The Trilogy of the Void: The Complete Boxed Set

by Peter Meredith

  The demon shrugged the man's shoulders. "Then I devour it. Another soul you have given to me...first the Gypsy, then the witch and now...an innocent."

  Father John stepped over and whispered loudly, "We have to do the exorcism...it's our duty to try to save this man."

  "There'll be no exorcism...you are fool Saint John. I will kill it. I will take it back with me." The demon stopped, waiting as if for a decision and Father John looked around for support, but when he glanced at Sister Mary Agatha, she was forced to turn away. Her chin began to quiver and she wished that she had never gone up those stairs to the steeple.

  There was an odd guilt about that simple act, as if this was all her fault somehow. She looked over at Father Alba, wishing he'd give the thing what it wanted.

  Despite his pasty, white skin, Father Alba seemed to rally his courage again and though his voice was pitched unnaturally high, it was also firm, "Then take him!"

  "Father Alba, no!" Father John spoke angrily.

  Ignoring his friend, the chubby priest ordered, "I said take him! We don't make deals with demons. We cast them out!" His voice grew stronger as he spoke, "In the name of Jesus Christ, I command that you leave this man in peace! Depart from him and go back to whatever hell you came from."

  Sister Mary, her eyes riveted on Father Alba, felt hope expand slightly within her at his words. She turned to see what effect they would have on the demon.

  It stood with the man's head still contorted down and to the side, blood dripping from his nose and chin. "You have no power over me, lackey."

  Silence greeted this and with her courage fading like a sunset, she took another step back. Sean Shay saw this and upped the ante, stepping back two steps. There was now only the barest shred of sanity keeping her from running and she knew if Sean took only one more step, she would flee shrieking out of her mind.

  He took two more.

  "Stop!" Jim commanded in his great deep voice. He looked at his friend with the heavy eyes of a basilisk and the look froze Sean in place. Jim set the decanter of Holy water in the nearest pew, and said gruffly, "Father, I know this man's face. It was only when all the blood was washed away, that I saw it. I think he's the man the cops are looking for. He's got something to do with those kids that disappeared."

  More silence as each of them stared intently at the man.

  "Oh yes, I have the little ones, they are mine now."

  "Oh, dear Lord, save those poor children," Sister Mary called out.

  The demon laughed. "Don't bother wasting your time praying to your so-called God. He hides himself, afraid of the disappointment he would see in all your pathetic faces, if ever you would see him. No, if you want to save those children, pray to me! Get down on your knees, where you belong and worship me."

  "Where are those children? Tell me!" demanded Father Alba in a hollow voice that was bereft of authority.

  "Are you going to trade the lives of those children, for my path?"

  The priest looked down seemingly unable to come to a decision.

  "I will have my path, lackey! The children were to serve me in another manner, but I do like the idea of them slowly starving to death, with you being the cause. And there are so many other little ones, right? There are some in this orphanage that nobody wants, isn't that right? I want them. I will take them from you."

  "No!" the nun shrieked at the demon and the simple act of defiance caused her courage to rekindle itself, if only in the very slightest manner.

  "Then give me my path!"

  "I don't have it," Father Alba said almost in a child's whine. "But...but I can get it, ok?"

  Chapter 6

  Talitha-Unrestrained

  Talitha started toward the church, that cruel smile playing havoc with her normally beautiful features. The rock that she'd picked up, she put to her nose and sniffed at it idly.

  "Talitha, please wait. The police might be in there." Will's morning was coming apart in great chunks. He felt a panicked desperation and he knew there was trouble and pain associated with going into the church. "Look, if you hurt one of them, they'll all be after you...hundreds of them."

  "That sounds like fun."

  "Talitha..."

  She spun about, her face less than a foot from his chest. He felt like a giant compared to her yet he anxiously wanted to retreat a few steps. Her cruel smile widened at his discomfort and her teeth, looking hungry for violence, shone white in the October morning. However, it was her eyes that held him rooted to the asphalt. They weren't the soft, warm brown of his sister's. No, these were dead and icy, seemingly without a soul behind them.

