Darker Than Noir

by Riley, R. Thomas; Zoot, Campbell; Chandler, Randy; Kauwe, Faith

  As Idaho waddled away, Kowalski appeared with a glass of bourbon and a cigarette.

  “Can’t smoke in here. It’s the law.”

  “I am the law,” he said and took a long drag.

  Brendan watched Idaho and the principal make their way through the crowd. On the way, Idaho said something in another stripper’s ear. They both looked in his direction. The music was really grating on his nerves. Words on top of words on top of words and beats beating on beating beats under flashes of flashing light. The stripper was walking toward him. Her ribs, collarbone, and hips were sharp against her thin, pale skin. Wicked art: random tats in random places. A smiling clown was on her thigh. A word was on her face, just below her right eye: WRENCH.

  “Like a skeleton under a white sheet,” Kowalski said.

  “Shut up.”

  Words. Beats. Lights.

  “I know who the old bag is,” the stripper said. “Her name’s Miss Robin.”

  “Robin?”

  “Yeah, like the bird. That’s her first name. Her last name was something weird. Don’t care. That’s all I got.”

  Kowalski leaned in and said, “Do you want to make more money?”

  She smiled and ran her hands down her sides.

  “No, shit no. Not me. I’m sayin’ if you want to make more money you should probably invest in a meal from time to time. Believe me, it will pay for itself.”

  She flipped him off and started to leave.

  Idiot.

  “Wait, wait, wait,” Brendan said, gently holding her boney elbow in his hand. “Don’t listen to that dickhead.”

  She glared at Kowalski. He smirked.

  Idiot.

  “You called her an old bag. Why?”

  “Because she is. The only reason she was so nice to Cisco was because she wanted to shove Jesus down her throat. Wanted to save Cisco from hell—because we strippers are nothing but a bunch of sinners, right?”

  “If she was so mean, then why would Cisco live with her?”

  “Because she didn’t know any better—not yet. Robin would suck you in with kindness and then cut you down when the time was right. Self-righteous bitch.”

  Kowalski shouted over the rap, “I got it!”

  Brendan turned.

  The idiot downed the rest of his drink, wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his coat, and then said, “Robin Heidelberg!”

  “Yeah, that’s it,” the stripper with WRENCH on her face said.

  Brendan turned to Kowalski. “The old woman at the beach house?”

  “The charcoal granny.”

  ***

  The Holy Catholic Church of the Resurrection sat on a hill overlooking Columbia River. Ivy and moss covered the brick walls and sideways rain pelted the stained glass windows. It was cold in the narthex, but nice to be out of the wind.

  “Smells like ass in here,” Kowalski said, his voice echoing.

  “Funny you should say that—just coming from a strip club.”

  Kowalski smirked.

  A marble statue of the Holy Mother, palms open, head tilted, looking downward.

  “Look at you, Naughty Mary,” Kowalski said. “Busty. Curved. Dude, Jesus’ mom has got it going on. You think Jesus’ friends, the disciples, were like, ‘Dude, your mom is hot’? I bet Peter was a peeping Tom—peeking in Mary’s tipi when she was naked.”

  “I don’t think she lived in a tipi. And Peter wouldn’t mess with God’s mom.”

  “Such a shame she was a virgin. Poor Joseph was probably busting a nut.”

  Kowalski burped. His eyes were blood shot and his arms hung like noodles. As he walked toward the entrance to the sanctuary, he said, “When I was a kid I was one of those altar boys. Sometimes I’d drink the wine when the priest wasn’t looking. I wonder if I might be able to find a swig of the Lord’s blood around here…”

  “Maybe you should wait in the car,” Brendan said.

  “No, no. I’m fine. You think I’m drunk, don’t you?”

  He didn’t answer. He checked his watch. Nine. The kids were in bed by now. House was probably clean: dishes done, floors vacuumed. Prep work for the next day was completed: lunches packed, baths taken, and clothes picked. Sarah was likely folding laundry on the couch and watching The Bachelor. Either that or Sarah was gone. Driving toward her mom’s place in Sacramento. A note left on the table: Dear Brendan…

  He knocked on the door to the parish office.

