Red Rain- The Complete Series

by David Beers

  “Can you stop any of this, John?” Father Charles said.

  The car came to a four-way. The road was empty and quiet this late at night. Harry was yapping, but John blocked him completely out. He listened to the silence coming across the phone and the echo it created in his head.

  The question asked … nothing in his mind jumped to answer it one way or another. Perfect stillness wrapped around the tension that was the priest’s question.

  “No,” he said finally. “It’s too far gone.”

  “What are you planning to do?”

  “What I always do,” John said.

  “Will you come see me?” the priest said.

  “Now?”

  “Yes. I’ve … I’ve been derelict in my duties, perhaps. You can’t keep doing this, John. We have to find a way to get you help.”

  Tears rushed to John’s eyes.

  “I can’t believe this,” Harry said to his right, trying his best to crack through the wall John was building. “You’re tearing up because some holy man wants to help you? We’re minutes away from killing the girl, John. FUCKING MINUTES! Hang up the phone.”

  John didn’t drive the car forward. He sat at the four-way, wondering if this was real—if a lifeline was finally being tossed. If God had heard his cries and was finally answering.

  “You’re serious?” John said.

  “Yes. Come to the church. I’ll meet you there.”

  “Okay, Father,” he said, a swollen tear rolling down his cheek.

  John hung up the phone and leaned his head back against the seat.

  “You’re going to see him? Right now?” Harry said, his voice full of disgust and disbelief.

  John kept his foot on the brake and didn’t say anything.

  “Look, man. I get it. You’re feeling guilty. Part of you wants to stop. You’re not looking at the whole picture right now, though. You’re not going to get many chances like tonight, chances that I’ve lined up to take care of everyone at once. Her, here. Detective Dick Face alone at the office. We can end it all tonight, even easier than I thought. If you go to that priest, I don’t know that we’ll get another shot like this.”

  John knew Harry spoke the truth.

  Things had lined up almost perfectly tonight. The plan was simple. Kill Rickiment, making it look like a burglary. Head to the police station, and when Tremock decided to leave, finish him. No need to make it look like a mugging, because no one was ever going to find the body.

  And yet, after so many years, Father Charles called. Tonight. Minutes before John walked up to the girl’s apartment and opened up holes in her body.

  “That’s not a coincidence, Harry,” he said.

  “You’re a goddamn fool. Get up there and do it. Go see the priest when it’s over.”

  John put his hands on the steering wheel and drove forward. He hit the highway and rolled his windows down as he did.

  The cool air chilled the car but also elated him.

  For the first time in a long time, John felt there might be a way out of this. Father Charles could help.

  Dark bags hung under Kaitlin’s eyes. Her boss had said something at work today, asking if she was feeling alright. Kaitlin said yes, she felt fine, though nothing could be further from the truth. She hadn’t slept in days. She stayed up all night, chain-smoking cigarettes and looking out this window. Every half hour or so, she leaned forward and peered through the blinds, trying to be as stealthy as possible.

  She couldn’t call Eve over anymore. The girl spent the last two nights with Kaitlin, and at some point, Kaitlin had to face this on her own.

  She watched a car roll slowly down the road, the driver not glancing up at her, but holding a phone to his ear.

  Kaitlin didn’t even know what she was looking for anymore. Was she losing her mind? Not a rhetorical question. Perhaps she was going insane, night after night, unable to sleep or stop thinking someone was outside, watching her. Perhaps none of this was happening at all, but only her mind creating ghouls where none existed.

  Perhaps.

  She didn’t think so, though.

  Someone was outside. Maybe not every night, but some nights, most certainly.

  Kaitlin wanted to call the police, God she did, but they started all this. They came to her, asked her questions, and then left her here without even a life raft. Just floating in the ocean, sharks smelling her blood and swimming to her as fast as they could.

  She stood up from her chair and put out the cigarette she held in an ashtray. She picked up a knife sitting next to the ashtray and then walked to her bedroom. She carried the knife everywhere she went now. She didn’t remember when she picked it up, but now if she was at work, it was in her pocket, and if she was using the restroom, it sat on the sink.

  Kaitlin climbed into bed, not sure if she would be able to sleep.

  Not sure of much.

  Father Charles put his collar on, looking at himself in the mirror.

  His hands shook as he made sure it fit correctly. Had his hands ever shook like this when dressing? Not since he first left the seminary, speaking his first sermon at his first church. That was years ago, and when compared to now? Almost silly.

  “What do You want me to do?” he said.

  He knew God wasn’t going to answer him, though. He said it out of spite. Out of anger. He hated this position, powerless, yet forced to act.

  Charles had to get out of his own head if he were to have any chance of helping. He needed to focus on that, on helping, instead of his anger at God. The anger would do nothing to solve this problem, leaving him waking up sweating and with heart palpitations.

  “Guide me, Lord,” the priest said.

  He didn’t know what to say when John arrived. He only knew he had to try.

