Malephar, the demon inhabiting me, would suffer no such hindrances.
Yet despite my precautions, I soon realized the room in which I awaited Danny’s coming was not that dark at all. Granted, it was murky enough to obscure my position on the couch from a distance of perhaps twenty feet, but for my plan to work, I would need to get much closer to Danny, and to do that I would need to cross several motes of light, traverse spills of moonglow that had managed to leak through the various blankets and towels I’d draped over the windows of my cottage. Even worse, I realized with incipient horror, once Danny’s eyes adjusted to the semi-dark room the way mine had, he would detect any movement and would have ample time to parry an attack.
Or to mount one of his own.
I sat shivering on my ratty brown secondhand sofa as memories of Danny and his behavior that night on Rosemary Road strobed through my head. The night Father Sutherland and I had exorcised the demon Malephar from young Casey—and had unintentionally driven the fell presence into my own body—Danny had behaved as nobly as any storybook hero could.
More troublingly, he had exhibited incredible physical strength. If, I now realized, my hands atremble on my black-slacked knees, any aspect of my plan failed to unfold as I’d envisioned, Danny would simply wrap those long, tensile fingers around my throat and throttle me until my windpipe collapsed.
Or worse, he would torture me the way he’d tortured his innocent teenage victims.
The abrupt gunning of a car engine made me jump. Though the noise issued from blocks away, in the silence of the cottage it sounded like cannon fire. It came to me then how very quiet our humble campus was, how watchful and silent the rectory. It was spring and the sky was cloudless, yet there seemed to be no life at all in the fragrant April air, no birdsong or cricket’s chirp. Upon opening my front door, as I had instructed Danny to do over the phone, would he immediately detect my breathing, which grew shallower and shallower? Worse still, would he smell the fear on me, like a cowardly miasma, from his position on the stoop?
My heart thundered as a new revelation crashed over me. When the front door swung inward, a pale column of moonlight would illumine the foyer and a section of the living room beyond, the room in which I sat waiting. How far would that hideous rectangle of light creep? Far enough to expose the fishing line I had strung across the walkway? Far enough to reveal the toes of my black shoes, the ones I’d repeatedly scuffed to dull their polished gleam?
If you truly had faith in your plan, a voice in my head whispered, you wouldn’t have bothered with the tripwire.
That was correct, I knew, but my rising panic made it impossible to focus on anything, even my debilitating self-doubt.
I wore no watch, and in throwing the main power breaker in my fuse box, I had disabled the various digital clocks scattered throughout my living quarters. Yet I knew the hour of my momentous encounter was at hand, knew it as surely as I knew my plan hinged on a theory, a theory as volatile as the sinister being around which it revolved.
Since the demon had entered my body two nights before, since Malephar—if that was indeed its true identity—had burrowed into me like a chortling pestilence, I had succeeded in thwarting its attempts to govern me the way it had governed the teenager Casey Hartman, the way I was certain it had controlled innumerable human hosts in its accursed history.
Once, I had awakened to find myself at the bathroom mirror, a razor drifting toward the soft flesh of my throat. Even at that moment, with every molecule of my being hyper-aware and thrumming with fearful energy, I could feel the savage intelligence, like some towering medieval siege engine, battering at my brain in an attempt to topple my defenses and possess me utterly.
Yet how could I be certain that, when the appointed hour arrived, Malephar would seize control the way I needed him to? And once the demon had possessed me and had perpetrated the brutal atrocity he yearned to commit, how could I be certain I could regain control of my own body?
Earlier that day, when I first read about Makayla Howell and the manner in which the Sweet Sixteen Killer had sexually abused and ultimately eviscerated her young body, I resolved that the killer should suffer the same unspeakable depredations.
Yet now that the moment was upon me, my courage waned. There was a ghastly logic to it. The one instance in my life during which I’d exhibited bravery—the exorcism—had been promptly undone by my execution of an innocent man, and my punishment was a reversion to my former state of abject meekness, a state in which I now quivered as I waited for Danny to fling open my door.
