Evil Eternal

by Hunter Shea

  Shane sat at the edge of his chair, entranced by her dream. He could almost feel her agony, her fear. “Then what?” he urged.

  “I…I felt myself floating out of my body. I could hear my heart begin to slow down. I screamed as loud as I could, and that’s when I woke up. I’ve never had a dream like that. I was hoping that a day out, with you, would help erase it.”

  She shivered and covered her face with her hands.

  “You think I’m crazy, don’t you?” she said, peeking out from behind her hands.

  “I’m not in any position to call anyone crazy. That was a hell of a dream, though.”

  Aimee regained her composure, now giving him her puppy dog eyes. “If I ask you to sleep over tonight, will you? I don’t want to be alone if I have that dream again.”

  He moved over to her side and put his arm around her. “I’m all yours.”

  She melted into his embrace and minutes later, they dove into their food. They spent the day visiting a small art exhibit and then took in a movie. After making love, they lay side by side and the dream did not return.

  Chapter Six

  “You surprise me,” Father Michael wheezed through punctured lungs, “I would have thought such a cheap charade to have been the work of a beast below your stature.”

  The torment of his shattered chest was almost too much to bear. Threads of burning pain knitted a tapestry of torture throughout his entire body. The pitchfork prongs had passed cleanly through his torso and were firmly embedded in the wood post. It was useless to even attempt to free himself at this point.

  Cain, the demon of all demons, smiled.

  “You mean the work of a beast below our stature, my dear, dear friend.”

  Wisps of inky blackness crept into the corners of Father Michael’s vision. He fought hard to stay conscious.

  “Consider this a sample,” Cain continued, “better yet, a light appetizer before the feast I’ll lay out before you and the simps you protect.”

  “I…will…stop you,” Father Michael hissed. He kept perfectly still, willing his body to recoup some iota of strength that could free him from his impalement.

  Cain moved a step closer, his fingers softly caressing the wooden handle of the pitchfork as if it was the tender head of a newborn baby.

  “How many times have I heard you say those four famous words?” Cain snickered. “You vow to stop me. We fight. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. But in the end, you can never truly stop me. Have you ever paused to think what would happen to you if I really did up and disappear?”

  Cain placed his hands together in an imitation of a bird and flapped his fingers above his head.

  “Why, without me, there would be no you! No more spooky-looking, morbid monster Michael doing good for the pope du jour and his insipid boss!”

  He pretended to cower with fear, his eyes growing wide and his hands shaking above his head as if seeking repentance from above.

  “You’ll have to forgive the melodrama. I’ve been screwing around with those freaks in Los Angeles and I believe some of their more annoying traits have rubbed off on me.”

  Using his index finger, Cain pulled down ever so slightly on the pitchfork handle. Father Michael stared at him with expressionless, opaque eyes.

  “Hollywood. Huh. I went there to corrupt them and those sons of bitches ended up teaching me a thing or two about debauchery. They’re really wonderful people, in their own sick way. It’s not like the old days, is it Michael? When creatures like us could freely roam the world and inject fear in everyone we met. Remember the battles? The fields littered with bodies? We were fact, where we are now fiction. I really do miss the battles.”

  Cain’s diseased mind hurtled back to a particular scene in the Scottish lowlands. How he had instigated a clan war that lasted twenty years. It wasn’t until Father Michael’s arrival that he chose a side, injecting them with his venomous seed, twisting them into monsters. And oh, how dear Michael had fought, gathering the opposing clan, both sides hacking at one another until you couldn’t make a move without squelching in the blood-soaked earth and slipping on body parts. When it was all done, only they remained, gore covered, panting, humming with the thrill of unadulterated slaughter.

  Snapping back to the present, he yanked the handle down as far as it would go and lifted his finger off so it bobbed wickedly to deliver a fresh wave of pain to Father Michael, who grunted and coughed up a thick glob of blood and mucous.

  “Why don’t you stop trying to fool yourself into believing that you’re fighting the good fight? You’re just as much a monster as I am. Maybe more so considering your ghastly appearance. I don’t suppose you get out much, do you? You look like shit.”

  Father Michael sneered. “Murderous dog.” He spat an undulating gob of flesh and tissue at the demon’s feet.

  Cain moved closer, resting his lips next to Father Michael’s ear.

  “And I accept that,” he whispered. “You need to accept that too. I killed your wife and family a long, long time ago. Time to get over your grief and cope with this fucked-up life your God has chosen for you. Just because he made you like this doesn’t mean you owe him a damn thing.”

  He jammed his tongue into the priest’s ear, swirling it around his earlobe then pecking at his neck with soft kisses, savoring the taste of blood that had dripped down his chin.

  “I really don’t know how you do it. Living with so much pain. Seeking me out for creating a little murder and mayhem here and there, all along stacking up the bodies and souls into neat little piles as high as my own. You wage a hypocritical war for a hypocritical general, Michael.”

  Cain stepped back, gripped one hand on the pitchfork handle, and with one mighty tug, pulled it loose from pillar and priest.

  “I’m going to help you, which is more than you’ve ever done for me.”

