by mike Evans
He thought of his girlfriend Alecia and realized her arms were going to be the only thing capable of making him feel any better, he just hoped that she’d be home. Alecia would not expect him for at least another four to five hours. He thought that he might slip into his mothers to follow Father Michaels’ orders. If anything happened to his mother it would truly break his heart.
He exited the church, nodding to the priests that were congregating at the entrance to the massive cathedral. He ran to the steps missing James by seconds and tore off down the road.
Tony rolled up to his house, it seemed to have more character compared to the rest. He checked the door, but it was locked. He thought of course, it’s locked stupid, your mom wasn’t born yesterday and isn’t going to leave the door opened in a neighborhood like this. Most of the neighbors in the community that were here back in the seventies knew what happened here and they had thought of Tony as a miracle child. The elderly Italian women in the neighborhood would simply call him bambino di miracolo, which he found out later meant miracle child. He had never felt miraculous growing up. The majority of the time he was just thankful he’d survived his father, the demons, and high school. The number of kids who had heard the rumors had little sympathy for a boy who’d been plagued by demons. The ones who did thought it was cool were usually the ones who donned all black clothing, black lipstick and had serious issues. Those were the ones which he wanted nothing to do with.
Tony stopped standing on the stoop realizing he was daydreaming and probably looked a fool standing there. When he put in the key he almost half sensed that it was going to open on its own. But it didn’t and he walked in looking around for his mother. “Ma, you home? Ma?”
No answer came, he’d figured she would be at work, but a hug from someone who cared right now would have meant the world to him. Alecia would do just fine and then some, but the feeling of being held by a parent who cared could make you feel like a kid again... in Tony’s case it was one of the “non” demon possessed times he’d like to be transported back to his psyche. He took the stairs to his room quickly realizing it’d been hours and had a smoke, the nicotine coursed through his veins as the smoke made its way in and back out. He watched the smoke going into the air, circling around and making its way back down and into the closet beneath. He realized anyone would come off as completely insane for what he was doing next, but he wasn’t anyone and this wasn’t any normal house...it had a history.
He pulled the water out uncapping it, wanting it to be ready. “Who’s there, what do you want?”
A slow sound of fingernails, but much deeper came from the other side of the door. He could visualize strips of wood being slowly shaved off the back of the door and curling, falling to the ground. Tony kicked the door, “I said what the hell do you want?”
“Everything.” Was all that it said, “Our ruler wants everything.”
The door began to shake and Tony ran a line of water down the frame and across the closet’s entrance, almost half of it spilt as he couldn’t keep his control. The scratching became a pounding until it subsided and quit completely. He walked backwards, stumbling onto his bed. He tried to raise his hand to his mouth to take a drag, but his hand had never been so shaky before.
The door began to glow red from beneath and smoke filled the room. Tony looked around coughing on the smoke. He tried to breathe, but it was all he could do not to choke to death. He threw the rest of the water on the door crack and screamed with his last breath, “Stay in hell you bastard, you aren’t taking me again! I’m going to become a priest and I’ll send abominations like you back to hell every chance I can! My God is a just and good one and he will smite you and your devil.”
The water leaked out of the container and the smoke turned black making it impossible to see. Both of Tony’s eyes watered and he fell to the floor, unsure what to do. He began crawling for the door and when he got a hand on it, it did not budge. Tony was trying to think on his feet but couldn’t figure out anything. One of his crosses hit against his chest. He removed it placing it on the handle and pressing the cross onto the knob. He took a deep breath, turning the knob hoping his faith was enough and when he did it clicked open. Tony watched as the smoke dissipated. He sat up against the door to his room. He didn’t waste any time and crawled out of the room. When he thought he had even the slightest of his composure and air back, he stumbled sloppily down the stairs. He left a note thumbtacked to the front door. Tony got on his bike, taking a couple quick breaths not wanting to drop his bike. Had Tony waited, he’d have caught his mother rounding the corner as well as the note being blown away.
Chapter 10
Outside Holt’s Garage
Billy left the garage in a hurry looking around. He thought for a moment that Morty could be around and maybe he would be annoyed, but not too annoyed not to accept a ride back to the church. The number of things he currently was worried about were increasing. The main thing besides the devil coming was that they wanted his brother and at the moment he was missing and if he was a target he was not safe!
Not that it was an uncommon sound to him but he could hear the sound of pain, but better explained it was more like torture. He thought about running back into the shop and getting the men, but remembered quite quickly that they and the customers waiting were all demons and that was what the pounding coming from the steel door behind him was. Even if they weren’t demons, he figured he’d have a better chance of trying to get the police to come to the ghetto and quickly even if he told them he was a member of the local church.
