Speak the Dead

by Grant McKenzie

  The doors at the front of the church clanged shut and Father Black clapped his hands together. “Bring forward the Travelers.”

  From the last row, a young man stood and moved behind an elderly woman in a wheelchair. The woman wore an ill-fitting dress in a distressing shade of crimson that made her bloodless skin even whiter. Her head lolled onto her shoulder as though her neck muscles couldn’t hold the weight, and her eyelids flickered, the tiny muscles stuck somewhere between asleep and awake. Her wrinkled face was obscured by a clear plastic oxygen mask, the life-giving tank affixed to the wheelchair.

  The man nibbled his lower lip as he slowly pushed the wheelchair down the aisle to the stone altar. The congregation offered him words of encouragement and support as he passed each row.

  Once they reached the altar, the man lifted the woman’s limp arms onto the stone basin and removed her mask. The woman didn’t fight him, her slack expression unchanged. The young man barely glanced at Sally as he placed the mask on top of the oxygen tank and twisted its valve closed.

  He turned to the congregation and cleared his throat. “My mama suffered a stroke while the surgeons operated on a tumor that hid undiscovered behind her liver until it was the size of my fist.” He held up his fist to demonstrate, and his eyes fought back tears. “Cancer, the Devil’s last laugh. Before the stroke, the doctors gave her six months to live. Since then, they say they don’t know how she’s still alive.” The man wiped at his eyes and stood up tall, proud. “But I know. She didn’t want to go on the Journey alone.”

  The crowd cheered and a chorus of Hallelujahs rang out.

  The man glanced over his shoulder at Sally before continuing. “She wanted the Seer to guide her, to make sure she reached the other side without the Devil’s tricks and lures making her take a wrong turn.”

  Amens erupted.

  “My papa is waiting for her, and she’s ready to go.”

  The crowd of onlookers stomped their feet and clapped their hands as the man walked back to his seat through a sea of reaching hands and smiling faces.

  When the congregation had calmed down, a slim man in his mid-thirties stood up. He was dressed in an unusually fashionable monotone suit and his dark beard was perfectly sculpted to show off his cheekbones and hide a weak chin.

  Standing next to him, dressed in a candied apple red gown, was April.

  Sally shook her head and felt her whole body tremble as the man took April by the hand and led her down the aisle to the stone altar.

  “No,” Sally said weakly, “no, you can’t do this.”

  Helen rushed to Sally’s side.

  “Hush, girl,” she hissed. “This can be made painful for her if you wish it.”

  As father and daughter reached the altar, April looked up at Sally and beamed. “You’re all clean and… and pretty. Do… do you like my dress?”

  Sally swallowed a cry. “It’s very pretty,” she said.

  April’s father bent down and spoke in her ear, telling her to place her arms in the stone basin and to stay by the altar no matter what happened.

  As he returned to his seat, he didn’t say a word to support his decision to offer up his daughter, as if the obvious fact she had Down Syndrome was enough. Sally scanned the audience, desperate to find someone else who found this obscene. But everyone she saw was smiling.

  Father Black clapped his hands together again. “Bring out the Deliverer.”

  A door opened at the rear of the hall, and Sally craned her neck to watch Aedan enter. His dark eyes burned behind slits in the hangman’s hood.

  The audience began to chant in prayer as Aedan moved closer to the altar.

  Sally swung around to face Father Black, her back to the audience. “You can’t do this,” she said. “I won’t let you.”

  Helen jumped onto Sally’s podium and grabbed her forcibly by the shoulders. “We’ll make the girl suffer if you cause us any trouble. Is that what you want?”

  Sally didn’t know how to answer, so in response, she did the only thing her terrified mind would let her: she opened her mouth and screamed.

  87

  Jersey was rushing the front doors when he heard Sally’s scream. A further jolt of adrenaline instantly flooded his bloodstream, and he hit the doors with a full-fledged NFL-style shoulder tackle.

  The tremendous blow made the doors shudder in their frames, but neither one flew open.

