Deliver Us From Evil (Demons Beware Book 2)

by mike Evans

  “No, I am not a demon, I tried that once and it didn’t work out so well,” the man pointed up to the roof. “You know who had to interfere and ruin all of my fun. I was so close but he just doesn’t see eye to eye with me. We were friends once, before he sent me to rule hell. Now I have a new plan and you are going to help me.”

  “I am not doing anything for you. You’re crazy!”

  “How much proof do you need, Jack, to prove to you that I am who I say I am? What if I cut my head off and then spoke, or maybe you’d like me to take you to hell with me, show you around? There are some real interesting people I could introduce you to. You know it doesn’t have to be all that bad. It is better to come with an invitation, than to be sent there because of the sins you have collected throughout your life. I assure you that you have got all of the sins one needs for a red-carpet invitation to hell.”

  “You can’t afford me.”

  “You still think money is important? I thought that you were much brighter than this. I could possess you, I could take you over, but then that’d just ruin everything. I need a pure human, well as pure as you could be expected to be since you are a killer.”

  “I don’t want to go to hell, I -”

  “You will do as I say, or I will rip you apart and eat your soul. If you are worried about payment you may live like a king until you join me in your forever home, then you are a fool, but once you complete your task you’ll live like a king for as long as money has meaning.”

  The man held out his hand, letting gold rain on the floor. Jack had never seen so much in his entire life. He watched in awe until his living floor was covered ankle deep in it. “What…what is it that you want me to do?”

  “That’s the spirit Jacky,” and Satan went to pull a list from his pocket, realizing his fingers were still covered in blood. “You won’t be able to read anything if I don’t wipe this heart and blood off my fingers, now will you? I want to start stateside; the other countries are much more religious and faithful. I just love all of you sinners in the states. Do you know what an exorcism is?”

  “Yeah, it’s where priests send the damned back to hell where-”

  “Careful, Jack, you wouldn’t want to offend me, would you?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “There are a handful here in the USA, a few close, a few far away, I need you to help me with them.”

  “You need me to kill them? So, you can come up here, with whatever it is that you have down there, is that it?”

  “Yes, Jack, try not to sound so high and mighty, it is better to have me as a friend.”

  Jack looked at the window thinking of the four stories to the pavement below. He thought that maybe God would show him mercy if he lied and leapt to his death. Satan was in his head lifting him back off the ground. “You might like to know that there were ten before you. I am sure that you have not had a lot of competition from those that you consider either better or in the same class as yourself. Is that the truth?”

  “It’s been quiet from others lately. Do I have you to thank for that?”

  “They are dead because they took the moral high road, don’t worry, they are still in hell, he was above mercy and they ended up exactly where they belonged. I assure you an invitation to hell is much better than a punishment. You kill these priests and when my reign on Earth begins you will never want for another thing again. But you must make it look like an accident.”

  “Because you fear that he will step in and send you back to hell, is that it?”

  “See, you aren’t as stupid as you look. Yes, I’d like to try and not deal with him, he always ruins everything good. Now do we have a deal, or would you like me to do to you what I did to the others who have turned me down?”

  Jack looked at the window again and Satan finally lost what little patience he had. He stuck one finger to Jack’s skull, sending each of the ten assassins into his mind at one time. He saw one being burned alive, the skin being peeled off a man he knew and had worked with named Jesus, another being boiled to death in water and those were the tame ones. When he lifted his finger, Jack knew that he had no choice. Satan leaned in so close that his lips were brushing his ear. “Remember, you cannot get away, you cannot run, you cannot hide, and if you kill yourself I will be seeing you even sooner than you want.”

  “But how do I get hold of you if I need your help?”

  “You just think of me Jack, and I will be here as quickly as I can.”

  “Really?”

  “No, Jack, kill them, if you don’t I’m going to kill you and make what I did to the others look like a sweet dream. Do you understand me? Any questions you have, Jack?”

  “Kill priests, go to hell either way, but live like a king and have an invitation, is that about the gist of things?”

  “You got it, Jack.”

  Jack gazed at the gold and Satan disappeared. Leaving only the corpse, it fell to the gold dirtying it with its blood. Jack pushed up from the ground, rubbing at his hair that was soaking wet and his heart was racing like he had never before experienced. He crawled over to the man shaking him, but it was lifeless. He rested against the couch holding up his hand in front of him only to see them shake. He took long, deep breaths until he could keep them still. It was far from his first body that he’d ever seen but had never put a bullet through one and had it come back before. He crawled over to the phone, picking it up, dialing the number and waiting for it to answer. “I’ve got a broken water heater I’d like to be fixed.”

  “Is the unit disabled?”

  “Understatement.”

  “Will this be cash or charge, sir?”

