Thanks to the whisky, the padre was the only one in the saloon who could see the black, pointed tail coming out of the back of Jet’s trousers. He was also the only one who could see the black pointed ears sticking out underneath Jet’s faded top-hat and the only one who could see all four black-clawed hands dancing away at the keys of the Weber.
Gripping the spear tightly in his left hand, the padre focused his energy the way Catherine O’Leary had taught him. He stared intently at the powder upon the ground and uttered the incantation. “Beithh ná fear ná Themon dras bac seo.” Everyone jumped as the power ignited like gun-powder. The whole crowd stared at the doorway, finally taking note of the padre standing there with the spear in his hand. A wispy, crimson barrier, translucent and humming with energy glowed in the doorway behind him. Jet’s piano playing morphed from the Black Hawk Waltz into the Danse Macabre by Saint-Saëns.
The padre was staring intently now at the piano player, his steely, red-rimmed eyes stern and narrowed down to slits. Jet never stopped as everyone hustled away from the path between the padre and the piano. The padre lowered his goggles down over his eyes and then rotated first the left silver gear surrounding the lens followed by the right. The lenses turned a deep red as they clicked into place.
Jet finally turned his head slowly towards the padre, but the padre was the only one who saw a long, forked tongue snake its way out of Jet’s fanged, black mouth. Burning red eyes glared at the padre. Jet lifted his hands off the piano and faced the padre, but the Weber kept on playing. There was a gasp from the watching crowd as he stood up.
Fast as a rattler, the padre grabbed the silver revolver at his right hip. It came out smooth and straight just as Jet leapt from the piano bench, sending it flying. Jet soared through the air at the padre. People screamed, hollering and climbing over one another to get away from the fight. The pistol barked like a hell-hound, and a huge gout of flame erupting from the barrel. The enchanted slug, a hollow-point full of holy-water and capped with bewitched wax, caught Jet in the thigh, tearing a gaping hole down his thigh, and blue flame started pouring out of the wound.
“JESUS PALOMINO! A DEMON!” Earl’s scream filled the saloon.
Jet was almost on top of the padre when the second enchanted round hit him in the chest, stopping him cold. He howled in inhuman agony and staggered backwards a few steps towards the piano. His red eyes glared in pure, hellish hatred at the padre.
“Jidfu dawn fjammi ma 'riħ!” Jet shouted, his voice sounding like a deep, beastly growl, and he slashed a black talon at the chandeliers as he finished the incantation. There was a massive burst of wind that swirled throughout the saloon. Every hat, card and jacket that wasn’t locked down by something went flying, and every flame was blown out. With a moonless night, the entire saloon went pitch black except for the pale, ruddy glow of the barrier in the doorway.
Jet smiled evilly, thinking he had the upper hand on this arrogant, upstart soulful. He leapt once again at the padre, his mouth agape, fangs growing longer in anticipation of his next meal. His talons stretched out, yearning to bury themselves into tender, waiting flesh.
The padre, a confident smile of his own splitting his face, could see everything through the red lenses of his goggles like it was daytime. He watched the approach of the demon, and at the last moment planted the ring-end of the spear against the floor, angling the blades directly in line with the demon’s path. The demon impaled itself on the tip of the spear, stopping short on the guard.
Another agonized howl split the air as blue fire erupted from his chest and around the blades sticking through his back in huge gouts that lit up the entire saloon in its blue glow. He flailed his arms about as the padre grabbed the spear with both hands and held tight with all his strength.
The demon grabbed the shaft, preparing to push himself off the blades, just as the padre pushed the recessed button set into the shaft. A small, backward-facing barb popped out of each blade, effectively capturing the demon on the end of the spear. The padre planted his back foot against the red barrier faintly glowing behind him and started pushing the demon backwards like a pile-driver. He built up speed as he crossed fifteen feet of floor, pinning the demon to the heavy Weber piano with a massive crash. Wood splintered as the blades passed through the one-inch oak panel, the barbs collapsed upon entry and then popping back out on the other side.
Buscher released the shaft, confident that he had his unearthly prey. Buscher started reciting the Latin words he knew by heart. “Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus, omnis satanica potestas, omnis incursio infernalis adversarii, omnis legio, omnis congregatio et secta diabolica, in nomine et virtute Domini Nostri Jesu Christi, eradicare et effugare a Dei Ecclesia, ab animabus ad imaginem Dei conditis ac pretioso divini Agni sanguine redemptis …”
Buscher continued through the exorcism, and with every word the demon’s howls became weaker, his flailing lest vigorous. Only Buscher could see that the demon’s appearance was deteriorating, aging quickly from the healthy, black specimen of demonhood into a shriveled, gray corpse. It took two minutes for the demon to die, and with its last gasp, the Weber finally stopped playing.
The saloon was deathly quiet. Tate was the first one to move. He reached behind the bar, grabbed a lantern and with a match from his pocket lit it up. Soft orange light cast shadows across the overturned tables and chairs in the saloon.
Every living soul except Buscher was crammed up against the bar or the wall behind it, staring at the giant padre standing in front of the piano and the demon’s corpse. They could all see what it was now.
Buscher pressed the button on the shaft of his spear, and with a mighty tug pulled the blades out of the piano and the demon. He walked across the bar, his big boots booming through the saloon.
