by Ninie Hammon
Emily stood and squared her shoulders. Now, she had to go back to the demon in front of the altar and let him kill her.
* * * * * * *
Daniel was shouting into the phone, yelling…he didn’t even know what, incoherent words, pleading, cursing. But the hollow sound was gone, so apparently Victor had switched the phone off speaker.
Then he heard Emily’s voice, breathless. Victor had handed her the phone.
“I got him to let me put Andi in the choir robe closet,” she said. It registered somewhere in his brain what she was telling him, but he couldn’t process it. “I closed her up in there so she won’t have to…watch.”
He careened around a corner onto Market Street at the end of the block leading to the church, jumped the curb, drove across two yards and blasted through the hedge on the other side. He was probably doing sixty miles an hour when he ripped out the rose garden and grape vine arbor in front of the church. Then he locked up the brakes and the Suburban fishtailed, tires screeching, slid sideways across the church lawn, all five of the drop-off lanes in front of the building and the sidewalk and came to rest only a couple of yards from the front door. As he leapt out of the car, Emily’s voice sounded calm but tear-clotted in his ear, holding on, trying not to cry.
“Dan…listen to me. I love you. I really do. I mean it. And I’m sorry… I’m so, so sorry. Please forgive—”
“Emily, honey, it’s Ok. The five minutes aren’t up. I’m right out—”
Then he heard a single gunshot.
“Emily!” he cried into the phone. Then dropped it, burst through the front doors of the church, ran past the Welcome Center desk and into the sanctuary, calling out, “Emily, Em—”
Her body lay crumpled on the floor in the center aisle in a growing puddle of blood.
* * * * * * *
Theresa’d been concentrating so hard on listening—straining to hear a sound from Jack or Cole, that she didn’t even notice it at first. It was only when she decided they wasn’t in the warehouse anymore—they’d run out into the night, that she saw it filter down out of the ceiling. Then she’d managed to kid herself for another five or six minutes after that, trick herself into believing it was mist. Or fog.
Yeah, right—fog.
That was just because Bishop wasn’t here.
Wasn’t nobody who knew her would tell you Theresa Washington was anything except an independent, secure, tough-as-boot-leather woman. The undisputed leader of the Christian women in her church, on the board of the library and the crisis pregnancy center, volunteered in the soup kitchen. But Bishop knew and understood. He knew her, knew she was who she needed to be to keep the wheels on life, could screw herself up to standing all tall and firm and strong. He was the only person—except her grandma…and Jesus—who knew she wasn’t strong at all, that she wasn’t a leader. He knew she was shy, painfully so, and introverted, that it would have been fine with her if she didn’t never have to see nobody but Bishop—ever. She needed him, depended on him, was who she was in response to who he was for so many years she didn’t know how to do things, how to do life without him.
And she sure as Jackson didn’t know how to do dying all by herself! How do you wrap your mind around the reality that you’re taped to a chair inside a building that’s on fire?
A building full of paper.
The smoke had hung up there high in the ceiling at first, of course. But gradually it had started to sink. It had just about reached the top of that metal elevator cage that Cole was gonna lock Jack in when she heard the crackling sound in the ceiling.
“Bishop…you listenin’ to me?
I know I ain’t s’posed to talk to the dead. I know you’s busy being in paradise, and don’t likely have time for the goin’s on in the world you done left behind.
But you need to listen to me, no matter what you’re doing. You hear me?”
Sweat rolled down her forehead and into her eyes. It stung, made her squint, but she couldn’t wipe it away. After the smoke started leaking in, it’d gotten hot quick. It’d already been stuffy in that closed-up warehouse but the temperature had shot up in the past few minutes quicker than her feet heated up when she stuck them in front of that little heater Bishop’d gotten her to warm her toes on cold winter nights.
“I didn’t figure to die by burning to death, Bishop! Wasn’t nothing I ever considered. If you’s here and we could do it together…but…burning up, all by myself here in the dark. How’m I gonna do that?”
