So, the duty of jury fell on her. Since Heaven would never come, she took it upon herself to deliver them unto Hell.
Angela pulled Clara’s lighter from her pocket and sparked the flame.
CHAPTER 43
The rapture was too engrossing for anyone to notice the gas, or its accompanying odor, which now saturated the carpet running through the aisle.
The congregation was too busy pawing over each other like excited puppies starving for their mother’s milk. Escape from their hell seemed, at long last, mere moments away and their sweet freedom was made all the sweeter knowing the price they had paid.
At the cusp of their ascension, many of the members saw fit to give thanks. They were relieved that at least the boy had not died in vain, at least the darkness could be overcome, and at least they still had a god to praise.
In the midst of all this clamouring, the sanctuary was ignited. The first and most obvious to be swallowed by the flame was the door. The ravenous fire devoured the wood in seconds and proceeded to let itself in without waiting for an invitation.
Quickly, it chased up the aisle, reducing the red carpet to a foul, blackened sludge. The fabric of the three rear windows burst into rolling balls of flame in succession, like carefully timed fireworks. The orange blaze tumbled upwards in a grand display, leaving scorch marks against the back wall as it rose. The upsurge dispersed against the roof, birthing several new fiery offspring.
Already, the impenetrable fire had cornered the congregation. All their escape paths were burning and the heat was only getting closer. The roar of the flames competed with the congregation’s screams as the fire jumped eagerly from one pew to the next.
“No!” yelled Dorothy in an attempt to frighten the fire away as if it was an animal. It didn’t work.
The glow of the devastation settled in Rick’s eyes, lending his coldness some much-needed emotion. He knew who was to blame for this inferno and was compelled to whisper her name, “Angela...”
One of the side pews suddenly caught fire.
“Grandma!” screamed Matthew. Stunned by the undeniable majesty of the encroaching bonfire, he had momentarily forgotten about his slumbering grandmother.
With his shirt pulled around his face, he left the children and forced his way through the heat, but it was too late. By the time he reached the pew where he had left her, Flora Thompson had already been eaten away. Crispy flakes from her flowery dress – the one she wished to be buried in – were caught by rising pockets of heat and twirled into the air. Faced by the sight, Matthew’s body told him simply to breathe and keep breathing. Unfortunately, there was no more air to take in, only smoke, and Flora’s ash.
He coughed uncontrollably, as if his goal was to retch out his lungs. The heat crowded in around him and he fell to his knees, unable to withstand the weight of the tenacious flames. With his forehead against the ground and his fist pressed tightly to his chest, he resigned himself to suffocation. The sounds of panicked cries and scurrying feet faded from his ears. All he could hear and feel was his body attempting to sift out oxygen where none could be found.
Before he was completely overcome, however, an angel intervened. Susan – who was as close to an angel as anyone was going to get – arrived at his side and propped him back up on his feet. She helped him from the thralls of smoke and back to where the air was slightly more breathable, but even at the pulpit, the dangers did not abate.
The fire took to the old wood like a kid in a candy store, hasty to gobble up every morsel.
Gary, along with a handful of assorted congregation members, ran to the stained-glass window in the hopes of smashing their way through it. As they approached, it became obvious the conniving flames had predicted this move and had already crawled all around the window’s trim. The glass mural was completely enclosed by a blazing arch and although this made getting near it impossible, Gary noted how it also made the colours radiate brilliantly like winking gemstones. It was a beautiful thing, even in such perilous circumstances. If only Chris could have seen it, he thought to himself.
A sizable plank from the roof came loose. It swung down through the air like a flaming baton and landed on Gary Brown’s head. He wasn’t aware that the sky was falling, nor was he allowed time to ponder his last moments before he was crushed. The weight of the plank collapsed his neck; his spine compacted, then snapped and down he went. The greedy fire was impatient to get a taste of him.
In a flash, his body was engulfed, as was half the room by this point. The sanctuary had become a furnace and its searing heart was growing ever brighter.
