by DC Malone
“I said he acted as a catalyst, and he does bear some responsibility for the murders, but the situation is more complex than I had originally thought. Donovan isn’t the murderer, but he sort of unleashed the murderer. That’s my take on it, at least.”
“Okay,” Carter replied, still not sitting, “That’s fine. It doesn’t matter. If he, uh, freed this murderer, then he’ll know something that can lead us to him. Perhaps he’s not completely at fault, but it sounds like he’s complicit in some way. We can use that to our advantage.”
“The murderer is a demon.”
Carter sat back down.
“A demon?”
“Yup.”
“Like red horns and a pitchfork?”
“Pretty sure that’s a devil,” I said gently. “But you’re on the right track.”
“A demon.” Carter grabbed his bottle from the bar and took a long drink. “I don’t have any idea what to do with that.”
“Join the club,” I said. “I almost had a panic attack. Of course, I’ll utterly deny that if you try to tell anyone.”
“You saw it?”
“Sort of. Felt it, too. Not one of my favorite experiences.”
“Do you think you might be able to…” Carter cleared his throat pointedly. “Work your magic on it, so to speak?”
“Huh, I’m actually not sure.” Most of the stuff I could do—interacting with spirits, peering into the deaths of the recently passed, and so on—had a feeling of innateness attached to it. It was almost like having muscle memory for things I’d never actually done before. But once I did them, they felt right on some intuitive level. To some extent, I felt that feeling every time I interacted with the realm of the dead.
I got none of that feeling when I was in the presence of the demon. Nothing that suggested we were even playing on the same ballfield.
“I’ll take that look to mean you’re a little surer than you’re letting on,” Carter quipped.
“Maybe that’s true. This demon doesn’t feel like something I’m just going to be able to shoo away. I left a message with my personal demonologist but, as usual, he’s taking his sweet time getting back to me.” I wasn’t sure what was tying up Hiram this time, but I hoped it wasn’t a certain nosey woman-child in search of more information about me.
“I guess that’s something, at least.” Carter finished off his beer in one long pull. “Waiting around is my least favorite part, but it seems like that’s all I’ve been doing lately, really. None of this demon stuff is really in my wheelhouse, so I guess waiting is all I’m going to be good for.”
“Not necessarily.” I pulled out my phone, tapped it to life, and brought up a Maps page. I handed it over to Carter.
“Holy Mother of Light,” he read. “Is this?”
“Donovan’s church? Sure is. I did a little Google-fu while I waited on you. Wanna go take a look with me?”
“Why not.” Carter handed the phone back. “It sure beats waiting.”
Chapter 10
Holy Mother of Light church was in the south part of the city, nestled between a structure housing yet-to-be rented business spaces and a small, four-story apartment building. It looked just like any other church to me—vaguely castle-like, with its elongated features and pointed windows of stained glass. Granted, I wasn’t exactly an expert, but, as a child, the home had rounded us up twice a week and bussed us to one of the hundreds of Catholic churches in Boston. So, I had some point of reference, at least.
Those old childhood church sessions only left me with a feeling of boredom and impatience. Come to think of it, most of my childhood could be summed up as some combination of boredom and impatience. But as Carter and I approached the entrance, Donovan’s church gave off a different vibe than anything I could ever remember experiencing. Maybe it was just because the place appeared long empty, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that the building somehow emanated an intense feeling of loneliness. It was a cold and hollow feeling, and I had to shove my hands into my jacket pockets to try to win back some of the warmth the place seemed to be sapping out of me.
“Place gives me the heebie-jeebies,” Carter said. He rapped his knuckles against the door and waited.
“I don’t know,” I replied. “It kind of gives me the warm fuzzies. Just like home.”
Carter looked down and narrowed his eyes at me. “Really? This place?”
“God no. I’m just messing with you.”
“Good. You had me worried for a minute.”
Carter and I waited another minute or so, then he tried the door. It was locked.
“This was a little anticlimactic. Don’t think I’m going to be able to get a warrant on the basis that you think the priest of this church summoned a demon. Somehow, I really don’t think that’s going to fly with the higherups.”
I pulled my little ring of lock pick tools out of my jacket and jangled them in front of Carter. “I just happen to have my warrant right here.”
“Just possessing those things is illegal in some states.”
“Not ours.”
“No, but using them to break into a church is—”
“You can avert your gaze if it makes you feel any better,” I suggested. “Then we can pretend the place was unlocked when we got here. I’m not a brute, and there won’t be any signs of forced entry.”
Carter sighed. “That won’t be necessary. It’s not like I’m going to be able to report any of this. And if we do manage to get our man, something tells me I won’t be bringing him in in the traditional sense.”
“We will cast the fiend back down into the fiery depths of hell,” I said with a faux grandiosity.
Carter didn’t appear to be amused.
“Too much?” I started in on the door’s lock. The mechanism wasn’t elaborate, and I knew I would have it popped inside of a minute.