  The eyes, lifeless in a human sense, made the smile all the more wicked and Will felt his testicles scurry upwards in hiding. It had been a long time since he saw her eyes like this and without thinking, his left hand slipped down and went to his vulnerable groin. Not since the early days at the hospital, when the orderlies would find her in the mornings covered in blood, had her eyes been so devoid of humanity.

  "I told you to shut it!" she said, with a touch of insane anger. "And now, I have to turn around with my back exposed to someone with a gun just to repeat myself?"

  "I'm sorry...I'm sorry, it's just that..."

  She interrupted him in a deadly quiet voice, "You will be sorry...later. You obviously need another lesson in manners. But first..." She trailed off, eyeing the church. Will could almost feel the blood lust emanating from her.

  "I should tell you something, Tal. I should've told you this a long time ago, you're wanted by the police for murder and..."

  Her immediate laughter was full bellied and loud, yet even through it, she kept her dead eyes full on his face as if watching for a sign. "Ha, ha, oh my! How we have the same parents is a mystery. The laws of this world don't pertain to me. I'm well beyond them. Not to mention, I'm insane, remember? They put me in an asylum for the insane. Crazy people can do anything they wish to. They're free...unrestrained by morals or laws, and your ridiculous society is too afraid to judge them for what they are."

  Her laughter was as unnerving as her eyes.

  Looking away from her, he asked, "Ok Talitha, how would you judge them?"

  "The people who kill for fun, who can kill you as easy as shake your hand...they're truly evil. Every last man, woman, and child. Right down to their core, despite any proclamations of remorse they may make."

  "Are you evil then?" he asked in a whisper. "The doctors seem to think you're suffering from schizophrenia."

  "How can you even ask that? Of course I'm evil. Right now, I'm using you as a human shield, even though I'm the one with my back to the church."

  He looked over her head at the building. "That's not possible."

  "Sure it is. First, if it's the police, as you think, they won't shoot just in case they miss me and hit you. Second, with your wasted gift, if they do shoot you'll see it coming even before they pull the trigger. I'll just step aside and where do you think that bullet will go?" She poked him in the chest, drilling her fingernail into his shirt, smiling up at him as she did it. "Then I'll snatch you up and use your not-quite-dead body as cover. Shall I go on? Do you want to know true evil?"

  He shook his head no, but she started speaking again regardless. "This is fun! Do you know sweet little Talitha is not the goody-two-shoes you think she is? That's right. I am her. She's the facade! The fiction I cover myself in, to get you to do what I want."

  She kept up her dead-eyed smile and walked behind him, poking him painfully every once in a while. "I know if I looked like this every time you came over, you'd stop your little visits, and then where would I be? But big, gullible Will is always there to rescue his little sis. I use you. I let you get tortured every week so I can sleep in peace and quiet."

  She paused, waiting for a response, but Will's brain was shutting itself down, and he couldn't find anything to say. She walked back in front of him, "You asked for this, right? You wanted to know. Don't worry, Will. The dreams can't last forever. I was only tortured
and raped so many thousands of times."

  They stood in the parking lot of the church and nothing felt real to him. The crisp cool air, the smell of the burning leaves, the orange and gold forest, all of it felt like someone else was seeing it. Like it wasn't him standing there hating his sister. It was the surreal running over his reality, distorting it, bending it away from the touch of his mind. He almost didn't catch what she said next.

  "And you should want the dreams to last, really. As long as I still need you, you'll be safe enough. But once they're done...you will pay!"

  Her vehemence brought him around somewhat and he asked, "What did I ever do to you?"

  "What did you do? You were the one who took me from the void! Have you forgotten?"

  "I thought that was what you wanted." His brain was a bewildered beehive of noise that hummed along loudly, but without a sense of purpose.

  He looked up at the church shaking his head slowly and realized he could hear the opening hymn to the mass. And now they were going to miss it and for some reason this bothered him nearly as much as Talitha's crazy rantings.

  But they would've missed it anyways. There were men in the building looking out at the two of them and he could feel their impatience and their fear. People with that much fear could be dangerous; yet they were unlikely as dangerous as Talitha.