  Jack held up a handful of the gold smiling lightly, he realized there were thousands of the coins. “Gold and I need it now, double your usual service charge if you can get here in the next twenty minutes. Is that going to be an issue?”

  “We wouldn’t want to keep you waiting, Mr.?”

  “Just get here, top floor and now.”

  Jack pushed up to his feet going straight to the bathroom. He ripped the shower curtain off its hooks and packaged his delivery. He did his best getting the coins where no one would see them and pushed the corpse out into the kitchen, leaving a stack of five coins on his chest. Jack got up walking for his gear and looking at where the address he needed to go to was located. “California, here I come.”

  Chapter 3

  Parker House

  Tony slapped the alarm clock when it started beeping. He didn’t want to wake up his mother before she had to be ready for work. He sat up in bed scratching his back and running his hands through his hair. He rolled out of bed, getting the motivation to go to the shop and have yet another day full of turning wrenches and working on people’s cars who could barely afford to fix them. He was thankful for the work, it was hard, but it was honest and steady and that wasn’t something that most in the neighborhood could attest to having the opportunity to say they had.

  He cracked the window and lit up a smoke. He thought about showering, but knew he was just going to get dirty again at work. He could shower at his girlfriend’s, Alecia, if he got off before she had to be at the diner. He watched the street, it looked abandoned at this time of the day or more like a war zone. Broken liquor bottles in the street, cars that people couldn’t afford to fix on the curb and with the exception of a few lights coming on from other homes in the neighborhood it was still dark as night. He turned on his lamp and it flickered giving him the creeps.

  A voice whispered, but he couldn’t hear it well enough, he thought with as thin as the walls were that maybe it was the neighbors fighting, which didn’t make a lick of sense to him at five in the morning. He looked down at his smoke, watching it being sucked into his closet. He took a hold of his work shirt slamming the door loudly and sticking a chair underneath it.

  He had hated this room ever since he was four years old for given reasons. His mother had wanted to move them out, but with the loss of his father or lack thereof as no one ac
tually knew what became of him she could just barely afford to keep a roof over their heads. He cringed at the noise, knowing if his mom wasn’t already up that she surely was now. He slid on a pair of jeans and slung the shirt over his shoulder walking down the steps. His mother’s room was still dark and he thanked the lord he hadn’t awoken her.

  He slipped down the steps seeing the light was already on. Joan, his mother, was turning on the gas stove and Tony could already smell the coffee starting to brew. “Sorry I woke you ma, I was trying to be quiet.”

  “What was that loud noise upstairs? I thought maybe you’d fallen.”

  “I…I heard a voice in my room, it freaked me out. It was probably just my head playing tricks on me, I don’t want you worrying about me.”

  “It’s a mother’s job to worry, Anthony Parker.”

  “You didn’t have to make me breakfast, I could have gotten something on my way to the shop this morning.”

  "Please, there's nothing open at this ungodly hour. The last thing you need to do is go to work without anything on your stomach. It's a shock to me at all that the wind doesn't blow you over as thin as you are."

  He smiled, kissing her on the back of the head. “That’s why I have the motorcycle Ma, it keeps me weighed down.”

  “It’s a death trap and I wish you’d get rid of that thing. I think the only reason young boys buy those is to give their mothers heart attacks. I don’t know why you can’t just buy a normal car, or take the bus.”

  “The bus doesn’t run this time of morning and the last thing I can afford is a car, even though I could at least fix it now if I ever came across one in halfway decent condition.”

  Tony took a seat looking at the pile of mail on the table neatly organized into his and her piles. He looked through some junk mail, a few motorcycle magazines, until he came to a golden envelope with the name of his church and a cross in the return corner. “That came for you yesterday, Tony. If you kept decent hours, maybe a mother would see you a little more often than she does.”

  "It isn't my fault, I got too much on my plate right now."

  "You have too much on your plate. Just because we live down in the slums does not mean we need to talk like one. Now eat your eggs before they get cold, that mail can wait."

  “It’s from the church, the letter I sent in to inquire about being a priest.”

  Joan stopped plating the eggs and set them down on a hot pad on the table. “Well, why are you sitting there, why don’t you open it?”

  He wanted to say something smart, but nothing he could think of to say would leave him with anything but a slap upside the back of the head. “What was I thinking?”

  Tony ripped the envelope open trying not to look too eager. He was confident that he was doing a horrible job. He pulled it out and saw catalogs for the diocese in Chicago. He looked up to his mom and his and her lips both quivered a little. He read the letter seeing that he had been accepted. Tears were hitting the paper as he read and his mother wasn't doing any better job controlling her emotions. He showed her the paper and the smile she had melted away instantly. "What, I thought, I thought you were happy, I thought you would be happy for me, mom?"

