The First Sacrament (The Demons of Stone Chapel Book 1)

by Duncan, Lex

  “Oh, hello,” she said from behind the circulation desk, dabbing her mouth with a napkin. She put her plastic fork down and pushed her cup of peaches away. “You're Beatrice, right?”

  Looks like my reputation preceded me. “Yep.”

  She smiled. She wasn't the stereotypical old lady librarian. She had the glasses down, but the rest of her was fresh out of college. Auburn hair, green eyes, eager expression. “The Headmaster called and said you were coming. Sit wherever you'd like.”

  “Okay” I shuffled over to the nearest table. The television in the upper corner of the wall flickered on. No one ever told me this place had a TV. I'd have to rethink my visiting hours.

  “Sorry,” Ms. Hayworth said. “I don't usually do this, but I just got a text from my mom to turn on the news.”

  I picked at the slice of pizza on my lunch tray, popping a rubbery pepperoni in my mouth. “I won't tell if you won't.”

  The channels blipped by, alternating between static and soap operas, then stopped on the face of a perfectly coiffed brunette standing in front of rundown warehouse blocked off with bright yellow caution tape. The banner below her proclaimed breaking news.

  Her concerned voice filled the room. “Good afternoon, I'm Candace Walker for Channel 10 News reporting live from a press conference held by Mayor Michael Bishop in regards to the mass homicide uncovered in this very warehouse Saturday evening. New details have emerged―Oh, here he is. Let's listen in.”

  The camera zoomed away from Candace to a ridiculously handsome older man with thick silver hair and a three piece suit. He stepped up to the podium and confronted his audience of reporters with a stern grimace and a clearing of his throat.

  “Good afternoon,” he began. He sounded strong, commanding. Mayoral, even. “As you know, a horrific act of violence was uncovered here two days ago. I am working closely with the police department and the federal authorities to bring this depraved killer to justice. I'm standing here today to tell you, the people of this city, that we will not tolerate this violence, nor will we continue to let it happen. We take crime very seriously and hope to bring a quick resolution to this case.”

  Ms. Hayworth migrated from her desk to my table and sank into the chair beside me, bringing a forkful of peaches to her lips as Mayor Bishop continued his speech.

  “Though we will not be releasing the names of the victims at this time, I extend my condolences to their families and wish them all the best in these trying times.” He paused, glanced down at the podium, then back up at the audience. It was completely silent. Everyone was enraptured by our charismatic leader. “Details about this case are sparse at the moment, but we are working tirelessly to give the victims and their families the answers they deserve. That being said, if you know anything about what might have happened here, please contact the police department. Thank you.”

  Assuming that was the end of his speech, the audience erupted with questions. Who did it? Do you have any leads? What precautions are you taking to ensure this doesn't happen again? Cameras flashed and the entire crowd shifted forward toward the podium, desperate to get the first scoop.

  “Mayor Bishop!” One man shouted. “What about the allegations of demonic activity? Is there any evidence to support that?”

  I sat up. Max said in his post on Armageddon Now that the evidence was all there, that it was obvious. That the demon at work was extremely dangerous. How could there be any doubt?

  Mayor Bishop leaned into his microphone. “While we don't want to rule anything out, everything we've found thus far points to more human hands.”

  Wait, what? Was he seriously denying that a demon had a stake in this? Max was going to be pissed.

  Ms. Hayworth looked troubled. “I hope he's right. Lord knows we don't need any more demon trouble around here.”

  “Yeah,” I mumbled, picking another pepperoni off my pizza. “We really don't.”

  ***

  School passed by without further incident. No demon attacks, no blood symbols, no snide comments about my pajamas. I didn't even see Jason. When the final bell rang, I made my way back to the library to start my first day of detention. Crooked stacks of books filled the tables and Ms. Hayworth scurried around them, scribbling on a clipboard as she went.

  “Ms. Hayworth?” I put my backpack on her desk. She didn't answer. Just zipped around the stacks like a deranged wind-up toy in a cardigan. “You okay over there?”

