Hands of Lucifer

by John Tigges

  “Oh, for crying out loud,” Myles said. “Why didn’t we think of that? Nicole, turn on the lights. You’re standing right by the switch, aren’t you?”

  Without a word, he released his hold and she pulled away from him. When he heard the click of the switch and the room was plunged into light, he uttered a short gasp. Nicole stood next to the light switch, but he was at the far-end of the living room, next to where the windows were covered with steel plates. Who had he been embracing?

  Nicole screamed when she saw Myles at the opposite end of the living room. “Myles? How did … did you get there? You … you were standing … next to me, holding me …” she stopped, the full impact of the situation hammering at her. Turning to the priest, she desperately swallowed the screams she felt rising within her.

  Myles hurried to her side, throwing both arms about her.

  “Don’t be concerned right now,” Father Maskey said. He sniffed the air. “What is that?”

  Myles and Nicole followed his example, inhaling deeply. The awful stench, which had hounded them over the last weeks, filled the air. The redolent stink of decaying flesh, of something rotten and dead, washed over them. One moment it seemed to be alleviating but would increase tenfold the next instant.

  “That’s worse … worse than it’s ever been,” Nicole said, gagging.

  A wailing laugh threaded its way through the apartment, ebbing and flowing as it undulated in volume. The lights went off, then as quickly back on. The rhythm established, the flickering lent an unreal, almost surrealistic atmosphere to the living room and that part of the kitchen that was visible from where the trio stood, rooted to their spots.

  Then the darkness took hold again, while the laugh rose and fell in direct proportion to the smell of death that filled the apartment.

  “Candles?” Myles cried. “Have we got any candles?”

  “I … I’m not certain,” Nicole said.

  “Here,” Father Maskey said, “I’ve got a lighter.” He spun the wheel on the small cigarette lighter, and when the flame danced on the invisible stream of gas, the odor increased. Then, the rooms plunged back into a sea of light, then dark, then light—and the flashing continued unabated.

  “You filthy, rotten, non-fucking cocksucker. Get out of this apartment right now, or I’ll take this weak-willed sow for my own!” The words boomed from the stereo speakers as the tuner went on. The television set glowed with a life of its own and the picture began changing from one station to the next as it traversed its way around the dial, the cable-converter box spinning flashing red digits as some unseen finger pressed the button.

  “Come on, Maskey, you worthless bastard. Get out of my apartment! You don’t belong here. This cunt is mine. She asked for a favor and I granted it. Now she owes me. Isn’t that the way things are supposed to be, you worthless faggot-fucker?”

  Nicole sucked in her breath and Myles looked away from the priest. Father Maskey opened his breviary to the prayers for exorcism and calmly said, “Don’t pay him any attention. From what I’ve been told and from what I’ve read about such situations, the devil or demon tries to discredit the religious person present and shake up those who are in attendance.”

  “I … I’m sorry, Father,” Nicole whispered.

  “Don’t be. Not for what he’s saying at least. Remember, the devil is the champion liar of all times. Believe just the opposite of whatever he does say, and you’ll be all right. I don’t think he’s capable of telling the truth about anything.”

  “Is there anything we can do to help you, Father?” Myles asked softly, stepping closer to him. Why did he feel he had to be close to the man and practically whisper?

  “It’s not necessary, you stupid asshole. You think you’re so great because you’re on television. Watch the set. This is what I think of you, Myles Lawrence!” The voice boomed so loudly that the lamps on the end tables bounced while the knick-knacks on the shelves above the TV set jiggled toward the edges.

  The three people turned to the TV set, as if forced by some remote control. The picture tube’s flipping images slowed, until it went blank. Then, the studio setting as used by the KSLL-TV news staff appeared. An image of Myles sat behind the large desk and he smiled at the camera.

  “Good evening,” the image said and was instantly greeted with a load of what appeared to be animal waste dumped over his head. The smell of manure filled the room. Maniacal laughter bellowed through the apartment. Eggs pelted Myles from off-camera, and a nude woman, grossly overweight, sashayed across the front of the desk, lightly jumping to the top of it. Bending her knees and thrusting her lower abdomen forward, she stood over the unperturbed image of Myles, urinating on his head.

