Catching Hell

by Greg F. Gifune

  “Whoa,” Tory said. “Look at that, dude.”

  On an interior wall behind them hung another portrait, this one larger than the others and housed in a gold-leaf frame. It bore the steely likeness of a gaunt man in later middle age. Dressed in a dark robe, his arms held out to his sides, palms up, he stared down at them with furious condemnation. His fiery eyes, receding shock of black hair and bony face made for a presence equal parts mesmerizing and deeply unsettling. On a small gold tablet mounted beneath the portrait The Reverend Alton Boxer, 1699 had been inscribed.

  “Must be the town’s founder,” Billy reasoned.

  “Charming,” Stefan said.

  Billy watched the eyes in the portrait. There was a sickness to them, something dark and depraved. A chill licked his spine, slowly inching up toward the back of his neck. He forced himself away, deeper into the room.

  As the others separated, taking in various areas of the library, Billy moved to one wall of bookcases. As he scanned the titles, the scope of the section began to take shape. The entire side wall of the library was dedicated to the occult. “Guys, you better take a look at this.”

  Stefan, once aware of what he was seeing, gave a resigned sigh. “Great.”

  “Why would a town this small have such a huge number of books on occultism?” Alex asked. “Half the library’s nothing but.”

  “Look at some of the titles,” Billy said, reading the spines. “There are lots of books about town history in this section too, so I think it’s safe to assume the people here are tied to this sort of thing.”

  “And always have been,” Alex added.

  “Maybe it’s a religious thing,” Stefan said, “a sect or something.”

  “Not all occult stuff’s bad.” Tory leaned against the corner of the table. “It covers lots of stuff. I dated this one really cool Wiccan chick from Frisco and—”

  “Yeah, fascinating, but that’s not what this is.” Billy selected a few titles then brought them to the table. “Let’s see what these have to say.”

  The first book, published in the early 1940s, had been written by a local schoolteacher and mostly on town history. Flipping through the pages, Billy came upon a chapter dedicated to town founder Alton Boxer. The first page showed a drawing of him standing at the mouth of a large field, his black robes flowing in the wind, one hand pointing toward distant hills and the other clutching a bible of some kind. Behind him, a group of stone-faced settlers gazed at the horizon. “This Boxer cat was a minister from Massachusetts,” Billy said, reading the page of text opposite. “In 1691 he and his followers were charged with heresy, witchcraft and consorting with the Devil. They were thrown out of the church, but Boxer and his flock took off before they could be tried. This is where they ended up.”

  “Sixteen ninety-one,” Alex echoed. “A year later all hell broke out in Massachusetts. Miller’s The Crucible anyone?”

  “But the Salem Witch Trials were nothing more than mass hysteria,” Stefan reminded them. “It wasn’t real.”

  “Doesn’t mean this guy wasn’t,” Billy said, scanning the next page. “Ten years before the trials in Salem, New Castle Island in New Hampshire was plagued by mysterious demonic events, including hundreds of stones that fell from the heavens. The culprit was Lithobolia, the stone-throwing devil. Many believed this is where it all began, and that these events are what led to the strange happenings in Massachusetts. The Devil was on the loose, roaming from place to place. Alton Boxer visited New Castle while those events were happening. He had gone there as a man of God to investigate the alleged satanic forces at play himself, but soon returned to Massachusetts to tend to his church. For several years afterward, Boxer struggled with his faith and began to secretly investigate and study the occult. During this period, his teachings slowly began to change and embrace a different philosophy. According to this, through his studies of the occult he came to understand ‘the truth’. He’d seen it, this says. Boxer saw evil incarnate, its existence to him no longer a matter of faith but proven reality. He and his followers came to believe that purity could only truly be gained through total and absolute submission to sin.”

  “Pure evil,” Stefan said.

  “He taught that physical immortality for human beings was possible, but that it could not be gained through service to God. It could only be obtained by submitting to Man’s greatest adversary.” Billy looked up from the book, face pale. “Lucifer.”

  “Grody,” Tory said, “they’re a bunch of devil freaks.”

  “At least their founders were.” Alex leaned forward, both hands on the table. “What happened to this Boxer character?”

  “Doesn’t say.” Billy flipped through the book. “He founded the town in 1692, but I don’t see anything in here about Boxer’s death.” He closed the book, put it aside and moved to the next, an autobiography on an Italian man named Dante Salerno, an evidently well-known spiritualist and practitioner of the black arts who had apparently visited Boxer Hills in the 1940s. On the title page, Salerno had autographed the book and written the following inscription: To the people of Boxer Hills. Thank you for your warm welcome and hospitality. I dedicate this book to you, and all followers of the truth.—Eternally, Dante Salerno, August 1946. Billy relayed it then read from the biography. “Apparently this guy was a celebrity of sorts in occult circles. Sounds like an Aleister Crowley type. Seems odd that this guy would come to a town as small and remote as Boxer Hills, but this place obviously held significance for him.” He rifled through the third book he’d chosen, a book on séances, and then the forth, a history of angels, including the fallen, but didn’t find anything relevant. “What’s really weird is that all these books were published before 1947, so they don’t mention anything beyond that year. That in itself isn’t strange, but if you think about it, from the moment we got here we haven’t come across a single thing outside that timeframe. It’s like time’s stopped in this town.”