  Again, no answer. This was awkward. I watched her do another lap, waiting to see how long it'd take her to realize I was there. Then, as she went around the third time, I decided enough was enough and tapped her on the shoulder. She jumped so high that I wouldn't have been surprised if her feet left the ground.

  “Beatrice!” She gasped, clutching her clipboard to her chest. “You―you scared me.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “You were, uh...distracted.”

  She readjusted her glasses, smiling sheepishly. “Yes, well, I apologize. I tend to have a very one track mind when it comes to work. I get so focused on one thing that I don't pay attention to anything else and...” She trailed off. “I'm rambling. Sorry.”

  I decided to change the subject before we found something else to apologize about. “So, this is what detention's like, huh?”

  She nodded. “For now, yes. I'm reorganizing the shelving system to make more useful materials easier to find. It's a lot of work, but it'll be worth it in the long run.”

  It looked like a lot of work. At least I wouldn't be scrubbing toilets. “What do you need me to do?”

  She tapped her pen on her clipboard in thought, then pointed it in the direction of the group of shelves labeled 'LOCAL HISTORY.’ “You could start by taking all those books off their shelves? You don't have to do anything with them. Just stack them up in alphabetical order and I'll do the rest later.”

  Stone Chapel was a city obsessed with itself, and it showed in the dozens of books I had to move from the shelves to the floor. There were compilations of letters from prominent citizens, three copies of Stone Chapel: A History, and, of course, the entirety of The Cromwell Diaries.

  Back in 1784, the city’s founder, Elias Cromwell, began putting to paper his journey from Rome, to England, to the New World. What resulted was something local historians called The Cromwell Diaries, a near mythological account of the founding of the city. As the story went, Cromwell was born in England, moved to Rome when he was eighteen to study Catholicism, then moved back to England when he was 33 to spread the good Catholic word. He got tired of England’s anti-Catholic sentiment at the time, however, and sailed to the New World to found a place where people of all faiths (mostly Catholics) would be welcomed.

  We heard this story every single year at the Founder’s Day assembly.

  The entire set was made up of fourteen piles of paper bound together by some old string and battered covers. Stone Chapel High was currently in possession of them. A gift from the city library during last year’s Founder’s Day assembly. They wanted to share the wealth, I guess.

  When I was finished with my task, I took a step back to make sure I'd gotten everything in order. It looked fine, except…

  It took me a second to realize it, but after some squinting and a double take, I noticed that The Diaries, numbered with the year they were written on their tattered spines, jumped from 1799 to the floor. 1800 was gone.

  “Ms. Hayworth?” I called.

  She managed to tear herself away from her inventory taking long enough to attend to my missing book crisis. “What's up?”

  I pointed to the Diaries stack. “The Diary from 1800 is missing.”

  “What?” Her brow scrunched up behind her glasses. “Are you sure you didn’t just drop it?”

  “Positive. I moved all of them directly from the shelves to the floor. Not much room for error.”

  “That’s…not very good at all,” she said. She tapped on her clipboard some more. “We have to find that book, Beatrice.”

  We spent the next hou
r scouring every inch of the library without anything to show for it. Poor Ms. Hayworth looked like she was going to have a panic attack. I tried telling her that she’d probably just misplaced it somewhere, but she shook her head and sent me away.

  I spent my bus ride home wondering if she would be okay. I mean, she really looked ill at the thought of losing one of the city’s precious pieces of history.

  And then I got back to my apartment. And all thoughts of Ms. Hayworth and the suspicious case of the Mysterious Missing Book vanished from my mind.

  Eight

  The last time I saw Mother Arden, we got into an argument. About Rosie. About how I was taking on too much responsibility. About how it was going to kill me one day. So it was funny, then, that when I got home, she was standing in my now empty apartment with an expression that I roughly translated into meaning I told you so.

  “Mother Arden?” My backpack fell to the floor with a thud that echoed hollowly against the bare walls. “What are you―”

  She smiled gently, dark eyes crinkling at their corners. “Mr. Arturo contacted me.”