  Footsteps clicked against the hard floor. A pot-bellied priest emerged. He extended a hand. “Hello, my son, Father Glanville.”

  Father Glanville’s quick, wrinkled smile was somewhat disingenuous. The small eyes behind thick-rimmed glasses were hard to read. A gray beard covered most of his leathery skin. His pink tongue rested on his bottom lip; his breaths were shallow and wheezy. The crucifix around his neck seemed to swell and deflate.

  “Please, come inside.”

  Kowalski stumbled over an area rug and crashed into a bookshelf. A few relics—an icon, a photo, a diploma, a statue—wobbled and nearly fell.

  “Sorry, padre,” he said, finding a chair adjacent to the priest’s desk, and plopping down.

  Brendan sat. A candle burned on the desk, making flickering shadows on the priest’s face.

  “Oh, no worries at all,” Father Glanville replied, and then lit his pipe and took a few puffs. “I hope you don’t mind my smoke. Seems you can’t smoke anywhere, anymore.”

  “It’s a shame,” Kowalski said, fishing out a cigarette from his breast pocket. “At least we still have the right to smoke in church. Praise the Lord. Gotta be a separation of church and state sort of thing, huh?”

  The priest smiled. “So, what can I answer for you about Ms. Robin Heidelberg?”

  Brendan didn’t know how else to say it. Tell it straight. “She’s dead.”

  The priest nodded.

  That was simple. Priests dealt with death all the time, right? Finite people. Fallen world. Nothing lasts forever. Everything dies.

  But he looked as if he didn’t care.

  Ramp it up. “She didn’t die of a heart attack or crossing the street.” Brendan needed to see that the old bastard had a soul. “She was killed along with six other people in a beach house. Her head was torched. She had flesh and blood under her fingernails. Not her own. That flesh belonged to a stripper named, Francesca, or Cisco.”

  “Cisco’s her tittie-dancin’ name,” Kowalski added, and then had a bit of a coughing fit.

  “That’s unfortunate and quite bizarre,” the priest said. “What was she doing at the house?”

  “That’s what I was hoping you could tell us. We heard that Robin was somewhat of a religious zealot.”

  “I wouldn’t go that far. Surely, she wanted to live out her faith and please God. Things were black and white in her world. Heaven, hell; good, evil. No denying that. But a zealot is something different.”

  “Did you know that she liked to take in strippers?”

  Kowalski snickered like a teenager.

  “I did, though I never inquired much. I knew that her purpose was to change them—to help them see that life was much more than being objectified.”

  “Do you know why she would take Francesca to a beach house of presumably random strangers?”

  He shook his head.

  Kowalski was still coughing. He stood and staggered away, waving them off, and saying, “Don’t mind me.”

  Brendan watched as Kowalski made his way to the corner and fumbled with the window.

  “Be careful. That window is very delicate.”

  Kowalski got it open and a gust of wind ripped through the office, extinguishing the candle and sending a stack of papers to the floor.

  As the priest hurried to help Kowalski with the window, Brendan went behind the priest’s desk and began to pick up the mess. Damn asshole, anyway. He wondered why he put up with so much of Kowalski’s shit. Maybe this was the final straw.

  With papers in his hand, he turned to place them on the desk. A
glance. Something beneath. Underneath the desk. A box.

  Glanville shut the window and ushered Kowalski back to his seat.

  “He’s gassed.”

  “What’s this?”

  The priest’s face turned white. He wheezed. “That’s nothing. A box.”

  “May I see it?”

  “What’s there to see about a box?”

  “Yes, what is there to see?” Brendan said, and knelt.

  The priest hurried toward him, saying, “That’s private!”

  Before the priest could get any closer, Kowalski grabbed him from behind and clamped the old man in a bear hug.

  “Damn it, Kowalski! Don’t hurt him.”

  “Just get the fuckin’ box,” he said, about as sober as Kowalski gets.

  Brendan reached under the desk and slid the heavy wooden box across the floor toward him. He grinned. “You knew something, didn’t you?”

