A second later he struck the smaller bowl, allowing the vibrating hum of that bowl to mingle with the hum of the other one. It was an amazing mixture. The priest sat still for a minute allowing the ringing to infect everyone’s ears. Then he struck them both again, this time the smaller bowl first. He let them ring out while he used the mallet to gently rub around the outside of the bowl, somehow changing the timbre of the tone.
“We offer you a sacrifice to take in place of the children. This is a gift from Him to you. You have no choice but to accept it and vacate the lives of these children of God Almighty.”
The air inside the room began to get warmer as a gentle breeze began to form and get larger. Blair felt the change instantly. She knew something was happening and it wasn’t good. She wanted to get up and run, but she knew better then to do that. They needed to remain calm and stand vigilant.
“Stay calm,” the priest said, feeling everyone’s unrest. “It is only starting to test us.”
Kira suddenly fell forward hitting her face on the table and falling to the floor with a sickening smack.
“Kira!” Emily rushed to her sister’s aid, but Gail pulled her back to the table.
“NO! We can’t break the circle. We have to stay together inside of the salt!” Gail screamed.
The wind began to howl as the cabinet doors started opening and closing by themselves.
“Reveal yourself! Come forth vile demon and face your maker. You will not hurt these children of God. They will own you!” Josephs continued his rant.
Blair was afraid that he was making this thing mad. Her validation on this opinion happened seconds later as Kira rose to her feet without moving a muscle.
She was no longer Kira. She was possessed. Her face was white and chalky and her flesh appeared to be beginning to melt off of her skull. Her eyes were placid white, like quartz. The white color was smoky and dim. There was no life left in her eyes. No light left at all. She was no longer Kira, not by a long shot.
“Kira!” Blair screamed.
Josephs took note of Kira’s condition. “Get back from the demon!”
Emily was too close to move fast enough as Kira back handed her sister across the face and sent her body flying through the air until it collided with the wall. She fell to the floor, landing with a loud smack. She was not moving. Blair was too far away to tell if she was breathing or not.
Father Josephs grabbed the holy water off the table and threw a big splash of it in Kira’s face. She screamed as the water began to eviscerate her flesh, leaving a charred burning smell of death in the air. The mixture with the incense was now disgusting and thick. Blair felt like she was going to puke.
Gail moved behind Kira and draped a holy robe over her. The sound that came out of Kira’s mouth at that moment was not even vaguely human. She let out an insane animalistic roar that sounded like a combination of a bear and a mountain lion.
Blair tried to cover her ears as the roar filled the house, echoing off the walls. If they didn’t hear it down the street it would have been a miracle.
Kira’s body collapsed under the robe and fell to the floor, taking Gail with it. The body that used to be Kira was not moving and it did not appear to be breathing. Gail checked the girl over. She placed her head to Kira’s mouth and then to her chest.
“She isn’t breathing!” Gail said.
“She will be OK. We must get the circle back. We have to attack the demon while it is confused and injured.” Josephs said.
The team regrouped around the table. Blair’s eyes went to Emily and Kira both unconscious and both possibly dead on the floor. Every emotion that could be running through her mind right then was running through there twice. Blair found that she was having problems breathing and the other girls were all stifling back tears, even Gail. This was messed up on another level.
Father Josephs regrouped himself and continued to speak to the demon, back to Latin this time as he read from the book of Exorcism. He paused and looked at Jessica and Blair.
“It’s time.”
“Time for what?” Blair asked.
“It is time for the three of you to work together to beat this thing once and for all. There are three demons at work here; one that is terrorizing each one of you. It will take all of you working together to beat the three of them once and for all.”
“What about Kira? She might be dead.”
“She is not dead. Not yet. You have the chance to save her but we must act fast! Now grab hands—all three of you.”
Blair grabbed Jessica’s hand and then she grabbed Kira’s hand with her right hand, so that Blair was in the middle. That was the way the old man seemed to want her to be.
“Why do I have to be in the middle?” Blair asked. Really she wanted to know why she had to hold a possessed dead girl’s hand, but she went with something a bit more tactful.
“Because you are the only one who is not tainted. The demon has no hold over you, yet. We will need your power to defeat this thing. The other two are quite drained.”
“Thanks for clearing that up,” Blair said.
She was terrified. She had no idea what was going to happen or what she could expect next.
“Depart from these vessels of the Lord at once. You have no say or power over them. The Lord God has seen fit to cast the likes of you into the fiery depths of hell where you must return at once. There will be no uprising. Satan has failed. He will not walk the Earth again and the war of Armageddon will not happen now. Depart! Depart!”
The old man began screaming the word over and over again. Blair feared for his heart, but he was stronger then he looked. He kept screaming the word over and over again as he looked at the three of them, as if he was shouting to something deep inside of all of them.
Kira’s eyes opened wide. The eyes were still demonic and opaque white balls, with no pupils. She opened her mouth wide revealing rows of razor sharp teeth like a piranha.
