Would he start with Celia Bittner?
Yes, the demon’s voice answered. He’ll start with Celia, and he’ll continue with a string of other delectable tarts. He’ll rip them open and fuck their glistening wounds, and in time he’ll graduate to Liz and her family. And he’ll go on and on and on, you cocksucking coward. You’ve failed to stop him.
“No,” I whispered. I pocketed the fillet knife, its wicked surface sharp against my thigh.
Yes! Malephar answered. Yes, you little bastard! You’ll be anathema to Liz once she finds out what you tried to do to Carolyn. Why not simply die now and avoid her condemnation?
“That was you,” I muttered, “not me. I would never harm Carolyn.”
Tried to strangle her.
I stopped you from strangling her.
Something sulky crept into Malephar’s tone. You didn’t stop anything.
Then why not kill her? I demanded. You wanted to. I felt your hatred of her. Carolyn’s goodness whipped you into a frenzy.
You dare not challenge me, craven. Or have you forgotten the way I savaged you in your bathroom. You are nothing.
I moved forward, the light growing stronger.
“I am the light,” I whispered.
What? Malephar demanded.
I didn’t know why I’d uttered the words, but they’d perfectly captured the lifting sensation I was experiencing. Because I had remembered something I’d lost over the last several days, something more important than anything else.
I had defeated Malephar once.
You didn’t defeat me.
I had vanquished him in Liz’s house.
You became my host, craven!
By casting you out of Casey’s body, I answered, my muscles seeming to swell.
You’re mistaken! If any power existed in that house, it belonged to me—
I clenched my fists. You only overcome those who believe in the supremacy of evil.
—or to your murdered companion, the dead priest.
I will live out the rest of my days repenting for what I did to Father Sutherland—
—your days are finished, you insolent child—
—but you will not be the one to judge me, Malephar.
Your soul will roast, you simpering, cowardly—
“I rebuke you, accursed serpent, by the power of God,” I said aloud.
WHAT? Malephar thundered.
I stalked forward, the light and the roar of water strengthening.
“And I demand that you depart from this body.”
You don’t have the strength to cast me out, craven.
From somewhere behind me I heard the clatter of footsteps. Danny had discovered his error.
He was coming.
“I order you by the might of the holy spirit and the name of Christ, to depart from this innocent flesh.”
Innocent? The demon bellowed laughter. You’re a killer, a lecher, a ruthless—
“The power of Jesus Christ compels you. Tremble before His mighty hand.”
Tremble? You tremble before me, false priest!
“Jesus orders you to abandon this flesh. God demands that you leave this body.”
I will not leave you, craven! the demon shouted, but the voice was shot through with uncertainty now, a plaintive note leavening the bestial growl to which I was accustomed. I will use you to spread the devil’s darkness!
The tunnel tended right and downward, and I discovered from where the glow was emanating. There was an iron grate there, through which two-dozen bars of milky light poured. The grate looked solid, but it was also rusty, the bolts no doubt having been eaten away by age.
I began to run.
“Jesus Christ casts you out,” I said.
What are you doing? the demon demanded.
I thought it fitting that now, when my powers had begun to wax—when my faith had begun to return—Malephar could no longer read my thoughts.
Or rather, he could only read them too late.
NO! he shrieked.
But I was already lengthening my strides, loping forward until I’d attained maximum speed, and diving forward, shoulder-first into the grate.
In the instant before impact I realized I might well die of a broken neck if the grate refused to give.
It gave. When my full weight crashed down on it at a sixty-degree angle the ancient bolts snapped, the grate swung open, and then I was plummeting into a shadowy expanse that was nevertheless brighter than the tunnel I had just exited. I dropped through the murk, the demon still raging within me, and landed, my lower back and buttocks hitting first and the back of my head smacking the ground. I tumbled, the slimy concrete verging downward, and eventually wound up a few feet away from an underground river.