  “You think I like slamming into bookshelves on purpose? Fuckin’ photo over there shows El Padre playing in the sand with a box. Looks about the size of the spot on the floor by Favre’s missing head. I figured you’d catch up to my thinking sooner or later.”

  “Let go!” the priest yelled.

  Kowalski threw him to the ground, and then laughed. “Yo, Brendan, wasn’t that about like when Pedro Martinez threw down Don Zimmer?”

  Brendan hefted the box onto the desk. Blackened in places by fire. Dry blood. Foreign words scrawled across the top.

  “Sick bastard. You kill those people?”

  “No!” Glanville said. “Never in a thousand lifetimes!”

  Tears ran down his face, moistening his beard. His hand was shaking.

  “What does this say?”

  “It’s Aramaic. It says, ‘The Box of the Seven Sons’”.

  “What’s that mean?”

  “The seven sons of Sceva, from The Book of Acts.”

  Kowalski was smoking again; the cigarette dangling loosely from his mouth. “Tell us a story, O wise one.”

  The priest crawled over to the chair and humbly took the seat.

  “The seven sons of Sceva were exorcists—or so they thought. The Book of Acts recounts them going into a home and trying to demonstrate their powers of exorcism upon this particular demon. Well, the demon said to them, ‘I know Jesus, and I know Paul, but who are you?’ And then the seven sons were beaten bloody and sent from the place naked and running for their lives.

  “Eventually, and what was not accounted for in the scriptures, is the exorcism that took place in that home. A few days later the disciples confronted this demon and banished him to the first item they saw. That box. Jesus had already set the precedent by sending the Legion into the pigs. Forced to bow to the Lordship of Christ, the demon took up residence in the box, and the disciples took the box to a cave near the Dead Sea. They hid the box there and rolled a stone over the entrance. There, in the darkness, the demon stayed until I found it on an archeological expedition. Thus, the photograph.”

  “Bullshit,” Kowalski said. “So, you’re telling me that demon is in that fuckin’ box?”

  The priest was silent.

  Brendan leaned over the desk and said, “What are you trying to tell us about the beach house?”

  Father Glanville shook his head, and then wiped away a tear. “After I discovered the box, I had a very real encounter with this entity, whose name I shall never mention.”

  “Why?”

  “Because if you say the name of a demon, or write the name of a demon, you have been summoned. You see, there’s a big misunderstanding about summoning a demon. Demons are never summoned. Man doesn’t have that power. We don’t tell celestial beings what to do. If a demon comes—it is because you have been summoned. They’re working toward that end all the time—seek, kill, destroy—and in our ignorance we believe they are at our mercy.”

  The priest struggled to stand. “No, time is nothing to a fallen angel. A lifetime is but a second. It may take a generation to summon you—but the demon will always get his man.”

  “What happened in the beach house?”

  “I don’t know. I wasn’t there.”

  “Then how did you get the box?”

  The priest rubbed his face. “It was taken from me. I recently started to do these demonstrations. People don’t believe that evil is a real being—and here I was with ‘evil in a box.’ I let people touch the box. I let people feel the oppression that was harbored inside. There was a radiant evil that was so powerful and bottled up that dread was felt immediately. Some people were instantly moved to tears and shaking. Others ran from the room. I wanted to show that evil was real—albeit on a short leash that was sealed by the apostles.

  “But then a Satanist by the name of Leo Gardner got wind of this. He became obsessed. It was what I would call, ‘summoned’. He began to visit me often, just to be in the same room with the box. He began to tell me about his dreams. How the darkness crawled under the doorways and encircled him. About how the shadows took on small animals with anthropomorphic abilities, begging him to let the darkness come inside…”

  Panic seized Brendan. The nightmares. Ryan’s nightmares.

  “…and Leo, one day, came in, beat me mercilessly, and took the box. He decided to do his own underground experiment. And people were on hand, including Robin and the stripper. Robin had hoped to scare the stripper straight. Others were there—perhaps friends, perhaps random people he’d met on the journey. By the time I found out where he was, they were all dead. I took the box.”