But at that moment I realized I needn’t have worried about the front door at all.
Because the stirring of a kitchen curtain behind me told me Danny was already inside my cottage.
I had forgotten to lock the windows.
Chapter Two
I waited for Danny’s gloating voice, my pinwheeling imagination even scripting words for him: Nice place you got here, Father. Too bad it’s about to get so messy. In my mind Danny sounded like Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront, calling me Fadda even though his dialect was Chicago through-and-through.
Or perhaps Danny would address me in Tsakonian, that almost extinct language of his Greek childhood home, the language in which he’d not long ago made his confession to Father Peter Sutherland.
Oh, how I wished Father Sutherland were with me now!
He would be, a raspy voice spoke up, if you hadn’t ended his life, you puling sodomite.
As horrid as these words were, they sent a surge of excitement through me, for the demon had been completely dormant since my phone call to Danny earlier that evening. Now, the foul intelligence had awakened, and that meant my plan might still work.
If Malephar would come forward when I needed him to.
I strained to listen for Danny’s footfalls. A floorboard creaked from my left.
I sprang to my feet, painfully aware of how empty my hands were, how bereft of bludgeoning weapons my living room table was. There were books, a glass of orange juice I supposed I could smash and use to stab at Danny. But nothing else. Unless I could smother him with a couch cushion.
Come forth, Malephar, I commanded.
No answering voice sounded.
A flicker of light from the kitchen arrested my attention. The same curtain that had alerted me to my intruder moments ago, I now saw, was swaying slightly in the chill night breeze.
No, I thought. Focus on the bedroom. It’s accessible from the back hallway. Danny entered the kitchen, stole through the back hall, and is now lurking in your bedroom preparing his attack.
Or perhaps, I thought, he’s waiting for me to attack him. It was I, after all, who’d requested this meeting. And though my tone during our conversation had been amicable, Danny knew why I had called. He knew I wanted to kill him. Just as he wanted to kill me.
So do it, I told myself. You don’t need the demon for that. This is your turf. You know this cottage better than he does. Use the darkness. Sneak into the kitchen, find a weapon, surprise him—
“Hey, Father,” a voice said at my ear. I whirled, gasping, and saw something glint in the shadows, something at the level of my abdomen. I went stumbling backward and was only prevented from falling by the living room wall. I became aware of a dull heat in my belly, but it wasn’t until I pressed a hand to my midsection that I realized I’d been wounded.
Wounded grievously.
My palm was slimed with blood, my black sweatshirt split horizontally in a foot-long swath across the navel. I realized with numb shock that something was bulging out of my stomach. I tried to cram my entrails back inside my belly, but Danny was hurtling toward me, his bloody carving knife flashing in the gloom. He thrust a forearm under my chin, cracked my head against the wall, and flicked the knife at my face. My nose became a blazing heat, a gushing wetness. Like a man suffering through his blackest nightmare, I let go of my bulging intestines and pawed at my nose, which was gone. Just a ragged hole through which blood and mucus popped and bubb
led.
Too aghast to fight back, I stared into the eyes of the Sweet Sixteen Killer.
Danny’s face was inches from mine, as close as a lover’s. “How’s that feel, Father? We understand each other better now? Or you wanna mock me some more, make fun of my prom date?”
This last barely registered. I remembered goading Danny the day before, speculating about why he’d chosen sixteen-year-old girls on which to unleash his monstrous fury, but this seemed a lifetime ago. And immaterial anyway. Because I was dying, my lifeblood gushing from my stomach. And the ragged hole where my nose used to be.
“What I don’t get,” Danny said, still speaking directly into my face, “is why you thought you’d get away with it.” He shook his head. “I mean, I woulda killed you eventually, but I woulda let you live a few more days.” He grinned crookedly. “It was sorta fun knowing someone was out there who knew what I was doing. Kind of like a thrill? You kill for a while, you start to get bored with it. You need something to make your dick hard again.”
I opened my mouth to tell him what a ghoul he was, but the only thing that escaped was a phlegmy cough. I began to choke on my own blood.
