by J. Thorn
The furnace-room door stood open, revealing boxes and plastic bags, but not much else of value. He was about to head back upstairs when the beam of light caught hold on a set of hinges. Father moved in closer and discovered yet another door, composed of panels of wood. Its rusted hinges looked as old as the house. The open slide bolt in the top, left corner of the door avoided the creeping rust.
Father pointed his flashlight at the ceiling and put a firm grasp on the handle of the door. The curved, metal handle stunned his palm with an icy touch. In one motion, he yanked the door open and aimed the beam inside.
He saw nothing but brick and mortar. Cobwebs hung from the ceiling, and the dirt on the floor showed a recent disturbance. Father shook his head and tried not to breathe the musty air. He backed out and slammed the door shut.
He stormed back up the steps, where the men snapped to attention. One of the younger soldiers stepped forward.
“Sir, there appears to be a set of tracks leading through the backyard and into the adjoining house on Winston. It might be him.”
“No, it isn’t. However, it is another thorn in the Lord’s crown.”
Chapter 44
Sully kept his head down, disguising his puff of warm breath. He watched as Father’s men flooded the house. Their lights and laser beams pulsed through every room.
He wiped at his eyes and brushed the memories of fallen brothers aside. Sully thought of those left at the safehouse, and of the news he would have to deliver.
Sully checked the clip, making sure that he had enough rounds to take on Father’s men and take out the leader of the Holy Covenant. Sully drifted back through childhood with the cascading gusts of falling flakes.
Fucking mother pretended like she didn’t know it was happening, he thought.
Tears began to well up in Sully’s eyes.
Sully appeared to have the childhood of Silverstein poems and Rockwell paintings. He grew up in suburban Cleveland, the son of an auto mechanic and a teacher’s aide. Sully’s dad made enough money to support the family, so his mom worked to help “settle the rough edges”, as she used to say. Sully spent many days playing football after school, doing homework, and attending church like the rest of the families in the predominantly Irish neighborhood.
When Sully turned seven, the pastor of their parish, Father William, made an appearance at school before recess. The man had eyes of steel, and his words grabbed hold with the abrasiveness of sandpaper. Most of the women of the parish, and the nuns that taught in the school, feared and respected their pastor, in that order.
“You are all now of age to formally serve the Lord,” he had announced.
The girls sat still but did not pay much attention, forbidden to serve as altar boys.
The priest followed the statement with fiery rhetoric straight from the Old Testament, brimming with holy vengeance. Several of the boys in Sully’s class raised their hands and promised the pastor that they would attend the orientation on Sunday morning.
The nun, Sully’s homeroom teacher, ushered the class out of the room and toward the playground, where games of tag and kickball would consume energy and renew fierce rivalries. Except for Sully. The priest put his hand on Sully’s shoulder, and told Sister Ann that he would be staying after with the young man. She bowed her head and pulled the door shut. Sully watched his fellow classmates run and shriek in anticipation of the big game. He bit his bottom lip, eyes darting back and forth between the door and the clock.
Father William pulled the blinds shut on the classroom windows. He turned the lock on the door. Sully thought about all of the rules he had broken, none of which would warrant a visit from the pastor.
“You can be of special service to our Lord,” said Father William.
Sully did not respond, mindful of the wooden paddles wielded like samurai swords. Father William sat in the desk next to the young man.
“I need you to expel Satan from me. You can help cleanse my soul of evil and bring the light of our Lord Jesus Christ to both of us. Can you help me?”
“Um, yes, Father.” Sully broke his silence, not wanting to risk the disrespect of not answering an adult’s question.
Father William unbuckled his pants. With his right hand, he removed his penis, which jerked about in a haphazard way. Sully’s eyes widened in a mixture of shame, fear, and curiosity. Father took Sully’s tiny hand and placed it on his growing erection.
“If you move your hand up and down, the evil will be dispelled from the top.”
Sully did as he was told.
For eight years, Father William visited Sully. It happened in the church basement, the rectory, the school gymnasium, and anywhere else Father William could find that provided them time alone. Sully told his mother on his tenth birthday. After three years of the abuse, he was convinced he could not live with it any longer. She slapped her son in the face and it hurt worse than any punch that Sully had taken his entire life. He was never able to look his father in the eye.
By the time he was fifteen, Sully considered stabbing the priest. What would they do to him, if he did? But the next month, the organist made the announcement at the end of Mass. The Catholic Church thanked Father William for his service to the parish and wished him best of luck on his new assignment.
A squirrel darted across the tree above Sully’s head and scurried onto the electrical wire running toward the house. The tears made it hard for Sully to focus on the animal, while the spent ones froze in his beard.
Sully was not sure when Father dropped the “William” from his surname, or how he had managed to return to Cleveland. However, he did know one thing. He would face his abuser, speak his piece, and send the man to Hell.
Chapter 45
John knew that the first shots came from outside the house. It took a pause and the thumping of boots on the kitchen floor before Father’s troops returned fire. The men yelled about a sniper behind the garage.
