by Weston Ochse
He didn’t see the correlation.
“Father Emmett explained it to me. If I had travelers, there would be entire sections or passages in their language or in my language describing things and concepts for which I am not aware. But possession by an actual demon is different. The demon knows we’re trying to find it. It knows to hide. It knows we’re trying to find signs of its evil.”
“So, the three hundred and forty-seven times was its attempt to color your writing with Godliness.”
“Yes. And without thinking it repeated the same thing it did before, until it realized what we were doing and then swung all the way back so that the letters G-O-D did not appear in sequence at all, either front to back or back to front.”
“How could someone possibly keep track of such a thing?”
“Exactly. That’s how it works. As a conscious entity, my mind has other requirements. To stand. To speak. To do physical things. An entity has no need so can concentrate like I cannot. Automatic writing or psychography is not an exact science. In fact, Father Emmett said it takes a certain amount of art to read the results. The bottom line was that I was possessed and there were no travelers inside me.”
“What would he have done had there been any inside of you?”
“Astral projection,” she said matter-of-factly.
The very thing he’d been considering doing if he only knew how. But coming out of the mouth of a Catholic nun, given to her by a Catholic priest, seemed a little bit new age for the stogy Catholic church. So he said as much.
“Demons have been possessing humans for far longer than the Catholic Church has been around. Fallen angels have been trying to get corporeal form long before Christ was a zygote. Exorcising a victim often requires techniques borrowed from cultures and religions from across the breadth of time. Astral projection is what helped me keep my soul away from Kimaris during the worst of the infestation. It needed my soul to merge with and I denied it that, so to get me back he took it out on me.”
Seeing the question in his eyes, Sister Renee added, “He cut me—one tick mark for each day he was inside of me.”
She wore long sleeves and her dress was down to her ankles so he couldn’t see where she’d been cut. Then he remembered what de Cherge had said about the length of her possession and was staggered by the number. Seven hundred and sixty-three days. The tick marks had to be all over her. Everywhere.
She nodded to him as his eyes widened in silent horror.
“Where is Father Emmett?” he asked softly. “Maybe I can get him to help me.”
Her face hardened. “You won’t find him anytime soon. Kimaris took him and they both disappeared.”
“Took him as in… Oh my God. Aren’t you worried he’ll be back?”
“Not in the least. What’s a young woman compared to an expert on Christian demonology? Kimaris upgraded. There’s no reason for him to come back. My guess is he wants to find a way to get to Rome.”
Boy Scout thought about the idea of a possessed pope and shuddered. Then a thought came to him that might be even worse. “There’s another possibility. What if he’s looking for others like him? You said he’s number sixty-six? What about the other sixty-five? What if he managed to get them all together? That truly would be Hell on Earth.”
Chapter Five
Atlas Meditation Grotto, Later
THEY MET SEVERAL more times over the next few days—each time in the grotto, his hands and ankles cuffed and chained together. Sister Renee began to teach him how she learned to leave her body. They both felt that the astral projection taught to her by Father Emmett was his best hope at discovering who his travelers were and possibly being able to communicate with them. The idea that he could actually converse with the entities on a level playing field held a certain excitement to him. Certainly far better than him screaming to get out from behind the glass walls of his mind.
“You have to take a leap of faith,” she finally said on the first day. “You just have to trust me that this is a thing.”
“It’s not that I don’t trust you,” he said. “It’s just that I can’t see myself doing it.”
She leveled her gaze and said each word slowly. “Leap of faith.”
He laughed and sat back.
“What’s so funny?”
“Just that you were so serious. You remind me of one of my college professors the way you just said it, with your head down and your eyes so piercing.”
She crossed her arms. “Now you’re just making fun of me.”
He sat forward. “I’m not. Really, I’m not.” He licked his lips and regarded her for a moment. “Do you know where that term came from—leap of faith?”
She shook her head.
“Søren Kierkegaard. He was a Danish philosopher. He posed that faith wasn’t something based on evidence, but rather something that lived in one’s self-doubts. I know it sounds like he’s arguing against himself, but listen. What is the evidence of love or belief in God? There’s detritus like a shoe box full of love notes or the Bible, but are they really evidence? Do they really prove anything? Kierkegaard theorized that in order for someone to truly believe in something they couldn’t touch, see, or feel that they needed to doubt it and then recognize that they had doubts.”
“So, you’re saying that if I doubt then it proves I believe?” she asked, her eyes squinting around the problem.
“Basically. Think of having to leap over your doubts to get to where you can believe.”
“What about blind faith?” she asked.
“I think that’s for idiots and lemmings. To not approach life intellectually is to allow someone else to dictate your future.”
She nodded. “That’s deep. You learned all of this?”
“I lived all of it.”
“In the church we deal with our doubts all the time. I’m far from perfect and I often have doubts, but there are small things that make me keep going.”
“Same here,” he said. “I’ve doubted several times that I’d survive a particular battle, but I always do.”