  The lights burned from inside the cathedral. John watched them from the parking lot, both he and Harry silent.

  Father Charles was in there and the only thing keeping John from getting out of the car was Harry. His dead friend remained silent, but John still felt his pull easily enough. Harry had been close to getting what he wanted tonight, and somehow John drove him here, the last place he wanted to be.

  How was I able to do it? John said.

  “Because you’re a fool,” Harry said aloud. “You think this is going to stop something and it’s not. It’s going to make things worse, I promise. What do you think is going to happen when you go in there? That all of a sudden everything that’s made you from the time you were ten until now is going to disappear—that some holy light will shine down and clean you of all your impurities?” Harry looked over to him. “John, there is no stopping this. I don’t know why you are this way and I don’t care. The priest won’t fix you. God won’t fix you, if he even exists.”

  “Shut up,” John said quietly, his eyes closed.

  “Go on, then. Let’s get this over with.” Harry opened his door and led the way, not waiting for John to get out of his side.

  He followed, though, looking down at the pavement instead of up at Harry. They both walked inside, Harry not waiting, but walking to a pew and sitting down, staring forward as angry as John had ever seen him.

  “John?” Father Charles called from his office.

  “Yes, Father, it’s me.”

  John walked past Harry, down the aisle and toward the statue of Jesus dying for all sins—even those that John had committed. He looked to his right and saw the priest coming out from the hallway, dressed in black and wearing his collar as if it wasn’t the middle of the night, as if he was about to give a sermon.

  “Thanks for coming,” Father Charles said. He joined John’s side, both looking up at the dead God they worshipped.

  “How long have we known each other, Father?”

  “How long ago did you first come here?”

  John shook his head. That had been such a long time ago. It felt like a different person walked in here originally, looking for answers that he hadn’t been able to find anywhere else. “Maybe twenty-
three?” he said.

  “And your first had been by done then?”

  John said nothing, knowing that anything outside the confessional booth could be used against him.

  “What am I going to do?” John asked.

  “Will you take the sacrament with me?”

  “Of course,” John said.

  John had been twenty-three when he first walked through Charles Rapport’s cathedral doors. It took ten years from the point at which he watched Harry drown in the ocean until he realized that his life was, as the twelve-steppers would say, unmanageable.

  When he arrived, he was close to suicide. The world was closing in on him, ready to suffocate him, and he saw no way to make everything stop. He couldn’t even slow it down.

  He went in on a Saturday, hoping that the church would be empty, hoping that he might be able to pray. He had never done it before, not even by accident. His parents weren’t religious and that influenced John’s life as well. But, after what happened two weeks before, he didn’t see much choice. He would be in jail soon, and after that? Strapped to a chair just before electricity surged through his body, not stopping until he sat dead, his skin smoking.

  The church had been empty and John felt relief as the door closed behind him. He didn’t know how he would explain himself if people started asking him questions; why was he here? Did he believe in God? Plus any other number of things that John couldn’t imagine.

  He took a seat and looked up at the dimly lit platform in front of him. The place looked somewhat creepy, a suffering man hanging from a cross and shadows cast every which way.

  How was he supposed to begin? John hadn’t ever asked himself many questions about the afterlife. Whether God existed or you simply decomposed in the ground when this life ended. He still wasn’t too concerned with that question; John came to this place because he didn’t know what other choice he had.

  He bowed his head but didn’t close his eyes.

  “I don’t know how to make it stop,” he said aloud. “What I did, what I’ve done … I’m going to hurt everyone I love, one way or another.”

  He paused for a few minutes, hearing nothing but the creaks of a shifting building. No God. No alerts from the sky.

  “Hi,” someone called from across the room.

  John’s head jerked up, surprised at the sudden sound in the silence surrounding him.

  “I’m Father Charles,” the priest said.

  John stood in front of the priest, Father Charles, who stood slightly higher on the platform. He held a chalice of wine in one hand and an unleavened wafer in his right.

  “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name…” Father Charles said. John heard the words, the same ones he had listened to so many other times standing in this same position. He bowed his head, focusing on the prayer to his Lord and Savior.

  “Thine is the Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory, forever and ever. Amen.” Father Charles brought his left hand in front of him. “The peace of the Lord be with you always.” He moved the cracker toward John. “The body of Christ.”

  “The body of Christ,” John repeated, placing the cracker in his mouth.

  “The blood of Christ,” the priest said, moving the chalice to John’s lips.

  “The blood of Christ,” he whispered and then swallowed the wine.

  John felt an interest from the priest that he hadn’t felt with anyone in his life before. His mother cared, but to venture into what was wrong would unveil things she couldn’t handle. His father cared, but lived in a world where nothing could ever be wrong. Dr. Vondi? He had been a mistake.

  “What brought you in here?” he said a week after they first prayed together. They met in his office, John having asked before Mass if it would be possible to talk with him.

  “Today?” he said.

  “No, in general. What brought you to the church?”