John pushed the thin piece of paneling to one side and crawled out from underneath the basement steps. His legs felt cramped, but he was otherwise thankful for the hidden storage area.
Light from the late-evening sun filtered through the open side door and down the steps into the basement. John remained in the dark for a minute to make sure he was not giving up his position to one of Father’s men.
Glass broke and bullets launched into the soft cedar shake of the house’s exterior. John tasted dried, burnt wood on his tongue, and covered his mouth to stifle a cough.
He heard the first of two explosions roll back to the house. The second explosion followed a minute after the first, and the retaliation shook the foundations of the house. John thought that the old colonial, built in the early 1920s, might come crashing down, burying him forever. John’s ears rang, and dust rained down from the rafters, covering him with a thin layer of grime. He crept up the steps, gun barrel leading the way.
When John reached the side door and mudroom landing, he stopped and flattened himself against the wall. The men in the kitchen talked, but he could not make out what was being said.
One soldier appeared in the driveway, three feet from John. John held his breath and pulled tight against the wall. The soldier aimed his gun in another direction and moved down the driveway toward the garage.
Chapter 46
Through the pain, Sully welcomed the warm embrace of his own blood. He wiped the red shade from his face and watched three men closing on his position. His left arm snaked back over the hedge at a bizarre angle. Sully felt a burning sensation in his stomach, and phantom pains pulsed where his right leg used to be. The grenade left a divot in the snow bank.
“Drop your weapons!” came the first command from the soldier closest to him.
“Does it look like I’m holding any, numbnuts?”
The other soldiers surrounded Sully, each aiming the barrel of their assault rifle at his head.
“Hold your position,” said the lead soldier to the other men.
Sully closed his eye
s and his body spasmed from the pain he tried to ignore. When he opened them again, Father was coming down the steps out of the kitchen door. He had a Bible in one hand, and swept his robes back and forth through the cold wind.
“You are an agent of Satan,” said Father.
Sully laughed and spit blood onto the pristine, white snow next to his head.
“How’ya been there, Father William?”
Father looked at Sully’s face. His skin matched the pasty white flakes falling from the sky.
“What? Don’t remember each piece of ass you’ve had? I sure do.”
Father turned and instructed the soldiers to take his weapons, which they did. He ordered them back into the house, out of earshot of the conversation.
“How do you know I am Father William?”
“You were the pastor of my church when I was a kid.”
Father’s face contorted as misty recollections passed through his mind.
“How many little boys have sucked you off? Did it start with Sister Anne’s class, or have you been taking cock your whole life?”
Father drew a leg back and drove his black, steel-toed shoe into Sully’s abdomen. “Shut your mouth, right now.”
The biker froze, his mouth agape with silent pain. When his wind returned, Sully screamed.
Father peered into Sully’s eyes as his own lit with a distant memory. A faint smile broadened his rough face.
“Michael Sullivan. How could I forget your face? You were easy because your parents were stupid.”
Sully sat up with all of his remaining strength and lobbed a slow, long punch at Father’s knees. Father stepped back and stood on Sully’s arm. With his free leg, he delivered a blow square on Sully’s nose.
“Before these men send you to your Judgment Day, I’m going to give you one last chance to make amends before the Lord. Since your days in the parish, you have strayed. Come back to Him now and save your soul before it is too late.”
Sully pulled himself to an upright position with his back leaning on the garage. He spit more blood and looked up at Father as his vision clouded. Sully saw Father as he stood now, but he also saw Father William superimposed. The two images floated back and forth between each other. Sully shook his head and spoke.
“You are nothing but a rotten pervert. A sick, twisted son of a bitch. You used your power and influence to abuse little kids. There ain’t nothing beyond this, so you ain’t scarin’ me with your threats of Judgment Day. But let me tell you this. I know that the cosmic balance of the universe will correct itself. You will leave this world with the pain you have inflicted on others. Fuck off, Father.”
With a wave of Father’s hand, Sully sat back and closed his eyes as the guns fired. Four men pummeled Sully’s broken frame with rounds of ammunition. Father held up his hand and the firing stopped. Michael Sullivan’s lifeless eyes stared up into the bare tree and beyond the blue-gray sky.
Chapter 47
Jana put her good hand to her mouth to stifle the cry. They gunned the man down like an animal. She was too far away to hear the conversation. The makeshift splint on her broken wrist immobilized it, but it did not hold back the throbbing, insistent pain.
She pulled back from the window and reassessed her situation. After pulling both wrists, one swollen and shattered, through the loose zip ties, she’d managed to find a screwdriver in the storage room. With it, she’d slid the bolt back and ran out of her old house into the next-door neighbor’s. She timed it perfectly, as John and a gang of bikers approached the house just after her escape.
She heard the stairs creak and spun around.
“It is good to be reunited, is it not?”
Jana shivered at the sound of Byron’s voice.