  Myles turned away from the picture and Nicole embraced him.

  “Stop!” the priest shouted at the top of his voice. “Stop in the name of Jesus Christ!”

  The scene on the tube disappeared, instantly replaced by a face, hideous in its make-up of jaundiced skin erupting with pustules and running sores. The triangular shape of the head paralleled along the two sides the shape of the mouth and nose, while the eyes were squinted into “V” shapes of their own. The mouth opened and the visage growled, ” Who are you to tell me to do anything, Priest!”

  Nicole stared at the visage. It was the same evil countenance that she had seen standing at the foot of her bed. Good God! What had she started?

  Father Maskey raised his hand concealing the small bottle of holy water from sight and threw several drops on the television set. The first second the blessed liquid touched the tube and cabinet, a high-pitched scream, louder than anything yet unleashed by the demon, rent the air. The picture went blank, then dark as the set turned off.

  A heavy silence hung in the air for several minutes. Father Maskey coughed. “Myles, if you know and recall the responses to the Litany of the Saints, please say them. We must, for our own protection, begin the rite of exorcism.”

  “Very well, Father.”

  “Go fuck it on the mountain—Go fuck it on the plain—Go fuck anything that’s fuckable— try fucking on a train,” the voice sang from the stereo speakers.

  “In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” Father Maskey began.

  “Amen,” Myles said.

  “Amen,” Nicole repeated after Myles. Even though she had no idea what a Litany of the Saints might be, she intended to say as best she could the prayers along with Myles and the priest.

  “Lord have mercy on us.”

  “Ah … Christ have mercy on us,” Myles said, hesitating at the response, familiar and yet remote by the passage of time since he had helped say the prayer at a church service.

  “Lord have mercy on us. Christ hear us,” Maskey said.

  Myles could not think of the appropriate response. Later in the prayer, when the names of the Saints were intoned, he would be able to answer with the correct, “Pray for us.”

  “Christ graciously hear us,” Maskey said, before continuing with the next summons, “Holy Trinity, One God.”

  “Pray for us,” Myles said, an expression of doubt covering his face.

  “Have mercy on us,” Maskey corrected.

  “Have mercy on us,” Myles said, turning when Nicole whispered it immediately after him.

  Maskey intoned saint after saint, imploring their help in this hour of need. When he loudly said, “Saint Michael, the Archangel,” the lights flashed on and off and the TV set turned on, joining in a deafening battle for supremacy with the stereo set that boomed with the sounds of cannon.

  “Pray for us!” Myles shouted along with Nicole who quickly had learned the repetitious response, saying it with renewed fervor each time.

  Realizing that the name had upset the entity, Father Maskey continued.

  Myles answered each supplication with “Pray for us!” failing to notice immediately that Nicole had stopped answering with him. When he turned to her, he gasped. Nicole was gone. Looking up, he saw her body parallel to the ceiling, h
overing in midair.

  “Father! Father Maskey! Look!”

  Maskey stopped the recitation of names, his eyes following Myles outstretched arm. Blessing himself, he said, “We must get her down. NOW!”

  Myles reached up, just able to touch the pants leg around Nicole’s ankle. When he pulled, she moved as if pivoting on a fulcrum. “She feels as if she weighs tons,” Myles said, when Maskey reached up to help him.

  Pulling with all their strength, the two men brought Nicole’s feet down toward them and little by little, returned her down to the floor.

  Nothing more happened, other than the putrid mist continuously filling the air along with a drastic drop in the room’s temperature. When Maskey finished the Litany of Saints, he continued into the next prayer, a psalm.

  “Save me, O God,” he intoned, “by Thy Name, and judge me in Thy Strength. O God, hear my prayer: give ear to the words of my mouth. For strangers have risen up against …”

  “I’m no stranger, you stupid fucker of old women!” the voice screamed. “That prayer will not help you one iota’s worth of fly-shit! Forget it, Maskey. Go get fucked someplace and leave me in peace!”

