The Trilogy of the Void: The Complete Boxed Set

by Peter Meredith

  Uncalled for his mind flashed to an image of a corpse; a boy tied over the back of a chair. The body was that of 11-year-old Rick Brabec, his head had been practically sawed off with a steak knife. Clutching his own throat, Will shook the picture from his mind and got up from the bed, feeling a pain inside him that wasn't physical. There had been too much death already. The death of innocents like Rick, and his mother, his sister Terry. And so many others.

  Because of Luke there were eleven innocent people dead, but none stood out so keenly as that of Jim. Will saw in his mind the homely face of big Jim. The gap-toothed giant of a man. Sweet and shy, quiet by nature, he had become more than just a friend in the two days that Will knew him. He had been a brother in arms and had died like a hero, but now his soul was burning in hell, trapped in the endless Void.

  And strangely Will couldn't remember his full name. Big Jim, Jimbo, White Jim, these were all the names that Talitha had called him, yet his last name wouldn't come to him.

  "Jim..." he said to himself, hoping to spark a memory. Nothing. He went to the phone and dialed Saint Thomas Catholic Church. Other than his sister and himself, no one knew about the death of Jim, or of the battle beneath the factory where the demon Ba'al Zubel had been defeated.

  "Saint Thomas?" The words were rich and warm, coming from the voice of a practiced speaker, but the tone wasn't honest. There was just a touch of apprehension beneath it and Will had a brief flash. The man on the phone was a priest, decked out in his working black attire; alone he sat at the desk in Father Alba's office. He was middle-aged, with the regular features of an Italian; grey at the temple, brown eyes with growing bags beneath them. Though the room wasn't in any way warm, there was sweat in his hair and down his back. He had a nagging fear to him and Will knew that his name was Father Alfano.

  "Hello Father, may I please speak to Sean Shay?"

  There was a pause on the other end of the phone, perhaps because Will had unwittingly called him Father, and when he spoke again, that nervousness in the priest's voice was more pronounced. "He's not available; would you like to leave a message?"

  A message was out of the question: Will called. Your best friend is dead. That would be horrible.

  "Do you know when he'll be in? This is kind of important," Will replied. But just then he saw clearly where Sean was. The picture bloomed in his mind like it was a memory: Standing in a hospital room, Sean, his large pumpkin sized face looking whiter than usual, held out a sheaf of thick papers to a small tidy looking man. A priest. Neat and trim the man appeared with his short grey haircut and his perfectly trimmed goatee. Confidently, the priest had his hand out about to receive the yellowed and ink scrawled vellum, his eyes were on them and he seemed equally curious and skeptical.

  Another person sat in a chair near to the single hospital bed that stood in the center of the room. Will could only see a part of the person and knew not whether it was a male or female. He guessed male and guessed as well that it was another clergy member; the person wore all black but unlike the priest, this man's clothes were lined with a deep red and about his waist, he wore a red sash.

  The vision was like a single frame of a movie. It was there in his mind, pure but not complete, the edges faded to black and only a portion of the hospital bed was visible, its occupant unseen. But, he didn't have to be seen and Will didn't need a supernatural power to know that it was Father Alba. His arms flared in goose bumps at the thought of the priest and all the man had gone through.

  "Never mind," Will interjected just as the Father Alfano began to answer the question. "I'll...I'll just talk to him later, thank you."

  "Who is..." Father Alfano started, but by that time Will had hung up the phone. He didn't mean to be rude, but his mind was whirling over the idea of losing the incantations that Sean had and there was no time for pleasantries. Running about the two motel rooms, he gathered their meager belongings and was just about to shout to Talitha to hurry, when he caught sight of his image in the bathroom mirror.

  "Jeeze..."

  Below the layers of soot and splattered blood, his face was unrecognizable. The swelling on the left side seemed to unbalance his entire head and for the first time he realized that he could barely see out of his left eye. The right side was only marginally better. He touched himself tenderly, but winced all the same.

  "I'm so sorry about that," Talitha said poking her head out from behind the shower curtain.

