Noah knelt, obtaining the position through obvious pain. “Forgive me Lord,” he prayed, “forgive this servant who has carried the weight of this transgression for too long. Because of my greed father death has gained a stronghold.” He prostrated himself on the concrete floor.
“Such a disgusting display,” Lonnie’s voice cackled. “Who’s next… Pride… Apathy or you?” A finger without flesh pointed toward Keri, one long, slender bone of accusation, “Stephanie was given one sin to wallow in. She is not a child of greed or pride… and apathy sickens her, but deep inside she has fantasies… sexual dreams, which make her wild with lust. Fulfill my curiosity… Blondie, and share with us your sins.
“Leave her alone,” James spoke above the increasing volume of Noah’s prayers.
“Ahhh, Apathy you call out for your turn. You are so right, Blondie’s transgressions are so much more interesting, let’s save them until last… shall we. Share with us your unfeeling attitude toward those students who cry out for compassion.”
“I had no idea… she would take her life,” James said in a low voice meant for no one else to hear.
“But she did… and she told you she had made suicide a consideration. Did she not?”
James fell silent. Keri’s face burrowed against his chest.
“Answer me,” Lonnie’s voice shouted with a volume the room couldn’t possibly contain. Keri cupped her hands over her ears and fell to her knees. The others cowered to the floor, trembling with the walls. “Convince me of your innocence and I might allow you a chance to seek forgiveness like Greed.”
“I am not innocent,” James said as he stood to face the accuser, “and I grieve for her loss and know that it was possible for me to have prevented her from taking her life.” James looked toward Candice to one side, kneeling by a frightened Keri, and to the other side where the tear streaked face of the minister looked back. “She came to me after class and shared her depression. So many her age fall into the same struggles… I didn’t know. She needed to be held… she said so… to feel a sense of warmth, separate from a cruel world. I could have made her feel… but the repercussions.”
“And deep down… you had a physical attraction for the girl, didn’t you? You were afraid of your own weaknesses… your own inability to stay clear of a teacher-student love in.” It laughed, and the evil resonance vibrated off the walls.
“Seek forgiveness,” Noah Cote whispered from his public confessional, “God will forgive you, and it will not be able gain strength from your separation from the Almighty.” Noah gripped the unmoving leg of the unconscious old man on the floor beside him. “Abner understood all along… we need only act in a right manner.”
James knelt as tears began to well in his eyes. Keri embraced him from behind as a spasm escaped his body.
“You males are so putrid and weak. No inner strength like that of Lonnie Wilkerson. It doesn’t matter though… I’m seriously thinking about letting my feminine side come out from the closet.” It moved forward. Flesh from the left side of its face pealed. Long boney fingers pulled the shreds away, exposing dead muscle and white bone.
“You Pride… will I take you or will you crumble and make me turn my attentions to the other whore?”
Candice rose to her feet, back to the wall.
“Pride… you are without talent… you are pathetic, convinced that you are what you could never be. You use and abuse… for your own gain. How many have you sworn undying love for… only to sleep your way to fame?”
“Go to hell,” Candice screamed.
“I’ve been there… it’s not a bad place… really… much nicer than this dump.”
“Candice,” Noah called out, moving toward her, “do not deny it your sin.”
The expression the actress offered the minister made the entity in Lonnie’s body howl with joy. “She has more or less told you to ‘fuck off’,” it bellowed. “Now go ahead Candice Goddard tell this decaying chunk of flesh how great an actress you really are.”
***
Noah felt Abner touch his arm as he went to move away. The old man’s chest barely rose with each intake of air. From inside his coat the old man brought forth the broken crucifix, the one Abner had busted into two sacrilegious pieces back in the hotel room. He offered it to the minister, sliding the wooden icon across the floor.
In Noah’s church the wall of the sanctuary displayed an empty cross, one without the beaten body of their savior. He had told Catholic friends that his congregation had moved beyond the crucifixion and embraced the salvation the resurrection offered. He lifted the broken relic of a recent assembly line quota from the floor. On the back were printed the words ‘Made in China’, so much for Christianity, a Hindu probably labored over the carving. The body of Christ dismembered at the knees, the wood splintered and jagged, a weapon Abner had claimed use of once before. Noah would seek an opportunity to witness the work of this Chinese made Jesus on the cross.
The minister listened as the decaying monstrosity taunted Candice. Her denial bit deep into the fabric of their scheme; tearing apart the foundation they laid.
“Tell me Pride,” the dark soul shouted, “what role have you ever had that you didn’t screw your way into? You are a pathetic whore… Pride, giving what little you possess for nothing but fame.”
“No,” Candice screamed, “you’re wrong… you don’t know… you couldn’t know.”
Noah reached her side as tears of frustration began to fill her eyes. Had they been tears of remorse Noah would have been relieved.
“Do not give it what it needs,” Noah whispered, hoping to keep his voice from the decomposing ears.
“What do you know?” Candice shouted back with overwhelming anger.
“What do you know about anything, Noah Cote?” The voice of Lonnie Wilkerson sang into the room. “I already own her. You are too late, my man of God. Too late to save Pride from what she deserves… to late to save Pride from feeding my hunger.”
