“No thanks. I’ll stand.”
Lorna looked perplexed but didn’t push the issue. Instead, she perched sexily on the edge of her desk as she surveyed him. This was another tactic and she turned her eyes up to him provocatively.
“After our meeting on Friday, Kirk suggested that you are to attend the board meeting today.”
“Why?” Jake asked.
“Because, you are crucial to our plans.”
Jake didn’t answer. Instead, he left the office. His walk had gone from the downtrodden man, believing he was on the verge of losing his job, to the confident stride of someone who knows he is important. As he passed the typing pool, Jake no longer feared the curious looks of the secretaries, or the pitying gaze of the other advertising assistants. He knew he was on the up and it was all because he had great ideas. Even Lorna couldn’t ignore that.
In his office, he added more of the roll-on. The Urban Wolf deodorant made him feel strong and confident. It gave him something that nothing else ever had. He glanced out at the secretaries working outside. He wondered if anyone else had learnt the secret inside the product. Somehow he thought they hadn’t. He was beginning to believe that the deodorant only had this effect on him.
Karen passed by his window. She turned and waved. You look good today. Maybe Lorna won’t eat you like all the rest of her assistants after all.
Jake smiled. He had changed. Lorna had finally met her match, and Jake would make her pay after the working day. He still wanted her; only from now on he was going to call all the shots and her sharp nails would have to stay sheaved in future.
He worked through the day, efficiently, but slightly distracted and then, when the time came -laptop under his arm, ready to make the presentation for the string of commercials he had proposed - Jake made his way to the board room on the floor above. Under normal circumstances, he would have been nervous, but he used the roll-on once more and it helped him feel calmer.
“Come in, come in,” Kirk Weiss said as Jake rapped on the door. “We’re all ready for you.”
Jake had hoped he would find the room empty and have time to set up his laptop before the board members came in. It threw him a little that they were already waiting. The board consisted of three women and seven men. Jake knew some, but not all of them, as the directors kept themselves very much to themselves. He wished that they all had name tags: he feared that he would make some stupid mistake and address the wrong person.
I have to tell them everything and then there won’t be any need for them to question me, he thought.
“Take all the time you need,” Lorna smiled.
Jake quickly hooked up his laptop, and tested it on the smart screen. Finally, when he was ready, he began to tell them all about his ideas and how they would benefit the client. As the presentation started Jake felt like a performer: keeping his audience captivated was paramount and they all watched him intently as he spoke. But following the presentation the board members were quiet. Jake looked around at their blank faces and wondered, as the silence fell on the room, if he had somehow failed their test.
“Well,” started one of the women that Jake didn’t know. “Isn’t he just marvellous?”
“Absolutely delightful,” said another.
“A testament to your tutoring,” Kirk stated, addressing Lorna.
Lorna nodded. “I had high hopes for Jake and the experiment has proved to be very effective.”
Jake looked around at the now eager faces.
“Experiment?”
“Why yes, Jake. We’ve been trying a new product out on you,” Kirk explained.
“A new product? Surely you don’t mean Urban Wolf?”
Lorna smiled and for the first time Jake noticed the excess of teeth in her broad smile. It made him feel nervous and brought back memories from his half recalled dreams. “Sort of.”
“I knew it! It’s changing me!”
“Not really the product,” Kirk explained. “But rather the idea of it. You see, even a sheep can think it’s a wolf if it is in the right environment.”
“What do you mean?” asked Jake. His cheeks flared red with embarrassment. Somehow he had been duped, used. “Are you saying you don’t like my campaign idea? That this is all a joke?”
“Oh no,” Lorna replied. “There’s nothing amusing about this and if it makes you feel any better we do love the campaign and will be using your ideas.”
Lorna’s face, already long and thin, appeared to be longer, the smile wider and she wore the same hungry expression that she had worn every time she had abused him. Jake looked. The board members where changing too.
“I don’t understand!” He backed away towards the door. “You’ve changed me. I’m one of you!”
