Father John cleared his throat, trying his best not to let the demon’s tricks distract him.
“In the name of Jesus Christ, I demand that you leave this vessel.”
She hissed again.
“I won’t leave shit, you fucking fake. I am here, I am Mother, and me and my children will tear you apart.”
The demon laughed. It was a horrible grating sound.
“Mater est, matrem omnium, you old fuck.”
John continued with the words that he had first heard Father Callahan utter all those years ago, undeterred by the threats.
“You are ordered to leave, to abandon this vessel of God that you have inhabited, that you have stolen from our Lord and Father.”
Father John took another step forward, even as the figure before him continued to undergo its transformation, revealing what it really was.
You are the most important part of the exorcism, Father Callahan had said. You must believe.
The woman’s feet, protruding from beneath the hem of the white dress, started to change. No longer were they the pale pink flesh of a woman. Instead, as the priest watched, the toes merged into three claws with huge talons extending from the ends, the foot itself turning a deep black.
If he hadn’t believed before, there was no question he did now.
“Leave this vessel!” he yelled, pulling a small round bottle of holy water from the burlap sack that hung around his shoulder.
This time when he stepped forward, the creature’s obsidian eyes darted to the bottle.
“You think you can stop me with that?” A forked tongue snaked from between the woman’s lips, leaving dark stains where it touched, as if removing makeup.
A scream broke through the night, and Father John used all of his willpower to keep his eyes locked on the demon before him.
He was not oblivious to the fire that crept up Kendra’s and the little girl’s legs—it was nearly to the girl’s knees now. But his role in all this was to exorcise the demon.
He couldn’t help her; Brett would have to do that. If he didn’t take care of matrem omnium, they might wish that they had been burnt alive.
“Jesus Christ is our savior, he sacrificed himself for our sins, and he shall accept your sins as well.”
“Fuck you!” Mother shouted. She grew more hunched before his eyes, her back curling unnaturally, thick, knobby vertebrae poking through the sheer fabric.
It was starting to cower.
Father John popped the top off the billiard ball-sized bottle of holy water and then, in one motion, flung the open end toward the demon.
Mother cried out and tried to shield her face.
Holy water splashed on the thing’s face between its claws, red welts and blistering skin rising from where it struck.
“Jesus Christ demands that you leave the body of this woman—”
“Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!” Mother took another crooked lunge backward in a lame attempt to avoid another splash of the clear liquid.
The demon’s back leg bumped into the burning platform on which Kendra and the girl stood. The edge of the white dress ignited like a wick soaked in kerosene.
Father John splashed more holy water. With the fire that engulfed her white dress, long, thick flames stretching up her chest, obscuring the demon’s face in thick black smoke, he couldn’t tell if any of it struck her or simply evaporated from the heat.
It didn’t matter.
What mattered was that he was nearly finished.
And he had the perfect living vessel for the demon.
John took two more steps forward, leading with the cross.
It was then, with the demon burning in front of the platform, that he realized that Kendra’s feet were a blistering red, her toes nearly as black as the demon’s now. Amazingly, the woman had managed to hoist the girl up—Lacy, it was Lacy McGuire—despite their restraints, and was now hugging her against her bare chest, keeping her out of the fire while she burned.
For now.
Father John breathed in some of the acrid smoke and continued.
His heart fluttered.
“You must leave this body; you must abandon this vessel of the Lord.”
“Fuck you!” Mother’s words were distorted by the flames that now engulfed her, and they seemed to come from the fire itself. “You think that fire can kill me?” Then it laughed, a horribly guttural sound that was so inhuman that it gave Father John pause. Some semblance of a head, a blackened face and hairless skull, pushed through the fire and leered at him. “I was born in fire!” she screamed. “I was born in fire when Jane Heath and the rest of the townsfolk tied me and my daughter to a stake—after Benjamin raped me over and over again. Branded me. I was born in fire, you stupid faggot!”
When the words died away, an unusual calm extended over John and the creature. The dress had almost completely burnt away now, reduced to ash and a few straggling flames.
They were alone.
The dark head lowered for a moment, and John thought that this might be it—that it was nearing time to force the demon out. But then it raised again, and it was no longer a demon, a burnt creature from Hell.
It was a woman. A woman with blue eyes and shoulder-length blonde hair. The contrast was so striking that Father John was momentarily disoriented.
What was worse was that he recognized the woman.
It was Christine Barker.
“Please, I’m dying—you can’t burn me. You are a priest; you are supposed to help me! First you try to drown me, and now this? Please save me, Father… save me!”
The tears that burst from her blue eyes sizzled and evaporated before they made tracks on her cheeks. The dress was completely gone now, but the pale, milky white skin beneath was amazingly clear of blemishes. Father John gaped.
This wasn’t Christine before him, couldn’t be, but at the same time it was.
And then Father John felt ashamed, ashamed that he was staring at the woman’s full, round breasts with the small, dark nipples. He was suddenly overcome with the desire—no, not desire, but a need—to close the distance between he and Christine and to squeeze her breasts. To take one in each hand and force them together. And then take the nipples in his mouth and suck them until they got hard.
