it here.”
She held up another old book and grinned. “I have been introducing Elizabeth’s rituals to you here in the Sacristy for months. It was she who wrote of the importance of sharing the darkest blood in nocturnal communions of the beast. It was she who described the power of the grave pearl. And I have devised our ceremony tonight based on some of her musings on the best way to attract the eye of the beast to our desperate bodies. Between the writings of Elizabeth, and Celestine, and a description I found in Durthy’s A History of Evil, I think we will have a successful and exciting Equinox tonight. I’ve written down all of the steps here.”
She held up her Book of Shadows and bowed her head. The Irreverent Mother stepped forward and lifted the veils from Regina’s head.
“You have done well, my child. You will lead us into darkness.”
She raised her hands to the ceiling and looked around at the assemblage. “Tonight, we will brave the darkest ways. If you are not ready to give yourself completely, I would ask that you leave now. There will be no penalty. But we cannot have anyone in this room who is not ready to surrender everything in their heart and soul to this path. I will turn my back, so that you can leave with no shame.”
The Irreverent Mother turned toward Regina and put her hands on the other woman’s shoulders. She leaned forward and whispered something, and Regina nodded. Austin looked around the room but saw nobody heading to the doors. If you had been coming to these ceremonies for months or years, it was a l
ittle late to back out now.
“You have chosen the ecstasy of evil over the drudgery of good,” the Irreverent Mother said, turned back to survey the crowd. “I am pleased that I have not been kissing and whipping all of your behinds for nothing these past weeks. And I am excited to share this forbidden sacrament with you. May your blood and devotion bring us all a new well of power. May we all become the true sisters of Satan tonight. I give the room now to Regina, our saint of seduction, our acolyte of arcane. She has given all that she has to bring us here. Hers is the ritual, and the sacrifice, and the mule.”
When she said mule, Austin flinched. She was looking right at him as she said it. So, all he was in the end was a pack animal. A plaything for Regina whose only purpose had been to deliver Ceili.
Bitch. He said the word over and over in his mind, but it did not resolve the red flare of anger in his soul.
“Please hold out your hands,” Regina said, stepping forward again with a glow in her face that reminded Austin of the aftermath of orgasm. She was in her glory right now.
“Sisters, we are one in the blood of each other. We are one in the blood of our prince. To begin the night, we will share our blood and surround the priests with our circle. We are the womb that they came from. The womb that they yearn for. The womb that will smother their desperate stabbing for meaning. Move the priests to the center now. The hour of the Equinox begins.”
There was a shuffling and murmurs, and several men in black vestments and one in a bishop’s hat moved to the center. All around, the women – sexy, slovenly, fat, skinny, tall, short, old and weathered, young and smooth as plastic – took each other’s hands to hem the men inside.
“There is no life without blood,” she said. “Our circle begins with my own.”
At that, Regina picked up a dagger from the altar behind her and held it up in the air for show. Then she brought the tip to the center of her left hand and drew it across. She repeated the action on her other palm. She winced visibly, and the red quickly welled in the center of both hands. She handed the knife to the Irreverent Mother, who stood next to her, and then held up her wounds to demonstrate her devotion. The flicker of the candles nearby flashed eerily across her skin, as if the fires of hell were licking at her wounds.