Dorothy shielded herself from the harsh light of their impending cremation and looked again to Rick. She grabbed hold of his ankle, wrapping her hands around the top of his foot like a chain.
“My god, save us! Please! Do something!” she pleaded desperately.
Without offering Dorothy so much as a sympathetic glance, Rick kicked her away, sending her skidding across the ground into the front row of pews. Despite this, the other congregation members continued to beg for his help. Rick, untouched by their cries, floated effortlessly into the air and disappeared into the billowing smoke that had gathered on the roof. Even then, a few believed he would return.
Dorothy, bewildered and destroyed, remained sitting against the shattered wood of the bench where she landed and looked around at the hell that had come to pass. She folded her hands in her lap and let the destruction sink in.
It was more than just the church that was being destroyed. Over the past two days, the ugly struggle for life, or rather, for what she wished life to be, had ushered in unthinkable pain. She had lost too much and so she had become a crusader against death itself. She strived to maintain the promise of ever-lasting life, the comfort that nothing really ends, that no one is gone forever. She was determined to earn Heaven at any cost, even at the cruel bargain of one of their own. However, in the madness she witnessed now, as congregation members dashed about the room, choking, and frantically searching for a way to save themselves, she had to admit, it hardly seemed worth it.
Then, someone called for Dorothy. Though filtered through char and carnage, she could still recognize the voice.
Gradually, Dorothy’s sweaty face turned to behold Clara climbing up the aisle toward her. She was wearing a dress of fire that had melted most of her dead flesh away, but somehow her eyes had once again survived. Despite the cracking wrinkles singed across the abomination’s face, Dorothy could still see her struggling little girl.
“Mommy...” the burnt thing whispered, smoke spilling from its mouth.
“That’s right, baby. I’m here. Come to mommy,” Dorothy responded tenderly, with a smile. She opened her arms and welcomed her closer.
At the sight of this warm gesture, Clara’s corpse sprang into action and scuttled forth like a beetle. Its crispy hands latched onto the pews on either side like the rungs of a ladder and propelled it forward.
Dorothy Muller’s burning child pounced on her with a devastating embrace. Once the corpse’s arms entrapped her, Dorothy felt the incredible heat of the dead flesh scorch her skin, almost fusing the two together, before the fire even had time to acquaint itself.
The daughter leaned its sweltering head against Dorothy’s bosom. It was like a searing frying pan held to her nipple – she was being suckled by the devil’s lips, a depravity to which she felt deserving. As Dorothy’s nerves exploded from the surging pain, she was compelled to express her torture. She arched her head to the smoky roof where Rick had retreated and released a wail that grew from her gut into the storm above. The sound was like the final, piercing note of a most extraordinary libretto.
Her mouth suddenly became very dry as the flames passed from one body to the next. Fire picked apart her arms before rushing up to her neck only to become engrossed in her hair. Once the first strands caught flame, it was only a few seconds before her entire head was bubbling like an overcooked marshmallow.
The two of them fell backward
s together into a bed of coals, releasing a burst of fresh sparks into the room.
For the rest of the congregation who still dreamed of escape, the only hope for survival that had yet to be burned away were the trio of small windows on the east wall. The problem was, only the children were small enough to make use of them.
CHAPTER 44
Through the connecting windows in the mess hall, Angela bore witness to the full extent of her vengeance, but the misery she had unleashed was – in some cases – more than she bargained for.
It wasn’t until she heard their screams that Angela remembered the children would also be caught in her fiery fury. Upon the realization, she wished she could have thought more clearly, she wished she could have spared the innocent. Yet, she could not take back the flame, nor could she leap through the inferno to save them. All that was left for her to do was watch as the devastation washed over the church, obliterating wood and flesh alike, indifferent of their struggles and protests, until nothing was left but ash.
