The Trilogy of the Void: The Complete Boxed Set

by Peter Meredith

  It was a cruel smile.

  Chapter 4

  The Demon and The Nun

  Sitting in the staff kitchen of the orphanage, her buttocks overflowing one the old wooden chairs, Sister Mary Agatha was contemplating sin when the sound of the sirens cut through her partial deafness. She had seen the lights of the police cars a minute earlier and in her younger years she would've heard the insistent wailing a long way off.

  Tonight, however, they came to her muffled, a distant sound that was incongruent with the urgent proximity of the flashing lights. Since the police rushed through the neighborhood in this manner almost daily, she was unconcerned and after giving the speeding cars a casual look she went back to her deliberations.

  Did the act of taking ice cream that did not belong to her and eating it, constitute a sin?

  Four years ago, when he was new to the parish, Father John had told her to help herself to it. Recently, however, there had been looks and sometimes a, "Hmmm" would rumble from his throat at the sight of an empty ice cream container.

  Despite her age, her hands were still strong and she stirred the ice cream vigorously. When it was the consistency of soup, the way she most liked to eat it, she took a large spoonful and decided it wasn't a sin after all. She was like a vampire in this way and would need to be disinvited, before she gave up her rights to it.

  The lights of the cars flash up the street and around the block. They ceased to exist for her as soon as they were out of sight and she went back to her contemplations. She had moved on from sin, and was now considering ice cream in general as she worked the spoon into a cold vortex.

  How she wished there was some way that ice cream would last in the main kitchen of the orphanage. Currently, there were thirty-six boys in residence, aging from six to nineteen years old. When it came to food, they ceased being boys and became human shaped piranhas.

  The boys, voracious as they were, couldn't compare with the two live-in counselors, however. The counselors were very big men and she always had trouble watching them eat. Sean Shay would frequently eat, not with a fork, but with a spatula or serving spoon, shoveling tremendous amounts of food into his huge maw. Despite being only twenty-six years old, Sean wasn't in good shape and Sister Mary Agatha worried for him.

  He never exercised and the only time she had seen him sweat was when he was polishing off one of his gigantic dinners. The sweat would start as a trickle in his thick black hair and soon he'd be using his napkin to mop his pale brow, like a surgeon.

  The other counselor, Jim Anderson, was taller—practically a giant. Unlike Sean, he exercised quite a bit which always made him the hungrier of the two men. Though his manners at the table were better, he quite literally ate enough for three people. Both of the men were veterans of the orphanage and had been friends, since Jim had been unceremoniously dropped off in the middle of the night twenty-one years before. They'd been assigned as bunkmates and had formed a bond of lasting friendship.

  Jim had been hired officially as a handyman/janitor, but he was so good with the boys that he enjoyed counselor status. The two men were a great boon to the orphanage despite the mountainous food bills. Parentless boys frequently require the heavy hand of discipline, but since the two men were so large and intimidating it was almost never needed.

  This was a relief for Sister Mary Agatha who had reached an age where she could no longer freeze a child in place with just a scowl.

  The nun briefly considered another portion of ice cream. However, a vision of a scowling Father John appeared as she gazed at her empty bowl, so she rinsed the bowl out and headed off for a final check on the boys.

  She walked from the small office building through the almost pitch black chapel, pausing on her way to the south wing, where the dormitories were, so that she could genuflect before the altar.

  There, she struggled her large body down and touched the floor with her right knee for the barest moment, weaving with her hands a quick Sign of the Cross. As she hefted her bulk upwards, her habit shifted slightly and it was then that she felt the sudden cold.

  It slipped down her neckline feeling like icy fingers about her throat. Her world was orderly above all things and the sudden chill that swept over her, felt distinctly ominous. Remembering her silly fright from the night before, she made a conscious decision to ignore the feeling.

  "It's an open window," she said loudly, challenging the gloom of the dark church with her fearlessness. Silence greeted this statement and she gave a smirking, "Humph," as further evidence that she wasn't in the least bit scared. She was very close to convincing herself that all was normal. It could in fact, be an open window, since it had been a cooler than normal, late October day.

  Ignoring the unsettling feeling—one that was growing on her—that there were eyes watching her from the balcony, she walked toward the front of the church.

  The vestibule of the church contained little besides a pamphlet-filled rack and a large ornate brass font, filled with Holy Water. Ignoring these, she moved in her waddling gate to the tall wooden doors, and gave each a small push, satisfying herself that they were locked. She then went to the stairs leading up to the choir balcony, but paused as a small worm of fear gave a little wiggle inside her. A gentle cold breeze wafted down from them.

  She gave the air a tentative sniff and there was a slight nastiness to it, very much like what she had experienced the night before and it caused goose bumps to break out down her arms. Her rational side explained it away; sticking to the theory that it was just an open window blowing in both the cold air and the ugly smell. However, her feelings of foreboding began to overrule rational thought and she toyed with the idea of getting either Jim or Sean to investigate.

  But then she pictured the smarmy looks they'd have on their faces when they came down from the balcony to report only that a window had been left open.

  Sister Mary Agatha set her jaw firm and started up.