She grinned at his response. “Based on your doubts, then, you should believe in the astral plane and astral projection.”
He thought about this for a moment. “I’m willing to believe, yes,” he flashed a grin, “but my faith is wavering.”
“Remember, if you doubt, you truly believe.” She flashed him a grin. “At least according to old Søren.”
He laughed a combination of nervousness and hilarity. “You got me there.”
“Then let me see if I can’t make your faith stronger,” she said. “I can confirm that you have travelers. I have seen them. They are like bright shadows of you in the darkness.”
And so, the lessons began.
“Each of the seven chakras represents a step to locking away your body and then leaving it. You must lock each chakra or something could come and inhabit you.”
“Do you mean had I known this to begin with this might never have happened?”
“From what you tell me, it wasn’t in the best interests of the dervishes to explain ways to defeat their plans.”
Her voice had grown softer and her eyes seemed brighter since he’d first met her. He wondered if the almost constant and close contact between them might be an antidote for some of her misery. He hoped it was, because her presence certainly made him feel better... safer. That she’d gone through something possibly worse made him listen more closely—like he had in Ranger school when his instructors began telling war stories, him in awe of them until he had his own memories, realizing then that they’d shared theirs to try and get the memories out of themselves.
“Each of the chakras has a name,” she said. “There’s no reason to memorize the original names for them because the words have no magic. Just know them for what they are called in English and where they are located on the body. From bottom to top they are the root, sacral, solar plexus, heart, throat, third eye, and crown. Each chakra is a place of power. A focal point. While each c
hakra has other characteristics, for the purposes of projection, you just need to be able to visualize where each one is.”
She’d gone on to explain that the chakras ran in a straight line from the base of the spine to the top of the head, indicating where each one existed.
“Now imagine that all the power inside of you is located in each of the seven chakras. Beginning with the root chakra, you shift the power from each one into the one above it until all of your power is in your crown. From there, it’s only a matter of effort to push your power, which is your soul or your consciousness, out of your body and into the astral plane. This is what they call astral projection.”
He’d laughed at her then, and almost lost her as a mentor. He’d been forced to explain. “You have to understand that until recently, I didn’t believe in anything I couldn’t see, hear, touch, lick, or fight. All of this is so new to me, it’s still taking some getting used to.”
Then she’d pinned him with a level gaze and asked, “And you think I’d always planned on being possessed?”
From that point on he kept his wonderment and self-deprecation inside.
“The idea of astral projection exists in most cultures. Even certain Amazonian tribes believe that they are able to fight each other in a sort of soul fight on the astral plane. But it’s not easy. Many who attempt it try and fail. The secret is being able to concentrate so completely that you are able to tune everything else out.”
“How long did it take you to be able to do it?” he asked.
“I was more motivated than most. I was locked out of my mind. Already under the heel of Kamaris. Father Emmett spoke to it and I listened. The message had always been for me. Projecting myself was the only way Father Emmett could really talk to me.”
“How long?”
She sighed. “Weeks.”
He imagined her trapped, her body being ravaged by the thing inside of her, while she desperately tried to get away and failed… over and over and over.
“Eighty-nine days to be exact.”
“And on the eighty-ninth day?”
“I climbed out of my chakras, locked them behind me, and left my body.”
He frowned. “When you say lock you mean…”
“It’s helpful to imagine each chakra as a lock. You design it. It can be simple or complex. It’s up to you.”
“What do yours look like?” he asked.
“Mine?” she asked. “Initially they were something you might find at a hardware store. Something I might put on a school locker. But now they are complex with many moving parts. Each one looks like a lotus.”
“Were you ever afraid you’d be lost—that you wouldn’t be able to come back?” he asked.
“I was hoping for that. I didn’t want my body anymore. I just wanted to be done with it. But you are tethered to yourself. You can’t lose yourself unless you really try.”
“So, it worked.”
“Father Emmett was waiting for me. He waited for me as he’d done for each of the eighty-nine days.”
“What did he say?”
“That’s when he told me his plan to set me free.”
Boy Scout opened his mouth to speak, but felt a great weight pull at him, as if an immense anchor was attached to his psyche. Slowly at first it pulled him away. Down and down and down he went, until he was no longer in the grotto but instead at the entrance to an underwater cave. The press of the ocean against his skin was incredible. A great beast awaited him inside the cave. He couldn’t see into the stygian blackness inside the opening, but he knew something immense was in there, something not human. It moved and he felt the displacement of water pushing against him, but still he didn’t see anything. It was then he realized that he was underwater, and he sought to breathe. When he opened his mouth, water surged down his throat and into his lungs. He gasped. His body became a question mark. Then it straightened into an exclamation. Back and forth from question to surprise as his hands clawed at his throat. Then the beast moved forward, just a shadow, but enough for Boy Scout to see the outlines of a face, humanlike, and eyes that glowed with malevolence.
Something grabbed him.
He slapped it away.
It grabbed him again and he felt pain on his face.
Then he was back.
In the grotto.
Not in the water.
