by mike Evans
“That isn’t very Christian of you, now is it, father? Is there a reason that we aren’t all regarded with respect, or am I not allowed to have such a thing?”
“You deserve a ticket to hell, you revolting demon. Give this boy back his life. You do not deserve another chance here on Earth, or God would have taken you into his gates.”
The boy laughed and motioned with his hands. He had seen some examples of the demon’s power but never to such a degree. He flung Andrew from the top level of the house, through the living room, and into the window. He half-expected Father Andrew to go directly out it, but he stopped him before he made it all the way out. He was half in and half out.
Joseph looked to the demon crouched in the hallway, looking at the father hovering in the window, screaming at the top of his lungs. The already fearful pedestrians outside of the house were no better off for having to hear this. None of them knew what was happening. The fears of the father were enough to alert them to the fact something horrible and unearthly was taking place on the inside.
Joseph tried to walk towards the window yelling, “Don’t do it! Don’t do it!”
The laughter filled the house, drowning out the screams coming from the crowd, as well as the priest. Joseph tried to hobble to the window in time, wanting to knock it out before what he feared would happen did. He fell to the ground before he could get to where he needed to be. The laughter stopped and the words that he would never forget filled his ears. “You are too weak to save him. You are too weak to stop me. You are an ant.”
A whoosh of air went past his collar and he watched in horror, with his face contorted in the worst imaginable one that he could. Just before it happened Father Andrew looked over no longer screaming, he was past the pain. He said, “Do not blame yourself, Father Joseph. It is okay. I am not scared of what happens next, I will be fine.”
Tears were running down Joseph’s face and he was disgusted with himself that he’d gotten hurt, he’d let his friend die, and he was unsure if he would ever be able to forgive himself. His heart hurt in a way that it had not since his mother had passed as a young boy. Father Andrew fell from the top of the window frame, and the glass that had been left was shaped in an upside down cross.
The glass was no longer perfect and clean; this was spider webbed and covered with blood from the tip to the bottom. Blood made its way down the wall. Andrew’s and the mother’s blood became one. A moment of defeat raced through Joseph’s veins, followed by doubt and the fear that maybe—just maybe—this one demon was strong enough to take care of the priesthood that was fighting so hard across the nation... across the world.
The demon’s voice echoed from the hallway above. “If you leave now, you might not suffer the same fate as your friend. You could end up stacked like your mentor if you are not careful. Leave now, priest, and go your own way.” The demon began roaring with laughter. “Go with God!”
Joseph was just barely containing his breathing. He knew that this was what the being wanted. They’d been called every single thing that a person could be called by these things, but when they were mocked with the words that they held in their heart, it was more than his ability to stay rational could take. “I am going to save this boy, and you are going back where you belong!”
“I will remove a thousand priests from this earth if it means I don’t have to go back. This is your last warning priest, I give you my word in blood on that.”
Joseph tried to stand but his ankle was still swollen, making it near impossible to do so. The demon waved his hand and the front door opened, taunting him even more so to leave.
Chapter 20
Chicago, 1972
“Father Joseph, sir, are you okay?”
“I am, sometimes I just... I just... the past comes back to me. It has a hard time letting go, Father.”
“Yes, I have some things in my past that I can remember just like it was yesterday, as well. Are you okay? Do you need to sit down and rest awhile?”
“Father, I could rest for all of my remaining days and still not be what I need to be. My time as a man of cloth has not always been an easy one. Times come and go; it is hard to explain until you have experienced some of it. I fear that you will be able to know what it is that I’m talking about all too soon.”
“I’m still having issues coming to terms with all of this being real.”
Joseph took a hold of the pew, thinking of everything that the two of them needed and praying it would be enough. He had thought back to nineteen forty-five, when his hair had much less silver gracing it, and how it was by the grace of God that he had survived the day. “You remember that prayer, Father Michaels. You remember it like your life depends on it, okay? I’m not going to go round and round with you about your faith. You were the one who took the oath; you told God that you would take care of his flock. You are the only one that will know when the time comes that they can handle this job. The only thing that I can say is that we need to have the firepower behind us.”