  "Thought? You thought? You were never big with the thinking were you, Will? Once you step down into the void...that's where you belong, forever!"

  Anger started to simmer beneath his confusion. "I don't get it. You aren't explaining anything with your put-downs. Why would you be mad that I came and got you?"

  "Because Will, when I was there I had value. I was worth something. I was a commodity that was bought and sold... that is something you know. Even here, being valued is worth a lot. And! And!" she shouted this in his face. "I was becoming more...more than just Talitha. I grew stronger and stronger and it was I who brought pain. Now thanks to you, I'll have to begin again. The lowest of the low. I'll get back where I belong but it'll take time and plenty of pain—my pain!"

  "But you don't have to go back. Free will exists even after death." He wanted to reach out and hold her, but as he put out his hands, she turned away.

  "Do you think heaven will accept me? After everything I've done? Man, you are so naive. Do you know how many people I've killed? How many I've tortured into insanity?" His mouth was suddenly devoid of saliva and his tongue became thick and useless. He wanted to tell her to stop talking but he couldn't form the words and she went on, "Just escaping the asylum, I killed...hmmm, how many? Let's play a guessing game...how many people do you have to kill to escape from isolation in an asylum for the criminally insane?"

  When they had come by the house looking for Talitha, the police had told them she had killed four people in her escape. He wondered now if there were more that they didn't know about.

  Will had never asked her. He had always been afraid to know the truth. "Four, I think," the words came out of his dried out mouth, thick as if he could've chewed on them for a while.

  "Oh, you knew. Well there goes my surprise...how bout I tell you what happened instead?" He shook his head, no, but that only made her flash her dead-eyed smile. "The orderlies, they would come out every night when the lights went down. Just like great horny roaches. They would take turns on me and I allowed it, not that I had a choice, but I even encouraged it. Despite how unimaginative and pathetic they were, with their dull repetitious back and forth, it passed the time. We both know that I've endured far worse, right Will?"

  Her smile widened and the image of the creature with the great ripping horn came back to him, making his stomach undulate nauseously.

  She walked away from him then, seemingly unconcerned about the men in the church and sat down in front of an aging Honda Accord. She still had her stone from earlier and she put it to her lips and rubbed it there gently.

  "Men are such idiots when it comes to their dicks. I pretended to enjoy it, night after night. I waited them out patiently, knowing it was only a matter of time. You remember I was under full restraint around the clock? They were never supposed to bring the keys into the cell with them, but that time, one of them did. I heard them chink on the floor when he dropped his pants. All I had to do was bite down and they were mine."

  His eyes blinked at this image of his sister and she laughed at him. "I didn't bite it off! Not then. I needed them to release me first. Ahhh...A guy will do almost anything you ask of him, if his junk is in peril. Well, I couldn't exactly ask him, what with his cock stuffed so far down my throat, but he got the point. His friend, the one banging away like he had a bus to catch, he...what's wrong, Will? Is the idea of your sister being gang raped upsetting you? You look all pale and green."

  Will did feel like he was about to get sick, however Talitha just went on talking, "That's too bad. I was just going to tell you how once they unchained me, I bit that guy's dick off, right at the root. But I guess I shouldn't mention it, what with you being all sick looking. And you probably don't want to hear about the orgasm I had when I did it either."

  His undulating stomach turned a summersault and he was sure he was going to vomit. He went to the nearest car, a rusted out Ford Mustang with balding tires, and leaned over its hood. The image of his sister, grinning, with a mouthful of blood and gore seemed to cling to his mind. It was glued to the inside of his skull, and the picture was as big and wide as a screen at a drive-in. She was being brutal with her honesty, hurting him with the truth of her evil.

  "Why are you telling me these things?" he finally blurted out.

  "Well, cuz it's fun, of course. Just like what I did to those guards...that was fun, too. You still look at me as if I'm your little sister, but I'm not her. That girl couldn't handle the void, but I could. And what's more, I thrived there, I grew stronger! This is why I won't be packing my bags for heaven any time soon."