The tears on the woman’s face were gone now, and instead, her eyes rolled back and fluttered. Her mouth, previously marked with pain, suddenly opened, and her tongue, soft and pink now, not thin and forked, darted out from between her full lips. It traced its way across her lower lip slowly, seductively, and Father John felt the front of his pants tighten with his erection.
“Fuck me,” she said, then moaned. “Please, please, I need you to fuck me, John. I need your cock inside me. I will forgive me if you just fuck me…”
The woman’s hands went to her neck, gripping it, then traveled down her body, pushing her breasts together as Father John wanted to do, all the while moaning, the sound like liquid ecstasy to his ears.
Father John swallowed hard, trying to push the lump he felt in his chest below his chin into his stomach. He lowered the cross a couple of inches and strode forward.
Look at those breasts, my God, they are perfect.
“Please,” the woman pleaded, “fuck me.”
And he would have; deep down, Father John knew that if weren’t for a distraction he would have walked over to her, pulled down his pants and fucked her until she was raw. Until both of them were raw.
He was no longer in control of himself, no longer a priest, barely a man reduced to but his basest of desires.
It was a voice—not that of the beautiful woman before him, but of the man that he had come to this hell with, FBI Agent Brett Cherry’s voice—that saved him.
Likely saved all of them.
“John! Help me, John!”
The priest whipped his head around, his eyes immediately finding Brett. The man was covered in the girls, so many of them that the scene might have been comical if they hadn’t been trying to pus
h his face back into the mud.
My God, they’re trying to kill him.
Father John whipped his head back, and the beautiful blonde was gone. In her place was the black creature, the dress reduced to ash, her joints pointed, all angles, its long and thin neck dotted with huge spines marking where Mother’s spinal cord had once been.
“Fuck me,” the lipless head ordered.
Father John felt his heart flutter and his legs go weak. He stumbled forward, and reached out, expecting to fall to the mud like Brett.
But he didn’t fall; the cross kept him upright. It landed square on the demon’s face.
There was no singing sound or sizzle of burnt flesh, as he’d expected—there was simply no flesh left to burn, just a hunk of overcooked meat. The thing shrieked, a sound high and tight, and it flung itself away from Father John, collapsing to the ground in front of the burning pyre.
More screams filled the air now, seeming to come from all sides at once, but John didn’t dare look around again. He didn’t dare risk being tricked by the demon again.
Instead, he scrambled forward, aware that his heartbeat was so irregular that he was starting to become lightheaded.
Stay alert. Just a little while longer.
He splashed more of the water on the moaning beast, and it flexed and jumped.
“Come out of her, demon! I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to leave this woman!”
The thing rolled onto its back, and slowly spread its legs.
“Leave her!” he shouted again.
The hole it had for a mouth stretched wide, its chin aimed at the stars, its black, lidless eyes reflecting the moonlight.
A moan—a long and undulating sound, raspy, like the wheeze of a dying man—exited its mouth. Then it arched its back and a foul black shadow started to emerge from the slit between its legs.
The sight was horrifying and nauseating at the same time, and Father John felt bile rising in his throat.
“Jesus Christ demands it! Jesus Christ demands it!”
Somehow he managed to move forward until he was hovering over the demon.
One more thing, one more thing to do.
A living vessel—he was the living vessel.
“Enter—”
But then Father John’s heart stopped beating and he gasped.
The cross slipped from his fingers and he grasped at his chest with both hands before falling to his knees.
No! Please, no! Not now… not now!!!
CHAPTER 67
Kendra screamed again, partly because the flames were charring her legs to her knees, but also because of the chaos around her.
Brett had fired at Martin, and missed. Then the girls had attacked him, driving him into the mud.
Get off him! Get off him! she shouted in her mind, but whatever link had been established between Kendra and her sisters was broken.
She could hear none of their thoughts, and instead was left to suffer with her own.
Then Father John had materialized out of the woods, and goddamn her if he wasn’t performing some sort of exorcism.
But unlike with Christine Barker all those years ago, it seemed to be working with matrem omnium. That is, until the man collapsed to his knees and his eyes rolled back. The strange black fog that had been coming from between Mother’s legs had extended like a hand, probing the man’s closed eyes, his nose, his mouth. But when Father John fell on his side in the mud, then the fog retracted and Mother’s back, arched like a gymnast’s, suddenly relaxed. A few seconds later, Mother’s blackened body also turned on its side, until it was ironically in the same position as the priest’s. They looked like yin and yang, both curled opposite ways in the mud, the priest’s head less than eighteen inches from Mother’s scarred feet.
Scarred. Burnt.
Lacy screamed, and Kendra did her best to crane her neck to look down, which was still restricted by the rope around her throat.
Despite her best efforts to hold the girl out of the fire, Lacy’s feet were becoming red. They weren’t turning dark and blistering like her own, but if the fire continued to grow, then they too would become crispy, like Mother’s. Like hers.
