Unfortunately for Gallo, his memory loss was only temporary. When he finally managed to obtain a reaction from one of his jailors, it somehow lifted the veil from his amnesia; it also proved to be the dawn of a terror he fervently wished he had avoided.
It happened on day 125, even though, by that time he had stopped counting. Gallo had again begun his regular campaign of shouting, banging and otherwise making noise to try to attract his captors. This night, however, he succeeded.
He’d been yelling for more than ten minutes because a low wattage overhead light, a good 20 feet up and riveted to a wooden crossbeams in the ceiling, had been turned off plunging him into total darkness. The bulb had been on since his capture and he wondered if this was an escalation of deprivation. Would he lose his food, bedding or water next? He decided he wouldn’t take it lying down. Whoever they were, they’d soon find that there was still spunk in the old man, he thought letting loose another bellow of protest.
He’d screamed challenging obscenities, finally yelling that they would all be consigned to hell for his imprisonment. It was then he heard a distinct scratching at the steel door. It resembled the sound of four or five nails being slowly pulled across the metal on the outside. The sound was repeated.
The old priest rose from his mattress and crossed to the steel door where he cautiously placed his ear against it. When he heard nothing, he again shouted that his captors would be spending eternity with the devil for treating a man of God in this way. The scraping on the door came again and he’d held his breath, pressed his ear close and listened.
On the other side of the door, he could now hear labored breathing. Finally, a low, rasping and gravelly baritone whispered “W-We want...you...!” It was barely loud enough for him to hear. The words were stilted and hesitant as though the person wasn’t used to speaking. Still he got the message when the voice continued: “Don’t...curse the devil...Gallo...or one night...he’ll be sure to answer.” This was followed by a low, nasty hiccupping that passed for a laugh. And then something scuttled away followed by...
...silence!
For some reason the words had hit the old priest hard. A split second later the cobwebs in his mind cleared as though someone had shoved smelling salts under his nose. He remembered everything that had happened after he’d left the hospital: How the little girl with the hellish eyes led him to the giant figure near the tree; how he’d panicked; and, how the monster had reached for him.
Now, in the cell, his heart had begun to race and sweat poured from his forehead. Revulsion, terror and despair returned anew as memories flooded back in a jumbled ménage of flash pictures that bloomed and faded, swept into focus and abruptly dropped from the sight of his mind’s eye to be replaced by even more disturbing visions.
He remembered how, on seeing the creature, his legs had begun to tremble and his breath had shortened until he was puffing like a wasted animal. He remembered being frozen, unable to move or run despite being relatively near the hospital and safety. He remembered the blackened countenance that passed for a face with the two protrusions on its head beckoning him forward. He remembered how powerless he had been to resist. And, finally, as the being had pulled him close and enfolded him into his cloak, he remembered being smothered by what he knew to be the wicked stench of mortal sin. Screaming, his mind had retreated into the blackness to hide. The next thing he remembered was waking up in his cell.
After first contact, Gallo retreated from the door, trembling in fright, fighting nausea and trying to pray. But he was incapable of reciting his prayers, even by rote. He merely mumbled sounds that he hoped were prayers.
Thereafter, he made no more protests or challenges. He meekly accepted the food that was offered and kept silent. He prayed continuously for salvation through deliverance or death – either was preferable to this torturous limbo of meaningless existence devoid of purpose or control.
Now, barely a month later, the nightly keening began again sending chills up his spine and setting goose bumps alive on his arms and legs. One thing was certain: whatever was making those sounds – he wasn’t even sure if they were human or not – was slowly being murdered.
Because of prolonged inactivity, the old priest’s bones constantly ached and his joints had stiffened. He rolled onto his knees and used his hands as leverage to stand upright. Shuffling to the steel door, he pressed his ear against it. The screams were definitely coming from somewhere distant, though loud enough to also be heard through the small, stone openings of his cell. Why didn’t someone else hear them, he wondered? Surely they were loud enough that any passer-bys would alert the police. But, he also understood the possibility that he was in a rural area since, despite the nightly weeping and pleas for mercy, nothing happened. At these times, there was little Gallo could do other than to say a prayer for the souls of those sufferers.
