The Trilogy of the Void: The Complete Boxed Set

by Peter Meredith

  "You mean you lied to him. Her soul isn't saved is it?" The words from Father Alba's mouth were seasoned with accusation, there was a long pause, and the priest frowned at being ignored.

  "Mrs. Fortini?" Will asked in a soothing manner so as not to upset her. "Did you lie to him?"

  "Yes, I lied to him. I couldn't save her soul then and I don't think I can save it now. I could only save myself, so I said: Tomas you have to kill her in order to save her soul. He couldn't do it at first, instead he cried and blubbered and I was getting angry and afraid so I said: Use the gun Tomas, make it quick! But he wouldn't. The priest was almost dead, his face was nearly black and his legs drummed up and down on the floor, but they were getting weaker and weaker." Her voice droned on without emotion and her eyes were unblinking.

  It was only when she repeated words from that night twenty-one years before that she sounded alive. William realized that Adrina was in a trance. It was to his son that she was responding to and he looked keenly at the boy and saw that Will understood all of this too.

  Adrina went on, "I said: Please, we don't have time, use the gun now or we'll all die! Tomas had a gun. It was a heavy gun and it was cold...it was ice cold...cold as death."

  "Why did he have a gun Mrs. Fortini?" Will inquired.

  "I don't know but it was cold and heavy. He took it from his coat and put it to her head and said: Mom I can't! I can't do it. She's my baby and she's so beautiful, I can't do it." Her voice had become that of a man, filled with heartbreaking sadness, and William's skin broke out in goose bumps a second time at the sound of it. You have to kill her Tomas! The priest is almost dead. And the demon will come for me next...kill her now quick, please! Kill her for me! I pleaded with him to kill his beloved daughter, so that I wouldn't have to face the demon again. I will never see the light of heaven, I know this, and I deserve what the demon is going to do to me. But there was no choice. The only one that could live through this was me." She stopped talking and the silence rolled around the kitchen as the men sat still in shock.

  Finally, William nudged his son to get him to continue. "Mrs. Fortini," he said in that odd comforting voice that William had never heard before. "Did he shoot her then?"

  "No he couldn't do it. He put the gun aside, slowly and I thought my death would happen then. The demon came to me...it hurt me...it didn't want to kill me fast, like the priest, it wanted to hurt me, it wanted my suffering above everything else. It wanted to feed off of me...it wanted to eat...to eat...to eat...to eat...to eat..."

  The repetition was chilling and William felt his goose bumps return in force and he shuddered at the sound.

  "Mrs. Fortini?" This time Will said it loudly, obviously bothered by the dreadful words. "The demon looked into you, we got that, but then what happened?"

  "To eat... Yes to eat, to feed off of my pain. It was crushing my toes with a hammer, each one Bam! Bam! Just as the pain would start to recede, it would crush the next in line. I was screaming... I don't know if the screams are in my head or coming out my mouth. But I scream for its pleasure. Then, like a miracle, it's gone and at first I was so happy, so relieved, I look down and my shoes look unmarred and the pain was fading like a dream. But then Tomas starts screaming. It is like a girl's scream, high and piercing and that sound scares me worse than anything. Tomas is a man; he fought in Korea...nothing should make a man scream like that. IIIIIIEEEEEEEEEE!" Adrina suddenly screamed loudly and it echoed in the apartment.

  It was the scream of her son Tomas, tearing up from her soul and William knew then, that whatever evil Adrina might have done, he would not be the one to judge her.

  When the scream ended, she picked up where she had left off, "I looked to Tomas and I saw why the demon had released me. My son had his hands over Emily's mouth and he was suffocating her, killing her in the most painless way he could conceive. The demon knew that if the girl died, his gate would be closed, so it went after Tomas. The vision had made it clear I was not to kill her, so even as Tomas screamed and screamed, I put his hands back over Emily's mouth and held them there with the stabbing pain of his cries drilling through my ears."