He slammed me against the wall, bashing the base of my skull on the plaster. Waves of dizziness rolled through me, the dark living room pixelating, becoming a starry orange-and-black tapestry. My knees threatened to unhinge.
“Stay with me, Father,” Danny urged. “We’re not done yet.”
I am, I thought dimly. When a man has to clutch his small intestine the way he would a colostomy bag, he is most definitely done.
Danny seized me by the upper arms, shook me so hard my neck rattled. I realized I’d been drifting into unconsciousness. Despite my fading state I marveled at how strong he was, how effortlessly he supported my body despite the fact that my muscles had turned to gelatin.
“Look at me, damn you,” he snarled.
Blinking, I did. Though my vision was filmy, distorted, I saw his face well enough. He actually chuckled. “Jeez, Father, I’m sorry for the profanity. Even now I can’t get used to cussing in front of a clergyman.”
“Not… not part of the clergy anymore,” I croaked.
The lopsided grin. “Hell, I know that. I was just trying to be nice to you in your last moments. You’re no more a priest than I am.”
Some vestige of anger kindled in me, some dying ember flaring brighter at his insults. I heaved my arms up—they felt a hundred pounds each—and slapped weakly at his torso.
His grin broadened. “Ahh… you gonna do something about it, Father? That’s what I was counting on. Not this pussy behavior. I hoped you’d put up a decent fight.”
Fight. The word reverberated through my brain. Please fight him, Malephar. But if the demon was cognizant of my plea, he gave no sign.
I began to slide down the wall.
“Whoops,” Danny said, hauling me up with a grunt. “Thought I’d lost you there, Father. I didn’t mean to cut you so deep, but it’s this damned darkness. What’d you do, take out all the bulbs?”
He glanced about, as if the dormant lamps would answer him. “Like bein’ in a cave,” he muttered. He glanced at me, saw perhaps how my eyes were glazing, and something like pity permeated his glittering brown eyes. “Okay, Father, I’ll let you relax a little. I can tell you’re cooked anyway.” He released me, and I found myself slumped on the floor. My vision was grayer than ever, but I still distinguished the outlines of his legs.
My stomach had begun to throb. I coughed again, and though the pain in my gut was extreme, it was the gaping hole in the middle of my face that ached the worst. I imagined how I must look, and a new species of terror surged through me, the black dread of disfigurement. Even though I was about to die, the thought of how repulsive I must appear filled me with a mind-numbing horror.
Danny crouched before me, perhaps catching something of my emotions. “Sorry, Father. Definitely a closed casket for you. I’ll be sure to tell Liz how hideous you looked. Like fucking Lon Chaney. She’ll be thankful she never kissed you.”
In spite of all that was happening, this still shook me to the core. Tears of rage burned in my eyes. “Can’t,” I tried to say. “You can’t—”
“I will,” Danny said. In the dark living room, his white teeth shone like incandescent tombstones. “I will visit Liz and her kids one of these nights, and I’ll carve them up so badly you’ll hear their screams in hell.”
I couldn’t even shake my head in abnegation, couldn’t summon the strength to plead for Liz’s life, for the life of her children. Before that night on Rosemary Road, I never would have believed a man would murder his sister-in-law, his nephew, and niece. But now I believed anything. And I could see in Danny’s eyes he meant what he was saying. He would slaughter them, and he’d exalt in their screams.
Yet my body would no longer respond. My lips wouldn’t even form a plea.
Kill him, I begged Malephar. Stop him before he can hurt Liz, before he can harm Casey or Carolyn.
My left hand shot up, seized Danny’s wrist.
“Jesus!” Danny hissed, and made to jerk away. But that other intelligence had finally taken hold of me—five minutes too late, I thought ruefully. It was my fault for relying on such ghastly forces for aid.
My hand, compelled by the demon, clamped tighter on Danny’s wrist. Through the undersea roar of my own gushing blood, I heard the bones in Danny’s wrist crack. His fingers jittered, splayed wide. The knife clanked to the floor.