“You think you can defeat us! We will not be stopped. Almighty Satan will have you all as slaves before the sun rises!”
The voice sounded like a symphony of voices that echoed through the walls and the halls of Blair’s home. She began to shiver as the temperature dropped in the room. Kira’s hand began to squeeze her own with a vise like grip. She felt bones starting to give. She was going to end up with a broken hand.
“Don’t let go!” Josephs screamed as he got up close to her face. He sprayed holy water in her face and then proceeded to do the same to Jessica and finally Kira. Kira screamed as her flesh burned once again upon contact of the holy water. Her grip began to loosen.
Suddenly Jessica’s face changed as the demon attached to her emerged to reveal itself.
“Vile priest! You will pay for this with eternal fire!” The demon’s voice was several octaves lower than a human’s, the bass rumbling in the floor beneath them.
Blair almost let go of Jessica’s hand but she held on strong.
The priest continued to spray the holy water on them one at a time as he continued to chant loudly in Latin. Blain was not sure how much longer she could hold on. She was feeling faint. Her chest was so tight that she was unable to breath and the air was blowing so hard that she could not see.
Then she heard the buzzing.
A swarm of bees came out of nowhere and began to attack them all. The pain was excruciating as bee after bee pelted them with stings after stings. She had to hope that this was all supernatural, like before. She was not really being attacked by bees. She had to stay calm and just weather the whole thing out. She was tougher than this. She was going to beat this thing!
But the pain. The pain was like a bunch of tiny little bites happening all over her body at once. The priest seemed to be unaffected by the bees as if he was used to this sort of thing. She wondered if there were things in this world the old man had not seen. She was leaning towards no.
She saw the pain on the face of Gail as they looked at each other knowingly as if giving strength to the other
one. Jessica was gritting her teeth as she stood up to the onslaught of the bee attack. There had to be a few thousand bees in the house, at least.
“Don’t let go! Don’t give in!” Gail said.
“I won’t!” Blair responded. She tightened her grip on Kira’s hand. The demon laughed hysterically in Kira’s body. But Blair knew it was failing. She could tell by the laughter and the look in its eyes. The demon was losing the battle and it knew it. It just wanted to terrorize them as much as it could and convince them that they were weak when they were strong. They were about to show him who was boss.
“Depart! Depart!” The old man screamed in the demon’s face.
Suddenly the demon’s voice let out a huge roar that shook the entire house. Kira’s real face came back and Blair could see in her eyes that it was really her. She was confused and frightened, as was to be imagined.
Jessica was back too. “What is going on?” she screamed.
“Depart!”
The house went silent. The bees were gone. The wind stopped howling. Not a single piece of furniture was out of place. There were no broken dishes on the floor. Everything was as spick and span as it had been before.
The old man walked away from them and looked around the kitchen and the living room that adjoined it. He seemed to be taking readings.
Emily moaned in the corner of the room. Kira instantly went to her.
“What happened?” Emily said as Kira helped her to her feet.
“Are you OK?” Kira asked.
“Yeah. How about you?”
The old man appeared in the kitchen.
“Everything is just fine.”
The End
BONUS
Thank you for supporting this book. To extend your reading pleasure, here is a selection of books that I think you may enjoy.
Serial Killer
Horror
About the Book
George was angry. Retired, disabled from his job as a traffic warden, he had nothing but contempt for the world at large and the evil people that existed in it. Apart from his solitary trip once a week to an American diner, his only love was to watch the news on TV, and scowl at it. But his new TV had more to offer than simply the news. Legion offers him a chance to put right the many wrongs in his neighborhood. To remove some of the trash that tarnishes his beautiful city. To regain some of the pride he lost after being beaten just for doing his job.
Legion will guide him to the people that need to be removed and give him all the information he needs to do the job. All George has to do is follow instructions. A variety of undesirables have been selected for the justice that is George. George has a hammer and a long overcoat. He will become a serial killer.
Chapter One
George pressed hard on the television remote. Hard enough perhaps to not only remove the channel he had been watching from his eyes but to destroy all that he had seen. The news was bad yet again and George Spencer was mad too. Watching the news on a constant cycle made him angry. So angry he needed to change channels to see more news that would only make him angrier. His pudgy fingers pressed repeatedly on the remote as he hopped from station to station. He loved his television news but people, not so much. Retired and injured from his job as a traffic warden, George was 63, short, pudgy and bald. His over eagerness to slap parking tickets on as many cars as he could in a day caught up with him, one day it got him a beating he would never forget.