  Father Maskey continued reciting the psalm, raising his voice when he came to the last lines. “For Thou hast delivered me out of all trouble: and my eye hath looked down upon my enemies.”

  Turning the page, the priest continued. “I adjure Your Grace, Oh, heavenly Father, to aid me in this battle against the wicked dragon who possesses this dwelling. Drive him back to hell when it is right to do so. You, demon of the dark, tell me your name! Tell me the day and the hour and the manner of your leaving this place. Do this with some sign!”

  Laughter was the priest’s only response along with an increase in the degree of vile fetidness filling the rooms.

  “The Lord be with you,” Maskey continued, his breath’s vapor condensing in the cold air, then read a gospel of John. Opening his coat a trifle when he finished with the words of the evangelist, Maskey exposed a purple stole hanging around his neck. He reached into a side pocket, withdrawing a small crucifix.

  When Myles saw the cross, he opened the package he had been carrying when they entered the apartment. Withdrawing the silver crucifix, he held it up not unlike the priest, waiting to see what would happen next.

  Nicole stared wide-eyed at the two men, both holding the symbols of Christ’s death high in front of them.

  Maskey held the cross and breviary in one hand and the bottle of holy water in his right. “I exorcise you, most vile of spirits, the embodiment of our dreaded enemy, Lucifer, the entire specter, the whole legion, in the name of Jesus Christ, to get out.” He made the sign of the cross with the bottle, splashing droplets of the liquid about the room. “Flee this place, leaving these creatures of God.” He made two more signs of the cross and was instantly slapped across the face by an invisible hand.

  “Are you all right, Father?” Nicole asked when she realized what had happened.

  Undaunted by the attack, Father Maskey continued the prayers of exorcism. The demon shrieked when he finished the first prayer of the ritual. “Fear Him who was immolated in Isaac, sold in Joseph, slain in the lamb, crucified in man and then was triumphant over hell!”

  The high-pitched cry spiraled into laughter, seeming to take root in the kitchenette. Nicole tugged on Myles’ sleeve and they both turned to Father Maskey, the unasked question on their faces.

  Maskey shrugged, stepping back to peer into the next room. The door of the refrigerator flew open and eggs, fruit, vegetables, bottles of milk and salad dressing floated out into the kitchen, making a large circle in the air. The cupboards flew open and the contents of the refrigerator were joined by cups, saucers, plates, silverware and boxes of dried food. The circle grew more crowded and a second one formed beneath the first. Both turned more rapidly, and when it was difficult for the priest to distinguish the different items, he suddenly realized what was about to happen.

  “Hit the floor,” he cried just as the carton of milk sailed into the living room, smashing against the far wall. The milk splashed a white flower-pattern against the wall, fingers from each petal flowing toward the floor. Glasses and vegetables, pots and pans, fruits and eggs —everything that had been in the cupboards and refrigerator—followed the milk carton, sailing into the living room, over their heads, crashing into the wall. Shards of glass sailed about after the tumblers had disintegrated. Food smeared the painted walls in a bizarre pattern as the remainder of eggs and oranges mixed with the milk and butter.

  Nicole pressed herself to the floor in a desperate attempt to squeeze into the carpeting, her hands over the back of her head to protect herself. Myles lay half on her, shielding her from the assault. Father Maskey raised his head every second or so to see if the barrage had ended. Each time, he ducked as a new missile dove toward him before swooping back up to smash into the wall.

  After several long minutes dragged into an eternity, the attack ceased. The only sound in the apartment was Nicole letting out sobs each time she could catch her breath.

  Then Myles said in a hoarse whisper, “Is it over, Father?”

  “That particular trick is probably finished because he ran out of ammunition in the kitchen,” Father Maskey whispered.

  “Trick?” Myles wheezed the word. Was the priest enjoying this or was it merely a poor choice of words on his part?