  The air on the stairs, saturated with the late autumn cold and the insidious smell, combined to caress the darkness of the church, making it more than it should've been. She thought about the light switches down in the vestibule with sudden regret.

  She'd walked right past them without a thought, but now wished that she had turned them on and she felt a sudden childlike fear of the dark springing up from out of nowhere. At the top of the stairs she knew there was another set of switches, but she imagined there could be something waiting in the dark for her and that when the light came on...

  "Nothing...there's nothing, Sister," she told herself quietly. However the little worm of fear was now slithering in her belly, serpent-like, and she felt almost nauseous.

  It turned out that she was right about the nothing. At the top of the stairs her hand whispered along the wall until it found the switches and she snapped them upright. The choir balcony, save for the pews and the organ, was empty.

  With the sudden light, her fears scurried like cockroaches into the dark cracks within her and she let out the breath that she had subconsciously pent up. Since normally she was the most rational of women she stood amazed at how she was acting.

  She shook her head at her silliness and looked around. The cause of the cold was immediately obvious; there was indeed a window open, one of the large stain glass ones on the north side of the church. These canted inward to help with cleaning and at the sight of it, she felt relief. Then annoyance.

  Someone was going to get a stern lecture—the homely face of Sean Shay came to mind. This had his irresponsible feel to it. Sister Mary Agatha turned her bulk sideways and began shuffling down the long wooden length of the center pew. Something gold shone dully against the dark blue of the carpet and she saw it was the handle of the window lying there. More annoyance suffused her.

  She stuck it back on the device and cranked the window shut. As she turned to leave, the cockroach-like fears that had been watching her from the dark crevices of her mind, strode boldly into the open. They had grown larger and it hadn't taken much.


  Just a sound was all it took. A small, sly sound had come from the steeple above. She couldn't describe it, except to say that it seemed purposely made to send a jolt of adrenaline through her old body. The nun stood frozen in place, waiting and worrying but after many seconds had passed with no further sounds, the roaches of her fear gradually shrunk back again.

  She told herself that it was nothing, however as she made her way along the pew, she kept her head cocked toward the steeple all the same. When she reached the stairs she felt the cold again, this time streaming unchecked from the steeple above.

  The stairs up to it were cramped, steep, and black. Without hesitation or regret, the nun leaned over and swatted the light switch to the up position, but still she hesitated.

  She battled internally; her pride against her building fear. Legitimately, she could now admonish Sean and send him up there to check all the windows, only lately he'd been making snide remarks. Remarks, harmless little jokes really, about her age, or her hearing, and recently about senility. If he got the slightest inkling that she was afraid, the not so funny jokes would never end.

  With a tired sigh, she again told herself there was nothing up there; just like the balcony, the steeple would be empty.

  The decision made, she compressed her large body into the narrow staircase, which had been designed, not for a woman of her bulk, but for a ten-year-old altar boy, and started up. It had been a few years since she had been up there, and she pictured the tiny room at the top. It was a small six-sided area and contained more of the stained glass windows. In the center of the room a velvet rope hung from the bell tower above and in her youth, she had enjoyed calling the people to Mass with it.

  Now however, she was beginning to feel claustrophobic, especially as she turned the corner on the small landing. This felt to her like nothing more than a tall coffin and that unsettling image was lingering in her mind when the voice, a voice that was almost human, but not quite, spoke to her from the still unseen steeple.

  "Sanctimonialis Mariae Agita...incessus," it was a terrible grating hiss and she jumped, startled by the suddenness of it and let out a small shriek of fright. It was a moment before she realized the words were Latin and another moment before her mind translated them: "Sister Mary Agatha approach."

  Her mind was amazingly blank. For seconds, she stood rooted on the landing, her right foot, in its highly polished sensible shoe, on the first stair and her mouth opening and closing pointlessly, devoid of the slightest drop of saliva.

  "Incessus!" The voice was angry and demanding. It wanted her to go up to where it waited. The small act of translating the word became a catalyst and her mind ballooned with thoughts, most of them unwanted. She could now picture the owner of that nasty voice; her mind had conjured up a vision of a great, wet, snake.

  "Oh dear," she whimpered. The image had her near to panicking and she turned on the cramped landing to flee. However, she seemed to be held in place; the walls hugged her close, keeping her almost immobilized. Her claustrophobia, forgotten at the sound of the voice, came back and the walls of her coffin shrunk in on her again. In vain, she wriggled and squirmed to free herself, so that she could leap down the stairs as her eighteen-year-old self would've done.

  The voice now spoke in another language, one that seemed to chill the air around her so that her breath, huffing out of her in great gasps became visible. The words of the fell language were beyond her, but she understood all too well that it wanted her up there with it.

  "No," she said in a voice that was not her own. Hers held authority, command, and power. This one was small, that of a frightened child and was barely audible even to her own ear.

  Sister Mary Agatha had stopped her struggles at the sound of the weird language, but then there was a small noise from the steeple, the sound of movement. It was coming for her. The very thought was all it took to send her mad with fear.