“Sheep need to be fattened up before they make the best food,” Kirk stated. “The roll-on contains a hallucinogenic. You’ve imagined you were one of us, because deep down you’ve always recognised what we were.”
Jake turned and ran towards the door. He pulled at the handle but it wouldn’t open. This can’t be happening!
He heard howling, cracking and twisting bones and he believed he could smell blood too. There was a sickened roar, half way between a human cry and a dog howling. It sent a chill through his limbs. He felt paralysed with fear and his fingers lost their grip on the door handle.
Lorna was the first to reach him, rapidly followed by Kirk. They turned him around and that was when Jake saw the full horror of what was behind him. Lorna was naked, but Jake couldn’t reconcile the sight of this monstrous, twisted half-beast thing that confronted him with the beautiful, but cold, woman he had had sex with. Kirk was had removed his shirt and Jake saw that he was deformed, with a hunched back that arched up and showing the warped points of his misshapen spine. His face was long, but not quite wolf, certainly no longer human, and his eyes were misplaced in his head as though he had been dissembled by the artist Picasso. Tufts of hair grew with bald patches all over his naked torso and arms.
“What are you?” Jake screamed. Kirk’s laugh was like the chuckle of a demon from hell.
Lorna leered, thick gloop dripped from her serrated teeth as she lay back on the board table, legs open to reveal a greenish-mucus filled vagina. It pulsed, opening and closing like a gaping mouth filled with bile. She had several nipples, all of which were erect, as though she were cold or hugely excited, and they secreted some equally vile substance. She smelt of rot, like the epitome of a sexually transmitted disease, and Jake screamed as she turned her hair covered face towards him.
“Come to me lover?” she sneered her voice distorted by those awful canines.
Jake had never seen anything so hideous in his life. He slid down to the floor, legs giving way beneath him as he blacked out.
The deformed wolves pulled Jake’s prone body onto the board table. It was time for their monthly feast, and then they would all once more be able to shift into their full change. They ripped away the new and expensive clothing that Jake had invested in and one by one they began to tear at the soft flesh on his thighs and stomach.
“For you,” growled Kirk as his claws tore away Jake’s flaccid penis and scrotum. He tossed the tasty morsel to Lorna and she ate with relish. She deserved it. She had groomed Jake well and the taste of his over confident, adrenaline-filled blood was just the tonic she needed. She didn’t even mind when Kirk fell upon her, his huge wolf cock forcing its way inside her as he rutted. The excitement of feeding did strange things to them all.
Afterwards, they mopped up the remains, eating everything bar Jake’s white, perfect teeth. These the women shared amongst them like precious trophies.
No longer deformed, the wolves waited until it was full dark and then they slunk away from the board room, into their private elevator and out into the urban jungle that they had made their home...
X Is For Xezbeth
The Sixteenth Chapel
Dean M. Drinkel
St James Catholic Church, 50 Avenue Hoche, Paris
The young man fell to his knees. Tears in his eyes, heart in his mouth. Fingers tightened around the gun he was holding.
“Jesus wept.” An older man behind him, whispered, slumping into a pew.
A priest dipped a silver chalice into the stomach of the dead woman that lay on the altar, brought it to his lips.
“This is my blood.” He slurped the brown-reddy liquid, dropped the chalice, picked up a rusty saw, hacked off a lump of flesh from the corpse, opened his mouth, laid it on his tongue. “This is my body.” He chewed.
This was beyond horror. The church full of people, their remains anyway. A congregation of corpses. Some fresh, some not. In the poor light (from the candles illuminating the altar) he was sure there was a familiar face or two amongst the flock.
The priest – who now held a long silver stiletto blade, turned towards the inverted wooden cross that hung behind him.
Another body strapped there.
A boy. Late teens. Naked. Deep wounds to his hands and feet. A deep gash to the right side of his torso, his head darkly bruised. A barbed-wire crown stapled awkwardly on his scalp. Blood dripped onto the priest’s face and how he basked in it.