Angela became audience to a melodrama of survival, played out on a glowing red stage. Every scene ended the same – in cinders. She witnessed lovers sacrifice themselves in vain, and strangers push one another into the flames. Everyone was driven by the killer instinct to persist. Even in the end, the war between kindness and callousness raged on. It was a mesmerizing montage of human ugliness and human beauty, both made irrelevant by the certainty of utter annihilation.
Some commotion from the far corner of the sanctuary attracted Angela’s weary eyes. At first, she hesitated to look, for fear of witnessing more of what she had begot. To her great relief, however, she saw Susan and Matthew using one of the long steel candleholders to hammer out the remaining windows. Angela couldn’t hear over the crackle what they were saying to one another, but it was obvious what they were trying to do.
The children had been gathered around them like skittish ducklings. Susan laid down her sweater on top of the broken glass for protection. Then, one by one, Matthew started feeding the kids through the window. Angela counted anxiously as each passed out of the flame’s reach until she was certain not one child was left behind. It was a refreshing sight of heroism, one she was thankful to have beheld.
Matthew and Susan then crawled out the window themselves, though they didn’t easily slip through like the children. They had to squirm and struggle, but eventually they made it. Angela was less enthusiastic about this. Both Susan and Matthew were present when Alex was condemned, so they, like the remaining congregation members, deserved the fate Angela had prescribed.
So resolute was her castigation that, although it pained her to watch such suffering enacted, in her wounded heart, she felt it was justified.
There were no innocent souls left in the sanctuary now that the children were safe in the fields outside. Being safe and outside had become two contrary notions, but Angela knew the Behemoth would not come after them, at least not with the fire still burning so brightly. If Susan and Matthew were wise, they would take the children and run. Angela hoped they would be led far away from this place. She hoped they would, in time, forget about the deceit of the church, the cruelty of the congregation, the tyranny of gods, and most importantly, the fire she had used to destroy them all. She hoped they could somehow escape the traps life had so intricately laid out for them. But, like lambs to the slaughter, she thought.
As the heat reached new levels, it became more and more difficult to distinguish what were human remains from what was just burnt furniture. It was as if everything had been coated in tar. A few hymnbooks burst into shimmering blizzards and scattered into the smoke.
Angela focused on two bodies near the pulpit where the flames had not yet reached. She recognized them as Emily and Michael Rosenthal. Both were lying face down against the searing carpet. Emily’s body slightly overlapped Michael’s, like they had fallen together. Because of the way Emily’s hand clutched her throat, Angela assumed the smoke had claimed them both. The fire, however, wasted no time once it reached their feet. Their clothing took to the crimson flames as if they, too, had been soaked in gas. Emily’s body shriveled rather quickly, whereas Michael’s density took longer to penetrate. His mass was a feast for the fire and it seemed to savour lapping him up.
Something awakened from out of the flames. Angela immediately shifted her vision to the right. What she found was a horror as honest as she could bear it to be. A screeching figure, blackened and hairless from the heat, tore through the crumbling pews toward her. Fire stretched out behind the blazing banshee like the fluttering wings of a dying phoenix. Its scream was utterly inhuman, as even its vocal chords had been seared.
The miserable creature was at the window before Angela realized it wasn’t some demon from Hell, or a haunting spectre. The squealing thing was actually all that remained of Tina Brown.
This was a woman whom Angela had always hated, even before the madness. Yet to see Tina’s writhing form slumped over the frame of the window and her scorched fingers break apart like brittle chalk, was worse than just bitter sweet; it was pure agony. Though Angela undoubtedly wanted Tina dead for the part she played in murdering her son, comfort could not be derived from such a repulsive spectacle, no matter how much she tried.
With the solid wood stand that once held the binder for signing in and out of the church, Angela smashed through the back of Tina’s head. The charred flesh ripped away like tissue paper from the force of the blunt attack. What blood remained in Tina’s body bubbled out and sizzled against her exposed skull.
The stand rolled out of Angela’s hands and thumped against the floor. She waited in silence for Tina’s final convulsions to run their course. Once all movement had ceased, Angela took a step back.