  “I feel lost,” John said. He looked at the priest’s eyes, thinking that he had done something very similar with the psychologist ten years before. Vondi’s eyes hadn’t looked like these, though. His eyes had been curious, almost intensely so. The priest’s eyes were caring, a deep brown that seemed to plead with the world to give up its worries.

  Father Charles smiled. “We’ve all felt like that. I still do, quite often.”

  “Really?” John said.

  “Of course.”

  “When?”

  Again, when he would ask Vondi something like this, there would be a pause while the psychologist measured his words before speaking. The priest did nothing of the sort, but kept speaking as naturally as one might after a few drinks.

  “It’s kind of cliché, actually, but when I see massive suffering. I look at what’s going on in the Middle-East, both to Christians and non-Christians alike, and I wonder how God can let it happen. How He has let it happen for centuries.”

  “But you believe anyway?” John said.

  “Yes, always. He is there even if I can’t understand Him.”

  John was quiet for a few seconds, a question coming to him that seemed imperative to his survival. “Does He understand me?”

  The priest nodded. “He does. You’re His child. You don’t have children yet and I never will … at least, I hope I don’t … I wasn’t always chaste before I donned the collar,” the priest smiled. “Don’t let me get off on a tangent, John. We don’t have children so we can’t understand it, but one day you will be able to—on some level. My point is, that God understands us better than we understand ourselves, or anything else in this world.”

  “I’m not sure He can understand me,” John said. “I don’t understand me. I’m not sure anyone I’ve ever met understands me.”

  Father Charles smiled. “It can’t be as bad as all that. Tell me about some of it.”

  John tasted the wine, savoring it in his mouth for a second.

  He looked up to Father Charles who had tears in his eyes.

  “What’s wrong?” John said.

  “Nothing.” The priest turned and placed the chalice behind him. “Do you want to be forgiven for these sins, John? Truly?”

  “Yes.”

  “And do you truly want to stop, or is it something you tell me to help your conscience?”

  “I’ve always wanted to stop this. I hate everything about it. I hate myself for doing it.” John felt tears in his own eyes now, though he didn’t try to blink them away.

  The priest nodded, his back still to John.

  “Something isn’t right,” Harry called from the back. “Something is different here.”

  John didn’t need to turn around to know that Harry was on his feet, the stress in his voice filling the church.

  “Why did you call me here tonight, Father? Why tonight?”

  “Where were you when I called?”

  John paused. “Do you really want to know?”

  “Yes.”

  “I was outside someone’s house, ready to go in.”

  “Bless us Father,” the priest said, his head lowered.

  “Are you ready to take confession?” The priest said.

  Three months of conversations.

  Three months of moving around the real reason John came to this church. Father Charles tried to convince John he could be told anything, but John didn’t believe it. Not at first, but he began doing his own research, and learned that inside the confessional booth, the words were sacred. The priest could tell no one unless he wanted to be excommunicated, stripped of everything he worked his whole life for.

  And John needed forgiveness. He needed absolution of the crimes he committed, not only against man, but also against God.

  The past three months had taught John a lot about God and what He wanted. Truthfully, he felt like he was receiving the first real education of his life. He had been to school—good schools, and done well—but none of those places dealt with the soul. His soul, he thought when he first showed up, was black. Blackened more with each passing year, starting with Harry’s death and c
ulminating in the past few years. What was there left to do except join his rightful place next to Satan and call it a life?

  Father Charles taught him differently, though.

  That no one was beyond forgiveness.

  And now John sat inside the booth, the small window open between he and the man saving his life. Or leading him to The One that could save it.

  “Tell me your sins, John.”

  He swallowed, unsure how to start. He imagined this moment for the past three months, but now that he was here, he didn’t know what to say. How to tell someone the things he’d done, the thoughts that he still held.

  “I’ve murdered, Father.”

  Silence from the universe’s deepest regions filled the void between he and the priest.

  “Murder, John?” he said finally.

  “Yes. More than once. I watched my best friend die and I did nothing to save him. I murder because ….” He felt the tears hit his cheeks, hot and unforgiving. “Because I can’t stop it. Because at least a part of me really likes it.”

  Again, that silence which seemed to have no end, to know all and nothing at the same time.

  “Forgive me, John. I’m ….” The priest didn’t finish.

  “You said God can forgive,” John said, his voice hitching. “You said He can make me whole again. That He knows me and loves me.”

  John didn’t know if he was even speaking to someone on the other side, such was the cavern in between he and the priest.

  “Can he, Father? Can he forgive me?”

  “John, I, uh … Yes. He can. He can do anything he wants. But, I didn’t know what your sins were. I’ve never dealt with something like this.”

  John didn’t speak this time, letting the priest’s words hang in the air—the final rebuke, what John knew had been coming since the very moment he watched Harry trying to keep his head above water, and yet did nothing to help him. Because he was unforgiven. He was unloved. He was the monster he always thought, and now, with this holy man’s words, it all came true.