Chapter 16
For a moment Keri thought her time to be placed on trial had been forgotten by the thing that knew all evil. She held onto James for her own sense of security while he recovered from the onslaught of his unleashed emotion.
“It’s alright,” she whispered with soothing tenderness against the back of his neck. Her lips feathered against his fine neck hairs. In a moment when her life was most threatened she found peace in physical contact with last night’s lover.
“I never touched her… I kept my distance,” he offered, still looking down at the floor where his knees rested.
“I believe you.” She spoke with sincere honesty.
“It’s right though… I had feelings… I never would have acted on them, but still they were there… interfering with my responsibilities to her as a teacher… an adult.”
The hollered voices of Noah Cote and Candice, the verbal blasts of the dead entity infected her ears like a foreign language, Satan’s tongue, an unholy dialect spoken in the realms of hell.
James stood, strengthened by her embrace and she found herself standing with him. They moved away from confrontation, taking inventory of their comrades. Stephanie was against the wall, wavering like an autumn leave, broken and withered. She no longer cared to shield her lack of clothing from the others in the room. She had found her dress and held the garment like a used rag at her side. Abner lay frozen on the bare concrete floor, a slight rhythm of breath rising from his chest.
Lonnie Wilkerson’s voice shouted something about its hunger. Suddenly Keri understood the verbal condemnations of the beast. It turned to face her and distance did nothing to offer protection.
“I tremble with excitement in your presence blondie,” Lonnie’s voice taunted. “If this body wasn’t a decayed piece of meat I’d drag you in the corner and fill your womb with my warm seed.”
Keri tried to bury herself within her lover’s embrace. Her action enticed a burst of laughter from the decayed form in the room’s center.
“Can’t
rape the willing… can you?” Lonnie’s voice asked.
“Leave her alone…”
“And the harlot’s boy friend speaks. If I wasn’t so entertained by your feeble responses I’d rip your larynx right out of your throat.”
Keri pressed her slender form against James, trembling. “Please don’t respond to it,” she pleaded, “don’t give it cause to act on its threat.”
She felt his hand caress the curls hanging from her head. “You know what it wants… don’t deny what it already knows.”
“Are you going to listen to Apathy, or are you going to join Pride in my loving embrace?”
Keri watched the withered hand beckon Candice. A trance engulfed the actress, causing her to move without inhibition toward the horror before her. Noah made one effort to interfere. The force of rejection propelled him with ease to the floor.
“Sometimes,” Lonnie’s voice continued, “she is referred to as the prostitute in Revelations. Is she not? She may not have committed fornication with kings, but she would not be one to decline the offer… if the price was right.
“Interesting paradox we have, you… blondie… have given your heart and your love, have you not? Such an endearing emotion, love… will he still wish to hold you tightly in his arms when he knows what you are? Love… Blondie when it comes right down to the naked facts… it is simply hardcore sex after all… nothing more, sex, purchased by kings and paupers… and in your case the latter has taken its pleasure inside you.”
“Stop… please stop,” She cried out. Heavy tears began to streak down her face. She turned to look deeply into the spirit of Apathy and saw the love she desired.
“This would be so much less interesting,” the voice of Lonnie Wilkerson cackled, “if you hadn’t allowed her to seduce you last night, if you hadn’t… honestly fallen for her vile seduction, the same talent used in the past to bring men into her web.”
“I love you,” Keri shouted over the bantering, “you saved my life in more ways than one. Last night… we made love… please tell me we… made love.”
Her eyes were completely filled with uncontrollable emotion.
“And we will again.” His answer felt truthful and he sealed it by kissing her tenderly on her tear-stained cheek.
She stepped back, leaving an arm’s length between them. She’d never confessed any of her past. In Texas she’d been arrested and charged, the enforcers of the law had been her saving grace. Keri gathered herself and made an attempt to wipe her eyes of their salty fluid.
“I ran away when I was sixteen,” she began. “I had issues at home… my issues.” She placed the blame on her own shoulders. True confession does not pass the responsibility to others. “I was rebellious… still am… felt I could take care of myself, but I couldn’t.”
“Get on with it girlie, I’m bored already.”
Keri turned to stare at the hideous creature who’d just spoken. Its body oozed yellowish fluid, a sea of mucus. Human flesh melted away to fibrous muscle. White shards of bone glistened through the red meat.
James touched her face with his hands. He turned her toward him and Keri did not resist. Before he could form a statement of encouragement she asked, “Do you believe God forgives our worst sins… the one’s we see as most vile?”
The man who had held her naked body last night nodded confirmation.
“I could have gone back home… I didn’t have to do what I did, drugs… alcohol… sex.” She turned her face from his, not wanting to see his disgust. “I ended up at a truck stop in Oklahoma, not far from the Texas border. I sold myself… convinced myself that I did it to eat, but I could have gone home anytime I wanted to. Sometimes,” she paused to seek the words she needed, “I took drugs and drank… and willingly went to bed with strangers for enough money to buy more drugs… more alcohol.
“I was arrested for prostitution in Texas. I cleaned up my life, went home and put everything in the past. Only,” Keri shook her head, wanting to desperately wake in another time and place, “yesterday… when we met… you not only saved me from the explosion… I was considering… selling myself again.”