The pain wasn’t so bad anymore. Kendra’s body was completely numb, reduced to but a solitary purpose.
Protect Lacy.
But she could only hold on for so long, she knew. Her legs were getting weak, and the stool beneath her was almost completely burnt. When it gave way, she would fall, the rope tightening around her throat like a lateral noose, and Lacy would fall into the flames with her.
“Please!” Lacy shouted, her wide blue eyes staring up at her.
Kendra’s face twisted in despair.
I can’t! I’m trying, but I can’t!
But Kendra’s words only echoed in her head.
Mother moaned, and her arm twitched.
Lacy shrieked again as the flames continued to grow, licking all around her now, making her eyes water and her throat burn. Kendra once again craned her neck downward, trying to figure out how she could possibly save the girl. Her hands clutched the girl’s waist, the rope that passed over her biceps so tight that she could see her veins bulge. Someone had bound Lacy’s hands in front of her, but the only thing besides Kendra’s own grip that kept them together was a third rope that was looped around both of their ankles and then around the tree.
She couldn’t see or feel the rope anymore—it was deep in the fire—but she knew it was there.
If only I can…
Kendra again looked down at the stool beneath her feet, twisting against the rope that dug into the soft skin of her neck.
And then she made up her mind.
Hold on tight, Lacy, she thought, hoping beyond hopes that the girl could still hear her thoughts.
Then Kendra picked up her right heel as high as the ropes would allow and drove it down into the darkened top of the stool.
Mother moaned, but Kendra remained focused. She drove her heel down again and again.
On the fourth try, the stool made a loud snapping sound and a shower of sparks rose up to meet her.
“What are you doing?” Lacy shouted, but Kendra ignored her.
She would sacrifice herself for Lacy.
On the sixth heel slam, the stool cracked and they just hovered there for a moment, engulfed in the large, four-foot-high flames, defying gravity.
Then they sunk into the fire.
CHAPTER 68
Father John could feel something press up against his eyes, enter his nose. It was like a thick smog, but it lacked the characteristic caustic nature of smoke.
It was more like a liquid, an ether that clung to his nostrils, to his open mouth.
It was the demon, he knew.
Enter me! His mind screamed. He tried to move his hand, to reach into his pocket and retrieve his nitroglycerin, but his body refused to respond.
His heart was no longer beating, and he felt darkness closing in around him.
No.
He was so close.
He was the living vector that would contain the demon, and his plan was for it to die with him—in him. Slowly, he felt his airways begin to clear, and he knew in that instant that he had failed.
I’m sorry, Lacy McGuire.
I’m sorry, Meghan Miller.
Stephanie Black.
Christine Barker.
I’m so sorry.
The last thing that Father John heard before he died was the sound of wood breaking and of a little girl screaming.
I’m sorry.
CHAPTER 69
Kendra groaned with the effort of trying to hold the writhing girl as high as possible, out of the scalding center of the fire. She was still being supported by the rope around her arms, throat and legs, but they had loosened from the heat and with all of her stomping. And now, without the stool holding her up, Kendra sunk down almost two feet, directly into the flames that nearly eclipsed her navel.
It wasn’t possible to prevent the girl from be
ing burned; Kendra only hoped that she limited the girl’s pain and suffering.
Lacy shrieked, and Kendra grunted. She could barely breathe; when she had slipped down the tree, the rope rose to beneath her chin, and now it was forcing her gaze skyward, stretching her neck to beyond its natural limits.
Her legs were burning, so hot now and blistered that the nerves were shot. Deep down, she knew that she would never have full feeling in them again, if she got through this alive.
Kendra would never be the same, either way.
Please, just break. Please break.
And then, amazingly, the rope around her shins and around Lacy snapped, the fire having weakened it. Kendra immediately released her hold from Lacy, and the pressure on her bare chest and breasts vanished.
Lacy fell away from her, still screaming, and Kendra, unable to see anything but the sky high above, prayed that she had landed beyond the reaches of the flames.
Run, she pleaded, tears streaming down her face. Run as far and as fast as you can, Lacy. Don’t ever stop running.
The smoke from her burning skin suddenly parted, and Kendra was unexpectedly offered a direct view of the night sky.
It was beautiful—dark and deep. There were stars, too, thousands of them. It didn’t matter to Kendra if they were real, or if they were just spots brought on by the searing pain.
“Beautiful,” she breathed.
And then the fire engulfed her entire body.
CHAPTER 70
Brett gulped air and bucked his back, trying desperately to throw the girls that forced his face and head into the mud off of him.
Mud caked his nostrils, covered his eyes, and he tasted it in his mouth.
His gun was gone, and with it the need to make a decision of whether or not he could bring himself to actually shoot one of the girls.
Survival was a bitch, and it forced Brett’s arms out. His fingers tangled in hair, and he yanked. Somewhere through his mud-packed ear canals, he heard something akin to a yelp.
Small hands pushed against the back of his head, but he fought back, shifting onto one hip, and then quickly twisting the other way. A weight fell off his back; not all of it, but some, enough so that he could twist back the other way more freely.
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