“What? Oh, no, you’re fine—that was funny. I’m just distracted still. It’s a lot to wrap my head around, you know? A week ago, my life was, well, normal. And now I feel like I’m starring in an episode of The X-Files.”
The lock made a satisfying click, and I pulled the door open. “After you, Mulder.”
“Thanks.” Carter walked through the doors and into a little entryway that was lit only by the light shining in from outside. “But wouldn’t it make more sense for me to be Scully? Mulder was the one who reveled in all this supernatural stuff.”
I followed him in and let the door snap shut behind us. Carter found the light switch and flicked it on. The room was small and had a few benches set against one wall, with the other offering a large bulletin board and a calendar of church events. Opposite the side we came in was a set of double doors that led into the church proper.
“Yeah, that would probably make more sense,” I replied, “but I still get to be Scully. It’s just confusing otherwise. Plus, we’re both redheads, and that’s a bond greater than any other.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
Carter started to press on through the double doors, but I stopped him when a framed photo on the wall caught my eye.
“Check this out. Am I crazy or…” The photograph was a five-by-seven in a plain black frame that had been affixed just below the bulletin board. It showed a group of ten smiling men gathered around Father Donovan.
I pointed to the man on the far right side of the image. “That’s that Compton guy who murdered his worker, right? And there’s the guy I saw in my last vision. Caleb something.”
“Hicks.” Carter finished, leaning down to look at the photo. He stabbed a finger at a burly man to the priest’s left. “And that’s Jeffrey Eustace, the brother of the first victim.”
“He’s the guy you originally figured for the murderer in that one, right?”
“Yeah, and I’m certain of it now. Of course, it doesn’t mean anything if what you say about the demon is true. They’re just puppets, right?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know how any of it works, but the demon is definitely pulli
ng from this group for some reason. There have been four murders so far, and I’m willing to bet money all of the murderers are in this picture. The question is: does the demon plan on using everyone here?”
“Ten murders,” Carter said. “Eleven, if you count the priest. This isn’t even halfway over.”
I pulled the picture loose from the wall and thumbed open the backing on the frame. Boys’ Club ’18 was scrawled across the back of the photo in blue ink.
“I was hoping for a list of names,” I said, shoving the picture into my jacket pocket. “But maybe it’ll still come in handy. Ready to see what a demon’s lair looks like?”
Carter paused with his hand on the double doors. “Wait, you think the demon is here?” He all but whispered the word demon, as though he thought naming the creature might summon it directly to us.
The bad thing was, I didn’t know that he was wrong.
Through the double doors was a longish room filled with row after row of pews. It was far grander than the church I remember from my childhood, but it didn’t hold a candle to those megachurch arena’s you saw on television.
The overall feeling of disuse and abandonment persisted in there too. Nothing was wrong with the room. It had, in fact, been kept up quite well. The wood of the pews had a bright polish, the simple, white walls were bright with what looked like fresh paint, and the overall appearance gave the impression that pride was taken in keeping the place tidy and in good repair.
But still, that cold, hollow sensation sat atop all others. It was a place meant to be inviting. A place for fellowship and hope. And yet the message it sent was clear and unmissable: you are not welcome here.
“I was never really one for churches in the first place,” Carter said in a hushed voice. “And this isn’t changing my mind any. Place feels like a morgue.”
“They’re not all like this.” I stooped to fish something bright from under the edge of one of the pews. It was a silver tennis bracelet with charms in the shapes of the letters K and T. It struck me as odd that it had been overlooked, given the room's state of cleanliness. “I was only in them as a child, but I remember a fair amount of brightness and cheer, even though I was a sulky child and didn’t really take part in such things. This place, though, is something different. Something contaminated, I think.”
“Great,” Carter said, meaning the exact opposite.
As we threaded our way down the center aisle, I noticed three figures sitting in the front row of pews. There were two women, one who looked younger than me and the other who looked older than God, and a man. They were seated with a few feet between them, neither together nor completely separate.
They were spirits, of course. No big surprise there. I seemed to remember the church from my childhood being a big draw for the dead. Young or old, recently passed or long dead, it didn’t seem to matter. All manner of folks showed back up for Mass. I just figured it has something to do with a desire to crossover to whatever came next, but who could say really. For all I knew, it simply came down to a lifetime’s habit of attending.
It did get me to thinking, though. For me, the question of an afterlife had never even been a question at all. I knew there was something else—had seen evidence of it my entire life. And that wasn’t down to just the fact that I saw dead people milling about. It was the number of dead people I saw. It didn’t take a math genius to see that if every person who’d ever died was still locked into some form of existence here on Earth, then the whole world would be full up with shades. But that wasn’t the case. Sure, I saw them regularly enough to not think of them as much different than any other passerby on the street, but if they were all still here, I probably wouldn’t have been able to see my hand in front of my face.
Which meant they went somewhere.