  "Mrs. Fortini, did the demon go back?"

  "Yes. Emily died. Eventually, Tomas stopped screaming and looked down at his hands. The hands that had killed his own daughter. He wept long and I wept with him, miserable and disheartened."

  "Because of Emily?"

  "No. Because it was almost time to kill Tomas?"

  This baffled William and he mouthed the word why to his son, who asked, "Why would you need to kill him when the demon was gone?"

  "To save his soul. Right, Father?" She turned to the priest. However, her eyes were still huge, glassy, and unseeing in this world. Father Alba looked at the others wondering if he should answer and William gave a quick shake of his head.

  Will watched them silently and then turned to Adrina and said, "Mrs. Fortini, you lied to your son about saving Emily's soul. Are you lying to us right now about trying to save Tomas' soul?"

  "The demon had shattered him mentally; his head was sweeping back and forth as if he could deny what had just happened. Tears coursed down his face, they rolled off his jaw and were landing on Emily's pale face, so that it looked as if she were crying, too. No...no...no, Tomas repeated over and over again. His voice hoarse and raspy. Tomas said to me: It's too much, Mother, and I said: What? What is too much? He looked up from Emily and I saw his eyes were going in two different directions and he said: This life, it's too much. He picked up his gun...the cold one, and putting it to his head, pulled the trigger."

  Father Alba looked at the others. "Skipper told me the man had been shot in the back of the head...execution style. It was..."

  "Execution," Adrina interrupted speaking without emotion, "Execution. I am an executioner.

  "Mrs. Fortini, did he kill himself or did you, uh have to do it?"

  "I killed him. I am an executioner. The safety of the gun was on. Tomas looked at it and pressed a button and I pleaded with him, but he said: I can't be alive. I saw...things. I killed my own daughter with my bare hands just to save my own skin...I can't be alive. I said to him: No you had to do it and what you saw, it wasn't real. Please believe me, it wasn't real. Don't do this."

  Tears came down her face again. Speaking as Tomas she said: "It is real I know it, everything I've done...everything I'm going to do, it's all too much! I have to die, please let me die.

  "I wanted him to live, so I snatched the gun from his hands. Tomas, you just saw the demon, you know Hell is real. You know what will happen if you kill yourself. The demon is waiting for you.

  "This made him pause, but it was only for half a heartbeat: Then you must kill me. I lied then and said I couldn't, but I really could because I'm an executioner. I'm an executioner, right Father?"

  She turned her glassy eyes again to the priest and he shrank back away from her. Her face was that of a lunatic and despite her tiny size and old age, she looked dangerous like rabid dog. "I had killed before...executed...they were Jews, just a family of Jews. They all died, very horribly but at that time, no one cared about the Jews. The Einsatzgruppen came for us Gypsies and we fled from them. The Jews had passports and we did not." Here she shrugged; a little jerk of her scrawny shoulders. "They would've died anyway...I was just their executioner. We were in Austria, just outside of..."

  Everyone stared in silence at her admission of an earlier crime, but William felt a sense of urgency, he gave his son a sharp poke in the ribs. Will jumped, startled and William gave him a look.

  "Mrs. Fortini, what happened to your son?" Will interrupted the story.

  She was slow to stop, "The death squad was just on the..."

  "Mrs. Fortini? Tell me what happened to your son." Will's calm voice spoke with more authority.

  "Kill me now mother!" She was back to speaking as Tomas. "He begged me to kill him and I still held back selfishly, but then he smiled and said: There are knives...I have so many knives. It was the way he said it, w
ith so much comfort and peace at the idea of the knives. I realized that there would be no stopping him, so...in order to save him, I killed him. I told him not to worry about the knives that I would do it for him and I would make it quick. He smiled at me and the smile was filled with relief, thank you was all he said. And I said...I said..."

  She ended unexpectedly and blinked rapidly a few times, her face became alive with meaning, "Excuse me," she whispered.