  She set the letter down gently, smoothing it and remembering something very similar when Billy had applied to the church, which was more of a formality than anything given everything he’d done already. “I would be happy, Tony, I mean I am, it’s just that I think there was a mistake, honey.”

  Tony ripped the paper off the table. “What do you mean there was a-”

  Tony dropped the paper back down on the table. The name Howard Plum stared back at him in the recipient's name. His shoulders slouched and his hope started to dwindle. That feeling of getting out of the shop and being able to do something positive for the community and the world for that matter and people’s beliefs very quickly melted away. “I thought…I thought that I got in, I thought that after this many times applying they would grant me a meeting.”

  “It was just a mistake, don’t hold it against them for too long, okay, Tony, I know it hurts. I wish I had something good to say but this really is horrible. Is there anything I can do for you?”

  “No, but I'm going to call Father Michaels at lunch, maybe he can see about getting me a meeting. I’d like to know if I am in or not. I can be doing someone else a good deed by letting them know they sent it to the wrong place. I only hope that he deserves to be a priest.”

  Joan got up, giving him a hug and holding him tight for a moment. "If you don't get in then it just means that God had greater things in mind for you. I know how bad you want this and I am sure that Father Michaels would be happy to help you in any way that he can."

  Chapter 4

  St Mary’s Cathedral, Los Angeles

  The phone rang on the head priest’s desk. He looked at it for a moment wondering who was running a raffle this week that they needed help with. He picked it up and said, “Good afternoon, this is Father Edward, how may I help you?”

  “Edward old friend, it is Father Michaels out of Chicago. How are you?”

  “Oh no, what happened.”

  “Do I always call with bad news, Edward?”

  Edward ran through the last few years debating his answer. “Yes, yes, you always call with some sort of horrible news. Why is that, why can’t you just call to say hi, old friend?”

  “Well hello, Edward, how are you?”

  “You’re really just calling to say hi, Father Michaels, oh now I feel like a jackass, I’m sorry. I’m doing quite well, I’ve had a cold and these bunions will be the death of me but we are good. How are you?”

  “Healthy as a horse, by chance are you alone?”

  "No, I've got your two favorite young priests in the chapel saying prayers. Did you want to speak to Father Nathaniel or Carter?"

  “I need to speak to both of them actually, I have a job for them.”

  Father Edward shook his head mumbling, “I thought you said, oh, never mind, you’ll be the death of me, Father Michaels. Be patient, my old bones don't get out to the chapel as quickly as they once did. I could send a nun, but I fear they are in even worse shape than myself. I don’t know when they will retire, but we could use someone younger.”

  “That’s very nice Edward, could you please go get them now, this is quite important I assure you.”

  “It’s always important, do you know what happens to me each time that I go out into the chapel to tell them they have work? Guilt, nothing but guilt. I don’t know how to get around it.”

  “You need to have more faith, Father Edward. You think that you are punishing them in some way, but they are two of the few…two of the chosen, and they are doing more good than any of us could possibly imagine. Think what it means to take one of the demons and send them back to hell where they belong.”

  “Losing them would make me feel no better. I know that God would rest them in his hand and deliver them from evil, but it still makes me worry for them. You hold on, if you keep me talking, you’ll never get a hold of them. They need cordless phones or more than one so we don't have to go running all around the church grounds trying to find someone to tell them there’s a call.”

  “Cordless phones, yes, that is one invention I don’t think we will see in our lifetime. Now, please I am truly in a hurry. I fear the devil is making a play, one that I think we should stop quite quickly.”

  Father Edward pushed up out of his plush seat. His knees and back both protested, but he forced himself upwards until he was standing tall. He patted his gut, one that was very healthy from a many number of church meals from his congregation. He always loved going to the homes where he could see how his flock behaved and lived outside of the house of God. The only thing that he feared going to the homes were the size of the meals. Not once could he remember, even when he was still a priest in training, that he received an invitation for anything less than that of what appeared to be a feast prepared for an army or Thanksgiving dinner.

  Father E
dward made his way down the hall. Putting an arm up against the wall every so often to steady himself and wishing that he still had the knees of a twenty-year-old man. By the time he got to the chapel his face was beet red. He opened the door, seeing the two priests on their knees, heads down, reciting prayers and speaking to the man upstairs.

  Nathaniel looked up first seeing the head priest. He tapped Carter on the shoulder and held up a hand for Father Edward, he could see from where he was that he didn’t need to go walking any further without worry of falling over.

  Edward smiled resting against the doorframe. They made a sign of the cross as they exited, kneeling quickly as they left the pew. Father Carter put an arm under his elbow, helping him in and to a seat. “Father Edward, did you have something that bad that you needed to confess?” Carter joked.