“I am the way.” The blade at the boy’s throat.
“Enough, is fucking enough.” The younger man climbed off his knees and strode towards the altar.
“Don’t do it, Doret!” The other man called, but making no effort to stop him.
The priest’s eyes narrowed. A faraway look on his face. He put down the knife, leant under the altar and picked up a large ornate oil-stock. Exalted, he lifted it high above his head.
“Forgive them for they know not what they do.”
As Doret closed in, the priest hesitated before pouring the contents over his head. Spent, the oil-stock clattered to the ground. He grabbed one of the large waxen candles.
“You’re a fucking monster. Nothing, but a fucking monster!” Doret screamed.
The priest looked heavenwards, his body shaking. “How are the shadows? So vivid aren’t they?” His voice different, deeper, cracking in places. His neck bulged, the whites of his eyes bright.
“Fuck you!” Doret aimed his weapon, squeezed the trigger.
“Ite missa est.” The priest put the candle to his head and almost immediately his hair shot up in a ball of yellow-orange flame. “It is finished!” He shrieked as the blaze spread to his face then lower still.
“NO!” Doret yelled. “This isn’t finished until I say it’s fucking finished.”
The pop of his gun: One. Two. Three.
Each shot, true.
The bullets pummelled the priest. He fell to the ground.
“Burning’s too good for fucks like you.” Doret shot again for good measure.
The priest was now nothing but a crescendo of fire. Writhing this way and that in pain. Silently screaming.
Doret watched on. As far as he was concerned it didn’t matter whether the priest lived or died, though of course he preferred that the bastard perished.
Groaning came from above him.
Something dripped onto his face. Into his mouth. Blood. “Boss, boss, this one’s still alive!” He licked his lips. That familiar iron taste.
The seated man had already taken out his cell-phone and was frantically punching a number into it.
***
Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital, Paris
“I kept you waiting.”
The older man coughed. “Inspector Delacroix, this is Detective Doret.”
“What a terrible tragedy gentlemen. Not that you need me to tell you that.”
“Did he survive?” Delacroix asked. “The boy, I mean?”
“They both did.”
Doret appeared agitated. “You wasted your time on that fucking priest?” He paced backwards and forwards, pulled at his clothes, scratched at his face. “I put four bullets into that bastard and then he torched himself. How did he survive that?”
The nurse smiled. “It’s a miracle...a strong will...he’s not in a pretty state...obviously.”
“We need to speak to him.” Delacroix stated.
She sat back in her chair. “We all have questions Inspector, but I don’t think any of us will get much sense out of him, not for the foreseeable future anyway. He’s in a lot of pain, drifts in and out of consciousness...he does nothing but scream out in agony. We tried sedating him but that’s not particularly effective. He’s in a critical condition.”
“Such a shame.” Doret mocked.
“And the boy?” Delacroix asked.
“Lost a lot of blood. The wounds to his body were quite deep. Taken quite a beating, that crown...what on Earth was going on there, God only knows, yet he’s young and strong...there will be some scarring both externally and internally but he should live.”
“Anyone else there alive?” Delacroix continued.
The nurse shook her head. “Forty-four of them, well, forty-five if you include the one on the altar. We carried out tests. Dead before they arrived. We’re running identification checks...not easy...not all of them are...er...recent.”
“Sick bastard.” Doret muttered. “He deserved to die.”
“I would like to see the boy.” Delacroix said.
She took a deep breath. “Could it wait until morning? He needs to rest.”
Delacroix shrugged. "Five minutes? He might have some useful information.”
She tapped her fingers on the desk. “Fine.”
“You have a name for him yet?”
The nurse shook her head. “He didn’t have any ID either, we are searching through the databases as we speak. We may have something tomorrow.” She stood up, went to the door. “This way, but only five minutes. His rest is paramount.”
“Indeed.” Doret replied. Delacroix on the other hand, appeared distracted.