  In the silence of the apartment, it carried to each of them clearly. Adrina got up slowly and William saw the whole of her body was shaking. She went to the bathroom and shutting the door, left the four men sitting in dead silence. Each seemed afraid to break the silence and they all took to staring at Will inquisitively.

  2

  Will looked guilty as if he were on trial, and mouthed the words, "It wasn't me. I didn't do it." William knew this to be the truth and smiled at his boy in understanding. Will found the courage to use his voice a second later, and whispered, "What the heck was that?"

  "Auto-hypnosis, that is unless you have some magic power of your own," Brian said and he looked sad suddenly. "Talitha and I had an argument concerning this just a couple of weeks ago...she would've found this all to be endlessly fascinating." He stopped talking and sat staring at the beat up table. They all did and it was some minutes before Adrina came back out, looking more composed.

  She peered into the pale and ashen face of William and asked, "Commander, did that answer your questions well enough? Will you be able to trust me?"

  It had. He knew what he had just seen couldn't have been faked. "Yes it does and I...having seen that with my own eyes. I don't doubt you...or blame you."

  "That's nice, but I blame myself enough for both of us."

  "But what about the girl's body in the basement," Father Alba asked, like a kid demanding just one more story at bedtime. It was an improvement over the fear-induced self-righteousness he had displayed earlier, but it still grated on William.

  "I did it, of course," Adrina snapped angrily. "I had to. That is the way...you will see."

  "I'm sorry for...it's just..." Father Alba seemed at a loss for words. "But why take her down to the basement? Weren't you tired after the whole thing?"

  "I thought there would be a furnace down there, maybe one of the old big ones. I had to burn the body."

  William's stomach rolled over and seeing his son turn white, he decided to get the conversation back to Talitha, and what needed to be done to save her. "You said earlier that we'd have to confront the demon, how will that work? We can't touch it without...dying. Are there prayers that might do something or Holy Water?"

  "This is where we'll need Father Alba the most. We will each be baptized and anointed with the Oil of Chrism, this will keep the demon away from us physically. It will not stop it from entering our minds, however. That is why we must be quick. Confronting it will be easy; as I said, it will come for me first. I will last as long as I can, but one of you must step forward to challenge after me."

  William would be next, in his mind this was a foregone conclusion. "First off, Mrs. Fortini, I don't like the idea of you coming, but Brian's logic does seem correct. You'll confront it first but only because of your vision. I'll go next. After that, boys, you'll have to decide who goes next, as the situation warrants."

  "Don't plan too far ahead, Commander." Adrina was stern and her voice carried authority. "You will all know what to do when the time comes but you must be quick and decisive. Do not hesitate to do what you have to do! And I know you don't want to hear this, but it may come to it. If there is no other option, your Talitha, might have to be killed."

  "No!" Brian snapped like an angry dog, "It won't come to that. I won't let it."

  Adrina grimaced and hung her head. "If you can't be strong enough to do the very hardest things, you shouldn't come. You three...you each have to be willing to kill. It will not be enough that you are willing to lay down your lives. If this ends in all of our deaths the demon will go on and on."

  "I thought the exorcism was going to be performed on Mrs. Harris. Do we need to bring Talitha at all?" William's brow knit in consternation.

  "Yes, she'll need to be there. She won't be able to get back if the gate is destroyed and her body is not present. There's no guarantee, either way, and it will be up to her to make it back."

  "She'll do it," Will intoned with great certainty. "She's fearless." William and Brian nodded in agreement.

  "Good. That is good, her chances will be much better."

  Father Alba suddenly spoke, looking resolute, "I'll go into the house...if it will help. I should do more. I'm a priest after all."

  "I don't think that's a good idea, Father." Adrina suddenly exuded kindness and understanding to the man, and she even reached out and patted him on the hand. "Because you're a priest the demon will go for you first. It'll find any weakness and destroy you completely with it." He started to protest but Adrina carried on, "I understand, we all do, the need to fight this evil. But you were called by the Lord to minster to the needy, the poor in spirit, not to do battle with this monstrous creature."