  Father Michael slumped to the ground with a squish as his shattered internal organs mashed together. He kept his gaze fixed on Cain.

  “I promise not to leave town until you’re able to get up and walk again. Now, let me think where I should go to kill some time.”

  Cain tapped a finger against his chin while he contemplated.

  Suddenly, with three quick strides he was atop the supine priest, jabbing a finger into one of Father Michael’s eyes, almost popping it from the socket. Cain closed his own eyes, paused for a moment, and smiled. He removed his finger and sucked it clean.

  “Now I see,” he said. “And I see a church of very scared people waiting for your return. Think I’ll stop by and wait with them.”

  Father Michael struggled to get up. He managed to blurt out, “No!”

  Cain unbuttoned his shirt and removed his pants to reveal a toned body, still slightly tan from a summer working in various fields and farms.

  “Not a bad choice, huh?” Cain sneered as he admired his body and now-erect penis.

  “But, all good things must come to an end…”

  Reaching both hands to the top of his head, he gripped the base of his scalp and started to pull downwards. The sound of skin ripping from muscles and tendons filled the barn. It pulled away from his face, revealing a bloody skeleton with severed shards of muscle dangling and dripping from cheekbone and jaw. He continued to tug on the skin, all the while laughing like a demented man. Cain pulled and ripped until he had a strip of skin removed from his skull down to his ankles. His stomach and intestines looked ready to slither out into a heap at his feet. In mere moments, he had become a medical school anatomy mannequin from hell.

  He threw the skin roll at Father Michael, taking delight at seeing his adversary’s eyes flutter and close as the Herculean priest slipped into unconsciousness.

  “See you in church,” he whispered as a mother would to her slumbering child before bursting into another fit of laughter and waltzing from the barn.

  .

  Father Michael awoke in searing pain. His entire nervous system had been consumed by a conflagration of hurt. Struggling to eve
n bring himself to a sitting position, Father Michael wondered how long he had been unconscious. The howling of the wind outside the barn had abated.

  Grunting from the exertion, he pushed himself to his feet. He could feel his splintered bones and jellied lungs repairing themselves, but they had a long way to go. There was a slight hitch to every inhalation, a whistling, like a child’s plastic flute, on every exhalation. Staggering on a leg badly wounded from the child-demon’s mastication of his calf, Father Michael attempted to reach the barn door.

  Leaning his dead weight against the door, he was greeted by the one thing he feared.

  The sun was out.

  The storm had ended, leaving a fresh ten inches of snow.

  Cain had had all night, if it indeed had been one night and not many, to have his way with the frightened townspeople. He dreaded the nightmare that awaited him at the church.

  His body was in desperate need of further repair. However, time and circumstances superseded the necessity of slipping into a meditative state and calling upon the inner energy to mend his broken frame.

  The gunnysack was where he had left it, just outside the door. With a tremendous effort, he went back inside and collected his trident, twisting the handle so it was once again a gold cross atop a staff. He gathered the crucifix-daggers that were strewn about the floor, placing them in the deep pockets of his coat.

  Once outside, he reached into his bag and removed a black silk pouch. He extracted a palm-sized pile of brown incense from the pouch, brought his open palm to his mouth and blew the incense towards the barn.

  The barn was immediately engulfed in flame. In seconds, the core was white hot, the barn walls popping from the heat.

  Soon the barn would be nothing but a pile of ash. Everything inside, organic or otherwise, would become mere dust.

  Yet there was no smoke.

  Father Michael turned his back on the supernatural bonfire and slowly walked the snowbound path back to town.

  The trek back to the church seemed to drag on for an eternity, with frequent pauses to rest or to cough up fragments of lung tissue and blood. Father Michael was beginning to wonder if heading out before taking some time to heal had been a prudent idea.

  Until he heard the screams.

  He was still three blocks away from the church and he could hear the wailing of men, women and children as clearly as if they were standing right beside him. His heart pounded faster and he forced his body to stand as straight as it could in its current condition.

  He had been using the long shaft of his trident as a cane. Now he unsheathed the blades and carried it across his body. The houses and stores that lined the streets were deathly still. The people had never returned from the church. Nor would they ever.

  Father Michael took the steps leading to the church two at a time, gathering momentum as he kicked in the doors.

  The stench of a slaughterhouse in July assaulted his nostrils. There were still a couple of dozen to be counted among the living. The rest of the town had been churned into a gory jigsaw puzzle, with body parts and gristle strewn about every inch of the church.

  Father Rooney’s head had been nailed over the head of Jesus on the twelve-foot crucifix behind the altar. Whole arms had been affixed over the Stations of the Cross that lined the sidewalls, with the middle finger of each rigorous hand posed to stand in defiant attention.

  Most of the survivors had been driven into blubbering madness, all covered in the blood and entrails of friends, neighbors and family. A naked woman, her teeth chattering with such ferocity that they had begun to chip, held a crying baby to her bosom in the pew to Father Michael’s right.

  And in the center of it all stood Cain, all skin since stripped away from his body, throwing a handful of eyeballs against the stained-glass windows.