Despite frequent awakenings from the shrieks of victims in the night, his routine continued unaltered for days. It was about a week later that the nightmares began. These dreams held vivid and monstrous scenes that sickened him to the point of physically throwing up after awakening.
Night after night he would dream that he was being roused, led out of his cell, and dragged down some stone steps to a giant cavern where he would see the naked bodies of hundreds of terrified men, women and children being tortured.
Some were hanging by chains from stone walls, their flesh pierced by iron meat hooks slicing into their backs and holding them a few feet from the floor. Unable to escape, they would kick, cry and plead as small, orange and red, gnome-like creatures scuttled up to them, retreated, and scuttled up again as though testing the waters to see if they were a danger in any way.
The creatures were only three feet tall and yet had over-grown adult-sized heads complete with the mythical horns of devils. They were naked and seemed to be almost androgynous since he couldn’t make out any defined genitalia. Their sole intent seemed to be to torture their terrified prisoners, pretending at times to be afraid of them and retreating.
After a number of forays by the creatures towards their victims, who screamed in terror at their approach, they would retreat a few more times sporting sadistic grins. Ultimately they would end the game by returning a last time with scythe-like knives in their misshapen claw-like appendages. With heads cocked to the side as though puzzled over what to do, they would suddenly arrive at a decision en mass and scurry up to their victims to slit the bottom of their bellies open. Then they would drop their knives, dig their claws inside the hemorrhaging wounds and drag out the victims’ entrails to stuff them in their mouths. They would chew frantically, pulling their heads back to extract more intestines with their teeth as the victims heaved and screamed, and blood pulsed in scarlet gushes from their wounds and mouths.
And, there were more games from hell.
Once he was made to watch as dozens of the creatures seized chains attached to a number of naked victims’ limbs. The chains were pulled in different directions until the arms and legs made great fleshy pops, soon following by meaty ripping sounds as the limbs were torn from the body trunks leaving four streaming, gaping holes from which the screaming victims quickly bled out.
Other nights he dreamed that he was led to the same cavern where he’d see hundreds of people hanging by chains around their wrists above individual fires set in molten seas of crimson lava which flared, subsided, and then surged higher causing them to scream and to try to pull their legs up from the flesh-scorching heat. There was no lighting in the rocky cavern, though none was needed with so many fires. The red hot flames, which uniformly seemed to rise higher and higher over the minutes, would cast the macabre, dancing shadows of the victims on the surrounding rock walls as hanging bodies jerked and twisted in agony. Gallo was forced to watch as each one was slowly roasted to death from the feet up. The end would come when the blistering heat caused their pubic hair to incinerate in a brief flair, soon followed by their internal cavity organs bursting into steak-sizzling masses of
jelly, frying and popping in their bellies while seared flesh sloughed off their feet and legs into the fires. They screamed and screamed but never seemed to lose consciousness until the very last moments of their lives. Then their heads dropped and their bodies emptied themselves into the fires sending up a hissing, steaming stenches of urine and feces.
Gallo knew this could only be a rendition of hell and he was being made privy to the tortures of the eternally damned. But were these events real or mere nightmares? He began to suspect that they were real after awakening several times with his knuckles skinned and bleeding, his lips bitten through, his pulse racing, and his body drenched in sour sweat. The pork-like aromas of the smoldering flesh of the human sacrifices were often still in his nostrils and the pitiful screams of the victims resonated in his ears.
Sometimes he would remember being dragged by the small horned creatures close to the cooking bodies and having a long pike shoved into his hands. He was urged to prod and turn the bodies of the young men and women. If he failed to do so, he was thrust ever closer to the fires himself until he complied. The priest would never forget the sweating, terrified face of one young blond girl who couldn’t have been more than eighteen and who stared down at him from where she hung above the fire and begged: “Father...Father! For the love of God...save me, save my soul.”