  They were bolted solid from the inside.

  Sally stopped screaming when, along with the rest of the congregation, she heard the heavy thud against the front door. But before she could process what it meant, her focus was diverted by Aedan’s knife at her throat.

  “No more fucking games,” Aedan hissed. The thin silk hood was sucked so deep into his mouth it formed a bottomless well ringed with sharp black teeth. It could have been the gateway to Hell itself.

  Sally screamed again as Aedan leapt from her podium with incredible energy and, with one powerful swing, slashed his long knife across the throat of the wheelchair-bound woman at the altar.

  The cut was so deep, he almost decapitated her.

  Blood sprayed from the woman’s neck with such volcanic force, it was like a tsunami. Aedan, standing directly in its path, became drenched in it.

  As the horrified congregation looked on, Aedan ripped off his blood-soaked hood. His eyes were wide, bulging, crazed, his mouth open wide in a silent, primal scream.

  Then he rushed at April.

  Jersey spun to Sister Mary Theresa, his shoulder rubbery and his eyes wide with panic.

  “Get the bikes!” he yelled. “Break this fucking door down.”

  Jersey took off at a run, desperate to find another entrance to the church sanctuary.

  Sally yelled, “STOP! Aedan please, I’ll tell you everything if you spare her.”

  Aedan’s knife hovered at the girl’s throat, her hair bunched tightly in his other hand. The terrified girl was crying, begging, snot running from her nose to mix with the blood that was dripping off her executioner’s arm.

  Aedan glanced over his shoulder, his lips curled in a sneer.

  Sally pleaded, “Please. I’ll go on the Journey. I’ll bring back the message, but you have to spare her.” Her eyes turned hard and her voice grew cold. “If you harm her, I’ll tell you nothing. Her death seals my silence forever.”

  “Listen to her, son,” said Father Black. “We need her to cooperate. To be part of us.”

  “You’ll stay?” Aedan asked. His eyes shifted as though suddenly regaining focus. “If I spare this girl, you’ll join our family and become part of our church?”

  “Yes,” Sally said with desperate enthusiasm. “Yes, but no harm can come to April. She must be allowed to go home to her mother.”

  “What is this trickery?” yelled a voice from the congregation. It was April’s father. “This is not our way. The Devil cursed the House of Green with this mockery of a child. Her death lifts the curse and restores the House of Green to its rightful place.”

  “Silence!” boomed Father Black. “If the Seer portends a future for this child, we must respect her vision. That is our way.”

  Aedan shoved April away, sending her stumbling into Mother’s arms. Returning to Sally’s side, he slipped his gold-hilted knife back into its leather sheaf and grabbed her by the wrists.

  “Time to travel,” he hissed and plunged her face first into the stone altar that was already overflowing with the wheelchair woman’s blood.

  88

  Near the rear of the church, Jersey found a door leading to the cellar. He darted down the stairs and yanked on the handle. Unlocked.

  With a sigh of gratitude, he opened the door, but before he could dart inside a heavy hand locked onto his collar and yanked him back up the stairs.

  Choking on his tightening collar, Jersey looked up to see a large man in a dark suit with a pointed, Egyptian-style beard. The man opened his mouth to offer a threat, but Jersey had already crossed the line of following any rules. Desp
ite the awkward position, Jersey drove his elbow into the soft pillow of the man’s throat and followed it with a bruising left elbow to the kidney.

  The man released Jersey’s collar to clutch at his own throat, his face turning purple. Back on proper footing, Jersey wasn’t in the mood to fight clean. Instead, he brought his forehead smashing down onto the bridge of the man’s nose. Blood gushed to either side as the nose snapped and the man’s eyes rolled in his head.

  Jersey took out his legs with a single sweep and shoved the guard away. The man tumbled silently into the garden as Jersey returned to the cellar.

  Inside the cellar, Jersey quickly studied the layout, comparing it to what he had seen of the sanctuary above. The room was mostly empty space except for two steel pistons that connected with two circles on the ceiling.

