Ihan had come back late from the seminary’s library, still dressed in his clerical shirt. The rest of his friends had stripped down to white T-shirts. Ihan took a swig of beer and laid his cards on the table. He glared at the telephone across the room. The damned thing was still ringing. “All day and night. these people, the Penningtons, bother me. They think because they write checks, they own me. I’m sick of it.”
“Is it the man or the woman?”
“Always the woman,” Ihan said.
His friends laughed. One of them elbowed him, and Ihan laughed as well. “No, it’s not like that.”
“You say that, but things happen. I’ve heard about it. Women want what they cannot have. Sometimes, it’s the priest.”
“What do you know about women?” Ihan asked.
“About as much as Miguel knows about altar boys,” Jose said, and they all laughed again. Ihan could not help himself but laugh. He reached over and grasped Miguel by the shoulder and shook it, apologizing for laughing.
The phone was still ringing.
Ihan took another sip of beer. It was the coldest, freshest beer he’d ever had in his life, and he’d had many beers since leaving the seminary, but none that tasted so good. This beer was exactly as he’d remembered it, all those years ago.
“Go answer the phone, Ihan. You have to go.”
“I don’t want to. I want to stay.” He raised the bottle to his lips and nothing came out. He set it down and saw that the table was empty. He threw his cards. The dream was ruined, so he opened his eyes.
He lay there in the darkness and the darkness was silent. No phone rang. Perhaps he had imagined it. Perhaps it had only been part of the dream. A reminder that he could not remain in that place.
Soon, he saw a light flickering in the distance and walked toward it. There was a campfire just ahead, surrounded by a group of men. They were seated on tree stumps and overturned logs set around the fire. All of the men had rifles. They did not look up at him when he sat.
Thad Pennington sat to his left, stirring a stick into the flames, watching it make the wood smoke. Tucker Pennington sat at his father’s side, but it was a younger Tucker than the one Ihan knew. This Tucker was just a boy. His legs dangled over the sides of the overturned log without touching the ground. He kicked the log with his heels and broke off pieces of rotted bark, keeping himself content while the men sat. The rest of the men sitting around the fire had hardened faces. Stout men who had once been soldiers before they became hunters and farmers.
Seated among them was Jacob Rein. His beard was now black and full and hung down to the center of his chest, like theirs did. Ihan sat on the log next to Rein.
Thad Pennington tossed his stick into the fire and said, “Well, I guess we’d best get to it then.” He looked at Ihan. “Did you get them?”
Ihan opened his left hand and saw a half-dozen pieces of straw there, all of them the same size, except one. One of the straws was shorter than the others by half. That was what he’d gone into the woods to find.
“Hold them out,” Thad said. “I’ll go first.”
“What are you doing, Papa?” little Tucker said. The boy had stopped kicking the log.
“Drawing lots.”
“Can I draw?”
The men all looked at Thad. He didn’t look at the boy. “No,” he said. Thad leaned forward and pulled one of the straws from Ihan’s hand. It was a full-sized one. He sat back, his face red in the fire’s glow. “Go on, then, you bastards. Draw.”
The next man leaned forward and selected his straw, and then the next, and the next. Each of them drew, none of them getting the short one, until it came to Jacob Rein. There were only two left.
Rein reached over to take one of the straws and Thad called out, “Wait.” He stood up and slung his rifle over his shoulder. “It ought to be me.”
Thad turned his head away from them. In the firelight, his eyes glistened with tears. “Son. I need you to take a walk with me.”
The boy slid off the log. “Where are we going, Papa?”
“Just for a walk. I need to show you something.”
“In the dark?”
“It’s all right. Don’t be afraid.”
The boy put his hand inside his father’s and the two of them walked toward the darkness of the trees. Then Ihan looked at the stick Jacob Rein would have chosen. It was the last full-length one. The short stick would have been mine, Ihan thought. He tossed it into the dwindling fire and wiped his hands on his pants. It was getting cold. He could see his breath evaporating when he exhaled.
A gunshot sounded that sent birds scattering into the air. Ihan looked up at the sky as they flew past. He’d never seen their kind before. They appeared to be white doves but with bright red heads with no feathers. Just sagging skin, like someone had boiled their heads. He waited for them to fly high enough that no one else could see their deformity, then cried out, “There! Do you see the birds? They are the boy’s soul, taking flight back to heaven. They will be cleansed there and then they will return.”
The other men sitting around the fire seemed greatly relieved by this. They pointed at the birds in wonder, all of them except Jacob Rein. Rein picked up a large stick and maneuvered the branches inside the fire, trying to keep it lit.
“Do you see, Jacob?” Ihan whispered. “I have found a way to soothe their suffering. When the boy’s father returns, I will ease his suffering too.”
A great howl erupted from the woods, the roar of a frenzied beast. It rattled the woodland ground all around them. It grunted and snarled at them from the darkness. Ihan grabbed Rein’s arm. “What is that?”
Something stared at them from between the trees. It had bloodred eyes and circled behind the men. Ihan was too terrified to move. “What do we do?” he whispered.
Rein blew on the red tip of his stick to make it glow hot. “Try telling it a bird story. Perhaps it likes those.”
