Fear the Wicked (Illusions Series Book 2)

by Lily White

  In truth, he had. Initially, at least. But as is common with the passage of time, I’d had the opportunity to lick my wounds until they healed and regained my sanity.

  Ha. Sanity. The thought of it actually made me laugh as I slowly approached the parish I hadn’t seen in months with a gun tucked into the back of my pants and another at my side. There was nothing sane about this situation. Not what I’d learned about the past, and definitely not what I’d learn about Jericho claiming to be me as he continued leading the parish as its priest. We’d long traveled past what it means to be sane and wandered into a fictional world filled with the most wicked men of all.

  From what I was beginning to understand, it’s the people dressing themselves in the shroud of being good men that can commit the most evil. They are given access to the young. Are trusted with the minds and bodies of the faithful. They lead us in a way of thinking that eventually grooms us to believe that they are infallible and can commit no wrongs. We are constantly directed to look into the light so that our eyes can’t adjust to the shadows. And it is within those murky confines that exist behind closed doors and within tight corners that we see the truth. There is nothing good about them at all, we’ve just been trained to believe the illusions they cast out and told us were reality.

  Those are the people to be avoided above all costs. Those are the ones that should be publically shamed and brought out to admit to their horrifying crimes. Because, in the end, it’s the deceivers that are the most horrendous of all, and if good men do really exist in this world slowly slipping into Hell, then those men would be better off opening their eyes to the truth that stands before them, because to see it is to fear the wicked.

  I don’t believe that all men who claim to be good are actually bad. Men like Father Timothy exist, the kind who truly believe they can make a difference. It just sucks that a faith that should have been a beautiful balm to the soul of the devout can be used to disguise pure evil.

  It’s not like we weren’t warned. It’s written all over the Bible. But when a society is formed beneath the fantasy that true darkness cannot exist beneath God’s light, that society is doomed to fall. We’ve closed our eyes to the true seat of power. We’ve covered our ears and refused to believe we were led astray. It’s not the fault of the faith that we’ve sunk so far, it’s what’s been done with it in the hands of power hungry men.

  Money truly is the root of all evil – it’s a shame that people have been led astray for so long, they’re no longer able to see it.

  All was quiet around the parish property except for the faint murmur of noise leaking out past cracked windows to echo across the yard. It was obvious that the pews were filled inside and that Mass was ongoing, which made me wonder even more what Jericho was doing.

  A chorus of voices became louder the closer I approached, and I was genuinely surprised that I hadn’t yet been spotted or encountered. Perhaps enough time had passed that Jericho was complacent in the misguided belief that I would never return, that I would never think to find out what happened to my former parish.

  His complacency was good for me. It made it easier to sneak up and in position. Through a small window I remembered that looked into the sanctuary, I peeked in and damn near froze in shock.

  Jericho stood at the altar speaking a blessing that had no roots in the faith. Instead of the relics and religious symbols that used to cover that altar, a woman was laid out over its surface. The entire fucking town was sitting in the pews praying in unison with my twin brother, not a single one of them concerned about the naked woman lying beneath him.

  My world spun around me at that moment, reality twisting and bending before finally snapping back into place. What the hell had Jericho done to make everybody believe blasphemy like this was okay?

  The prayers ended, the parish growing quiet as the parishioners rose from their knees to resettle their bodies in the pews. Jericho’s smile stretched his face as he lifted his head to face them.

  “She’s possessed with the demon of lust,” he called out, his hand resting on the poor girl’s shoulder. I craned my neck and narrowed my eyes in effort to recognize his victim.

  Molly Harrison was stretched out before him, a fourteen year old girl with the face of an angel. Her blonde hair was swept back so that it fell from the table’s edge, her body exposed to the eyes of the parishioners. And rather than appearing afraid or embarrassed for exposing herself to the entire town, she lay there with a peaceful expression.

  “But she can be saved. Just like we’ve saved the others before her. We are powerful as a united front. We’ve eradicated the other demons. One by one, we are freeing this town of the evil that attempted to consume us. On our own, and individually, we were weak, but together we can face down any of Satan’s demons and send them back to the darkness from which they sprung. Who will assist me now in ridding this young girl of the lustful sins that infect her?”

  How in the name of all that’s holy had Jericho pulled this off?

  The answers wouldn’t come to me no matter how hard I racked my brain. The only thing I could comprehend at that moment was the force of my building rage. This wasn’t what the faith was about. I’d spent twelve years teaching this town about what God intended for his faithful and none of it allowed for something like this. Yet, in a few months, under Jericho’s control, the townspeople had become nothing more than the brainwashed members of his cult.

  “My son would like to help,” Addy Marks called out as she raised a shaky hand into the air. “I know he’s young, but I believe it would do him some good to see how much of God’s power is inside him.”

  My eyes rounded into saucers. Addy’s son, Jeremiah, was only seven years old.

  Jericho grinned like a fox in a henhouse. “Send young Jeremiah up. Don’t be shy, young one. We all have the power of God inside us.”