The last words were all tangled up with a sob, and crying took her for a time. Not long, though. She could see flames, now, dancing in the roof high overhead, dribbling little sparks that cascaded down like shiny red rain. The sparks had already started a fire in the boxes that Jack—
Jack! And Daniel, too. She had real bad feelings about the both of them. Maybe she was just…what was it that shrink’d said when they was in grief counseling after Isaac disappeared—how you sometimes projected whatever it was you’s feeling off on other people.
She didn’t think that was it, though. She had an awful feeling in her gut that told her they was in a real bad way and her gut feelings was almost always right.
And here she was whinin’ about her own problems when those young men was fighting monsters right out of the pit of hell with nothing but they bare hands.
Lord, forgive me for being so selfish to think of nobody but my own self. I come to you and lift up Daniel and Jack to you and ask for your protection around them and those they love.
She let out a breath, felt a little better, ’til she drew it back in and caught a strong whiff of smoke that wasn’t coming from the ceiling down. It was coming from nearby. She sniffed, followed the scent. First she saw a glow, then flames licked up out of a box of construction paper not fifty yards away. Sparks had set it on fire. It was gonna be a real bonfire in here in a couple of minutes.
She started coughing in earnest now.
Lord, don’t you take me out of this world before you let me know them boys is safe!
* * * * * * *
When Daniel saw Emily’s body, time unhooked from the world and left it dangling in a vast, empty void not governed by the laws of physics and reality. Daniel moved through that void, both so fast he had no memory of crossing the distance between him and the crumpled form on the floor, and so slowly he couldn’t get there, was in a slow motion video where every movement seemed to take a lifetime.
There was so much blood. A pool of it, a puddle. He knelt in the blood and felt it soak through the leg of his pants. It was warm.
Emily was motionless. Her face looked like she was only asleep, and if he’d reach out gently and shake her shoulder, she’d open those big blue eyes and see him. You had to wake Emily gently, she hated being startled from sleep. When they first got married, he’d set the alarm clock in the other room and taught himself to be such a light sleeper that he’d hear it and be able to get to it and switch it off before it woke Emily. Then he’d return to the bed and look at her sleeping for awhile, watch her face, the gentle rise and fall of her chest.
Her chest didn’t rise and fall now. The whole front of her shirt was soaked red, just like Andi’s Minnie Mouse shirt had been. She lay as still and perfect as a porcelain doll. Like he could lean over and kiss her forehead as he did some mornings—early on, not anymore—or take her hand in his to wake her. But he knew when he did, she wouldn’t move.
He reached out and picked up her limp hand anyway out of the puddle of blood and held it tenderly, aware on some level that he was sobbing. But the emotional release was only on the surface. In the depths of his heart he was inconsolable.
Then he heard an inhuman cry, a roar of rage, huge and Jurassic, and looked up to see a fat, bald man—a man with a gun!—standing in the open doorway of the choir robe room. Victor Alexander was sputtering in fury, inserting expletives every third word—between the syllables of some words.
“…tricked me! The kid’s gone.”
He seemed to become aware of
Daniel’s presence for the first time.
“Where’s it go—the trapdoor in that closet—where’s it lead to?”
Daniel merely looked at him, didn’t move.
The door in the back right corner of the ceiling in the room lined with choir robes granted access to a gigantic storage area on the third floor of the church that was stacked from floor to ceiling with the makings of a full-sized Broadway production. It contained every element of the church’s annual pageant called The Gospel Story that packed the sanctuary with almost fifty thousand people during its two-week run every year before Easter.
The disassembled set was there, props, costumes, stage lighting and makeup facilities for a cast of five hundred people—from half a dozen life-sized chariots for the Roman Centurions, to the three saddles lined with purple and gold satin that were placed on live camels for the Bethlehem scene, along with swords, water casks, spears, staffs, baskets and peasant costumes.
During the pageant, the choir robe closet was transformed into a “bird room,” where the doves used in the temple sacrifice scene and the trained dove that landed on Jesus’s shoulder in the John the Baptist scene were kept, along with the chickens for the cleansing of the temple scene.
