One to Go

by Mike Pace

  Hail to the Redskins, Hail Victory—

  “Jesus Christ,” exclaimed Tom and Matthew, almost in unison.

  Braves on the war path—

  It was his damn cell phone. Irene reached into his jeans pocket.

  Fight for old DC—

  “Other pocket!”

  Run or pass and score—

  Sister Irene yanked out the phone and turned it off, then set it on the table.

  “Uh, sorry.”

  The priest didn’t look amused. He and the nun reopened their prayer books.

  CHAPTER 53

  The priest had barely begun, and Tom felt the sweat dampening his clothing. He wondered if he should keep his eyes closed, like praying in church. He kept them open.

  The priest intoned, “Our Father, Who art in heaven, Hallowed be Thy Name…”

  The nun, reading, responded, “Deliver us from evil…”

  “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven…”

  “Deliver us from evil…”

  “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us…”

  “Deliver us from evil…”

  “All holy saints of God…”

  “Intercede for us…”

  “Save your servant…”

  As the priest and nun continued the rite, Tom tried hard to feel something, but so far, nothing stirred inside him.

  The priest continued, “I command you, unclean spirit, whoever you are, along with all your minions now attacking this servant of God, by the mysteries of the incarnation, passion, resurrection, and ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ, by the descent of the Holy Spirit…”

  As Matthew read from the holy book, he made the sign of the cross on his own chest, then stepped forward and repeated it on Tom’s brow, lips, and breast.

  The nun opened the silver flask and handed it to the priest. He stepped back and sprinkled water from the flask the length of his body.

  “God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, I appeal to your holy name, humbly begging your kindness, that you graciously grant me help against this and every unclean spirit now tormenting this creature of yours, through Christ our Lord.”

  Tom couldn’t feel a thing. The priest stepped forward again, made the sign of the cross over himself and Tom, then draped one end of the purple stole around Tom’s neck. He rested his right hand on Tom’s head.

  The priest raised his voice. “I cast you out, unclean spirit, along with every Satanic power of the enemy, every spectre from hell, and all your fell companions, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Begone and stay far from this creature of God. For it is He who commands you, He who—”

  Tom didn’t know whether he was supposed to say anything, but he interrupted anyway. “Uh, Father, not really feeling anything.” Both the priest and nun acted as though they hadn’t heard him.

  “I adjure you, ancient serpent, by the judge of the living and the dead, by your Creator, by the Creator of the whole universe, by Him who has the power to consign you to hell, to depart forthwith in fear, along with your savage minions, from this servant of God—”

  “Father? Matt?”

  The priest returned to his position across the room from Tom. “Tremble before that mighty arm that broke asunder the dark prison walls and led souls forth to light—”

  Tom figured the priest was so deep into the ritual that he didn’t hear him. Tom raised his voice. “Matt—” His lips felt dry, and he extended his tongue to moisten them.

  Except his tongue didn’t extend. And his lips didn’t move. He shouted, but he knew his mouth remained closed. They couldn’t hear him.

  “Depart, then, transgressor—”

  Suddenly, Tom heard clapping.

  He turned his head to see Chad and Brit, dressed as Redskins cheerleaders, sitting at his kitchen table watching the exorcism. Each ate from a bag of popcorn.

  “It’s them! They’re right here!”

  Neither the priest not the nun could hear him.

  Matthew continued the ritual. “Give place, abominable creature, give way, you monster, give way to Christ—”

  Tom struggled with the bindings, twisting back and forth. He lifted his feet off the ground, sagging against the restraints with his full weight. The restraints held. Tom noticed Matthew’s eyes widen, and the priest exchange glances with Sister Irene. They think it’s working, that I’m possessed.

  “Depart, seducer, full of lies and cunning, foe of virtue, persecutor of the innocent—”

  Tom hears a high-pitched screech, and, for a moment, the demons’ images faded to near nothing—little more than a shadow. Was it working? Oh, God, thank—

  The images returned.

  “Almost had us there,” said Chad. “Great show. Don’t you agree, Brit?”