  The boy pushed from the pew where he’d been sitting beside his mother. His brown hair was cut short to his skull but still managed to look wild. Dressed in a white shirt that was freshly ironed and brown slacks that matched his shoes, it was clearly obvious he was frightened by the changes that had taken place at his parish. His mother, having noticed his hesitancy to approach the altar where Jericho stood, reached out to prod him along by pushing her hand against his back. She whispered something to him that I couldn’t hear, but the words had been enough to spur him along. Slowly he walked up the center aisle, his head turning this way and that to see the rest of the parishioners smiling over at him.

  I had to fight not to reach for my gun and shoot Jericho before the boy could reach him. But unfortunately he was too far away for the weapon I had. All I would do is alert every person inside the building to my presence.

  Once Jeremiah reached the altar, he reached out to accept Jericho’s hand. Led around the side, he was positioned to stand where Jericho had previously been, a blade pulled from a jeweled box by my evil twin and placed in the boy’s hand.

  “Now, young one. What do we know about sin?”

  Jeremiah’s voice was so tiny that I could barely hear his response. “Sin is bad.”

  Jericho laughed. “From the mouths of babes. Yes, young man, sin is bad. You are right in that. And how do we get rid of it?”

  Shifting his weight from foot to foot, Jeremiah looked less convinced of the answer he was about to give, but still he held on to the handle of the knife and looked over the naked body of the girl laid out on the altar in front of him. It was most likely the first time he’d seen a woman without clothes. “Through pain,” he finally answered, shifting his weight once again.

  “Yes,” Jericho crooned, “That’s very good. It shows that you know how to listen. You’ve watched me release the sin from a woman’s body, right? You know what to do with the knife.”

  One would think that Molly would be struggling against the fate Jericho had assigned her, but instead, she lay on that table smiling up at the man who was convincing a small child to hurt her. I shook my head, far too focused on
what was occurring at the altar to notice much else.

  Slowly, the boy raised the knife that looked far too large for his small hand, and with a sweeping motion that was clumsy at best, he brought the blade down to run it over Molly’s body. It wasn’t enough pressure to kill her, just enough to slice the skin, and Molly’s mouth opened as that blade ran over her body, the scream tearing from her throat filling the entire parish.

  After a few seconds, Jericho took the knife from Jeremiah and whispered something in his ear. The boy smiled up at him before turning back to the parishioners with pride shining behind his eyes. Everybody clapped and began praying again while Jeremiah returned to his seat. Jericho took a cloth to clean the blood from Molly’s wound and also to clean the blade.

  “This is just the beginning of her purging of the sin in her body. As many of you know, it will take a week at least to rid her of all of it. She’s made the first necessary steps by stepping up and confessing the evil thoughts in her head. She’s exposed herself to our scrutiny and begged for our forgiveness as a body of the faithful so that she may again be right with the Almighty. After today, I’ll take her to the compound to continue her path to the light. But I want to thank you all for your strong faith and the help you are giving me in freeing this town from the evil that has plagued us for far too long.”

  People applauded his words and began shuffling around to get up from their pews. I watched and identified many of the townspeople, but also recognized the uniforms worn by Jericho’s cult family. Knowing I had to leave before anybody walked outside and saw me, I began to turn around when one particular face caught my attention.

  It was the face of an angel.

  The face of a woman who couldn’t possibly be standing among the living.

  And as shock burst inside me, weakening my knees as recognition took hold, I understood for the first time the game that had been played against me.

  Anger rushed in to replace the shock, my hand reaching for my gun only because the feel of the cold metal against my fingers comforted me.

  There, standing among the parishioners and members of Jericho’s cult, was a truth that shouldn’t have been possible.

  My heart constricted to the point where it felt like it wasn’t beating, my breath held in my lungs until they burned and forced the air out. My head swam and reality shifted again when my mind finally caught up to what my eyes were seeing and I recognized Eve was still alive.

  JOSHUA

  I was so tired of that arrogant prick who thought what he was doing was God’s way. For so many years, he’d led the family to believe that he was holy. I hate to admit that even I’d been fooled by his smooth, proud voice and promises of salvation at Heaven’s gates. My parents still believed it, as did the rest of the family, but I wouldn’t be fooled any longer.

  How he’d convinced us all of his power was simple enough, only because he kept us weak, kept us blind and kept us separate from the world around us. He drove fear into the hearts of every person who lived in that compound and had convinced them all that the only way to God was through him. And even during all the small excursions into town that he’d allowed, he wouldn’t allow us to stray far, wouldn’t allow us to pick up a book or watch a television claiming that all the knowledge thrown out in the world around us was placed there by the Devil to deceive us.

  I’d gone against his rules on the day I swiped a bible from a vendor’s table at the market. Elijah had been too focused on Eve to notice what I’d done. After stuffing the book into the bag I carried, I’d smiled and pretended like business was the same as usual. We were there to pick up a few items we couldn’t produce on our own and within an hour we were walking back to the compound.

  Always with the walking regardless of how exhausted we all were. It seemed like we were starving more than we were fed, but he’d told us to ignore the way our stomachs grumbled.

  It’s the demons making you believe God hasn’t provided, he’d claimed. But if you place your faith in the power of the Almighty, you will see the truth of their deceptions.