Billy sucked it up and sprinted into the sound of danger. He ran down an alley where there were four homeless men staggering around, one which Billy wanted to pass quickly. The four walked out staggering, but when the first looked up, his eyes, which were red began turning the actual color. The bloodshot in them was no longer the reddest part of his eyes. His friend and fellow bum saw him and yelled, “What is wrong with you Cletus?”
Cletus looked at him, but only because he was speaking. It had nothing to do with the fact that they knew each other, because currently what was possessing him had no clue who he was. He stared back to Billy approaching…approaching much slower now as he was quite sure what he was looking at. The man put an arm on Cletus’ shoulder shaking him gently. He brought up a hand never blinking and wrapped it around the bum’s wrist.
Cletus pulled the bum in front of him taking his other hand under the man’s scrotum in one fluid motion, lifting him in the air and throwing him as if he were a child’s rag doll up and into the brick wall head first. He had thrown him so hard that his head split open on impact. He landed on the ground in a heap of crates, blood gushed from his head. The second bum Greg turned to run away, he didn’t care what was going on, he knew it didn’t have anything to do with him. The man raised a hand and Greg turned around to stare at Billy dead to rights.
Greg said, “There’s no reason the blood bag is able to kill all of the priests.”
Cletus hushed him, but Greg said, “You know nothing, there will be no future conversations this man will have.”
Billy was already on a ten for adrenaline. He reached down to pick up a two by four but already confident it’d do little good. Cletus laughed loud enough for it to echo down to Billy and out the rear of the alley. Billy looked down at it, he’d seen what happens when you hit a demon, it didn’t matter what you hit it with.
His supply was running low, but was still far from out, thank God, he thought, as he pulled out a few of the glass water filled balls. Greg and Cletus both knelt just enough to make what they were doing predictable. They leapt and the distance between Billy and them was fading away with each leap.
Billy pulled holy water balls out and with no worry about himself brought them down hard enough to shatter them on the middle and the end of the board, he could feel shards of glass in his fingers and knew if he lived there’d be plenty of time to get medical care. Cletus growled as he approached, Greg was not far behind. Th
e two demons were running on all fours now taking turns leaping off the walls.
They felt invincible and the hatred they had for Billy was not going to be enough to stop them. Billy hung on to the board. A few slim lines of blood made their way down the board. Billy waited to the last minute until Cletus was within five feet. When he was on his final leap, mouth open, with his arms outstretched toward him Billy brought up the wood stepping back a foot and letting Cletus soar directly underneath him. Billy brought down the board so hard that it snapped over the back of his skull.
His forward progression stopped and he slid in the alleyways gravel to what would have been a painful time if the human were in charge. Greg was still moving, seeing his brother in hell did little to settle him down. He connected with Billy’s waist tackling him. The two of them flew backwards and Billy took the full impact.
Greg growled, “We will take it this time, we will take everything! Those of you blood bags which don’t want to be under our dark lord can be dealt with immediately. It will be a beautiful thing when your world dies as you know it and we can rule it in slavery the way we want to.”
Billy tried to push up, but Greg slammed him back down to the ground, using a hammer fist strike to the man’s chest. His head slammed into the road, a rock made its way through the skin on the back of his head and in between being repeatedly hit on the ground, knew there was blood and that he had little time left before fighting back would not be an option. Billy frantically reached into his coat pocket. He took three more glass holy water balls and screamed,” Go back to hell demon!”
Greg snarled ready to take one final blow and put the priest out of his misery and deliver him to evil. He placed both hands above his head wrapped together and ready to bring them down with a force Billy knew would probably finish him. When he looked as if he was bringing his arms down Billy squeezed with all he had shattering the holy water balls in his hand.
The pain of the glass was welcomed because he would know that his hit would carry the force of a heavyweight boxer. Billy swung, connecting with his jaw. The hit sent him off and he rolled. When he tried to get back up and tackle Billy again, Billy wiped the water on his knee and when the demon tried to connect his hands around Billy’s waist, found a knee waiting for him. Billy brought up his leg as hard as he could leaving all the weight on his free foot. He connected perfectly with the man’s nose, sending him stumbling backwards, a rainbow of blood flew above him and back as he went up into the air and his nose was spraying through the entire time.
Billy leapt into the air, landing on him while bringing out his bottle of holy water and ripped the cap off with his teeth spitting it into the air. Greg’s demon screamed and that was when he dumped the water down its throat, followed by running his hand underneath it and did the sign of the cross on his head. Greg screamed in agony and Billy knew that there would be no punishment for putting a demon through the pain he was. Smoke rolled out of his mouth and a red bruise in the sign of a cross instantly appeared as he broke through the demon’s defense.