Father Ihan’s eyes opened. He was in his bed in his small apartment in the church’s rectory. It was dark still. The sun had not risen yet. His cell phone rang.
He got out of bed and stumbled across the room toward where it was plugged in. “Hello?” he said.
“Father! Thank God you picked up. I need your help.”
“What’s wrong, Mrs. Pennington?”
“Tucker. He’s—something is wrong with him. I need you to come over right away.”
“Should you call an ambulance?”
“No! No ambulances. The police always come when the ambulances come. We just need you.”
Father Ihan squeezed his forehead with his fingers, rubbing his temples. “Let me get dressed,” he said.
“Thank you. Please hurry.”
He dressed in his shirt and collar and walked down the stairs into the church to see if his secretary was in the office yet. She usually came in early, and he found her sitting at her desk. “Good morning, Father. You’re up early today,” she said.
“Can you check the membership cards for a young woman named Santero? She told me her father is a member here.”
“Let me look. What do you need?”
“A cell phone number.”
She told him to wait while she looked, and he went to get a cup of coffee.
* * *
It was two hours later before Carrie saw the missed call. At the time Father Ihan had called her, the bodies of the O’Keefe family had just been discovered. Lori O’Keefe’s mother heard about the big arrest and police activity at the Waylons and tried to call her daughter to ask about it. When Lori didn’t pick up, the grandmother drove to Lori’s house to see what was going on.
Carrie was standing outside watching the crime scene unit go in and out of Waylon’s house when the grandmother arrived. Harv Bender was speaking to the press. A sea of people filled the front yard. Police and neighbors and reporters and amateurs who’d come to livestream it on their cell phones to the rest of the world. In the midst of all of that, they heard the woman scream from inside th
e O’Keefes’ house, across the street.
The police went running. The reporters went running after them.
Carrie knew Gregory Moon was laughing, somewhere in the hospital, even with his punctured eyeballs.
“Do you want me to take this, Chief?” she asked Bender.
“Weren’t you up all night trying to catch that asshole?”
“Yeah, but that’s not a big deal. I can handle this.”
“Go home, Santero,” he said. “You did good work.”
“I didn’t do it alone.”
Rein was standing at the edge of the crowd, looking at the O’Keefes’ house. People covered their mouths in horror as the grandmother staggered through the front door, covered in the blood of her dead daughter’s dead family. Two EMTs helped her from collapsing. She screamed, “Why God, why?” The EMTs stopped trying to force her to walk and let her down on the ground as she kept screaming.
Carrie came up beside Rein. “We couldn’t have known Moon was in there.”
“I knew he was watching Bill’s house.”
“But not from where. You’re not a mind reader, Jacob. You’ll never be able to know everything at the exact perfect moments and stop everything from happening to everyone. You did the best you could. You saved Bill and his family.”
The coroner’s office carried the first sealed black bag out of the house. It was small. Half the size of a regular body bag. The grandmother looked up as they walked past and began screaming again.
“Come on,” Carrie said. She pulled on his arm. “We’re getting out of here. We’re going back to that diner and getting pancakes and coffee and forgetting about all of this for a little while. We haven’t eaten since yesterday. What time is it now?” She pulled out her phone and saw there was a missed call. That wasn’t unusual. She got a half-dozen missed calls per day and they were usually spam. There was a voice mail though. She unlocked her car so Jacob could get in, and she opened the driver’s side door and raised the phone to her ear to play the message.
“Detective Santero, this is Father Ihan from Saint Margaret of Antioch’s. I am heading over to the Penningtons’ house. It sounds like there is trouble of some kind. They told me not to call, but I just wanted to let someone know, just in case. Thank you, and God bless.”
She tried to call the number back. No answer. Carrie sat down and laid her forehead against the steering wheel.
“No pancakes?” Rein asked.
Carrie groaned and put the car into drive.
* * *
“I believe in God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth.”
Thad Pennington gasped in shock. His entire body wracked against his restraints. The pain was bright scalding torment down the softness of his stomach. He screamed through the washrag stuffed in his mouth. It was impossible to move his jaw wide enough to scream like he needed to. He couldn’t even draw the breath he needed to do it. His entire head was wrapped tight in duct tape, with tiny holes poked in the nostrils. The tape went down around his chin and up over the top of his head and over his ears, encasing him completely.
“I believe in Jesus Christ, his only son, our lord, who was conceived by the Holy Ghost.”
He felt his son’s fingers digging through the opening in his flesh.
“Born of the Virgin Mary and suffered under Pontius Pilate. Who was crucified, then died, and was buried.”
Thad’s eyes rolled back into somewhere dark and red. He was losing consciousness. There was a tug inside his gut and another tug and something snapped deep in his bowels that sprayed hot stinging liquid against his insides. He inhaled sharply, breathing in so hard, the flaps of tape over his nostrils closed.
“I believe in God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth.”
Something slithered out of Thad’s body. It was long and kept coming. A magician’s trick where they bent their heads backward and drew a never-ending ribbon from their mouths.
“I believe in Jesus Christ, his only son, our lord, who was conceived by the Holy Ghost.”