  The day before, when Talitha's body was under control of an evil being, a creature of her own making that resided inside her body, she and Will had fought. And now he was a complete wreck while she was unhurt, and save for her sad frown at the sight of his misshapen face, completely unblemished. One would never know by looking at him that he'd won the fight. She healed quickly.

  "It's not your fault," he replied around the fingers of his right hand, which were currently testing the extent of the wiggle in one of his loose teeth. The wiggle wasn't bad, and if he lived through the day, the tooth might just be saved. The thought did little to cheer him. "We gotta hurry, ok? I think Sean Shay is on his way to hand over some incantations to some Catholic bigwig and I don't know how much time we have."

  "You better clean up too," Talitha spluttered from under the water.

  "You're right about that," he mumbled with a final glance at the horrible looking person in the mirror.

  His shower was done in minutes and he pulled on the spare set of clothes that he'd brought with him: jeans and thankfully a hooded sweatshirt. This, he tugged up, yanking it as far over his forehead as he could. Talitha didn't have an extra set and was forced to wear the disheveled black dress she'd worn the day before. Luckily, it was jet black and hid most of the soot stains on it, but it still smelled heavily of smoke.

  After dropping a much larger than normal tip for the motel cleaning staff, the brother and sister ducked into the steady cold rain that blanketed Boston and jumped into the old paneled station wagon that belonged to Father Alba. As he started the car, Will cast a quick glance at his sister but she didn't return the look. She only had eyes for what lay in front of her and kept her face steadily forward. In the back seat, the dried blood of the priest was a painful reminder of the day's previous adventures.

  Having been to the city on a number of occasions, Will knew a quick route to Faulkner hospital and by the time the clock on the dashboard switched over to read 10 am they were pulling into a parking spot.

  "Father...uh...Father Alba's room please," Will didn't know the man's first name. "He's a Catholic priest and had some eye damage." This he said to the thousand-year-old volunteer at the information desk. Even with her inch thick glasses, she squinted up at him. What she saw appeared to sour her look and her face crawled into a frown.

  "Albert?" she asked loudly.

  Feeling as if all the eyes in the room were upon him and his battered appearance, he leaned in closer and spoke even louder, "His last name is Alba."

  "A...L...B...A," she spelled the word slow and steady as her eyes searched for the letters on her computer keyboard. "Room 306...but it says no visitors. Sorry you can't go up."

  To get to the elevators, they had to bypass the lady. Will smiled, turning on the charm, but where once his handsome features might have turned the trick, his face was now too much of a wreck for that to work and the volunteer only looked a little disgusted. In defeat, he wandered over to Talitha, who had hung back due to the fact that a police officer was sitting behind nearby desk.

  Talitha headed his way and all but ignored him. She strode past, keeping her face turned from the policeman and went to the information desk. "Hello, Elizabeth Johnson's room please," she said with a clear voice.

  "Let me check," the old lady began and then peered down at her keyboard. "J...O...H...N..."

  Talitha stepped back calmly and then with a little nod toward the elevators she proceeded to head in their direction.

  "S...O...N. And Elizabeth...E..."

  Will got the hint and they were in the n
earest one, heading up before the lady could locate the "Z". Pushing the three button, Talitha grinned at her own cleverness, Will was right there with her.

  "Whatever you're doing to your face, I would stop it," she said after seeing his look.

  "What? I was smiling," Will couldn't tell if she was joking or not. She wasn't, judging by the fact that her brows shot up at his words. Thankfully, they were alone in the elevator and he turned to look into the mirror, which took up most of its rear wall. He gave it a small smile.

  "Crap," he muttered. It wasn't a pretty picture.

  "It doesn't look..." Talitha began, but she trailed off in an odd manner.

  Will barely noticed; he only had eyes for his poor face. "It doesn't look that bad? Whose face are you looking at?" The door opened behind him and a man strode in, not bothering to wait to see if anyone was thinking to exit and hit the one button and only then did Will recognize the man. It was Eric Milner. Detective Eric Milner.