A billion pinpricks of light bloomed in my vision, the pain formidable. Worse was the spiraling disorientation, the inability to gain my feet. I knew I had dropped out of the tunnel into some larger space, but I couldn’t get my bearings and continue my flight.
Footsteps above me.
Danny was coming.
I finally got up, nearly overbalanced, but righted myself in time. Still dizzy, I jogged forward for perhaps fifty feet before going gray again and veering downhill. My feet sloshed into ankle-high water, and I realized I could see fairly well now. I also discovered where I was.
This slimy, vast concrete tube was part of the Deep Tunnel Project. And if the light I spied downstream was any indication, I wasn’t far from the Jewel Reservoir.
The current was strong, and I knew if I waded deeper into the rushing water, I’d be swept through the tunnel and into the falls. I had stood around this reservoir on many Sunday afternoons and watched the excess water gush out of these giant tubes. The power they exhibited was awesome, the roaring of the runoff exploding out of the tunnels, pounding the reservoir below, and roiling like a storm-tossed sea.
No one could survive a fall into the reservoir. To follow the rainwater toward the mouth of the tunnel was certain death. My only hope was to hurry upstream and search for a way out.
I heard a whooshing sound and glanced up in time to see Danny sliding down the curved decline behind me, his gun drawn.
I was cut off. I fled in the only direction I could go, the direction of the reservoir. Danny’s gun had been holstered, but I’d seen how quick he could be. I was sprinting toward the light, so his aim would only improve the farther we advanced through the tunnel.
“Where you going, Father?” Danny called. “Don’t you wanna hear about my plans for after I kill you? You’ll never guess what I’m gonna do to Liz.”
Moaning, I loped on. Danny’s words weren’t idle threats. I knew it because I’d inhabited his mind, if only for a moment. But a moment had been long enough to glimpse the horrors there, the oozing darkness. Danny’s soul was as black as pitch, and though there might have once been some good in him, that light had been extinguished forever. Danny was beyond saving.
The question was, was I?
Danny spoke again, closer this time.
“I can’t tell you the number of times I wondered why Liz didn’t leave that asshole brother of mine and climb into my bed. She never notices, but every chance I get I stare at her cleavage, peek up her skirt. You know, she once left her bedroom door ajar when she was changing out of her swimsuit, and I got the most glorious look at her ass.” His voice was getting closer, the terrible words echoing off the curved walls and becoming clearer over the roar of the river.
“She had tan lines, you know, because it’s risky to lay out naked around here. But that snowy-white ass of hers… God, it was curved and firm and not a bit dimpled from cellulite. I can’t tell you how often I’ve thought of carving it up and eating it like jerky.”
I cringed, my limbs feeling leaden, my nerves frayed. Danny, on the other hand, seemed totally at ease. What was more, he didn’t sound a bit out of breath. I recalled how strong he was, how physically fit. He was a specimen of raw power, agility, and animal cunning.
And al
l his considerable talents were focused on ending my life.
The vast tunnel trended left, the way ahead gradually brightening. I could see now that the river of runoff was perhaps eighteen feet across, and I guessed it to be about six feet deep in the center. I flirted with the notion of leaping into it, but even as I slipped and slid on the curved, scum-slicked floor, I was still making faster progress than the water was. If I jumped in and allowed the current to carry me, I might not be able to climb out of the river before the tunnel emptied into the churning reservoir far below, and worse, I’d be an even easier target for Danny, who’d simply jog alongside me and fire at my head whenever I breached the surface. I wasn’t a terrible swimmer, but I wasn’t an accomplished one either. My only hope was that an exit presented itself between here and the end of the tunnel. If not, I’d either be swept into the reservoir to drown, or Danny would end my life with a bullet to the head.
“So what’s it like?” Danny called, his voice closer.
I didn’t answer, but I knew what he was asking about. Demonic possession was intriguing to many people. How much more tantalizing would the subject be for a depraved monster?