  Jersey studied the pistons and noticed two buttons, one green, one red, on the back wall near the smaller circle. He hit the red button and the piston began to sink into the ground with a hiss of escaping air. As it lowered, it brought with it a circular platform.

  Father Black didn’t notice his podium sinking into the floor. He was too focused on Sally, having walked forward across the stage to be near her, to be the first to hear the holy message delivered from her lips.

  She looked so much like her mother, especially now with her once-white hair turned crimson from the blood.

  When she was first plunged into the stone basin, Sally had struggled for breath before her body shuddered and went limp.

  Aedan gripped her under the arms, holding her slack body upright, as the Seer departed on the Journey.

  Jersey stepped onto the platform and hit the green button. The steel piston hissed again and began to rise.

  When his head crested the surface, he saw the backs of three people, two men and a woman, huddled around a large stone altar. In front of them, the congregation was silent and open-mouthed as they stared at whatever was happening at the altar.

  As soon as his shoulders cleared the hole, Jersey pulled out his Glock and fired into the ceiling.

  The noise of the gunshot startled everyone, but the reaction of the priest was the last thing Jersey expected.

  While the majority of the congregation jumped to their feet and rushed for the exit in panic, Father Black spun on his heel and, with a mighty roar, charged directly at Jersey.

  He screamed “How dare you!” as he bore down, his face a mask of unbridled fury.

  Out of position, still rising through the hole in the stage, Jersey rushed to bring his gun to bear, but he wasn’t quick enough.

  The priest lashed out with his foot and kicked him in the jaw.

  Jersey was knocked backwards and scrambled to grab the side of the circular opening before he lost his footing and went tumbling back into the cellar or was crushed by the rising podium.

  Before he could regain his balance, the priest hit him again, the toe of his shoe connecting with Jersey’s right wrist and sending the Glock flying from his grasp.

  Jersey yelped in pain and rolled to one side as he scrambled out of the hole. In that same instant, the front doors of the church burst open and three angels astride Harley Fat Boys roared down the aisle.

  Sally opened her eyes to chaos. She was clutched in Aedan’s arms, her own arms dripping blood from the altar, and the church was in an uproar.

  She swiveled her head groggily from side to side, desperate to refocus from her vision, and saw Jersey scrambling across the floor as Father Black lashed out with a sharp foot and sunk it deep into the detective’s ribs. Jersey groaned as his body lifted from the impact and he was sent rolling into the rear wall.

  Sally was about to call to him when Aedan gripped her tighter and said, “Hold on, this could be rough.”

  Sally screamed as Aedan buried his knife into an electronic panel and the podium they were standing on dropped like a stone.

  Jersey spotted Sally in the brief instant before her platform dropped out of sight and the giant fireplace plummeted from the ceiling.

  The iron hearth hit the stage with an ear-splitting clang that contained all the force of a small bomb to spew massive burning logs and fiery coals in every direction. One of the larger logs hit Father Black square in the back, its velocity so great that Jersey swore he heard the man’s spine snap.

  The priest was thrown off the stage like dry kindling, any last words lost in a whoosh of flames as the backdrop of curtains ignited.

  Alone on the burning stage, Jersey scrambled to his feet.

  The church was quickly filling with smoke as the red-hot logs caught everything on fire: walls, floor, curtains, clothing. People screamed and rushed for the only exit, scrambling over and around the three Harleys to escape the building inferno.

  Jersey caught Sister Mary Theresa’s eye and mouthed, “Get out,” before he slammed his hand against a red button and jumped back onto Father Black’s podium.

  The podium shuddered and dropped.

  89

  After the podium had descended about three feet, Jersey slid off and dropped the rest of the way to the floor. He landed on his feet and scanned the area just as the door leading outside slammed shut.

  Jersey ran for the door and burst into the gardens. He turned to his right and saw dozens of panicked people running around in an attempt to gather up their children and flee the burning church. That way meant chaos. He went left instead.