  Talitha stood only a step from the door, but she froze in place as her nostrils dilated—she knew his smell. It was an awkward moment filled with an awkward silence and it was perhaps this that clued the detective that something was amiss. Milner glanced at Will and his eyes came to squints as he tried to place the man beneath the bruises.

  "This is our floor," Will said in a hoarse whisper to his sister, hoping to get her to move, but she only stood as if glued in place. Now Milner turned toward Talitha, it was a slow motion turn, almost like a dream. His eyes shot wide as he recognized the slim young girl that had only two days before thrown him around like he was nothing and had threatened to cut off all his moving parts if she ever saw him again. Clearly, Milner had taken that threat to heart, because in the space of a half second, as the doors closed on the third floor, he pulled his pistol and aimed it square into the girl's face.

  Chapter 4

  Will

  Eric Milner had been very fast on the draw, but not that fast. Yet still the gun had come out like a black streak, cutting a line across Will's vision and surprisingly nothing stopped it. There it was pointed straight into Talitha's face. And a second later, it was still there.

  Perplexed that after all this time Milner still held the gun, Will pulled his eyes from the barrel and looked at his sister. Her face registered little more than a mild surprise.

  "You were at the church," she told the man, trying to peer around the gun. "It's ok, you don't have to be afraid. I'm the good..."

  "Shut the hell up!" Milner's voice was very loud in the small elevator. "Don't move."

  "Detective Milner," Will began. "This is the good Talitha. We were just on our way to see Father Alba..."

  The gun swung in his direction and Will leaned far back away from it striking his head with a small thump on the mirror behind him. The cop's eyes were wild. "I saw what she did to Father Alba. I don't care anymore about this good Talitha, bad Talitha crap. She's a danger to everyone who comes close to her and she's going to jail."

  "Officer Mil..." Talitha began, but now the gun swung back towards her. Milner had it around in a flash, however, just then Talitha used her speed.

  A second later, Will punched the emergency stop button and the elevator came to a halt with a little bouncing jolt. "Is he going to be ok?" he asked his sister.

  "Oh sure. Here take this thing," she held out the gun that she had taken from the officer. As the gun had swung at her, she snapped out with a quick light punch that hit the detective in the inner part of the wrist. The muscles and the tendons in his hand had immediately flared and his hand had sprung open, releasing the gun. She followed this up a tenth of a second later with an accurate strike to his solar plexus and as she had caught the gun, she lowered the cop gently to the floor.

  He was now red as a beet and making on odd hitching sound in his throat. Tucking the gun into the waist of his jeans, Will sighed and waited. It felt like a long wait.

  "Whatever happened to his other gun?" Will asked as the cop continued to struggle to find an opening in his lungs that would allow in air. After seeing that bright flash the night before, Will couldn't recall what happened to it.

  "It's back at the factory. I think I dropped it sometime after Ba'al...you know." Talitha dipped to one knee then and looked into the cop's face. "Are you ok? I didn't want to have to do that, but you were being very unreasonable."

  Milner began to breathe easier and massaged his right wrist, however his face held a wild fearful look as if he would run screaming the second the elevator doors were to open. They waited in silence until the police officer recovered enough to speak.

  "Why are you here?" Milner asked, still from the floor.

  "A couple of reasons," Will answered slowly, hoping not to spook the cop. "We wanted to be able to tell Father Alba and Sean Shay what happened last night. And we need some help."

  "Help? What kind of help? Not from me I hope. I could be facing a jail term already," Milner said scrutinizing Will's injuries. "Man you're all messed up. Did she do that to you?"

  "Yeah, but I'm going to tell the story only once so if you want to hear it, you gotta promise us that you aren't going to go all crazy, deal?"

  Milner nodded and Will got the elevator moving again. The ride was very uncomfortable in its silence. At length they came to the third floor and the cop walked them to Father Alba's room. Outside it stood a young priest dressed in the normal black garb with the hard white clerical collar. He seemed about Will's age and was fresh faced and handsome with dirty blonde hair and bright blue eyes. Those eyes widened slightly at Will's appearance.

  "I'm sorry, but no visitors," the priest moved between them and the door as they approached.