  She applauded. “Excellent. Three stars.”

  “Only three?”

  “Love the writing, but I wonder if the performance wouldn’t benefit from a few special effects.”

  Chad said, “Why don’t we give them what they’re expecting? After all, Matt and Irene have gone to a great deal of trouble on Tom’s behalf.”

  The priest continued, “Therefore, I adjure you, profligate dragon, in the name of the spotless Lamb, who has trodden down the asp and the basilisk, and overcome the lion and the dragon—”

  Tom felt his stomach wrench. He gagged, his mouth opened wide, and green vomit dribbled out onto his shirt. The only time he could remember anything smelling so vile was when he and his dad had found a dead cat under the front porch that had been there for weeks.

  “Love it,” said Chad, clapping like a child.

  Matthew and Irene froze, unable to take their eyes from the vomit.

  “More, more!” exclaimed Chad.

  Brit giggled, gargled a popcorn kernel in her mouth, then spit it toward Tom, hitting him in the gut. Suddenly, Tom felt the surge from his stomach. When the viscous liquid rose, it scorched his throat. He opened his mouth to scream and rid his body of the vile invader; the contents shot out like a fire hose, spraying green slime across the priest’s vestments.

  Matthew stood his ground, and Tom could see the fear on his face, on both of their faces. The priest’s words increased in their urgency. “Tremble and flee, as we call on the name of the Lord, before whom the denizens of hell cower, to whom the heavenly Virtues and Powers and Dominations are subject, whom the Cherubim and Seraphim praise with unending cries—”

  Chad clapped even louder. “Yes, yes!” He turned to Brit. “I’m getting very excited.” He extended his tongue; it split at the end and each prong encircled toward Tom’s face. Tom tried to scream, but no one could hear him. The tongue prongs tightened around his neck.

  “Please, I can’t breathe.” No one heard him. He struggled violently against the restraints, using all of his weight and power in an attempt to rip loose the crank handles, but to no avail.

  The prongs constricted tighter. Tom could feel his air cutting off and his face turning red. Couldn’t the priest see he was being strangled?

  The tongue snapped back to Chad’s mouth. He extended it again and wrapped it around Brit’s head, each prong caressing her hair.

  Brit’s breathing became heavier. “I need you, baby,” she said.

  Chad glanced at Tom. “Here? Now? What about Tom? You know how embarrassed I get.”

  “Tom’s family,” she responded. “Aren’t you, Tom? You wouldn’t mind if we got it on, would you?”

  Matthew, his eyes closed in prayer, continued the rite. “Therefore, I adjure you every unclean spirit, every spectre from hell, every satanic power—”

  Chad took Brit’s hand and gently led her to Tom. She reached around Tom and grasped the window sill on each side of him. Her face was inches from his. She raised her hips and rubbed them back and forth against Chad’s crotch.

  The priest made the sign of the cross on his own head, then traced the sign onto Tom’s brow, his hand moving freely through Brit’s image as it
would through dust mites.

  “Depart from me, you accursed, into the everlasting fire that has been prepared for the devil and his angels—”

  “Now comes the good part, Tom,” whispered Brit. She ran her black tongue across her lips.

  Chad unzipped his fly, and pulled out a glass tube. He smiled, and tugged on it so Tom could see it was the neck of an empty Wild Turkey bottle. He winked at Tom, and lifted Brit’s burgundy skirt.

  “Oooo, baby.” Brit’s eyes closed as Chad entered her. But Tom could still see the black orbs as if the lids were made of cellophane.

  The priest’s voice moved toward crescendo. “An unquenchable fire stands ready for you and for your minions, you prince of accursed murderers, father of lechery, instigator of sacrileges, model of vileness, promoter of heresies, inventor of every obscenity—!”

  “Stop,” shouted Tom. “Everybody, just please stop!” Chad laughed and continued to pound into Brit.

  Tom could feel her putrid breath exhaling onto his face. He looked into her eyes and saw nothing but black emptiness.