***
They walked along the corridor, into the elevator, to the third floor. “He’s in a small room on his own, out of prying eyes.” The nurse explained.
“Makes sense.” Delacroix agreed.
Another nurse (pretty, red-head) stood over the bed. She was writing notes on a clipboard. Seeing them, she finished, put the board at the foot of the bed and exited, smiling at Doret as she left.
In the bed, the boy lay. His eyes closed. A shock of dirty blonde hair spilled onto the pillow. Bandages wrapped around his head, his hands and feet. The sheet had been pulled back revealing one large covering on the right side of his torso, from his chest down to his thigh. Transparent tubes were lodged in his mouth, his nostrils. A drip in his arm. Machines beeped all around them.
Doret took a step forward, Delacroix grabbed him.
“We’ll come back tomorrow.”
“Hey?” Doret quizzed.
“We won’t get anything sensible out of him, not tonight.”
Doret frowned, stared at the boy but eventually followed Delacroix to the door.
They shook hands with the nurse, she bade them goodnight and headed away.
“That’s not like you.” Doret said.
“Let’s talk to the priest. He may not survive until the morning.” Delacroix smiled.
“Don’t we need to know where they’re keeping him?”
“It was written on the wall in the nurse’s office.” He smiled again but there was no mirth behind it.
***
They peered through the glass.
“He doesn’t look good does he?” Doret said, understating the obvious.
The priest was lying naked on the bed, not needing a piece of cloth to cover his modesty, mostly because there wasn’t much left of him to cover.
His hands, his feet, had been totally burnt away. The rest of his skin was red raw, scorched from head to toe. A white ointment had been rubbed into his body, not that it was going to do much good. His face too: lips, nose, eyelids had been entirely incinerated. As the nurse had said, it was a miracle that the man was still breathing.
He was a livi
ng hell and critical didn’t explain the half of it.
Delacroix pushed the door open. They entered, locking it behind them. There hadn’t been anyone standing guard, after all, what was the point? The priest wasn’t going anywhere.
Doret pulled a black drape across the glass. Sat down on the bench by the far wall. Delacroix dragged a chair across the floor and parked it by the bed.
It wasn’t clear whether the priest was awake or not. The oxygen pump and the monitors it was connected too suggested that he was breathing, if only fleetingly.
The Inspector coughed. “I know you can hear me, even if you can’t, or won’t answer me. So I’m happy to do the talking and you the listening. For now.”
Doret closed his eyes. He wasn’t feeling great. Been like it for days. He rubbed his stomach, perhaps he needed something to eat, to drink. Maybe he needed some sleep, couldn’t remember the last peaceful night he’d had.
“I can’t get my head around ‘why’?” Delacroix continued. “What were you doing in that church? How in hell’s name did you get all those bodies inside without anyone seeing you? I might be well off-mark here but I think you had some help, wouldn’t you agree?”
The priest didn’t answer, didn’t move, didn’t do much of anything.
“What were you going to do with all those corpses? You’ve upset a lot of people...was it a ritual? A message of some kind?” He sat back. “Okay, we’re listening, tell us more...”
Doret wiped his forehead. He was sweating. Blinked once or twice. He was hot but felt cold, must have been coming down with something. “I don’t think he’s going to tell us anything.”
Delacroix stood up, leant down over the priest, took a deep breath, then blew onto the man’s charred face.
The reaction was immediate. The machines going haywire, beeping madly, shrieking almost. The priest’s limbs stretched, his body arched, he groaned in absolute agony.
“Jesus Christ!” Doret sat up, a sudden burst of admiration.
“I hope that hurt. Yet, I can make it worse for you, much much worse. Shall I continue?” Delacroix said as the machines quietened.
He knelt down to where the priest’s ears once were, but were now nothing but two dark pits circled by mangled flesh. “Tell me what we want to know and you have my word that I’ll leave you in...peace. But if you don’t... the pain will be far worse than anything you can imagine. You decide.”
The Demonologia Biblica Page 34