  Mr. Arturo was going to get his ass kicked. Once for calling Mother Arden and twice for stealing all my stuff. It was completely empty in here. The tubs I kept my clothes in, the couch, the kitchen table, my laptop, all gone. I knew I shouldn't have left.

  “I'm glad someone has been looking after you,” Mother Arden said. She was in full habit as usual and the black fabric of her skirts whispered at her feet as she closed the distance between us. She wrapped her arms around me, hugged me tight. “Are you all right?”

  I squirmed out of her grasp. The ceiling was clean of blood and the dog was gone. As if it never existed. As if none of what I'd experienced those hours ago never happened. “I'm fine.”

  She stared at me. A steady, inexhaustible stare that made me feel eight years old all over again. “You don't need to be, Beatrice. I know what happened here. I know about Rosemary.”

  My throat got tight at the mention of Rosie's name. I'd been so caught up in my own problems that I'd barely given her a thought. I was a terrible friend. “She's fine, too.”

  Mother Arden held my gaze for a moment longer, then sighed, bowing her head as though in prayer. Dear Lord, please protect my charge because she's too incapable of doing it herself. And grant me the strength not to smack her with a Bible every time she mouths off. Amen.

  “Don't be angry with Mr. Arturo,” she said when she was finished praying or thinking or whatever. “I told him to move your things.”

  “What?” Did no one care what I thought about all this? “Why?”

  “It isn't safe―”

  My hands balled into fists at my sides. “You don't get to decide what's safe for me anymore!”

  “Beatrice―”

  “No!” I was too angry to think about what I was saying. “I'm sick of people making decisions for me! I'm not a kid! I can take care of myself!”

  “Beatrice―”

  “Dante thinks he can come in here and order me around and you just let him―”

  Mother Arden seized my shoulders, shocking the protests from my lips. The look on her face was one I'd never seen from her before. Usually so graceful, so composed, she looked...afraid. “Beatrice,” she said. “Listen to me! For once in your life, just listen!”

  For once in my life, I listened.

  “Something is wrong, Beatrice,” she said tremulously. “Something is very wrong. And you are getting caught in the middle of it. Don't you understand that? I don't know what happened that would make someone want to harm you, but they do and you aren't seeing it!”

  I couldn't speak even if I wanted to. I was that eight year old again, rendered powerless by a parent's admonishment.

  Her grip slackened, but it didn't slip away entirely. “Let me help you, Beatrice. There's no shame in it. You've always been a stubborn girl, but you can't let that kill you. I won't allow it.”

  “I'm not―…” It was a struggle to find my voice again, and when I found it, it sounded small. Childish. “I'm okay.”

  She didn't believe me. “No, you aren't. You aren't okay. You're exhausted and frightened and alone. You need to be in a safe place, Beatrice.”

  “I don't have a safe place,” I said. I'd aged out of the system eight months ago on my birthday. Instead of candles on a cake, I got shoved out of the only home I knew with nothing but a suitcase and some useless well-wishes. That I managed to get this far was a miracle in and of itself.

  “Yes,” Mother Arden smoothed my frizzy hair down. “You do.”

  She couldn't have meant the orphanage. “What do you mean?”

  Behind us, the door creaked open. “Knock, knock.”

  That accent...No way. I spun around. “Aralia?”

  She wiggled her long fingers in my direction. “Hello, darling. Long time no see.”

  This was a joke, right? This had to be a joke. “What are you doing here?”

  “Isn't it obvious?” She put her hands on her hips. “I'm your knight in shining armor, coming to take you away from this wretched place.” She looked past me to Mother Arden. “I take it you hadn't gotten to that part yet.”

  Mother Arden shook her head. “No. I hadn't.”

  “What the hell is going on?” I asked.

  Aralia and Mother Arden exchanged glances, the kind of glances that said they knew something I didn't. This Keep Things from Beatrice game was getting really old really fast.

  Mother Arden spoke first. “Mr. Arturo has graciously decided to welcome you into his home for the time being.”

  “Just until we find you a new place to stay,” Aralia said.