  Behind her, Chad sang: “Hail to the Redskins—”

  Brit joined in. “Hail Victory—”

  The priest shouted, “Depart, then, impious one, depart, accursed one, depart with all your deceits, for God has willed that man should be His temple—!”

  “Braves on the war path—”

  The priest and the copulating demons moved to climax.

  “Begone, now! Begone, seducer! Leave this soul and return to—”

  Chad and Brit howled as they reached orgasm.

  “FIGHT FOR OLD DC! Aaeeeooohhhh!”

  “—the FIRE!” Matthew trembled and had to steady himself against a wall to keep from collapsing. Irene helped him to a chair, then quickly filled a glass with water and offered it to him.

  Chad withdrew and they both rearranged their clothing. “That was amazing,” he said. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his brow. Except Tom saw it wasn’t a handkerchief.

  “Where did you get that?”

  Brit dangled it in front of Tom’s eyes. It was white with pink and yellow elephants decorating the edges. Gayle had kept it in a small trunk in the bedroom closet along with other keep-sakes.

  It was Janie’s baby bib.

  CHAPTER 54

  Tom bucked his body up and down, back and forth. “Don’t you touch that! Leave her alone!”

  From their surprised expressions, it was clear that Matthew and Irene had heard him. He was back on the air.

  “Tom, are you okay?” asked the priest.

  “Leave who alone?” asked the nun.

  “Take these damn things off!”

  An hour later, Tom and Matthew sat across from each other at Tom’s kitchen table, Matthew on his second beer and Tom into his second Jack on the rocks. He’d thought briefly of his exchange with Eva about his drinking, but he assumed she would understand surviving an exorcism starring copulating demons qualified as special circumstances.

  Sister Irene had appeared shaken by the experience. Tom supposed she hadn’t witnessed the whole green vomit thing before. As soon as they’d untied him, after a quick blessing for Tom, she’d asked Matthew to be excused and he readily agreed.

  When Tom described what had occurred, Matthew was nearly inconsolable.

  “We should’ve located someone who’d done an exorcism before. I’m very sorry.”

  “Forget it,” said Tom. “Something tells me the outcome would’ve been the same if the Pope himself had performed the rite. So, I need to take another life in nine days or my daughter dies.”

  “You know I can’t—”

  “What? Condone murder?” Tom struggled to keep his voice on an even keel. “So what would you do if you were me? You don’t have any kids, but what about a sister or brother? A loving mother or father? Would you willingly let them not only die, but sentence their souls to burn in hell for eternity? Or would you attempt to find a bad guy and take his life?”

  After a pause, the priest whispered, “I don’t know.”

  “And by the way, where’s the frigging cavalry?” Tom took a deep breath. He knew he was close to losing it. “Sorry, Matt. I just feel abandoned. Where are God and Jesus and the angels, the whole merry band?”

  “Sorry.”

  “Okay, I get it. We’re on our own here. Look, I assume God wouldn’t have a problem with self-defense. I know there’s the whole ‘turn the other cheek’ thing, but we’re not talking about a slap in the face. Does God condemn a man who shoots an intruder about to kill his kids and rape his wife? Or is He okay with letting the good guys die to protect the sanctity of the bad guy’s life?”

  “We’re not talking about self-defense here. Your targets to date did not threaten you.”

  “But they’d killed before.”

  “So now you’ve moved beyond self-defense to vigilante justice as your justification. Big leap.”

  “Still haven’t answered what you’d do.”

  Matthew pushed himself away from the table and headed for the door. “I’m so sorry, Tom.” The priest paused, his eyes indecipherable, then left without another word.

  The click of the door closing acted as a remote and the TV turned on.

  The screen filled with a replay of the exorcism, including the copulating demons. Without breaking his rhythm, Chad’s face turned to him.

  “We had such a wonderful time and we know you did too, so we thought we’d give you a chance to enjoy the replay.”

  Brit smiled at him. “Just one little matter we wanted to pass on. The fact you tried the exorcism, no matter how much we enjoyed it,”—she lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper—“well, it caught the boss’ attention, and for some reason he was in a cranky mood.”