There were no pews left in the sanctuary; the walls were now supported solely by a floor of flames. Not even the pulpit had been spared. On the contrary, the fire seemed to burn brighter there than anywhere else in the room. Angela had stripped away the façade of the building and found hell underneath. Soon, she thought, although the fire had remained obedient, that same hell would come spilling into the mess hall to claim her as well. When it did, she asked herself, would she run?
Then, the unmistakably artificial keys of the electric organ began to harmonize. A hypnotic melody, unfittingly banal, rose above the fire’s grumble.
The notes piled on one another in a simple musical grid, almost tribal in nature. Angela stalked by the windows to catch a glimpse of who might be playing.
Just as she had guessed, it was Rick who sat at the instrument, surrounded by a climbing blaze. His calmness made his presence all the more surreal.
Angela was almost lost in the music. It bypassed her mind and whispered directly to her soul.
A wall of smoke rose suddenly and obscured her view of Rick. The organ hit a piercing chord. If the instrument could cry, surely that was the sound it would make.
Angela rushed to another window, anxious to get Rick within her sights again. However, when she reached the opening, although the music remained, Rick was gone. Dorothy’s smoldering corpse had been placed on the organ, pressing down on the dissonant keys.
There was nowhere left for Rick to hide. The fire had laid claim to every inch of the sanctuary, so where did he go?
She stepped closer to the window, as close as the heat would allow her, and surveyed every corner of the burning room.
When she approached, the smoke stung her throat as it poured forth from just under the ledge of the window. It reached upward only a few feet away from her.
Out of that thick cloud emerged Rick like a phantom materialized, his robe billowing from the updrafts. With an animalistic roar, not unlike the one she had heard from the Behemoth itself, Rick lunged from the burning frame of the window and seized her, pinning her to the ground.
Despite the terrible destruction she had wreaked upon his congregation, he greeted his wife with a perverse smile.
CHAPTER 45
Bits of burning debris had fo
llowed Rick into the mess hall and scattered around the two of them like fallen stars.
Angela pushed against Rick’s body, but he weighed down on her as if he were filled with stone. She stared up with the inferno she had unleashed now smoldering in her eyes.
Rick stared back, unflinchingly. He straddled her, holding her legs down with his own, then pinned her shoulders to the floor. It made her feel like she was buried alive. Yet, Angela continued to fight him.
“Angela... You’ve been a naughty girl.”
“What makes you say that?”
“You have no idea what you have done.” Piercing red pupils formed in the centre of Rick’s eyes as if the blood was pooling there.
“I know exactly what I’ve done.”
“The Behemoth will be very angry.”
“Fuck you! And fuck that thing!”
He moved his mouth down to hers so she could feel the coldness of his empty breath. It chilled her skin and ate the heat from the fire.
He spoke calmly. “You still resist the beast? Are you so blind? If these past trials could not convince you, then what?” Rick paused as he considered the question, then continued. “I’ll show you firsthand what the beast taught me. It taught me so many things, Angela; things only a god would know. It showed me how nothing is truth. Through the will of the beast, everything becomes as you desire it. Even bone, even flesh.”
He rested his face against hers and gently fit his jawbone into the groves of her neck, just like he used to.
Her body, which had been primed by heated exertion, was disturbingly quick to lust. Angela felt her famished hunger for Rick reawaken inside her. Within seconds, the mutinous yearning took over her senses. Her mind pulsed with memories of him pumping into her. She recalled, during their few years of enjoyable sex, how the tense musculature of his back felt as it rolled into a variety of lovely configurations with every grinding thrust. Now, trapped against the floor of the church, she quivered at the opportunity to feel those sensuous assemblies again.
As if her face had somehow betrayed her passions, Rick brought his hips down against her own. She became enraptured by the thickness maneuvering on top her. Yet, it was a nocuous partnership, as with the pleasure came a tangible level of disgust and repulsion.
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