  She exploded into a frenzy, twisting her body in terrific lunges. Her habit pulled back keeping her in place, until a great tearing sound came from right beside her. Her long robe like clothes had been caught on the railing, and now suddenly free, she stumbled down the stairs, a girlish scream ripping from her old woman's throat.

  Falling face first; hard on her outstretched hands, she half-crawled, half-slithered down the remaining stairs to the choir balcony. With her breath laboring in her chest like an old draft horse, she had barely got to her knees before she heard the first sound of the footsteps on the stairs above.

  They were slow and measured.

  She became mesmerized by the sound of her approaching doom; the nun stopped breathing her great fear charged breaths. In fact, she stopped breathing at all.

  Chapter 5

  An Exorcism in Failure

  The sound of the steps descending the stairs was relatively light, but they were magnified in her head, so that Sister Mary Agatha envisioned a great beast coming slowly down towards her. Unknowingly, she had been holding her breath and suddenly realizing it, she let it out in a gush of prayer:

  "Hail Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners..." The prayer was spoken with such urgency that the words ran into themselves, becoming unintelligible in their hurry to be spewn from her mouth.

  Finally, the owner of the voice came into view. It wasn't a great beast—just a man of average size with blonde hair that was in need of washing. He wore blue jeans and a grey sweatshirt, the cuffs of which were dark with blood. He held bloody hands out toward her, the palms filled to over flowing with the almost black fluid of his body. His head was cranked down and to his right side, and except for the fact that he walked and talked, the man didn't seem alive.

  "Sanctimonialis, you speak in this tongue."

  It was not a question.

  Sister Mary Agatha couldn't find it within herself to do more than nod. Up close, the man's voice held a dreadful ripping quality and she was sure his vocal cords were being shredded as he spoke. It made her desperately want to swallow, but her mouth was bone dry.

  "Nun, deliver unto Ba'al Zubel, the lackey of the foot washer...Alba."

  The words were painful to hear and despite being in English with only the single Latin word, sanctimonialis for Nun, it was very difficult to understand. It took her a moment to figure out what he was talking about. "You want Father Alba?"

  "Yes! Tell the lackey...Ba'al Zubel is demanding his presence. If he hides again, Ba'al Zubel will kill this...man." As he said this he indicated himself by pointing one dripping finger to his own chest.

  Sister Mary was having trouble thinking straight and couldn't get her eyes past the blood. Her own voice was a warbling misery, "I will...ok. Please, don't do it."

  "Ba'al Zubel will do as it will with this man." He brought his red hands together briefly and then touching the exposed side of his neck he drew a red line across it with two fingers. Blood instantly poured from a wound that hadn't been there a moment before. "The lackey. Now," he commanded.

  "Yes, yes I will, please, don't do that." In order to get back to the stairs she had to crawl towards him and this she did with one hand up, to ward off any possible blow from the man. He took a step back and seemed to take no further notice of the nun, standing just as he had been with his head cocked and his neck glistening a lively red.

  There was no taking her eyes off of him and she backed down the stairs until she gained the vestibule. There she turned and fled toward the office building, running in a laughable, waddling rolling gait.

  "He's crazy! He's crazy!" she wheezed this over and over, as she huffed up the stairs to the staff quarters, her heart thundering in her chest. She'd stopped running as soon as she had left the church and now she was shaking with fright and unspent adrenaline, and her speed had been reduced to a simple tired plodding.

  "Father Alba," she had meant to yell this as she entered the common room, but what came out was only a pathetic, breathy whisper. Squeezing her bulk between the two old leather couches that sat facing an even older TV set, she hur
ried to the priest's door.

  The bloody man was just insane, crazy! That was all there was to this and as she beat at the door, she was quite prepared to tell Alba of the madman threatening suicide in the church.

  The priest, with an alarmed look on his face, opened the door quickly at the insistent knocking. He looked to have been in the process of changing and had a green pajama shirt on over his black pants. "Father...Alba." The heavy nun took two huge gulps of air. "There's a man in the church and...he's possessed." She had been lying to herself concerning the man's sanity, but that was forgotten. The truth came rushing out: "Possessed by a demon, I think. He said his name was Bay-al Zoo-bull...I..."

  At the look on the priest's face, she couldn't go on. His reaction to what she had said was not helpful to her state of mind. It was clear that he believed her. His normally pale face went paper white. He stepped back into the safety of his room and she thought he was going to shut the door in her face. Instead, he ran his hands over his large abdomen as if he was going to be sick.

  Father John Santos, clad in blue and white striped pajamas, emerged from his bedroom and said, "Possession, really?" He was younger, mid thirties and with his healthy tan and dark hair, he was almost too good-looking to be a priest. "What makes you think it's a possession?"

  Sister Mary, amazed that she had to explain herself, spluttered, "Because he is! He...he...spoke in tongues. Latin and uh, some other language. It was a guttural and evil sounding language." She stared back and forth at the two priests, wondering why they weren't rushing off to the church.

  With frank disbelief, Father John replied, "It could've been Slovakian. Have you ever heard a worse sounding..."

  The nun interrupted him, something she'd never have done if she were thinking straight, "No, Father. It was no language I've ever heard; not even close! Oh, Lord help us! It was terrible and painful sounding...and he had the stigmata!"