A length of wet, slime-covered coils wrapped around his bound wrists.
“Born of the Virgin Mary and suffered under Pontius Pilate.”
Another loop, this time draped over Thad’s fingers. He felt liquid pumping out of the coils onto his fingers. There was no strength to scream. Not enough air to scream with even if he did. He was tired of screaming. Tired of trying to breathe. He’d heard of swimmers who drowned struggling with all their might to get back to the surface until they were simply too spent to try anymore, and after a while it did not seem so important to try anyway. He understood, and Thad’s body slumped forward against his restraints and went still.
“Who was crucified, then died, and was buried,” Tucker said, and stood up.
He wiped his hands on one of his mother’s best towels as he walked from the parlor to the dining room. The door was off its hinges. Chairs were tossed throughout the room. One of them was stuck in the far wall by its legs and hung there. Silver forks and spoons and knives were scattered on the floor, along with shards of porcelain bowls and plates. He stepped over plastic fruits to get to the round wooden table in the center of the room.
Blood streamed off the table and cascaded over the edges onto the hardwood floor below. Father Ihan was stretched out naked on the table’s surface. His arms were held out wide with a nail through the center of each wrist and his legs were both nailed to the other end of the table. One nail had been driven through each of his ankles. Tucker had tried to cross the priest’s legs and drive one nail through them, but none of the nails were long enough. He’d tried several times, leaving bent nails and holes in the table’s surface. Finally, he settled for holding each leg down and nailing it into place, side by side.
Ihan’s head raised to look at Tucker. The man was going in and out of consciousness. “Do not do this. Please,” he panted. “You must not.”
The doctor was standing in the doorway, watching. Her eyes were now black glass that reflected the lights in the room. She smiled hungrily at the priest, revealing her sharp fangs. Bring him to me, she said, and curled her finger.
“Where should I bring him?”
“Who are you talking to?” Ihan demanded. He turned his head frantically to see where Tucker was looking but saw nothing except an empty doorway. “Tucker, listen to me. You must release me.”
The doctor turned and headed for the parlor. As she walked, Tucker saw two wings had sprouted from her back, made from shimmering white feathers.
I want him displayed for when they arrive.
“We’re coming. Wait for us,” Tucker said. He bent down and grabbed the edges of the table with both hands and struggled to raise it into the air.
Ihan cried out with pain as the table tilted, leaving the weight of his body suspended from the roofing nails driven through his wrists and legs. “Tucker, you are not talking to anyone. You are seeing things,” Ihan cried out. “God, you are hallucinating! There is no one there! Please, Tucker, you must resist. You are sick. Please put me down and call for help.”
The table began to roll. Tucker rolled it toward the hallway, holding on as tight as he could to not drop it. If the table fell, the priest would be crushed under its weight.
“Tucker!” Ihan screamed. The pain was too much to take. “Stop! Tucker, listen to me. I will get you help, I promise. Please.”
End over end, Tucker turned the table, steering it toward the wall. The priest’s blood was tacky between his fingers. It made them stick together and stick to the wood when he grabbed the table. He watched the priest’s bare feet come up over the top and keep rolling past, like the hands of clock. Now his head was coming around, right on time.
Ihan drew in as much breath as he could force into his lungs and threw his head back, shouting, “By the power of Christ I command you! I cast this demon out that has taken over your mind back to the pit of hell from which it came!”
Tucker stopped turning the table and held it steady.
There was nothing but the sound of the priest’s labored breathing.
Come to me, Tucker, the doctor called out from the parlor. This man is a false prophet. He has been condemned.
“That is why his suffering is just,” Tucker said, and began turning the table again.
“There is no one there, you psychotic son of a bitch!” Ihan shouted.
“Look not to the things that are seen,” Tucker said. “The unseen is eternal.”
24
They drove down the Penningtons’ driveway and stopped the car a hundred feet before the fountain so they could look at the house. Carrie put the car in park. There was nothing unusual from outside. She pulled out her phone and tried calling the priest again. There was no answer. “What do you think?”
Rein stroked his beard. He ran his index finger up and down his chin, moving the whiskers there. The curtains were closed on all of the windows. They could scale the walls of the entire house and still not be able to see in. “I say we go knock. See what we see.”
Carrie pressed another button on her phone and held it to her ear. She cursed and put it back in her pocket. “Harv’s not answering his phone either. He’s probably got his hands full.”
“I imagine so.”
“Maybe this is nothing.”
“Okay.”
“Why do you have to say it like that?”
“Like what?”
“Like we’re about to walk into something out of a horror movie and both get tortured to death.”
“All I said was okay.”
“Yeah, but it’s the way you said it.”
He stopped stroking his beard and said, “Okay.”
Carrie put the car back in drive. “Did Bill ever tell you he hated working with you?”
“All the time.”
They rolled to a stop in front of the entrance and exited the vehicle, taking up opposite sides of the front door with neither of them standing in front of it. Carrie leaned in to knock, then leaned back out of the way. They both stood, listening. No one was coming.
Rein cocked his head closer to the door. “What was that?”
“Stop messing with me.”
“I’m serious. Do you hear that?”
Blood Angel Page 25