  “But why 1947?” Alex asked, “why that year specifically?”

  Billy pushed the stack of books away, sliding them to the far edge of the table. “I don’t know.”

  “Okay, well obviously time standing still isn’t possible, so it has to be something simpler than that.” Stefan began to pace on the opposite side of the table. “Maybe, like I said before, this is some sort of cult town, a religious sect into some far out dogma who for some reason feel the need to keep Boxer Hills tied to its past, to keep it frozen in 1947 rather than allowing it to move forward into the present.”

  “This isn’t about possible or impossible anymore.” Billy rose from his chair at the table. “What’s it gonna take to get that through your head?”

  “Some things have happened, but we can’t—”

  “For Christ’s sake, the people at that diner tried to serve us what very well may have been part of a human being!”

  “We don’t know that, it could’ve been—”

  “You almost choked to death! You almost died!”

  “Thanks so much for letting me know. I had no idea when I was vomiting and couldn’t breathe that I was in any danger whatsoever.”

  “Both of you be quiet,” Alex said suddenly, holding her hand up. “Listen.”

  Through the open library doors came a soft and distant sound. Though the specific words were garbled, the delivery was consistent and repetitive, like chanting. Slowly, it grew louder then louder still.

  Somewhere nearby, a large group of people had begun to pray.

  Chapter Six

  They emerged from the library, followed the gravel path out to the road then moved toward the stone building at the end of the street. The gray sky had turned darker, littered with enormous black storm clouds that churned slowly beyond the tops of the trees and blotted out any memory of sunshine. The humidity remained. The praying, a deep and eerie monotone, grew louder the closer they got to it, and like sailors mesmerized by a siren’s song, Billy led the others across the property. The sound reminded him of a radio program his gra
ndmother listened to when he was a child. Early in the morning the station had broadcast monks reciting the rosary. His grandmother would sit in her favorite chair and say her rosary with them, and Billy was always drawn to the droning, emotionless voices. As they echoed through the ancient cathedral, Billy often attempted to visualize these men in his mind, conjuring shadowy figures in brown robes, hoods concealing their faces as candlelight flickered against the dark and dreary stone walls of their monastery. Sometimes he even sat on the floor near his grandmother’s chair and whispered along.

  These prayers, however, were unlike any Billy had ever heard.

  A dirt path cut through the square of grass yard in front of the church. There were no markings of any kind on the building. The structure itself looked quite old but sturdy, constructed of dark stone to form something similar in appearance to a chapel. Atop the roof, where a cross or some other religious signature normally would have stood, lay only a small steeple of rock. The front door, a slab of thick wood with a black iron ring in place of a knob, bore no clues as to the building’s identity either, but it was streaked with a thin bloody stain that ran from its center to the bottom of the doorway.

  “Are you sure this is a church?” Alex asked.

  “Whatever, I’m not going in there.” Tory, who had stayed at the rear of the group, took a step back out toward the road. “You saw what those books said. They’re probably sacrificing babies in there.”

  Stefan stuffed his hands in his pockets. “Maybe we should just leave, get back on the road and—”

  “Drive around in circles?” Billy shook his head. “There’s a storm bearing down on us and it’ll be night soon. I don’t want to be here after dark.”

  Tory paced about anxiously. “What the hell language are they speaking?”

  “Latin,” Alex announced.

  “Obviously,” Stefan said, “but do you know what they’re saying?”

  “Sorry, only took one semester of it in high school.”

  “Fuck this shit.” Billy grabbed hold of the black iron ring and pulled. The heavy door opened with a scraping sound, its bottom edge grazing the stone base of the doorway as he flung it back and stepped over the threshold.

  The prayers ceased, and but for a murmur of outlying thunder, the town of Boxer Hills had again fallen silent.

  A musty smell wafted from inside the church, billowing out through the doorway. The interior was dusty, unkempt, and consisted of several wooden pews positioned along the stone floor and an altar at the rear of the building that appeared quite old and bore no religious markings. It was all quite sparse, dark and unremarkable.

  The church was also completely empty.

  “Where are the people?” It was the third time Tory had asked the question since Billy opened the door.

  Finally, Stefan attempted an answer. “Could it have been a tape or—”

  “Stefan, enough, Okay?” Alex ran her hands through her hair. “Enough.”

  “But there has to be a reasonable explanation.”

  Billy moved deeper inside the church. It looked as if it had been empty for years. He walked toward the altar. A rock about the size of a grapefruit sat at its center, a withered and dried out piece of parchment pinned beneath it. He pushed the rock aside and pulled free the parchment. The upper right edge crumbled in his hands, falling away in dusty pieces to the floor. The remainder was an artist’s rendition of what appeared to be a demonic court jester, half human, half devil, with a hideous grin that revealed razor-like teeth, one hand clutching its long, winding, reptilian-like tail, the other holding a stone. Behind it, two jagged leathery wings extended up like giant claws. “What’s the demon that book talked about?” Billy asked. “The one Boxer went to investigate.”