“I said what’s it like?” Danny repeated. “You’re about to die, you know. Might as well confess your sins to somebody.”
Sins, I thought, frowning. Sins.
My body was failing me, Malephar doing nothing to help. Perhaps he wanted me to die. But something about that word, sins, was dredging up a memory.
The night Danny had attacked me in the cottage, the night Malephar had seized his arm and shown me the identities of Danny’s former and future victims, I had glimpsed a great many faces. Faces of the dead and the living both, and all but one of them had been identified.
We were nearing the mouth of the tunnel. I pushed forward and saw the vast, staring eye of the tunnel’s terminus, beyond which lay the deepening dusk, sunset having taken a stranglehold on the city.
I shot looks left and right, but there was nothing but concrete, nothing but rushing water. Eighty more yards to the mouth of the tunnel and no exit in sight.
But something else was gnawing at me. Moments ago, during my recitation of the rites of exorcism, Malephar had struggled violently. I believed myself capable of finishing the exorcism and vanquishing Malephar again. Yet now I wondered why Malephar would cease struggling. Was it merely because of the momentary stoppage of the rites, or was there something more sinister at work here, Malephar again plotting to best me?
Danny was gaining. “You know, I’ve been thinking a lot about the little friend inside you, Father.”
Friend, I thought, a chill squirming through me. Agent of my damnation is more like it.
“And I came to the conclusion that you’re not really fit for the job.”
My energy was flagging, the stitch in my side like relentless knife strokes. Only fifty yards to go. I realized that this tunnel was positioned beneath at least one other tunnel, because there was a continuous sheet of water flooding over the circular opening.
I couldn’t help but recall Father Patterson’s story of Ariana. Of how she’d been lost forever by tumbling into just such a waterfall.
And I had the feeling that the reservoir falls were far more violent than the ones in the state park.
Thirty yards.
“Now take a guy like me,” Danny went on, his tone conversational, “a guy who’s not afraid to do the grunt work. Who’s able, and more importantly, willing to get his hands dirty.”
I shivered, twenty yards from the opening, a large magenta circle on a tar-black tapestry.
“Wouldn’t I be a better vessel for your passenger?” Danny said.
An electric jolt sizzled through my body. I realized exactly what it was that Malephar wanted.
He wanted Danny.
“No,” I breathed, slowing as I neared the terminus.
An image flickered in my mind, a girl’s face.
“Stop, Father. Put those hands up high.”
I stopped. I had no choice. Three feet from where I stood the tunnel plummeted into an abyss. At a glance, I saw the drop was at least half a football field, maybe more. The roar of the falls was earsplitting.
“Hands up!” Danny shouted.
I raised my hands.
“Now face me.”
I turned and saw Danny striding toward me. His expression was easy, genial as always. He looked like he’d hardly broken a sweat. If not for the gun pointed at me, you would have thought we were getting ready to share a beer together.
“I heard that stuff you were saying back there,” Danny said. “You were trying to get rid of the demon, weren’t you?”
I said nothing, but I was thinking hard. That face in Danny’s mind… that face…
“And it makes me wonder,” Danny went on, continuing to display the same uncanny perceptiveness that had allowed him to murder seven girls under the noses of his colleagues and an entire city, “why you’d be so gung-ho to do that. I knew from the 7-11 incident, you know, piecing together what Ronnie and everybody else told us, that it wasn’t you acting alone against those assholes in masks. You had help.”
Danny stepped closer, the gun aimed at my chest. “So I wondered, ‘Why doesn’t he use that power to fight me?’ I felt it that night in your house, you know. That thing inside you could’ve ripped my arm off if it had wanted to. But it didn’t. And it doesn’t want to help you now.”
I looked into Danny’s soulless eyes, asked, “Why do you think that is?”
“I think you know, Father. And I think you know what I need from you.”
I did. God help me, I did.
He wanted Malephar. This sick, demented killer craved the demonic infestation that was plaguing me. Danny wanted Malephar to inhabit his body rather than mine.