  A smug look came over her face. "You see, I like hurting people, I get off on it. In the void there's only one pleasure allowed and that's the pleasure in causing pain. I still remember the first time when I found that out, ahhh yes, that was good. It was Auraghnash, this Crae demon..."

  "No, I don't want to know..." Will began weakly.

  "He had this great reputation, and really it was an honor that he traded for me, you know. The torments he'd lavish on his captives were so widely feared that I was in a perfect state of terror when I went into his chamber. He had this thing for glass, a fetish I guess you'd call it, and I found myself naked on this long cold pane."

  Talitha savored the memory, enjoying it all the more when she saw Will's horror.

  "It was mirrored glass and I could see my fear plainly, and he let me lay there for ages and I was just thinking he was drawing it out too long, when he started. Anticipation is half the fun you know. Your mind frequently conjures up worse images than the reality, but not this time. I figured he would cut me up or slice parts off, and sure that would hurt but it was becoming passé. You know, you've felt it."

  Will had felt it in his dreams and she was unfortunately right.

  She continued on, relishing the memory fondly, "There are many worse things than being cut on, and what Auraghnash did to me...was the worst. The glass pane fit me perfectly...in fact, it had been made especially for me. It was exactly my height and width and eventually the entire thing was in me.

  "He slid the shards of it under my skin and into my joints and deep, deep into the marrow of my bones. The shards were long and fiendishly edged. They found the vulnerable parts of me. Parts I didn't know could even feel pain. But all that was nothing compared to what came next...he beat me with a large wooden bat so that the shards broke into thousands upon thousands of gritty, cutting particles that coursed their way throughout my entire body." She shivered slightly at the memory. "Every movement was fantastic in its pain. You have no idea."

  But Will did. The memory of that particular dream came back to him and a wave of sweat instantly satur
ated his clothes and a sheen of it broke out on his forehead. His sick feeling doubled and he began to gag and she just smiled at his reaction.

  "Do you want me to stop? Too bad! Let me just say what a genius idea that torture was. But in the end, he wasn't as good as his reputation suggested. In his excitement over having me, he went too far. You see you have to build up to these sorts of things slowly, or you'll constantly have to one up yourself. Don't get me wrong, that first time was pure hell. In fact, he ruined me for many of the lesser demons with their machines and flames...they became dull. For a while there, I thought I was starting to master the pain of the void, but then he traded for me again."

  "Why? Why were you so valuable? What made you so special?" Will wanted to talk just to get his mind off his nausea.

  "Because I was still alive. I still had real feelings and my pain was more...fulfilling. Anyway, he traded for me again, and I can tell you I pissed myself on the spot. No joke...splash! Just like that. I shivered and shook all the way to his dungeons and I cried a long time on that next pane of glass. My tears were sweet blemishes on that perfect surface and I'm sure Auraghnash creamed himself just watching the misery I was in. Again, he waited to start until I just about couldn't stand it and I wanted to beg him to get it over with. Eventually he began sliding the glass beneath the surface of my skin and, just as before, the pain was...how do you describe chewing on glass?"

  She paused looking at him and he could only shake his head with his mouth hanging open. "Maybe I'll borrow some tricks from old Auraghnash and then you can tell me? What do you think?" Again, he could only silently shake his head, but the thought of it sent shivers down his spine.

  She continued with her terrible recollection, "That second time was an absolute horror...but, it wasn't worse than the first. I feared it would be, like I said, but despite the monstrous cruelty of it, it wasn't. In fact, it had already slipped into a bit of a routine, so I knew what was coming next.

  "This is really poor form. The victim can then start to count down the tortures and look forward to it ending. That's just stupid. Eventually he came to me and his dick was huge and sharply jagged with more imbedded glass, and I knew it would be just as it was before. Oh, the pain was dreadful, but I could see the moment coming when he would shoot his fire into me. The last time he had leaned in and this time was no different. That was the moment when I—finally—became my own person in the void. He had this long phallic beak of a nose, grey and putrefying, and when he leaned just a little too close, I sunk my teeth deep into it."