He looked at Sheriff Tate and started unscrewing the segments of the shaft. “I believe I may have solved your demon problem. For now.”
* * *
In the morning, half of St. Elmo was gathered in front of Earl’s saloon. Padre Buscher stepped out first followed by Sheriff Tate and Earl himself. In Buscher’s travels, doing the sorts of things he usually did, he was accustomed to townsfolk showing up in the aftermath of an exorcism.
“The problem, Sheriff Tate, is that this was an abnormal exorcism.”
“I’m sure I wouldn’t know what a normal one was,” Tate said tiredly. The padre had assured Tate that the demon was dead and gone, but Tate hadn’t slept much anyway. He figured he might not sleep again after a night like the last one.
“This was not a possession. Normally, the exorcism comes first, pulling the spirit of the demon out of the possessed and then destroying it. That demon was here in the flesh, straight from hell.”
“Meaning?” Earl asked with not a little fear.
Buscher stepped off the weathered boards and down the steps in front of Earl’s. “Meaning that there is a gate someplace … a doorway to hell that is most likely still open. I am assuming that this gate is up in your sister-town of Buckeye Crossing. And it must be closed.”
Buscher stepped up to his bilomotive. The word Rocinante was etched into the large, copper water tank set just in front of a wide, brown leather seat set on springs. The machine was made mostly of brass with trappings, valves and widgets made from heavily runed silver and copper. There was a large black wheel about six inches wide fore and aft mounted on large iron springs, and steering was achieved with wide, leather-wrapped bars attached to the front wheel. A hooded lantern was set in front of the bars, and it looked weather-proof. On the right-hand side of the machine, O’Leary had attached a cargo-carrier with one wheel on the outside. Buscher had explained to Flaherty that the side-car prevented the extremely heavy vehicle from tipping over in addition to holding either a passenger or cargo.
Padre Buscher slipped the black velvet bag into a space in the side-car and slipped on his heavy gloves. Stepping around the side-car, he lowered his massive frame onto the bilomotive and patted the small silver box built
into a housing under the seat. Tinker Flaherty and his wife were standing at the front of the gathered crowd, and the tinker stared in wonder, shaking his head at the silver box. Buscher had explained it to him the night before, once most of the other folks had gone home after the ruckus.
“You’re not tired in there, are you my pesky little firestarter?” Buscher cooed. The inlaid, silver box, covered with intricate runes, pentagrams, and sigils, glowed faintly with a barely-contained inner fire. Ukobach, a fire-demon that had been captured during the Great Chicago Fire, was imprisoned forever within. He had been captured by Catherine O’Leary on that fateful night in October of 1871. Ukobach had been O’Leary’s gift to the Padre for his help in defeating the Great demon Ebliss. It was Ebliss, not O’Leary’s lantern, that had actually started the Great Chicago Fire and burned almost half the city, despite what people read in the paper.
Padre Buscher tapped Ukobach’s prison and swore he could hear the little hellion screaming and cursing at him in the nine tongues of Hell. He chuckled at its impotent, impish fury, delighted to see a demon, even a minor one, turned to such useful purpose for a change.
Buscher fired up Rocinante, lowered his goggles over his face and snapped down the dark lenses that stuck out. Twisting the right grip on the handlebars, water was injected into a chamber on top of the silver demon-prison. It flashed to steam with a loud hiss, pushing the piston connected to the rear wheel. The pulsing noises they’d all heard the night before picked up in tempo as Padre Buscher headed out of town towards Buckeye Crossing to find a gate coming from straight out of Hell.
About the Author
Quincy J. Allen, a cross-genre author, has published a litany of short stories in multiple anthologies, magazines, eZines, and one omnibus since he started his writing career in 2009. His first short story collection Out Through the Attic, came out in 2014 from 7DS Books, and he made his first short story pro-sale in 2014 with “Jimmy Krinklepot and the White Rebels of Hayberry,” included in WordFire’s A Fantastic Holiday Season: The Gift of Stories.
Chemical Burn, his first novel, was a finalist in RMFW’s Colorado Gold Contest in 2011, and his latest novel Blood Curse, Book 2 in The Blood War Chronicles, is now available in Print and Digital editions on Amazon and digital formats on Kobo, Barnes & Noble, iBooks, and Smashwords. He is currently working on his first media tie-in novel for the Aradio brothers’ Colt the Outlander IP, and expects that book to release in early-to-mid 2017. He also has a short story appearing in an upcoming Monster Hunters, Inc. anthology from Larry Correia and Baen due out in 2017.
He is the publisher and editor of Penny Dread Tales, a short story collection in its fifth volume that has become a labor of love. He also runs RuneWright, LLC, a small marketing and book design business out of his home in Colorado, and hopes to one day live in a place where it never, ever, ever snows.
Photo credit: Zenfolio Jacobin Photography http://jacobinphotography.zenfolio.com.
If You Liked …
If you liked Paranormal Short Stories, you might also enjoy:
Short Fiction
Holiday Shorts
Out Through the Attic
(13 Fantasic Cross-Genre Short Stories from Quincy J. Allen)
Novels
Chemical Burn
Blood Ties
(Book 2 of The Blood War Chronicles)
Blood Curse
(Book 2 of The Blood War Chronicles)
Paranormal Short Stories Page 7