  Oh my God. I was going to rip my hair out. “I'm glad you guys decided to ask me about it first. Thanks for that.”

  “It isn't permanent,” Mother Arden said. She reached for my hand, but I moved away before she could. “It's for the best, Beatrice.”

  “And you think I couldn't decide that for myself?”

  “Your circumstances―”

  Again with my circumstances! “I don't care what my circumstances are! It isn't fair!”

  “Ladies,” Aralia stepped between us, cool as a cucumber. “I hate to break up such a touching reunion, but I'm afraid I'm on a bit of a schedule. Mondays are always busy, you see.”

  I glared at her. “Were you not listening to what I told Dante this morning? I'm not a couch!”

  She grabbed me by my shoulders and wheeled me around to face the door. “Of course you aren't, darling.”

  “Hey!” I hated that she was so damn strong. “Let me go!”

  “I can't do that,” she sighed. “This would be much easier if you would see reason.”

  I dug my heels in, but Aralia kept pushing. “I'm not leaving!”

  She stopped. “Do you want to die?”

  “No―”

  “Then you're leaving.”

  Resume pushing.

  “No!” Full blown temper tantrum, activate. I'd look back on this one day and laugh at how stupid I was being, but in that moment, I didn’t care. If they were going to treat me like a toddler, I was going to act like a toddler. “I'm not leaving!”

  “Good Lord,” Aralia said. “Excuse me. Mother Arden, yes? Please control your charge before I'm forced to do something drastic.”

  Mother Arden appeared at my side in a plume of black and white. “Beatrice! Stop this at once!”

  Oh, God. Here we go. She was using The Voice. Yeah. That one. The one that made many an orphan cower in fear and shame.

  “You complain that I'm treating you like a child, that I won't let you make your own decisions, and then you proceed to act like this?” She glowered at me, her face half eclipsed in the shadow of her wimple. “Being an adult is more than turning eighteen, Beatrice. Being an adult means doing things you may not want to do. Being an adult means making decisions you would rather not make. And since you refuse to make that decision, I made it for you. I made it for you and you will like it.”

&
nbsp; “But―”

  She wouldn’t let me argue. “I'm not going to let you throw your life away for the sake of your pride. You will go to Mr. Arturo's and you will thank him for all he's done for you.”

  “I wouldn't advise doing that today,” Aralia murmured. “He's in a positively foul mood.”

  Mother Arden took a step back. Composed herself. “Though my colleagues may think differently, I believe that Mr. Arturo is a good man. A great man. The fact that he is willing to let you live with him attests to that.”

  Aralia leaned down to speak in my ear. “He is unusually invested in you.”

  That was another thing. Why did he care? Why was he doing this? Was I part of his master plan? Was I being recruited like Max? Giving me the money was one thing but this was just...Too generous to be true.

  “You must play the hand you've been dealt,” Mother Arden said. She pressed her lips together as she caught sight of the claw marks on the far wall. “And if that means accepting outside help, so be it.”

  “Okay,” I wrenched myself away from Aralia, away from the both of them. “I get it. You can stop lecturing me now.”

  “I sincerely hope you do,” Mother Arden replied.

  I couldn’t believe I just got yelled at by a nun to move into a demon hunter's house. The world got stranger every day. “Can I do something before we leave?” I asked Aralia.

  If she'd said no, I would've done it anyway, but she didn't, so went across the hall to Mr. Zarcotti's door. I couldn't leave without saying goodbye.

  But when I knocked, he didn't answer. And when I knocked again, I got the same thing.

  He wasn't home.

  ***

  “You shouldn't pout, Beatrice,” Aralia said as we sat in the middle of rush hour traffic. “Think of this as a new adventure. You like adventures, don't you?”

  “I'm not pouting,” I said. Okay, maybe I was. But not for the reasons she thought. I still hadn't processed it all. In forty-eight hours, I'd gone from a relatively normal teenage girl with her own apartment to a decidedly abnormal teenage girl without the apartment who couldn't take a step in any direction without hitting a demon. The real kicker was that none of this would be happening if the church hadn’t tried possessing me in the first place.