  Lies, lies and more lies, yet the family sucked them up and truly believed that everything Elijah did was for their own good. I was tired of the lies, tired of being tired and hungry, tired of wearing the same thing day in and day out while I sweated to work the gardens and train the dogs that were intentionally kept starving just like us so that they were bloodthirsty.

  I wasn’t an avid reader, I’d only been taught how to read until my parents had dragged me to the compound, so it took me a long time to work my way through the pages of the Bible I’d stolen. Elijah would have claimed my desire to read was prideful, and maybe it was. I noticed that he was the only one who knew what the book said, and I figured that’s what made him so holy and powerful. I wanted to be as loved by God as him, and I’d wanted some of that power for myself. But after struggling at night when nobody was looking, reading against the glow of candlelight, I realized that many of the lessons Elijah was teaching were just plain wrong.

  God loved every human equally, we were all his children on this Earth and not one person was placed above the other when it came to his love for us. The savior wasn’t the man leading us to his version of the light, it was the one who died on the cross for all our sins, promising that if we would just love each other as much as him, we too could receive God’s favor.

  So, why was it that Elijah was teaching us to judge every person who wasn’t like us? Why was he filling us with so much hate? And why did he think it was right to use the words written in the Good Lord’s book to commit evil in God’s name?

  None of it made sense and I wished it hadn’t taken me so long to see it. I could blame that length of time on the fact that I was a slow reader, but it didn’t excuse me for my ignorance and what I’d already allowed to happen simply because Elijah told me it was right.

  He’d pulled me under his wing after deciding to marry my sister. He’d promised me that she was meant to help him begin the war that would rid all of us of the evil infecting this world. After instructing me to run her off on the night he was supposed to officially marry her, he’d convinced me to stay at the compound and let her run off by herself into the woods. For a full week I didn’t know what was being done to Sedra, or Eve as he made us call her. I didn’t realize until it was time to collect her from the parish that Elijah had allowed her to sleep with his own brother. It wasn’t until we walked to the parish that day that he’d told me the truth of what he’d done, but even then he’d convinced me it was all God’s plan, that her sacrifice was as beautiful and holy as God’s own Son.

  Slowly, the truth had come to me, and during that time I’d watched my sister become weaker and weaker with the teas she’d been drinking. I realized over the week that she was at the compound and Elijah stayed at the parish that if I didn’t get her away from him, eventually she would die.

  After watching the service today and seeing what he’d convinced a child to do to another child, I was finally to a point where I understood that there was no other choice but to run away. I didn’t know where we would go or how we would get there, but I had to believe we’d find our way. So while Elijah was distracted by the townspeople talking to him, I approached Eve where she stood silently waiting.

  “Hey, Sis. How are you feeling today?”

  She turned to me and the light pouring through the windows sparkled in her green eyes. I noticed her health was returning ever since Elijah claimed to have purified her by crucifying that man at the compound. What most of the family didn’t notice was that at the same time he’d purified her by killing another, he’d also stopped giving her that tea. I noticed, but kept my mouth shut. I had to keep pretending I was still the ignorant believer in the lies he’d spread since the day I’d met him. Speaking up would only position me directly in his crosshairs and I’d never be able to escape with Eve. I couldn’t even tell my parents because they were so far gone in their belief in Elijah, they would run to him in the misguided belief they were sa
ving their daughter from the evil that infected me.

  “Joshua,” she wrapped her arms around me and gave me a strong hug. It made me happy to notice that her bones were no longer as obvious beneath her skin as they had been just a few weeks ago. “I’m so happy to see you.”

  Laughing, I reached up to rub at the back of my neck, my muscles were tied in knots because I knew this might be my only chance to get her away from Elijah. “Me too. I was wondering if you’d like to take a walk with me? You know, just so we can talk and catch up.”

  Turning immediately to look at her husband, Eve’s mouth twisted with indecision. A few tense seconds passed before she looked back at me and smiled. “Elijah looks like he’ll be busy for a little while. And I’d like to go outside and get some fresh air. But we have to stay on the parish grounds. I’m sure he’ll be looking for me once he gets done talking to all those people.”

  Thankfully, the backyard of the parish was large and bordered by the woods. If I could get her far enough away from the building, there was a chance I could quiet her while dragging her off. If there was enough distance between us and the building, nobody would hear her arguing as long as I covered her mouth. I hated the thought that I might accidentally hurt her just to drag her away from the true danger - Elijah.

  “That sounds good.” Offering her my arm, I waited for her to wrap hers through mine and allow me to lead her from the building. My heart was racing with worry, but I wouldn’t let it stop me from at least trying to save my sister.

  Stepping outside, the warmth of the sun brushed my cheeks, birds singing from their treetop perches as people shuffled off to their cars or to walk down the sidewalks toward their homes. Fortunately, nobody noticed we’d wandered out and I led Eve around the side of the building and across the yard toward the line of trees at the back. I knew of an old hunting lodge that was hidden deep inside the forest, one that would only be a roof over our head and nothing more, but it would have to be enough until I could figure out where to take Eve to keep her away from Elijah.