The question of where had never been that big a deal to me either. I figured I’d find out the answer eventually anyway, so I might as well let it be a surprise. But my encounter with the demon threw a bit of a wrinkle into my thoughts on the matter. At the very least, it raised a whole host of questions I never really wanted to ask before.
I edged up to the young lady at the near end of the pew. She looked to be in her mid-twenties, had blonde hair, and was staring front and center like she was wholly focused on a church service only she and her companions could see. If she registered my presence, she didn’t let on.
“Excuse me, miss.” It was always hit or miss trying to communicate with a shade, especially if they were focused on something else, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to try. They certainly looked like regulars, so if anyone had seen something, they had.
Carter jumped at the sound of my voice. “What? Are you talking to…”
“We’ve got a small audience,” I explained. “Nothing to worry about.”
“No, of course not,” he said under his breath. “We’re just standing around in a demon-tainted church with a bunch of ghosts floating around us. Where’s the problem with that?”
“It’s only three of them, actually. And they’re sitting quietly, not floating.”
“Sure, that makes it better.”
I tried engaging the blonde again. “Hi, my name’s Meredith.” When she still didn’t look over, I touched her on the shoulder. Well, touched isn’t exactly the right word, as my fingertips passed right through her, but there was some form of contact in the action.
That was a relatively new development in my relationship with the shades, one that came with learning more about my true nature. And much of that learning had come from one of the many sermon-length lectures Hiram had given me on the topic of what it meant to be a Necromancer. He was quick to dispel the notion that shades were some kind of afterimage of a once-living person. They were, in fact, there in some pseudo-physical form. An actual presence that could be interacted with on a level beyond simple communication.
The young woman flinched at my touch and finally turned her eyes on me. They were a deep blue that filled me with thoughts of the sea and a short life of sadness.
It was my turn to flinch away. Something in her gaze was too overwhelming to look at for very long. The connection was just too strong, and it only amplified the horrible coldness of the church around me.
“Leave.” Her voice was hushed and lilted by an accent I didn’t recognize.
I dared another glance at her face, opting to watch her lips instead of her eyes. “I was hoping you could tell me something about what’s been going on here in the church. Anything would—”
“Leave.”
“I’m not leaving.” The shade’s one-note reply was starting to get under my skin. “If you can’t help me, maybe one of your friends will be able to.”
“Something wrong?” Carter asked. I noticed that he had put about half the length of a pew between us.
“No, just a stubborn one. I think I might have more luck—”
The blonde woman rose suddenly and pinned me with her tortured blue eyes. “He watches. Even now. He watches and delights. He will make you watch too.” The shade punctuated each of her statements by taking a step toward me, forcing me backward.
The other two shades rose as one and turned to face me. The old woman’s gaze was vacant, and the man’s eyes were rolled far enough down in their sockets for him to study his bushy mustache. But their voice came in a perfectly-timed chorus with the blonde’s.
“He knows the truth of their hearts.” The shades’ voices were a singsong of jarring disharmonies, like fingernails down a chalkboard in vocal form. Their heads, again in unison, swung in Carter’s direction.
I turned to look, too, and found Carter staring back blankly, mouth slightly agape.
“Carter?”
“Uh-huh.” His voice was casual, almost disinterested.
“Are you looking at them?”
“No.”
I stared at him until he finally looked at me in return. There was nothing in his expression that suggested he was lying. More than that, there was no way he could see them. I
was being overly paranoid and with good reason. The shades weren’t acting right—not like any I had encountered before, anyway. They were being affected by the demon, or, at the very least, were aware of it—him—and acting strangely because of that knowledge.
Something flickered in the corner of my eye, and I turned in that direction to find that the shades were no longer there. That wasn’t all that odd, most shades I ran into popped in and out of existence seemingly on a whim, but it was a little weird that they all vanished at the same time. They usually weren’t that much in sync.
“Okay,” I said, still feeling a little blindsided by the whole episode. “That wasn’t helpful at all. Maybe we should look around some of the back rooms. I’m sure the priest had an office or something that might hold some clues.”
“Sounds good,” Carter replied. “You can get started without me. There’s something I want to check out on that bulletin board we saw in the other room.”
As Carter went in the opposite direction, I started toward the pulpit and the rest of the church beyond. Doors were flanking that central area of the room, and I figured there was a good chance one of them led to the priest’s personal chambers.
I had my hand on the doorknob of the rightmost door behind the pulpit when the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. It wasn’t from anything I thought might be behind the door, either. It was that flicker again, just at the edge of my vision.
I turned back to look at the pulpit, thinking one of the shades might have popped back in for another round of bizarre and cryptic warnings. There was nothing there, only a dark lectern adorned with various priestly paraphernalia.
No, that wasn’t right. There was something there. Something I had been unconsciously aware of since the moment I walked into the room. Behind the pulpit, right where the priest would be when the pews were full of attentive people and his service was in full swing, there was something. It wasn’t something I could see with my eyes, but I knew something was there. The apparently empty air was thick with intent, with malice. It gave off the same cold, uninviting vibe as the rest of the place.