The third-floor doors leading into the storage room would be locked, of course, so Andi would have no way to get out of the room. But if she hid well in there, nobody would ever find her.
“We’re gonna have us a little talk, you and me, about old friends and the good ole days when we was kids,” Victor said. “You’re gonna tell me where Becca is—or that little girl of yours is gonna wind up as dead as her mama.”
This was the man who had ended Emily’s life, who had taken away from her all the days that should have been stretching out in front of her—Christmas mornings and walks on the beach and fixing Andi’s hair for the prom. No, not the man, the being, the entity, the demon, the monster from hell whose presence in the world was an affront to the laws of God and nature.
Grief and despair drained out of Daniel like water out a hole in a bucket. They were replaced by a rage he didn’t know he was capable of. He itched to leap on the monster and strangle the life out of him, slam his fist into his face over and over until…but there was Andi to think of. Emily had died protecting the child, had given their daughter a chance to live. He would do no less.
Daniel let go of Emily’s hand and rose slowly to his feet, aware that his own hands were bloody—Emily’s blood!—and he didn’t wipe it off on his pants. He wanted it there, liked the warmth of it on his skin.
The slow-motion sluggishness that had weighed him down vanished; the anguish that had clouded his senses disappeared. He was hyper-alert, hyper aware. His mind raced, not with random erratic thoughts, but processing and planning, considering options with the clarity of a computer.
“I asked you a question.” Victor actually snarled. “That door in the closet, where’s it lead to?”
“To another closet,” Daniel’s voice was firm, strong. “A real big one, on the third floor. From there, you can go anywhere. Andi’s gone. ”
Vic cocked his head to the side and studied Daniel.
“Now why is it I don’t b’lieve you?”
Daniel struggled to keep his face impassive.
“Why is it I think she’s just hidin’ up there somewhere?”
Daniel said nothing.
“Let’s see!”
Vic motioned to Daniel in a come-here gesture. “You get in there and climb up that ladder and call her, tell her to come to Daddy.”
“No,” Daniel said, and watched Vic’s eyes narrow in anger. “What are you going to do—shoot me?”
Victor couldn’t kill Daniel and they both knew it.
Then a sly, sinister grin spread over the gunman’s ugly face.
“Ok, then I’ll call her. I’ll tell her I’m gonna blow a hole in her daddy big as the one in her mommy if she doesn’t come here right now.”
Andi would come if he said that, and she’d become the sacrificial lamb. There was no limit to the horror Victor would inflict on the child to induce Daniel to provide information Daniel didn’t have.
He had to keep Victor from calling out to Andi.
That was it then. That was what Daniel had to do to save his daughter. He harbored no illusions about his chances in a fight with the super-powered demon-possessed fat man, but there was hope that somebody—lots of somebodies—must have seen his spectacular Nascar appearance at the church. Surely, one of those somebodies had called the police. Daniel had to stay out of Victor’s grasp, keep him occupied and away from Andi, until help arrived.
Without a word, Daniel bolted out of the sanctuary.
“Hey! Don’t you…I’ll shoot…” Victor called after him.
But he didn’t. After a moment’s hesitation, Daniel heard the thundering footsteps of the man running across the sanctuary in pursuit.
CHAPTER 33
“If I hadn’t broken your fall, you’d have busted your head and spilled your brains all over the floor,” Cole told Jack.
The words had the lack-of-resonance sound occasioned by Cole’s inability to breathe through his nose. It lay in a swelling lump on his left cheek. Blood drained out of it over Cole’s mouth and dripped on Jack’s shirt off his chin. Cole didn’t notice. Didn’t notice the trail of blood on the warehouse floor from the ragged compound fracture of his right arm either, a trail that must connect to a similar trail of blood all the way back to the other warehouse.
How was he still standing?
“And I need all your brains to stay right where they are so you can tell me where I can find the little fair-haired girl named Becca.”