Greg still tried to get up again, but Billy had broken through his barrier. Billy continued to hold him down, “I send you to hell, I denounce you on my earth and you can go back to the damned, as one of Satan’s soldiers.” Billy was no longer going by church prayers that had been practically carved into his psyche. “You do not belong here, and you must leave, you will not take myself, my friends, my loved ones, or any good soul on Earth, your god is weak and mine is just!”
“You do not have the power to stop us all, you will fall, you are a blood bag puppet, you are nothing but a puppet!”
Billy poured what was left of a canister down its throat. It tried to cough back up the water; Billy could only imagine what it felt like. Billy held his hands over the demon’s mouth, smoke poured from between his fingers, but he didn’t remove it until the demon’s color finally faded and the bum’s face went back to a natural red color from the abundance of liquor. When his eyes shot open and all he saw was bloodshot eyes, he let his hands off falling backwards. The man rolled over puking the water and all that he had in his stomach upon the alleyway ground. Billy patted him on the back not sure what he could do for him.
When Cletus started getting back up Billy ran over kicking him in the gut. All the air, he had in his lungs came out with a cry. Cletus landed on his back looking up terrified, non-demonic eyes looking at him and his lip quivering. The demon had decided to try another poor soul. Cletus tried to hold up his hands in defense but could not get over the pain that was gushing through his body. Billy almost felt guilty for their pain had it not been for the fact he had just saved both of their lives and God knows how many of the others. Cletus began to cry, “Please don’t hurt me, I’ll go to church, I’ll go to service, father, just please don’t hurt me, please, we ain’t got anything!”
Billy took one of the man’s hands pulling him up to his feet. He repeated the process for Greg and when they were both on their feet, pulled out his wallet handing each of them a ten-dollar bill. “The two of you go get something to eat, don’t drink it, or I’ll know, you understand me?”
The two both nodded nervously reaching out with shaking hands. When the priest made no moves, and showed no trickery they each snatched it making the money disappear. Neither man waited long after taking the cash before running down the alleyway. Each of them staring at each other trying to figure out what the hell had just happened.
Billy watched as they disappeared around the alley and rested against a brick wall for a few minutes. They’d come outside of homes before, they’d taken the innocent but nothing like this in years, not since his youth.
The screams that he had heard before had not dwindled. The original one sounded like it was now being accompanied by another. He looked behind him to make sure there was no other new threat. When the screams slowed down, he realized he was wasting time he didn’t have. The fact that the devil was taunting him so regularly meant something bad.
The idea of them going after Tony again made his stomach turn. Billy ran to the edge of the alley looking for the screaming. A steady stream of smoke made its way up into the air. He saw the van that Morty and his crew had been in earlier. Seeing what happened to them didn’t necessarily make him feel guilty, but nonetheless didn’t want anything to happen.
The dead were surrounding it, so many memories from his youth were rushing back at him. He ran toward the van to see what he could do, one man that was unrecognizable lay on the ground, a horde of the dead surrounded his picked apart body, another hanging out of the side of the van was practically picked clean. He saw the one demon possessed zombie walking away with a film camera in one hand the size of the ones that they used. He walked to the side to see what was going on with the driver and saw something that stole his breath. The van was stuffed with the dead and the last man’s screams echoed to him.
Chapter 11
James made his way into the office. Sister Judith was in her seat still and pointed to the hallway that the two men had gone down and where Father Michaels was still. He gave a thumb up and walked down to find Father Michaels looking at a stack of papers in his hands.
James cleared his throat and Father Michaels looked to him, seeing that he’d not had an easy go around. “What it is, Father Clapper?”
“You’ve known me more than long enough to know you don’t need to be formal with me, Father Michaels.”
“Then quit wasting both of our time and spit it out, please, James.”
“We took care of it, Billy needs stitches, but he isn’t smart enough to stop to get them taken care of.”
“So, what is he doing with his bad decision-making skills instead of getting his hand looked at, like it should be?”
“He’s running after Tony, we dropped him off at the shop where he works. He is a mechanic now; did you know that? The kid wasn’t a few feet tall when I met him now he’s tall as me, still a skinny punk but regardless.”
Father Michaels tried to be patient,
but his day had not been stress-free either. “James, can I assume confidently that if Billy is out running around the city with a hole in his hand that there is a reason for it?”
“The demons said that-”
“You mean demon, not demons, right?” Father Michaels said interrupting.
“Oh no, we most definitely had two, trust me, when we saved the brother, the sister threw the brother out the window.”
“Was he alright?”
“I leapt right out after him. We dropped him to his dad and then saved her, and removed the second demon. He’s making a play though not like usual…he isn’t just being annoying or trying to pick at a few souls, this is big, on a big scale!”