“Firepower?”
“Crosses, holy water, prayers, faith in God, and bibles.”
Father Joseph took out a flask, walking towards the holy water. Father Michaels asked, “Are you going to take some holy water, is that all that you need?”
Joseph turned, winking at him. “This is whiskey; this is for my nerves. My faith is great, but they still scare the hell out of me. I don’t care who you have to deal with, these things are dangerous, but they aren’t perfect, and we are going to stop them. We need more water than this though. This is just to calm the nerves. It might do you good.”
“We aren’t supposed to drink.”
“Think of it as the blood of our father. And I’ve never heard that before.”
The two went into the back room, going to the storage center. Michaels put a gallon of holy water into his backpack. Michaels said, “You think that we are going to need all of this?”
“I hope that it is all that we need.”
Michaels looked at the containers, shaking his head and praying that they wouldn’t need so much of what they were taking. “We better get going then, right?”
“Yes, the faster we get there, the quicker we are going to send these things back to hell.”
The two made their way out of the church. The streets were getting busy with pedestrians; no taxis were available and the two made their way towards the Parker’s house. Michaels pointed to a path that cut across to their block. Joseph said, “What kind of cemetery is this, Father Michaels?”
“It's a cemetery, what do you mean?”
“There’s not one cross in here; there’s nothing holy in this entire place,” Joseph said.
“I don’t know, I only go to our cemetery when people are buried.”
“What does that mean? You aren’t giving those answers that I'm really looking for here, Father.”
“I don’t know what to tell you.”
“I guess what I want to know is: when I see nothing that screams Catholics, Christian or anything else, I wonder what is going on here.”
They found themselves in the middle of the cemetery and when they looked around, saw something that they never would have thought they could have seen in all of their lives. Michaels said, “I don’t understand what is happening… What is this? What is happening to those... those people?”
Joseph yelled, “We aren’t going to figure out what is going on. We are going to get out of this place. The demons or something are in the ground!”
Michaels tried to run, but realized that Joseph was unable to keep up with him. He slowed down, running back and putting a hand around his waist. “We need to move faster.”
“These legs only move so fast, son. You say ‘move faster’, but these things are doing what they can. You want me to go any faster, then I don’t think either of us will end up anywhere but on the ground.”
Michaels pointed to the ground. “Well, what do you want to do about those?”
Joseph said, “I've never see
n those before, and I mean in all the fights we’ve had against the damned and demons, there is something so much bigger going on here than they’ve ever tried to do before.”
Michaels looked at the ground, seeing arms that were decayed. The clothes were stuck to their arms and covered with dried blood. Fresh dirt made it even worse, and the hands were outstretched. The two priests watched for a moment longer until the skulls started making their way out of the ground. It was impossible to know what they wanted, or what they were even actually looking at.
Michaels said, “Are those zombies?”
“I don’t know what they are; I’d say that unholy souls wouldn’t be too far off, Father.”
They made their way as quickly as they could along the sidewalk. They wouldn’t dare leave it for fear of having one of them touch them. They weren’t sure if the damnations coming out of the earth wanted to eat them, or pull them down to the depths of hell that only the Devil himself and his souls he was allowed to torture could know. They barely made it halfway through before the two priests realized that there was nowhere to run. There was a circle of death and they were slowly closing in on the two of them. The longer they waited the more corpses crawled out of the ground.
Michaels screamed, “What do we do? What are we going to do? They are getting closer.”
“These things are barely able to walk. Look at them; they’ve been in the ground long enough that the maggots have left nothing on their bones to eat. We have no reason to be scared of them. Come on, we will make our way through them and out to the safety of the street. If these things follow us we are going to take them right into traffic.”