The chase was over now. It had finally come to this, to beating the Incredible Hulk in hand-to-hand combat. Long odds, that. Real long odds. Still, Jack had a card or two left to play. He had a chance if he could get Cole in close where he could reach him. To do that, he had to go for motor dysfunction.
Jack curled his left hand into a fist and drove a round-house punch with all his strength into the femoral nerve in the inner thigh of Cole’s right leg and Cole’s knee collapsed out from under him like a tent with the center pole removed. The other knee responded in a sympathetic reflex and in seconds the man who’d been towering above Jack was now on his knees straddling Jack’s waist.
Off balance and with no use of his right arm, Cole had been forced to catch himself with his left arm, and Jack now knocked that out from under him with a blow to the inside of his elbow. As it collapsed, Jack lifted with his left leg and Cole tumbled over onto his side and Jack rolled over on top of him.
In rapid succession, Jack landed two punishing blows to Cole’s chest—using his right elbow, a harder, sharper weapon than a fist. He actually heard ribs snap, and slammed the elbow down again hoping to drive the jagged bones into Cole’s lungs. He hammered another elbow shot into Cole’s sternum and a fist into the front of his neck hoping to fracture his trachea.
Cole’s punching power was limited. Lying on his back, he couldn’t draw back his arm to gain momentum. So, instead, he grabbed Jack around the neck, pulled him toward his chest and delivered a devastating head butt, so hard the impact split Jack’s scalp and blood poured down his forehead into his eyes, momentarily blinding him. Then Cole powered Jack off him, dumped Jack onto his back, and rose up on his knees beside him. With his only functioning hand, he hammered a blow into Jack’s belly. As Jack gasped for breath, Cole drew back his fist and then stopped, barely holding his rage in check.
“I ought to smash your forehead back into your brain.” The voice that rumbled out of Cole’s throat was not his own. He was panting, spraying blood splatter with every word. “I ought to crush your teeth back into your throat, and shatter your sinuses. I ought—” He drew in a deep breath. “But then you’d be dead and I still wouldn’t know where sweet Becca is.”
Jack finally gasped in the breath Cole had knocked out of him, and watched an evil grin spread out over the ruin of Cole�
�s face.
“You can’t run if you can’t see,” Cole said. “I’m gonna make you eat your own eyeballs, nigger.” He reached out toward Jack’s face. “Gouging out an eye—that’s reeeeal painful—I know, I’ve done it myself.”
Jack turned his head to the side, straining away from Cole’s hand. And that’s when he saw it—saw them. It took him a moment to make the connection and to realize that the fat lady hadn’t sung after all.
* * * * * * *
Theresa couldn’t breathe; thick smoke strangled her. Then she remembered something she seen once on some television show. The fella had said not to stand up if you smelled smoke when’s you’s in bed, but to roll off onto the floor, said the air was better there.
She needed to get down on the floor, somehow tip the chair over. Rocking her body from side to side, she tried to throw the chair off balance on one side or the other. That didn’t work.
Maybe she could topple it backwards. She lifted the front chair legs a couple of inches off the floor with her toes, then tried to throw her weight backward. The chair rocked back, the front legs came briefly off the floor, then it clunked down again.
The air had gotten so thick with smoke Theresa had to hold her breath, now, afraid if she drew in even one lung full she’d never stop coughing. She concentrated, put every speck of strength she had into her toes, pushed off a second time, and threw her head back to slam her weight backward in the chair. The front legs of the chair rose up off the floor higher than the first time. Then she hung there, going neither forward nor back for a time that couldn’t possibly have lasted as long as it seemed to Theresa.
Then the chair tumbled backward and hit the floor and Theresa banged her head painfully on the wooden planks. Dizzy, coughing, it took her a moment to realize what else had happened during the fall. The old chair had shattered. The seat back with the arms still attached to it broke away from the seat bottom. The back legs gave way, splaying out in both directions as the front legs broke off the chair in a unit still connected to each other by the bar in the middle. The net effect of it all was that Theresa was lying on the floor on the crushed remains of the chair she’d been taped to.