He felt the small creatures near his knees beginning to push him towards the edge of the sea of fire. To save himself he pushed the pike into her side and turned her face from him as her stomach gave forth its contents and she died.
Each morning after the horrific dreams, he desperately worked to erase them from an increasingly numbed mind, to forget the horrible deaths of the people and the small, reptilian creatures that forced him to do unspeakable things. Sometimes, in an attempt to avoid what he hoped were dreams, he would try to remain awake. Eventually, however, he would fall asleep and it would happen all over again.
Then one night, everything changed.
Gallo had vowed to himself he wouldn’t sleep; he wouldn’t be coerced back into the fire pits, real or not. Suddenly the steel door had swung open with a metallic crash and a huge, umbrageous figure stood silhouetted in the doorway. Terrified, the priest squeezed his eyes shut feigning sleep, desperately trying to wish his visitor away.
Trembling, he heard what sounded like a chuckle or perhaps even a small growl from the figure in the doorway.
Bow to the King of Fire.
The old priest’s terror was great as the figure in the doorway began to speak in a soft, modulated and hypnotic voice. “Oh Father, Father, Father...what is to become of you cowering there in fear? Where is your faith now? Where is your trust in The Trinity? Where is your hope, old man?”
Gallo tried to keep his breathing steady. Retreating into the innocence of a child, he desperately pleaded in his mind: “Go away...go away...go away!”
“Have you lost all courage, Father Gallo? Can you not face me? What happened to all those threats you voiced so clearly over these last months? Were they hollow? Was your faith - that you professed so vehemently - nothing but a lie? Do you not continue to believe in the Son of the Wood Worker’s death and resurrection? What about the infallibility of the Church?” He laughed, a deep roar that seemed to shake the stone walls of Gallo’s cell. “Ah...so many questions, so little fucking time.”
The figure then suddenly advanced and stood over the quaking old man, knowing full well he wasn’t asleep. Gallo knew, with every fiber of his body, that this could only be Adramelech, the arch demon himself. Though he kept his eyes shut, he could feel an overpowering sense of evil growing in strength and proximity as the demon leaned close and whispered in his ear.
“Perhaps you’d like a turn in the pit? How would you like to feel your innards roasting like a fat, young pig, your outer flesh sizzling like crispy bacon?” He chuckled again quietly.
The priest’s heart hammered in his chest. Had the demon truly come for him? Was it his time to be tortured like the others? Visions of himself being slowly roasted to a screaming death forced him to abandon any charade of sleeping. Terrified, he scrambled off his mattress and flung himself away from the demon to where he huddled against the far wall. He was still too fearful to look at the Beast. With his blanket clutched in his hand, his mind reeled and snapped in and out of reality as madness tore into his brain; his beliefs, intellect and rationality surrendered to a single, primal desire – to survive. All he wanted to do was live. At any cost.
As Father Benito Gallo of the most Holy and Apostolic Roman Catholic Church began to croon in baby-like sounds to comfort himself and block out the horror, the silhouetted form stood up and laughed again. “Don’t worry priest. Be of good cheer. You have much work to do.”
The monster moved closer to explain how the old man could save himself. “There is no hope, no redemption, priest. You are nothing but human meat. But you may live out your miserable years if you follow orders. So be a good boy and start by simply disavowing any belief in the Father, the Son of God and his whore mother.”
* * * *
PART TWO
“THE COMING”
By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes,
Open locks,
Whoever knocks...
William Shakespeare
MACBETH
~ 1 ~
WOODSTROM, VERMONT - 2003
As they headed west on Route 4, Sheriff Clay Montague slowed the patrol car on the Ottauquechee River Bridge and carefully maneuvered across it before picking up speed on the other side. Like most bridges in the area, the one spanning the 165-foot Quechee Gorge froze rapidly and regularly featured some of the most treacherous black ice he’d ever encountered.