“My dreams showed me only the explosion… nothing else.”
She felt his hand reach out for hers and she offered a weak grip in return. Never had she opened up to anyone about her past. Even the police who arrested her in Texas knew little about Keri Jacobson. Her parents knew even less when it came to the life of the truck stop prostitute.
She felt relieved, even if James Lansing were to curse her and move away in disgust. A weight lifted itself off her shoulders, a repulsive blanket of shame. “He does… forgive us… I feel it right here.” Keri sniffed as she placed a hand over her breasts. “Do you?” Another tear broke loose from confinement and made its way down her cheek. “Can we go on from this point, feeling what we felt last night?”
His answer crept gently into her heart, without the use of words. He pulled her back into his embrace. She wanted to be absorbed into his being without ever needing to face the world again. His heart beat against her ear, a soft rhythm she listened to in the quiet of their previous night together. Still, she doubted if he would embrace her for much longer.
***
Candice’s scream brought reality back to any who had escaped its hold. The mucus covered thing held her forearm in a grotesque grip. She fought against the strength pulling her closer. The placid eyeballs, Lonnie Wilkerson had once visualized the world through, focused anger on Keri Jacobson and pleasure on Candice Goddard. The actress belonged to its hunger, frightened by the horrible fate she faced, still unable to accept her shallow existence.
“Feed me Pride,” the foaming voice of a decaying larynx commanded.
Candice’s only defense came forth from her lips as a spine-shattering scream. James moved and his reward was to be thrown back with rib cracking force against the rear wall. Keri felt hatred reach for her flesh. She shivered and pulled away. The master of denied sins brought her to her knees.
“You are no good to me whore,” Lonnie Wilkerson bellowed. “Forgiveness and love defile the core of my being.”
Keri moved, but it took only a thought, from the horror refusing her, to send her sprawling toward her lover.
Candice reached for her nightmare, screaming unintelligible fears. Twice Candice Goddard had starred in roles where she depicted a damsel in distress, a woman forced by her fear into a weakness foreign to her personality. If she could have packaged this fear and used it on film the critics would have drooled over her. At this moment she didn’t act, at this moment her career meant nothing. Her ability to accomplish anything other than to escape the grip of Lonnie Wilkerson’s decomposing hand no longer bore any importance.
It received her with both arms, accepting the gift of its new life, coating her flesh with the sticky substance of its own decay.
Chapter 17
“You can’t save her,” Abner’s voice croaked as he tried to get Noah’s attention. “Listen… to me, it has taken her already… there’s nothing you can do.”
“Nothing any of us can do,” Stephanie added, moving over to check on the fallen old man, “not to save Candice Goddard. She gave herself… willingly, to avoid facing the truth about her life.”
Noah turned to face Abner. “Then what good is this?” He held the broken crucifix in the old man’s face. “What good did any of us do by coming here? We have no chance to take down something of this nature.”
“It is at its weakest now,” Stephanie said, “I feel no effect from it.”
“As it absorbs new energy… a new life… force, its resources become limited,” Abner’s breath came in shallow spasms after forcing out his words. Stephanie touched the dying old man with hands caring deeply for his spirit.
“You knew,” Noah accused, “you knew this is what it would take… a sacrifice. That’s why so many of us came, so one could be a sacrificial lamb while the others attacked.”
“That isn’t true,” Stephanie intoned.
“He intended himself as the sacrifice,” Stephanie said. “You would have all denied your darkness to it, leaving it no choice but to take him. He offered himself.”
Noah saw James Lansing out of the corner of his eye, the schoolteacher held the attention of the monstrosity at the room’s center. It could hold off an attack from Apathy, leaving Greed with an opportunity to strike. Noah possessed the weapon Abner had fashioned. Candice was dead, she no longer screamed, she no longer felt pain, or had form reminiscent of humankind.
He moved with speed, a minister who tasted violence as a bitter fruit, regretting his own involvement in a selfish act of his youth. The broken icon made in China poised in his fist for a strike, to stab, to imbed the crucified form of his God on a Roman cross into the thing of darkness.
He beat James to the target, driving his sacred spear into soft mucus coated tissue. The form, which had once appeared as Lonnie Wilkerson, absorbed the broken cross without resistance. The molded body of Christ filled an open chasm.
Noah expected a cry of pain, instead laughter permeated forth from a mouth without shape. Candice Goddard fell free from her union, her female remains separating from the shapeless mass. Not a single breath escaped her melted lungs. Noah felt death was better for her, than life without beauty.
“I have reborn myself… have I not… preacher… one known to me as Greed?”
“It’s over,” Noah said. “You’ve taken your last life.”
“Ahhh, but so many swim within my being. I wanted one more and you have taken from me what was within my grasp.”
Neither Lonnie’s form nor Candice’s took complete control of its features. If it cried out in pain and agony, it did so without sound. In a brief instant Noah saw the face of the prideful actress, followed by images of each previous victim, each horrified expression gaining a stage to view the world through.
Dark Places of the Soul: Dark Soul Trilogy - Book 1 Page 10