Sister Renee squatted next to him, as did Preacher’s Daughter.
“What… what… I couldn’t breathe,” he stammered.
“Where were you?” the sister asked.
“Under—something immense waited for me—wanted me.”
“Enough of this,” Preacher’s Daughter said.
Where had she come from? Boy Scout noticed she was wearing strange glasses—like something John Lennon might wear at a carnival.
She handed a pair to him. “Put these on. We need to go.”
He accepted the glasses and put them on. Lights blinked on the frames surrounding the lenses in different combinations. The lights constantly drew his gaze. He found it immediately hard to concentrate on one single thing.
“What the hell are these?” he asked, sitting up.
She also wore body armor over a T-shirt. Her legs were covered in jeans that ran into her Merrell shoes. “Our protection against the dervishes. Our protection against their dance.”
“The dervishes? Here? How?” he asked, but she just kept nodding.
“No time.” Lore stood and held out her hand.
He took it and let her help him to his feet.
“We’ve got to go. McQueen is waiting.”
She quickly unshackled him. Everything was happening so fast. Boy Scout didn’t want to go—he wasn’t ready. The grotto was safety. The monastery was safety. He wasn’t ready to go back into the world. He wasn’t ready to fight the dervishes again.
Preacher’s Daughter grabbed his hand and pulled him so hard he had to follow.
He noted two last things.
The worry on Sister Renee’s face as he departed.
And that his clothes were entirely soaked through.
Chapter Six
The West Lawn
GUNFIRE ATE AT the silence of the monastery in small, nasty bites.
Boy Scout idly identified pistol and machine gun, the latter firing so fast they had to be Uzis. He’d thought the old weapon of choice for drug smugglers had gone out of style when Don Johnson was still rocking sockless loafers and sport coats with T-shirts on Miami Vice. The buzz of nine-millimeter rounds was accentuated by the louder sounds of a .40 caliber and several nines. But as violent as the rounds promised they’d be, they energized him.
Now at the edge of the grotto, he also heard the sound of a helicopter hovering.
He jerked his hand away from Preacher’s Daughter and grabbed her wrist in turn. “What’s going on?” he asked.
“Are you back or am I talking to an eighteenth-century traveler?” she asked, one eyebrow raised.
“I’m back. Now what’s going on?”
“The dervishes found you. They want the things inside of you.”
“They can have them. Are you packing?”
She reached behind her back and pulled out a pistol. “Try not to hurt yourself.”
He accepted the Walther PPQ, pleased at how the grip fit perfectly into his hand, checked the magazine, loaded a round, then pointed it at the ground.
“I don’t think it’s that easy, boss.”
“Where’s McQueen?”
“He has an exfil plan.” She glanced at him. “You ready?”
He growled at her, then found himself running to keep up, his body aching with each step. She stayed within the tree line, allowing the tall pines to shield them as they circumvented the green lawn. As he ran behind her, he saw several monks with pistols firing back at a group of men who were firing using the aforementioned Uzis. The good thing about Uzis was you could put a shit ton of rounds down range. The problem was they rarely went where you aimed. Then it hit him.
“You had me guarded?”
“What? You don’t think there’s an order of Trappist monks who carry nines to prayer?” Preacher’s Daughter laughed as she ran. “That was McQueen’s idea. Freed us up to do some research—you know, trying to get those things out of you.”
“Who paid for it?”
“We did a GoFundMe. It hit huge on Twitter. What do you think? Came out of your combat pay. De Cherge insisted anyway. He didn’t want his people injured.”
“I sure messed that up, didn’t I?” Boy Scout said, struggling to breathe. He hadn’t done any exercise in months and his body felt as much. “Where are we—”
They skidded to a stop at what had been his home for the past few months, the Hermit’s Cottage.
McQueen stood waiting for them, wearing the same goofy glasses they were. On him the glasses made him look like the old pro-wrestler, Randy Savage. Not only did he have the super muscular build, but he also had the chiseled face with a bushy Fu Manchu mustache. He wore one of his old shirts from when he was a bouncer at a gay bar in West Hollywood, tucked into 5.11 tactical pants. The shirt was hot pink and said COME YANK AT HANKS in white letters.
Boy Scout felt his heart hollow a bit at the sight of his old friend. They’d been through so much together and knew secrets neither of them would tell another soul.
McQueen held out a kit bag.
Boy Scout took it and emptied it on the ground. Soon he was donning his body armor, with a chest rig holster for his Walther, a belt with a dump bag in back, and a suite of grenades, some smoke and some fragmentation.
“We got word they were coming minutes before they arrived,” McQueen said.
“Any idea how they knew I was here?” Boy Scout asked.
“Emails from the monastery to the Archdiocese of Los Angeles detailing a fight and three seriously wounded monks,” McQueen said. “I found these guys from 4Chan who are working for us now. They’ve been following the dervish hacks, mainly because they’re all originating from a diplomatic IP. My 4Chan friends totally want to fuck with the dervishes.”