“I need you to come with me, little one.”
“Why? So you can serve me up to that sick bastard? Kill me now.”
Byron hobbled through the room toward her. A lump stuck out of his forehead above the right eye. The swelling almost closed the only good one. Byron’s pronounced hobble worsened as he walked toward Jana. As if to answer her thoughts, Byron spoke again.
“There are men waiting for me at the bottom of the steps. Do not be so foolish as to think you can fight your way out of this. You are a nurse, my pretty, not a warrior.”
Jana growled at the commander. She stood and walked past Byron, never taking her eyes off of his. She held her hands high in the air and started walking down the steps. Half way down, the soldiers whipped out the zip ties. Jana screamed as they bound her broken wrist to her healthy one.
Chapter 48
John heard Sully’s death cry. He had managed to sneak out to the driveway. Father stood above Sully while his Warriors of Christ stood behind him, firing into the man’s broken body.
As the soldiers turned back to reenter the house, John scurried behind the wall. He raced around toward the front door. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed movement in the neighbor’s house. John dove behind the evergreen bush, thankful that it had not shed its cover like most of the other shrubbery in the region.
He saw Jana emerge first, and could not believe his eyes. Her hair blew in the wind like soiled straw. Bruised skin and swollen features replaced the usual glow in her face. Jana wore a splint on one arm and cried in pain as the soldiers escorted her across the neighbor’s lawn and back into the house through the kitchen door.
John put his head in his hands and chased frozen tears from his cheek. He glanced at the gray smoke rising from Sully’s final stand, and beyond the biker’s corpse at the dark and silent street.
***
“I’m glad to see you are with us again, Commander Byron. My men were worried that you would not awake from your injuries.”
Byron’s mouth twitched into a reluctant grin as he calculated the odds of his survival.
“I understand you found the girl, Jana, hiding in the house next door?” Father asked.
“Yes, she left just enough tracks for an experienced hunter; the wounded hen is no match for an old fox.”
“Excellent work, Commander Byron. I was a little disappointed that you were not able to fight off the Infidels that attacked my men, but we took care of them in the end.”
“Thank you, Father. I am here to serve the Lord.”
“Are you, Byron? I don’t understand how those despicable Keepers of the Wormwood managed to take out my soldiers that were here, waiting for John and Jana. How do you explain that?”
Byron twitched and rubbed the lump on his head. Before he could answer, one of the soldiers dragged Jana into the kitchen before Father, who began his questioning.
“So you are Jana Burgoyne?”
Jana stood and did not respond. A soldier walked up and grabbed her by the broken wrist. His spittle hit her lips as he instructed her to answer Father.
“Yes.”
“Finally, some conversation. And where is John?”
“I don’t know,” Jana replied.
Father motioned to the other men.
“Take her downstairs.” The sun was dying as the early winter evening began to take over.
***
John heard the screams, muffled by the earthen walls of the basement. He cocked the weapon and sidled down the driveway toward the side door. From there, he heard Jana whimpering, begging for mercy, and cursing her captors all in one breath.
He reached for the handle of the storm door when a metallic click sounded behind his left ear.
“Drop the weapon or lose your head.”
Without an option, John followed the command.
Chapter 49
Byron stood back on the far wall. His slouching posture nagged an aching body. The commander kept out of Father’s sight, willing to let John and Jana occupy Father’s fury.
Father sent the majority of the troops back to St. Michael’s, leaving four to help him with the interrogation. They sat on boxes, smoking cigarettes and trading dirty jokes while they played poker, the words of the prisoners of no interest to them
. Byron slid down the wall into a seated position. Father glanced at him, but ignored the ailing commander. He would be dealt with later.
“Let her go. She’s of no use to you,” said John.
“Don’t tell me who is of use and who is not. God will make that decision,” replied Father.
John looked at Jana, but she looked away. Her entire face had swelled and turned red from numerous blows. Blood ran from her nose and mouth, and she wheezed with every breath.
“Tell me John, what does the Lord say about the Final Battle? Channel him for me so I do not have to hurt your wife anymore.”
“I’m not John the Revelator. I’m John Burgoyne. I live here, in this house, in South Euclid, Ohio. I wore a priest costume to a Halloween party. That’s it. That’s my story, no matter how much you torture me.”
Father chuckled.
“Torture you?”
He walked past Jana and John, examining their restraints. He instructed the soldiers to blow two sets of holes in the wall and stick the arms of the prisoners through them, binding their wrists from the other side. Father pulled out a crumpled cigar. One of the young soldiers involved in the card game jumped up and aimed his Zippo at the end of it. With hearty breaths, Father ignited the cigar and blew the smoke into their faces.
“It will be dark soon. Retrieve the construction light from the truck,” Father said to one of the soldiers.
The soldier returned, dropped the light on the floor, and connected the terminals to the car battery. The halogen bulb blanketed the entire basement with fluorescent light. Those in the room covered their eyes until they adjusted to the brightness.