My whole body was consumed in a billow of flame. My lips moved, but it wasn’t my voice that spoke. “Ambitious wretch!” the terrible voice buzzed. “You have grand designs, Daniel!”
Danny was staring at me with wide-eyed terror, his free hand beating at my fingers, his legs scrabbling on the floor in a frenzy to escape.
“You’ve got ‘em all lined up!” the demon crowed. “Gonna rape some teenagers this week, aren’t you!”
Danny writhed to escape my iron clutch. “Get… the… fuck… off me!”
Faces flashed in my mind, but they were unfamiliar, detached from any context. The images churned and pirouetted and morphed into others even more nightmarish:
Danny plunging the knife not into my stomach but into some teenaged girl’s. She had a small scar near her left eye, and she screamed as Danny gutted her, the blood splurting over his knuckles as he grinned his maniacal grin… Another girl, another setting, the room squalid but bright, Danny goring her on a meat hook as her head thrashed, Danny masturbating as she flailed about, the blood and sweat and saliva flicking from her face and hair… Another kid, this one wearing some sort of school uniform and styling her hair in a pair of insouciant pigtails, sauntering down the sidewalk and giggling with a pair of friends… The same girl, spread-eagled on the floor, a blood-freezing view of her ravaged stomach cavity, the skin flaps opened like a tropical flower, the glistening guts and viscera purple and Valentine’s Day red… A smiling Liz Hartman, taking Danny’s hand and thanking him for being such a help, Danny’s eyes crawling down her creamy throat and lingering on her shadowed cleavage… Quick glimpses of Danny’s niece and nephew, Casey and Carolyn, smiling up at their uncle… A girl begging for her life, face down, Danny mashing her cheek against the aged floorboards, tributaries of scarlet trickling over her skin as Danny bit into her ear… A yearbook photo of a girl with glasses and braces, a girl who’d be a knockout once her awkward stage was over… Danny leaning out the window, talking to a black girl, Makayla Howell, Danny’s eyes lingering over the muscular cocoa-colored quadriceps showing beneath a too-tight pink skirt… Makayla wailing as Danny’s knife ripped a ragged trough from her navel to her sternum… a dishwater blond girl with too much eye makeup staring back at Danny with a more than healthy interest… A hand clamping on Danny’s shoulder…
…and then Danny was sucking in air and scrambling away from me, his eyes vast and starey in the dimness of the cottage. I realized Malephar had also receded, and with that came the knowledge that, just fo
r a moment, the demon had controlled me the way I’d commanded him to. And wasn’t that another example of man’s hubris? To believe he could manipulate the sinister forces that ruled the night? I deserved this fate. Danny would go on killing and torturing innocent kids, while I would die unmourned. Liz might miss me, but she wouldn’t for long. Because Danny would murder her too, would slaughter her and her children.
I realized Danny had gone. Whatever he’d glimpsed in my face when Malephar had seized his wrist had spooked him enough to leave without confirming my death. He probably figured it was a foregone conclusion, and surely he was right. I was dying, could not believe I still drew breath. But it was getting harder and harder now, my respiration gossamer-thin, the choking death rattle more pronounced. Within minutes, I estimated, my life would be over. If I had minutes.
The back door banged open. Footsteps scampered down the sidewalk. Danny was getting away. No one would connect him with my death, no one would link my murder to the Sweet Sixteen. He was free to kill again.
I had failed.
I attempted to lift my head, but it cost an effort. Soupy blood lapped over my lips in a molten rill, and when I coughed, plump droplets scattered into the darkness. My gauzy vision unfocused, focused, then went bleary again. I glanced at my outdated black wall phone in the hallway. If I could crawl the ten feet I might be able to dial 911 and summon help. But what good would it do with my lifeblood already so depleted? And besides, I didn’t think there was any chance I could reach the phone. I could barely lift my head.
I lolled sideways onto the sodden, spongy carpet. My plan had been so childish. I had thought to trip Danny on the fishing line and leap onto his back. This way, I’d reasoned, I wouldn’t have to see his face as Malephar tore him to shreds.
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