  “Lithobolia,” Alex said, “the stone-throwing devil.”

  Billy searched the thing’s eyes. It appeared to be laughing at him. “I think that’s what these people worship,” he said, turning the aged paper so the others could see. “I think that’s what this is.”

  “Whatever Boxer found in that New Hampshire town in 1682, it changed him,” Alex said. “And he brought it back with him to Massachusetts. That’s why he and his followers fled and came here, where it was secluded and private, where they could worship their god, a god of evil who promised immortality through dedication and submission to sin. The people in this town have probably worshipped Lithobolia for generations.”

  Tory poked his head through the doorway but refused to enter the church. “Are you guys insane? Where are the people?”

  “Look around.” Billy tossed the parchment back onto the altar as if it were riddled with disease. “There hasn’t been anybody in this church in years.”

  “That can’t be,” Stefan mumbled. “We heard them praying, we heard them, it was no mistake, we—there has to be a reasonable explanation.”

  Billy left the altar and headed for the door, stopping next to Stefan. “You’re like a brother to me, man, and I love you. But I swear to God, if you say that one more time, I’m gonna knock you the fuck out.”

  Nodding helplessly, Stefan wandered back outside.

  Once he’d gone, Alex gave Billy’s arm a gentle squeeze. “You know how Stef is. In his mind there’s an answer for everything. As much of an artist as he is, he also believes deeply in science, reason and logic.”

  “And we don’t?”

  “Yes, we do, but we also believe in God, Billy, in an afterlife, the spiritual side of things. He doesn’t. This shatters everything he thought he knew.”

  “It shatters everything we all thought we knew.” Billy took a final look around the church. “Whatever’s going on here is—”

  “Hey, there’s somebody coming!” Tory stumbled through the doorway, tripping his way into the church. “A tow truck’s bringing a car to the gas station. That redneck dude in the overalls is driving, Alex.”

  “Tory,” Billy said, looking past him, “where’s Stefan?”

  “He went to go talk to him.”

  Billy ran for the door.

  A dilapidated tow trunk was parked along the side of the gas station, a wood panel station wagon attached to its towing mechanism. The towed car only looked a few years old and was the first relatively modern thing they’d seen since entering Boxer Hills. The owners, however, were nowhere in sight.

  As Billy and the others ran up the street toward the gas station, they saw that Stefan was already within a few feet of the truck. The man in overalls climbed down from the cab, his work boots kicking up a cloud of dust as they made contact with the dirt lot. Upon seeing Stefan, he stiffened, but when he noticed the others coming, he casually leaned against the tow truck door and wiped perspiration from his neck with a grimy handkerchief.

  The sky had turned darker.

  “—and we thought maybe you could help us,” Stefan was saying as the others scrambled into the lot.

  The man gave a contemptuous snort, his bloodshot eyes narrowing when he saw Alex and Tory. “Carnival’s back in town,” he said, shifting his gaze to Stefan and Billy. “And this time they brung a city queer and a little punk with ’em.”

  “Mister, we don’t want any trouble,” Stefan said, “we just—”

  “Fuck that.” Billy pushed past him, stood directly in front of the man and stabbed a finger at him threateningly. “Listen up, dad, you either tell me what the hell’s going on right now or there’s gonna be one less backwoods country fuck in this town, you got it?”

  If the man was intimidated, he gave no indication. Slowly, he wiped the sweat from his neck as a toothless grin spread across his craggy face.

  Stefan stepped between them. “There were people praying but the church was empty. Where did they go? The people, they—we heard them—what were they doing?”

  “Preparin’,” the man answered. “We all preparin’.”

  “Preparing?”

  “For the gatherin’.”

  As the others exchanged uneasy glances, Tory drifted toward the station w
agon for a closer look. Looking back, he noticed two men standing across the street in front of the General Store. One held a pitchfork, the other a crowbar. Both were watching them.

  “The gathering of what?”

  Tory inched closer to the station wagon, stealing a glance farther up the road. Four more townspeople, three men and a woman, had taken up position at the end of Main Street. They stood watching with blank, emotionless faces.

  The man stuffed the rag into his overalls. “Souls.”

  Rain began to fall, landing in big fat drops all around them, clanging against the gas pump, thudding in the dirt, drumming the roofs of the vehicles and blurring the windows in the buildings. Windows now filled with distorted faces. Men…women…children…

  Tory looked over his shoulder. Another group of townspeople had appeared. Standing around the Fairlane, they, like the others, made no move toward them, preferring instead to stare like lifeless mannequins. He counted a total of twelve people on the street, but each time he looked in a different direction more appeared, emerging slowly from the buildings or walking out of the forest. He craned his neck, saw that another large group had collected in the park on the next block, and more still had filled the gazebo.

  “Gathering souls?” Stefan asked frantically. “What does that mean?”

  The man’s smile receded. “Means you’re all fucked.”

  “Look,” Tory said in an unusually forceful tone.

  The others turned to him, and in doing so, saw the townspeople.

  “My God,” Alex whispered.

  The man began to laugh. “Your God’s not here, bitch.”

  Billy grabbed him by the front of his overalls and slammed him into the truck, pinning him there. “Who are you people?”