And I knew the demon wanted the transfer too. Malephar realized I wouldn’t acquiesce to his ghoulish wishes any longer. He needed someone more tractable to manipulate.
Or in this case, someone eager to execute the devil’s will.
“So you’re gonna do one more thing, Father. And the best part is, you’re not gonna have to lift a finger. All you have to do is stand there, and I’m gonna put a bullet in you, and as you choke on your own blood, the thing inside you is gonna relocate to a proper home, a place where it’ll be more appreciated.”
I paled, imagining how lethal Danny would become with the demon girding his actions. He’d already proved equal to the task of carrying out his atrocities and eluding capture. Now, with the demon aiding him, he would be unstoppable. His reign would last for decades.
One thought, one image kept intruding on this bleak possibility. The one girl I hadn’t yet identified.
It doesn’t matter, Malephar snarled. It was the first time the demon had spoken in several minutes. That told me I was near the mark, that the girl’s identity really might matter.
Danny gestured with the gun. “The demon went into you at the end of Casey’s exorcism, right? So finish this exorcism.”
Finish it, Malephar echoed.
Danny was right. If I exorcised the demon now, both Malephar and Danny would get their wish.
“Say the rest, Father,” Danny commanded, his amiable smile going tight.
But Malephar couldn’t continue if both of us were dead.
“I won’t do it,” I said. “If I die, the demon dies too.”
A flicker of disappointment played across Danny’s face. Malephar raged within me.
Danny shrugged. “Well, fuck it, you know? You die, it’ll be like this never happened. I’ve done fine on my own so far. I just thought it’d be a kick to wield the kind of strength you showed at that convenience store.”
He raised the gun. “Any last words, Father? What do they call it? A benediction?”
“Valediction,” I said, turning toward the sheet of falling water.
“Face me,” Danny ordered. “It’s gotta look like I shot you in self-defense.”
“What if I drown?” I asked softly
. I closed my eyes, sought for the name Malephar had discovered when he’d glimpsed the face in Danny’s mind.
“Not as good,” he said, splashing closer. “The story doesn’t work as well, and who knows? You might live. Stranger things have happened.”
“The last face,” I said, staring at the falling water. The sky beyond it was violet, the day writhing in its death throes. I probed for the name, and though Malephar struggled to conceal it from me, it was crystalizing in my mind.
“Turn around, Father,” Danny demanded. “Don’t make me ask again.”
Something Liz said about the killer echoed in my brain:
I hate him, but… I think he’s in terrible pain. Something from his past. I think that can be used against him.
I lowered my hands as I spoke. “I made a mistake. I thought the people I saw were all your victims, the ones you’d killed and the ones you were planning on murdering.”
Danny’s voice was uncharacteristically tense. “Shut up.”
“But there was one face that was separate from the rest. She had a different…” I paused, licked my lips, and imagined her features. “…a different aura than the other faces. A different color.”
“Shut your mouth, Father.”
“The others, there was a reddish cast to them. They were the ones who incited your bloodlust, who you’d carved up and tortured. Or the ones you planned on raping and disemboweling.”
“Motherfucker,” he growled, right behind me now.
“But this one was a solemn blue. A sorrowful memory.”
“I’m not just gonna shoot you,” he said, his voice raspy, “I’m gonna make you suffer. Who knows, they might not even find your body.”
“She was the one who broke your heart. She was the girl you loved when you were sixteen.”
“Keep talking, Crowder, I’m gonna enjoy this. I’m gonna carve you up worse than any of my honeys,” he snarled.
“You were in love with her. You told her so. You believed she’d marry you, raise children with you.”
His voice became a husky growl. “Gonna rip out your spleen, Father. Gonna eat it while you beg for mercy.”
“And then she left you for an older guy, a college student.”
“Get ready, you worthless motherfucker. Get ready to know pain.”
Exorcist Falls Page 30