The two walked towards the exit but the dead circled around, grouping and amassing three rows, ten thick. Their mouths most definitely looked like they were going to eat.
Father Michaels set down the bag, pulling out one of the bottles filled with holy water. “Is this going to work?”
Joseph was tilting his head side to side, unsure of what to say. “I have no idea. You got the young knees though, run on up there and toss a shot of it on them and see if there’s any reaction.”
“Reaction? What do you mean a reaction, what does that mean?”
“I don’t know, it means that they die... again.”
“They die again?”
“We are out in unchartered waters here, father, I don’t know what to tell you. Do you believe in this now, or do you need a little more faith here?”
Michaels walked forward with a glass container in hand. “Oh, I’m filled with all kinds of faith right now!”
“Good, because even if that water does work, we won’t have enough to take those things on by ourselves.”
“You aren’t filling me with a lot of confidence, at all, Father Joseph.”
“I wasn’t trying to. Get moving and see what is going to happen, there’s a family that still needs our help not far away. If they go down, you run!”
Michaels took the cap and put the holy water sprinkler down into the bottle and filled it. He brought it up over his shoulder, bringing it down and letting it spray. The holy water hit them in the face and their mouths opened, but they were unable to make a noise. They walked backwards for a moment as the smoke rose from their tattered clothes—which were more than likely once their best clothes. But that moment passed, and the pain did little to affect them. The dead made their way up towards the two priests.
Michaels screamed, “So what are we going to do now?”
Father Joseph brought out his cross from his breast pocket, walking forward and screaming, “Demons be gone; death be gone; go back to where you belong!”
They started walking even faster towards them, their joints not working and legs very stiff from lack of cartilage and tendons. The prayers did little good, and the two men both feared that this would most definitely be how they would meet their maker. Michaels tried knocking one over to force their way out, but five took its place. The bodies were too many to be counted by this point, with numbers growing by the minute. Joseph looked to Michaels and said calmly, “I’m very sorry I got you into this. It's never been like this before. I do mean ever.”
“I assure you, when I took the oath, that this was not how I planned on my life to end. I figured that in my old age, I’d be pushed around in a wheelchair by nuns, telling people to go in God.”
“I fear you won’t have time for a wheelchair. I am sorry. I just wanted to help out the Parker family.”
“You wanted to do what you should. God gave you the gifts that you needed to help people, Father Joseph, don’t ever be sorry about that. Don’t regret one thing, ever.”
The two joined hands, holding up their crosses, screaming at the demons to go back to hell, to leave this place. Both of them watched, unsure how those that were passing by did not see the scene. Father Joseph knew they weren’t in New York, where you mind your own business or become part of it.
“They have a veil over this cemetery, the power that is happening right now is going to be more than we can stand, given that we can even get out of here. I don’t know what to do but to run, but I fear that won’t be enough to help us. I don’t think we will ever pass through these gates with as many dead as there are here.”
Chapter 21
New York, 1945
Joseph ripped his belt from his pants and crawled over to the table stand—the kind he figured every person across America owned at least one of. He pulled it close to him, flipping it on its side. Joseph brought an elbow down into it, pulling each piece from its place, and set them on either side of his broken leg. He put the belt around it two times before putting it through the notches, making it as tight as possible. He wanted to scream from the pain, but he wanted to send this demon back to hell even more, as well as get redemption for the greatest, most patient, caring man of faith that he had ever met. While a man of the cloth or not, he’d never met anyone who compared in such a way.
The voice—almost taunting in nature—came from the stairwell. “Father Joseph, are you going to come see me? Do you think you can stop me, or would you like to tuck your manhood between your legs and head back out onto the streets? There seems to be plenty of people out there who would like to speak to you, or at the very least they’d like to have your help with calling an ambulance to get away from there. I’m sure if you leave that they’ll continue to have the faith that you wish for them to carry in their life. What I mean is, do you think that they’ll stop believing in the man upstairs if you bend to my force? Will word of the useless holy spread? Or will they still believe in a higher being, regardless of whether they are absent today...? Well, even if they are useless every single day of their life?”