  When he cleared the church building, Jersey spotted movement on a gravel path leading to an eight-foot-tall dead end at the rear of the gardens. With a grateful smile, he yanked his backup Baby Glock from its ankle holster and gave chase.

  Sally tried to fight her way out of Aedan’s grasp, but his grip was too strong. He dragged her away from the church toward the stone wall that surrounded the grounds.

  “You can’t get away,” she yelled. “The police will have this place surrounded.”

  “That’s not the police,” Aedan spat back. “It’s one cop who doesn’t know when he’s outmatched and outplayed.”

  Sally wondered if that was true: Was Jersey on his own? Had she brought him here to face all these monsters without backup?

  “What about your father?” she gasped as she bounced painfully on Aedan’s shoulder. “He could be trapped inside the church. You can’t just—”

  Sally froze in mid-sentence when she spotted Jersey arriving on the path just a short distance behind them. Her heart soared. He was disheveled and beaten, tired and out of breath, but he also had an aura around him that said he was definitely not defeated.

  “Jersey!” she gasped.

  Jersey looked up at the sound of his name and quickened his pace. He had the son-of-a-bitch cornered now, and there was no way he was letting him get away.

  Hold on, Sally, he thought. I’m coming.

  Aedan turned left at the end of the pathway and pulled Sally toward a steel door set into the stone wall. When they reached the door, Aedan activated a hidden panel and punched in a four-number code.

  A lock clicked somewhere deep inside and the door swung open.

  Sally tried to resist as Aedan pushed her through, but he was just too powerful.

  Jersey spotted the steel door and cursed. He bore down, putting every reserve of strength he had into his legs. His lungs were burning, his mind screaming: he was a fat fuck, and he was never going to make it.

  The door slammed back into place just as he reached out to stop its swing, and he crashed into it, gasping, groaning, spitting obscenities in a machine-gun staccato.

  He heard Sally call out his name from the other side of the door. Her tone was desperate, pleading. She was depending on him. Trusting him to save her.

  Fuuuuuck!

  Jersey, his face lashed with sweat, kicked the steel door in frustration and stepped back. The wall was at least eight-feet tall. How was he going to scale that?

  A thunderous roar made him turn as two leather-clad angels rode up on their bikes.

  Jersey pointed at the wall and wheezed, �
�I need to get over.”

  90

  Mother held April tightly around the back of the neck, a small paring knife pressed against the girl’s flesh. The knife had drawn a thin sliver of blood and it ran around the girl’s throat like a scarlet necklace.

  Five wild-haired women on motorbikes surrounded them in a loose circle—all but two twirled a lasso over their heads.

  Sister Mary Theresa climbed off her bike, her Remington shotgun snug against her shoulder, its large barrel pointed threateningly at the snarling woman’s head.

  Mother kept trying to make herself smaller, to hide behind her terrified captive, but the nun’s aim never wavered.

  “Let the girl go, Helen,” said Sister Mary Theresa. “It’s over.”

  “How do you know my name?” Mother asked.

  “Sister Fleur told me all about you. She said you’re the true head of the church, the poison behind the throne.”

  Mother spat on the ground. “Fleur White was a whore.”

  “You murdered her husband… her children,” said Sister Mary Theresa. “She told me you’re the one who used to interpret the Seer’s messages.”

  Mother cackled. “That is my gift. How could we trust anything those witches say? Most of it’s nonsense anyway. I gave Father the messages that he needed to make the church strong, but he began to distrust me. He had to hear it directly from the source, so the source had to go. I would’ve got rid of Salvation, too, if she hadn’t run away. I’ve been searching for years, but it was my own damn son who found her first.”

  “You killed those young women,” said Sister Mary Theresa with a shake of her head. “Sister Fleur told me that when she read about their missing eyes, she suspected it was your hand behind it.”

  “They weren’t Salvation,” said Mother sadly, “but I couldn’t take the chance that I might have missed something, that they might have possessed the gift. The Seer was our destruction, don’t you see? She always had been.”

  “You cut out their eyes…” Sister Mary Theresa couldn’t finish the sentence.