  “Call it what you will, Myles. Manifestation. Phenomena. Hallucination. Of course if it were an hallucination, we’d all be suffering from the same delusion, wouldn’t we?”

  “Are you saying, then, that it is over?”

  “I’m not too well versed in this sort of thing,” Maskey said quietly. “I rather doubt that he’d quit so easily. Usually there’s quite a confrontation between the exorcist and the demon. And I’m no exorcist.”

  Myles coughed as he stood, helping Nicole to her feet. Father Maskey followed suit and when they stood in the middle of the living room, Myles stared at him.

  “What do you mean you’re not an exorcist?”

  “Not as such. Remember the minor order of exorcism has been done away with and the Church appoints those priests who are to act as official exorcists.”

  “So, in … in the meantime, what do … do we do?” Nicole asked, a slight tremor in her voice. The sobs diminished noticeably when she spoke.

  “I’m going to have to report this to the chancery office, when and if we get out of here.”

  “When and if!” Myles asked.

  “Right now, I don’t see any means of leaving, do you?” Maskey asked.

  Myles and Nicole shook their heads.

  “Do you think we’ll get out of here?” Myles asked.

  The priest shrugged. “Right now, all I can say is we’ll have to pray to that end since the demon has trapped us in here. When and if we can subdue him, to some degree at least, then perhaps with his power weakened, we’ll be able to leave.”

  “This whole thing seems like a bad dream,”

  Myles said, squeezing Nicole’s hand.

  “This whole thing is my fault … regardless of what you say, Myles. If I hadn’t been such a romantic ninny, I would have accepted your decision to leave. I …”

  The stereo blasted the apartment with a John Phillip Sousa march accompanying a high-pitched laugh.

  “In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” Father Maskey intoned, opening his breviary. “I adjure thee, thou old serpent, by the judge of the quick and the dead, by thy Maker and the Maker of the whole world and universe, by Him Who has power to send thee to hell, that thou depart quickly from this place and leave these servants of God …”

  “They’re adulterers and fornicators, you fuckhead! They don’t give a good healthy shit about your fucking Church. They’ll not …”

  “Quiet, you hound of hell,” the priest shouted over the loud voice coming from the speakers of the stereo. “They will return to the bosom of God and his Son, Jesus Christ. They will d
o this with fear and affliction of thy terror. I adjure thee again …” Father Maskey made the sign of the cross on his own forehead, “… not in my weaknesses and infirmities, but by the virtue of the Holy Spirit, that thou depart from this place and these people of God, who were made in His image and likeness.

  “Yield therefore. Yield not to me but to the ministry of Christ. For his power urges thee, who subjugated thee to His cross. Tremble at His arm, Who led the souls to light after the lamentations of hell had been subdued. May the body of man be a terror to thee.” Maskey blessed his chest with the sign of the cross. “Let the image of God the Father be terrible to thee.” He blessed his own forehead again. “Resist not, nor delay in fleeing from this place and these people, since it pleases Christ, the Almighty, to want this man and this woman to be of His Body here on earth. And although thou knowest me to be none the less a sinner, do not think me contemptible. For it is God Who commands Thee.”

  Father Maskey blessed the room and a scream pierced the air with an immediate response. Where the liquid fell to the floor, tiny puffs of smoke curled up while burnt spots singed the carpet, making the outline of a large double circle with a five pointed figure in the center.

  Nicole winced, looking away when she recognized the pattern. An instant vision of herself, nude, standing in the center of the inverted Pentagon, formed. Please, God, help me! she prayed to herself. The image left.

  “The Majesty of Christ commands thee.”

  Again, Maskey threw holy water about creating more smoke when it struck the rug. Wisps spiraled upward.

  “God, the Father, commands thee. God, the Son, commands thee. God, the Holy Spirit, commands thee.” After each order, Maskey threw water about and the stench of burning rug filled the air, entwining with the rancid aroma of decay and death.

  Holding the cross high over his head, the priest threw water with his other hand after checking the next lines of exorcism from his book. “The sacred cross commands thee!”