Joseph turned his back to the demon’s gaze. He made sure that his cross was wrapped in such a way that it could not come loose, even if he put all the force he possessed into it against him, which Joseph was pretty sure was something that was good possibility. He tested his makeshift splints, putting the lightest weight onto it, and was sure he’d not be running a marathon anytime soon.
Joseph put a sweaty palm on the staircase, squeezing it and pulling to see if he had too much perspiration and blood on his hands to have a firm grip. When he did not fall backwards nor down, he took his first steps with the broken leg, pushing himself up the stairs one at a time.
The demon was sitting at the edge of the steps. Joseph had his mouth clenched shut; his face was covered with sweat and he was losing his own faith that he could make it. He could somehow hear Andrew’s voice from what seemed a mile away, screaming to him. Father Joseph keep going! Do not give up. You must have more faith than this if you want to live. Give up and die; succeed and send this monster back to hell where it belongs! You are the only one left who can do this, there is no time to wait for help!
Joseph nodded. His head was drenched by this point. He looked down at his feet, making sure that they were going where they were supposed to be. He could see small spots of dust on the floor getting wet from the sweat
dripping down from his face. He wiped his brow with his free hand, saying to himself, “Just a few more steps, it's just a few more steps… just a few more damn steps!”
When Joseph was almost to the top step, he felt hands grip him from below. He pulled out his bottle of holy water, holding it out in front of him. He felt relief for a moment from the hands assisting him and keeping him from falling down the steps. The strain that was bearing down on his body was immeasurable. But the hands he prayed were the holy ghost come to help him were not so.
He looked at the demon, who was smiling, still crouching, but lifting his hands slowly. He took its left hand, twisting it, and Joseph fought it but it was too strong. His right hand that had been clenching the holy water dumped what was in the bottle onto the floor. The demon said, “You will scream, priest. You can try as hard as you want, but you are still going to scream. I do not care if I need to peel the skin from your body, if it will be what it takes. Do you not fear the unknown, priest? What if God shuns you like he did the Devil? What if, after all this time, and all these people you’ve helped, you end up in hell after all?”
He opened up his hand, making the bottle fall to the ground. When Joseph was within a foot of the demon, he could just barely hold back the upwards turn of his lip into a smile. The demon swung him the rest of the way around, slamming him into the wall, denting the drywall and leaving a crack the size of his body. The demon jumped up from his squatting position, got up in his face, and yelled, sending spittle onto Joseph’s face. “You dare to mock me, priest?! Are you insane? Do you wish for your death to come even quicker?”
The demon missed all the telltale signs of what he was doing. Then it dawned on him that the man was not making pleas for help; he was not saying words to try to send him back to hell, he was only smiling. The demon was in rage, “What are you doing, priest? What is wrong with you!”
Joseph spit an entire mouthful of holy water into the demon’s face. Smoke went up in waves into the air, filling the ceiling. The demon clawed at its face, wanting for the burning to stop. The pain it felt was only equal to what punishment the Devil would surely make it feel when it made it back to hell’s gates. The force holding Joseph up fell and he crashed to the ground. The pain from his broken leg was outweighed by his ever-growing faith and the rush of pure adrenaline that was coursing through his body. Joseph put a hand on his knee, getting up and stumbling forward. His hand was still wrapped with the rosary beads, and he punched the boy as hard as he could in the face. The cross left a mark on his forehead sending him flailing backwards. Joseph was quickly following, hobbling as quickly as he could, dealing with the pain—sure that a second chance would not be offered. When he got close enough, he gave another massive blow. The demon tried its best to regain its balance but had no such luck; its feet went out from under it as the demon slipped in the holy water that Father Andrew had been carrying.