The guy in the red Mercedes had arrived two minutes before the ticket ran out, but George knew the game. If he fiddled and played around enough to stop the guy moving he could write him the ticket. This he had done with a smirk on his face as the man protested furiously. George was used to the tirade of abuse he would suffer during these confrontations, but this chap was not going to leave it at that. He took the ticket from George, and clenching it in his fist, slammed it straight into George’s face. George smashed his head on the car as he bounced down to the ground, his back twisting with a sickening crunch on one of those bounces. The man had stripped him of his machine as he lay twisted and broken on the ground. As the man drove away, George had tried and failed to see the number plate he had just written down earlier. The blood filling his face had blurred his vision.
The man in the Mercedes had got away and in taking the ticket machine with him, there was little evidence left to help the police investigate. No car, no ticket machine with the registration and George struggling to remember his attacker.
George had made a slow recovery and suffered constantly from headaches and excruciating back pain since. He also carried a scar on his back from the Mercedes badge he’d hit on the way to the ground. He never issued another parking ticket again. He was angry. But, today was Tuesday and on Tuesday he would take himself to town to a small American diner. There he treated himself to a cheeseburger and fries with a large cola. Only Tuesdays mind. That was the day he would allow himself to indulge for a while in the depravity of the outside world.
This small part of Manchester was about as much of the world as George could tolerate these days. The diner was functional but reasonably clean. George appreciated the fact that staff would ensure he always had a clean table with condiments on it before he sat himself down to his meal. He never left a tip of course. He was of the opinion that as he had to collect his own food from the counter nobody really deserved tipping. Though to be fair, at least here they did prepare the tables and remove the empty trays. Not like those real American chain diners where customers were expected to clean up after themselves. George had visited one or two of those and refused to follow the crowd and stack his tray and dump his trash in the bins provided. The staff in those places were polite, smiled but he knew they couldn’t care less if he had a nice day or not. He certainly wasn’t going to clean up for them.
Making the slow walk home, George passed an electronics shop. Lining the windows were a range, from smallest to largest, of the new flat screen televisions. George was already the proud owner of a smart forty inch flat screen he’d bought with some of his pay-off from work. Smiling smugly, knowing he owned one of these fancy televisions, he noticed the newsreader on one of the sets. The man eerily seemed to be looking directly at George.
The newscaster smiled at George and gave him a knowing wink as he carried on voicelessly reading the day’s headlines. George smiled and continued on his way home. Back at the house the first thing he did was turn on the TV and settle himself in front of it. The picture sprang onto the screen with all the fancy menus for those folk that like that kind of thing. George actually didn’t like that sort of thing, whatever that thing was. He actually had no idea the range of options the new television offered nor did he particularly care. He wanted his news and the few seconds of “Press here to join your friends on Friendsbook” or “Try our trial of Killer Flying Birds. You’ll be flying too.”
None of it ever moved him to press one of the buttons and he glared at the screen until the news came on again. That same newsreader he noted from earlier. Mid-fifties perhaps, George guessed. Dark, well cut hair and a smart suit. All the makings of someone that could be trusted to read the news without drama and deliver the truth. George liked the truth.
“The Lady Mayoress has been stealing from the council funds again.” The newscaster reported. “She needs taking out of the equation. We might have money for things that matter if this thieving cow was taken down.”
George stared at the screen. “Did he just say that on air?” George asked himself, leaning forward towards the screen.
“Don’t you agree George? We don’t need people like her destroying our wonderful city, right? We need to do something about it.” The newscaster continued.
George nodded.
“Close your mouth George. You’re gaping. You do know, she has been syphoning funds from the Library Special Fund and from the new old peoples’ center development funds. All going into a secret bank in the Channel Islands. Can you believe the audacity of the woman George?”
; “You are talking to me right?” George replied, his head snapping to look around the room as if he half expected it to be full of a dozen other old men called George. “Is this part of the new television options? I hope I don’t have to pay extra for it.”
“A personal service just for you. Free of charge. You were selected as one of our special viewers we knew would appreciate the personal touch. One of those we thought might be outraged and upstanding enough to do something about these terrible travesties of justice, George.”
“Well yes. Yes of course. This is absolutely disgraceful. And yes I am one of those that would like to do something about it. I’m not surprised at all I was chosen. I was actually almost a policeman you know?” George replied.
“A most exemplary traffic safety officer George and cut down in your prime. I’m sure a promotion was only days away if that monster hadn’t cut you down with that assault.” The newscaster said.
“I could have made supervisor you know?” George replied. He’d always hated his supervisor and his one goal had been to replace him and run the department as only he knew how.
“Quite so. A city like this needs a supervisor with your experience and dedication. So sad you had all that snatched away from you. Still, now you have the chance to make up for it. Doing some top level, secret crime fighting. If you think you’re up to the challenge of course. Many believe they are but few are able. Are you able George?”
“Totally.” George replied. “A chance to get back to righting wrongs. Yes indeed I’m able. Tell me what you know of our good Lady Mayoress and her stealing. I know a chap that works at the local police station. He’ll have her locked up in no time.”
Thriller: Horror: Conceived (Mystery Suspense Thrillers) (Haunted Paranormal Short Story) Page 10