  “I thought you’d never get here,” Cain said, still chucking eyeballs as if he was soft-tossing a baseball on a lazy afternoon. “As you can see, I decided to start the party without you.” The p in party barely came out because of his missing lips.

  “It ends now,” Father Michael exclaimed, his voice booming over the constant wailing in the church.

  Cain swallowed the last eye and leaned against a pew.

  “You know what? I believe you may be right. I’ve done just about all I can here. Notice how I left a few for you. There’s a point to all of this, which I hope you’ll see.”

  The muscles in his face and around his jaw twitched as he tried to smile. His face was a mass of red pulp with a large slash of bright-white teeth cleaving his horrid countenance.

  Father Michael grabbed a dagger-crucifix and hurled it at Cain.

  Cain swiftly ducked, but not before a three-inch section of his shoulder blade was carved off by the passing dagger.

  “Nice move,” he mocked. “You’re a little stronger than I thought you’d be. I won’t make that mistake again.”

  Father Michael threw two more daggers at him in quick succession. They each missed by more than half a foot. Gripping his trident, he prepared to charge the demon, his muscles coiling. His right leg gave out on his first step, dropping him to his knees.

  “You ought to see a doctor about that,” Cain said, cackling.

  Surveying the massacre around him, Cain said, “Well, it looks like it’s time for me to go. Time for another face, another place. I mean, we all wear different faces, don’t we? I just happen to have more options.”

  “Don’t go,” Father Michael struggled. “Stay here and fight me, coward.”

  Cain shook his head. “You should know by now that I’m no coward, Michael. A coward would take you on now, in this sorry state you’re in. I like you fresh, vibrant, angry.”

  His feet squeaked as he sloshed across the blood-soaked floor, walking towards the first pew before the altar then standing on it.

  “If you need me, I’ll be happily munching on an apple, enjoying the sleepless nights.”

  He leapt up to the nearest window and shattered the stained-glass portrait of St. Francis of Assisi. Perched atop the sill, he turned to Father Michael and said, “Now you go do what you do best and really think about it. If I am true evil and you are true good, we’re living in a world of denial.”

  That said, he jumped out the window and into the cold snow.

  A middle-aged man rose from beneath a pile of severed legs and heads when he heard Cain depart. He approached Father Michael on legs palsied from trauma.

  “You saved us.”

  He fell to his knees, sobbing. “I prayed to God the madness would end and you came and drove it away. Thank you, Father.” The volume of his voice began to rise, quickly reaching a madman’s pitch. “Thank you, thank you, thank you. Praise God, we’re saved! Saved! Dear God, your servant has saved us!”

  Others who had been crouched in the shadows began to stumble towards Father Michael, joining in his praise.

  “Hallelujah!”

  “Bless you, Father!”

  Father Michael felt a burning in his chest, and it was not from the injury he had sustained.

  These people, these innocents who had called him to save a little girl, had all seen what no human eyes should ever witness. Worse still, their close interaction with Cain had marked them as potential hosts when Cain called his minions to his heel. Cain left indelible marks on the souls as well as bodies of his victims, obliterating their store of better, happier days to come. He left them barren, mere shells destined for destruction that would follow them into eternity.

  Father Michael’s next course of action pained his very soul. Through the centuries, the remorse had never gotten easier to bear.

  “Go with God,” he said to his half-mad supplicants.

  Father Michael then let out a banshee wail, his jawbones popping as his mouth opened wider and wider. First, objects began to rattle. Everyone in the church clapped their hands to their ears. Next, anything made of glass shattered into minute pieces.

  Still, the wail continued.

  The surv
ivors, especially the children, began to cry out in pain, their legs rooted to the spot from the ache that started to throb in their very bones. The floorboards rattled in protest.

  Then it happened.

  In unison, the heart of every living person in the church burst with enough force to shatter the bones in their torsos. Their bodies dropped as one, as though they were a stage full of marionettes whose strings had all been cut at once.

  And just like that, the town of South Russell was no more.

  More scars to be borne on Father Michael’s soul.

  He collected his daggers, drew some incense from the pouch, and proceeded to set fire to the church. The baptisms, the weddings, the funerals, countless Sunday masses, the bright futures and pained hearts that had filled the spirit of the church, all obliterated with no one left to mourn the passing of all those lives once buoyed by promise and hope.

  All of it, destroyed.

  The only saving grace was knowing the healing power of the fire, how it cleansed their souls from the ravages of Cain’s embrace, ushering them into the light of the ever after.

  Father Michael watched the church shudder, then implode in an explosion of fine ash. The winds carried the gray grit on their current, covering him from head to foot. He collapsed in the snow, his mind and body pulled under by the overpowering current of pain and sorrow.

  Chapter Seven

  It was two hours before Father Michael staggered from the snow, the bitter cold harsh enough to have frozen one of his crucifixes to the skin of the palm of his hand. He glanced over his shoulder at the blackened earth where the church with all the inhabitants of South Russell once stood. The sound of a hungry dog barking echoed down the empty street, the solitary hint of life in what had, in just one day, become a ghost town.