  Milner's face, which was already set in lines of stress, formed into an angry frown at being told where he could and couldn't go. "They're with me." He didn't bother to wait for the young man to move, instead he brusquely reached for the handle and pushed him out of the way with the door.

  "Excuse us," Talitha added in a quiet voice, embarrassed by the cop's actions. There was a pretty pink to her cheeks. She slipped past the man and moved into the hospital room as silent as a ghost.

  The room was just as Will's vision. In fact, at their entrance everyone froze in place so it had the same picture quality as well. Father Alba sat in the bed, his face was thankfully, heavily bandaged. The image of the man's torn and bleeding eye sockets had lain just under Will's conscious since they had entered the hospital and the bandages, though he knew they'd be there, were a relief.

  Sitting in the chair next to the bed was an elderly priest...Bishop Keenan, Will suddenly knew. This was the man in Will's vision that wore the red sash and his clothes were trimmed with the same color red. He didn't wear the usual neat black outfit, instead he wore a cassock, which was a close fitting robe of sorts that reached down to his black shoes. Despite his age, seventy or so, the man had an open, almost cherubic face. He had unlined round cheeks that held a touch of Irish red and he smiled at them in the most pleasant way.

  The immense form of Sean Shay leaned against the wall to their left. He wore a grey sweat suit that would have to be retired soon since it appeared to be stretching to its limit across his great gut. That he had only just got there in the last few minutes was evidenced by his damp black hair, which clung to his head like a helmet. His face was wet with a mixture of sweat and rain and it was completely unreadable. It held far too many emotions: nervousness at being so close to a bishop, shock at the sight of Will's bruised face, fear of Talitha, and a deflating hope when Jim Anderson didn't come into the room after them.

  Quickly, Will looked away, feeling oddly guilty that he had lived, while Jim hadn't.

  The last man in the room, the dapper looking priest with the finely trimmed grey goatee, stood by the window and as they entered, he looked up from a stack of yellowed papers. This man held Will with a steady grey-eyed gaze for a second before he turned his face toward Talitha. She stared back and her eyes were wide open as if declaring herself fit to be judge
d. She even lifted her chin slightly, exposing her slim neck, one of her most vulnerable points. It was an odd moment.

  Will broke it. "Hello Father Alba. It's me Will Jern, and Talitha is here as well."

  "Talitha?" The priest's voice sounded hoarse and worn to a whisper. "And Jim?" The siblings shared a look.

  "No...he didn't make it," Will said with even less life in his words than the priest had used. Sean Shay hung his head, his emotions hidden behind the curtain of black hair that obscured his face. "I'm sorry, Sean."

  "Another death?" The bishop let out a long slow sigh. Turning slowly he eyed the new comers, especially Talitha. His bright blue eyes seemed to penetrate with their intensity. "And are you the girl that did this to the good father?"

  "In a manner of speaking, your Excellency." Talitha faced the bishop and matched the look that he had given.

  "Really? This little girl did this?" The old man no longer appeared cherubic, instead he glared scornfully at the assembled group of men, all of whom stood at least a head taller than she. "And no one could stop her?"

  "It does add credence to Father Alba's claim." This was from the dapper priest. He strode over from the window and gave Talitha a closer look, staring into her eyes.

  "Rubbish, Carl." The bishop shifted in his seat to face the girl better. "Alba has already said that he didn't fight back. Anyone could have the power to do this terrible thing, when the victim doesn't fight back."

  "Credence?" Will asked, putting himself between his sister and the two clergymen. He didn't care for how they were speaking as if she wasn't in the room. "May I ask who you are?"

  The bishop waved to the other priest, who answered in a raspy sounding voice, "My name is Father Carlton Vogel. I am the Exorcist within the See. And this is his Excellency, Bishop Keenan, auxiliary to Cardinal Archbishop Law."

  Will, who didn't know what a See was, glanced back and forth between the two men at a loss as to what sort of protocol was expected of him, he had never before met a bishop. For a moment, he considered attempting to kiss the man's heavy gold ring, but it seemed just too silly. After a second, he ended up giving the older man a simple nod. It went unnoticed as Vogel began to speak again.