  “Very cranky,” added Chad.

  “So, I’m afraid we have a rules modification. Not a big thing, really.”

  Chad added, “Not big at all.”

  “Your deadline’s been moved up a week.”

  Tom shouted at the screen. “No! You can’t!”

  Chad and Brit spoke in unison. “Two days.”

  The screen went black.

  CHAPTER 55

  After a long, mercifully dreamless sleep, Tom woke Friday morning and immediately grabbed his phone from the bedside table. He knew Janie had the day off for teacher in-service training, and called Gayle to see if he could take Janie and Angie to lunch. She readily agreed. Something about David also having the day off and the two of them going antiquing.

  Tom remembered tagging along with her for antiquing excursions when they were married. They usually occurred on Sundays and every few minutes he’d check his watch, concerned he wouldn’t be back home in time for the Redskins kickoff. He’d been an ass and wished he could rewind those years. He really wished he could rewind to that morning on Memorial Bridge, but no rewinds in life, unless you’d cut a deal with the devil.

  He thought about asking Gayle to check the keepsake trunk to see if the baby bib was missing, but when she found it gone, as he knew she would, how would he explain himself? He arranged to pick up the girls at eleven thirty.

  After dressing in jeans and a sweater, he found a poppy seed bagel in the fridge. As soon as he picked it up, almost all of the poppy seeds fell off, signaling the bagel was beyond stale. No problem. Anything to soak up the acid he felt in his stomach. The bottle of cheap vodka lurking behind the milk carton caught his eye. A step above Frank Custer’s Akron gin, but a small step. A little sip to calm his nerves wouldn’t hurt. He hesitated; Eva’s image filled his brain. He replaced the bottle and closed the fridge door, then exited the apartment before he changed his mind.

  It was all he could do to keep from running full speed to the Shell station. As Tom approached, he spotted an old woman standing in front of the pay phone with a stack of quarters resting on the tiny, scuffed-metal shelf. Judging by her clothing and the supermarket cart parked nearby, stacked high with clothing and other paraphernalia, Tom a
ssumed she was homeless.

  “Hey—”

  She turned, eyeing him suspiciously. “I’ll give you twenty bucks to let me make my call first.” She didn’t respond, and he quickly dug a twenty from his pocket and handed it to her. She snatched the twenty, grabbed her quarters, and stepped aside, standing guard next to her cart. She never took her eyes off him.

  Tom ignored her and dialed Chewy’s number. He could hear breathing as the connection was made.

  “Chew, uh, I mean whoever’s listening, I need a gun.”

  He was surprised to hear Chewy’s voice.

  “Sorry, Teach. We’re even. Stay free.”

  “No, wait. I’ve got less than two days and—!”

  The click terminating the call resonated inside Tom’s head. He immediately called back, but this time no one answered.

  “Phone broken?”

  He turned around to see Percy Castro standing behind him.

  Tom tried to conceal his shock. “What, you’re following me? You have nothing better to do on a Friday morning?”

  The detective didn’t answer him directly. Instead, he looked up to a camera mounted under the eave of the roof overhanging the station’s service bay.

  “Nowadays, everything’s on camera. Don’t know about you, but kind’ve gives me the creeps. Somebody’s always watching.”

  Tom hadn’t noticed the camera before, and he had a bad feeling.

  “Of course, as an investigative tool, it’s very helpful. Take your case, for example. We routinely check all the cameras in the neighborhood to see if a target’s engaged in any suspicious behavior. To tell you the truth, the Big Brother thing makes me uncomfortable as hell, but the greater good and all that.”

  “I’m trying to think why I care, but nothing immediately springs to mind,” said Tom, with a bravado he certainly didn’t feel.

  Castro continued as if Tom hadn’t spoken. “Then, when we do see our guy—you, in this case—using a public pay phone, we got to ask, why, in this age when every five-year-old has his own cell phone, would you be needing to make a call from a gas station pay phone? Could it be you didn’t want the call to be traceable?”