Though the National Weather Service out of Burlington had promised a clear day for tomorrow, it was snowing lightly now, huge flakes dancing in the sky with the promise of at least three inches of light powder. He could imagine the slopes of Suicide Six the next day bobbing with happy skiers cutting trails through the virgin snow under a wintry blue sky.
Clay hoped that he and his deputy, Bob Hitchcock, aka Hitch, could make it back to Woodstrom before darkness closed in. Vermont winter weather was unpredictable and unforgiving, particularly in December.
“What the hell are we looking for again, Clay?” Hitch asked, sitting beside him carefully sipping coffee from a steaming Styrofoam cup.
Clay glanced over, his gaze sliding past the Ithaca 37 12-gauge pump and the .30-30 Winchester clamped, barrels upright, against the dashboard between them. The deputy’s six-foot-four-inch frame was uncomfortably wedged in the front seat, his Stetson cocked on the back of his head and hazel eyes thoughtful. He blew steam off his coffee and cautiously took a sip.
“Damned if I know, Hitch,” Clay said, cautiously watching an oncoming SUV as it approached. “Mrs. Jackson claims she saw lights at the old Baker place.”
Slush from the other vehicle splattered the windshield and Clay hit the wiper button.
“Mrs. Jackson sees lights all the time,” Hitchcock muttered, swallowing another mouthful. “It’s those damn UFO books she keeps reading! Probably just someone with a hankering for venison up there jacking deer.”
“Maybe...but we’d better have a look. That place has been rotting away for years. If it’s kids fooling around, they could go through a floorboard and break their necks.”
They drove in silence for a few more minutes.
The highway unwound before them, a silent ribbon of dirty grey slush and snow marked only by twin black tracks where another car had made its way minutes before. The rest of the valley was blanketed in banks of soft, white crystals which now whirled lazily in the light wind and settled across the highway in sweeping mounds. He glanced up through the thick flakes at the mountains looming on either side of the road, awesome guardians of the valley. The car periodically hesitated, bumping through the small drifts of snow before surging ahead to pick up speed again.
Borderi
ng the highway were crowded stands of spruce and pine trees staggering under the loads of snow on their branches. Their soft beauty reminded him of gauze-swathed angels perched on the Christmas trees of his youth.
Hitchcock said: “A virtual winter wonderland, eh Clay?”
Keeping his eyes on the road, Clay nodded in agreement. Like Hitch, he had grown up in Vermont, and was well used to the winters.
The car slowed and staggered as it hit another drift and slewed sideways. Clay spun the wheel into the skid; the automobile responded beautifully. It was instantly arrow-straight again.
The flakes were huge and fluffy now, making it harder to see. They were also beginning to stick to the windshield. The warm air from the car’s vent melted the snow as it hit the glass and it puddled, ran, and froze on the wiper blades. In turn, the wipers lay twin smears of ice across the glass. Clay cursed and hit his washer button. The fluid sprinkled half-heartedly onto the windshield. The wiper cleared the slush for a minute, and then the window iced up again, worse than before.
“I wouldn’t use the washer,” Hitchcock ventured, hesitantly.
“You want to drive?” Clay shot back. He didn’t tolerate additional drivers, front or back seat.
Hitchcock grinned: “Naw, you’re havin' too much fun.”
Clay smiled in spite of himself and was grateful for Hitch’s easy-going good humor. He’d worked with the man for four years now and he’d become a close personal friend as well as partner. Martha Hitchcock, Hitch’s wife, had also become best friends with Clay’s wife, Jody.
The deputy was a great back-up in a scrap as Clay had found when he had to face down a half-dozen drunken, good-ole-boys outside the Loose Moose Bar & Grill one night two years before. The six men had just finished a free-for-all in the Moose and trashed it in the process. Clay chuckled at the memory of Hitch using a .12 gauge to make the rowdies understand they weren’t in charge any longer.
The Plan Page 9