  "Yes, but it's also part of my vocation...I can't run from it and I can't pick and choose which aspects, I wish to perform."

  "Father you will be needed! Everyone here will need to be baptized. You will need to hear all of our confessions and then there's Communion. We do need you." She was earnest and wasn't just trying to mollify the priest.

  "And the exorcism of course." William felt it odd to have to remind Adrina of the priest's most important job. "If it'll work in the doorway of the kitchen then please do it there and don't feel bad in any way."

  "It's just that I want to do more," he sighed. "I just can't believe we're talking about demons!"

  "Nobody ever truly does Father, until..." She left off with a shrug.

  "I suppose you're right. You know, I never really believed in Hell until today." He paused looking at them for understanding and found it in William who was in the same boat. "I always thought Hell was simply the absence of God."

  This seemed to rile Adrina and her face held thunderclouds that looked to explode on someone. "It is. You're right; Hell is the absence of God. However, you say it in such a casual way, as if it is a land where your ice cream Sundae doesn't come with cherries or where there are dogs but no puppies! You of all people should know that God is in everything!" Her voice grew loud and shrill, "Everything that is, but sin! Hell is built on sin, the blackest sin and only the truly greatest sinners can abide it because they have become their sins and can't see themselves any other way."

  The priest shifted uncomfortably but William was curious to her point of view. "What about the demon, did God make it?"

  "Yes, of course. God is the originator of all. The demon was once a being of some sort, but turned away from the Creator as have all those who dwell in the void. Demons are those who reject God completely and rejoice in their evil. That is the great difference. All the other sinners in the void know their sins, they don't rejoice but are ashamed, and that is what keeps them from God. Their souls still acknowledge God and all his works, and this is why they are so coveted by the various demons."

  The men all looked slightly confused at this and Adrina went on, "A being that casts itself into the void still has memories of its life...it still feels to a certain degree through those memories. Even though demons reject God, they still want what only He can provide: happiness, love, and laughter. Everything that makes life enjoyable. The demons collect souls in order to rip out those memories...to feel, if only for the most fleeting of moments, something other than their own terrible emptiness."

  "Why?" William demanded. He had been picturing his baby girl in the clutches of the demon and his anger came to a boil. "Why does God allow this to go on? I don't get it. This is one of the reasons I don't...I didn't believe in God. He could stop all the pain and misery but he doesn't."

  Adrina looked to the priest to answer William, but he had an
expectant look about him and was waiting on her to continue. "He could, Commander. He could do all of that and more, but it would destroy his greatest gift to us."

  "Life?" Brian asked.

  "No, a cactus has life; I'm talking about free will. Freedom! Commander, you're free to love God with all your heart or to turn your back on him and build your own personal hell. It's that free will that makes you who you are."

  "Yes, but I'm talking about all the misery in the world. Why does God let..."

  "And I am too!" she responded. "Misery is a direct consequence of free will...a murderer must choose to murder, a rapist must choose to rape. They know their actions are wrong and they may hide their faces, but they still choose to do it. People choose to live along rivers that they know will eventually flood and destroy their homes and kill their children. They then foolishly blame God for their own choice! God could protect you from your own choices, he could coddle you and keep you from harm, but you would become bored and tire of your life quickly."

  "Not necessarily."

  "Yes necessarily! When your children were small, they had training wheels on their bikes, yes? Yet you took them off because it was limiting their fun. Life is like riding a bike—the faster you go, the more fun it is. However, there's also more danger as well. God could take away the danger but, implicitly, the fun would go as well. Can you imagine a world without consequences? There would be no meaning in anything. You could jump off a building without getting hurt. But after awhile, you would be bored by it. You would be bored by everything! Do you still play Tic-Tac-Toe? No? Why? Because it's boring, there isn't anything to the game, there's no challenge, and it always ends in a draw. That is what the world would be like...dull and pointless."