  “And, you didn’t report it?” Kowalski asked.

  “Report what? Report that I have a demon box? No. Some things will never be believed in this world. Like now. You don’t believe me. You don’t believe that a demon could kill those people.”

  “No,” Kowalski said. “No, I fuckin’ don’t.”

  “I do,” Brendan said, his heart racing. “Is the demon in the box?”

  “That’s the problem, sir,” the priest said, and then shook his head. “He opened the box and said the name that only those summoned would dare say.”

  “What’s the name?”

  The priest was silent.

  “What’s the fuckin’ name?”

  “I don’t know. Only the summoned are told the name. Think of it as a password or a key.”

  “And then what?”

  “Once spoken, the door is opened and the demon comes in.”

  Kowalski laughed. “Dude, what’s wrong? You look sick.”

  Timing. Something was about to happen…

  Cell phone. Vibration in his pocket. He pulled it out.

  Home…

  He didn’t even need to answer it, because he could anticipate the words, the fear.

  “Hello, baby,” he said, his voice shaky.

  “You need to come home now! Something’s wrong with Ryan!”

  “Okay, baby, I’m on my way.”

  Kowalski was more than sober now. “Boss?”

  Tears burned hot in Brendan’s eyes as he pulled his handgun from his holster and leveled it at the priest. “Padre, you’re coming with us. And grab that goddamn box, too.”

  ***

  Nice little cul-de-sac in suburban Portland—the sort of place Andy Griffith and Opie might’ve even considered calling home. They abandoned the car in the driveway with doors open and wind howling.

  Brendan burst through the front door. Honey, I’m home?

  “Daddy!” Allison rushed to him. “I’m scared.”

  Glass shattered.

  “Kowalski, get her out of here! Padre, up the stairs!”

  The old man labored up the stairs with the box, wheezing. “Don’t think it will go back into this thing without a fight.”

  “Shut up and c’mon!”

  Sarah stood outside Ryan’s door. Her face was blotched red and streaked with tears. She flinched as another item crashed against the wall.

  “What happened?”

  Sarah couldn’t speak.

  Br
endan moved Sarah aside and then took the doorknob in his hand. He turned it. He said a prayer. He opened it a crack.

  Ryan sat at the edge of the bed with his face downward.

  “Hey, buddy?”

  Slowly, the boy’s head rolled up. Tilted. Eyes: indifferent. Face: pale. A cat-like growl escaped him. Then, he stood.

  A Tonka truck sailed through the air, slamming into the wall. The sheets on his bed blew upward and remained on the ceiling. A warm breeze hit Brendan in the face. The smell of sulfur and guts filled the air.

  “Daddy,” Ryan’s voice came from somewhere down the hall. It was so real he nearly turned to look, but then the thing spoke, low and gurgled: “Abba, Abba…” followed by what could only be words in a different tongue.

  Brendan trembled, powerless, he fell.

  Father Glanville stepped over him with the box, holding it in the air with the lid open, saying, “Devil, you have no power over this child! Your entry was a manipulation that Christ will never let go unpunished! The box is your dominion! In the name of Jesus, you turn this child loose and return to your purgatory until the Day of Judgment when all beings, both great and small, both celestial and earthly, will get their due reward.”

  The boy quivered and shook, convulsing. A shriek came from somewhere otherworldly. A black cloud rose—crawled—out from the boy’s mouth, nose, eyes, and ears. The darkness formed a fog in the air, snaking around and then finally, as if being pulled by an invisible vacuum, was sucked into the box.

  The lid slammed shut. Ryan collapsed. The blanket parachuted downward from the ceiling and rested perfectly on the boy.

  Glanville stumbled backward and then left the room.

  Sarah rushed in, falling onto Ryan—sobbing.

  Brendan crawled over and looked down. The color had come back to his cheeks. He smiled a little and asked, “Daddy, can we go on a bike ride?”

  Brendan wept. “Yeah, buddy, we can.”

  ***

  Outside, Kowalski and the priest were leaning against the car.

  “What are we going to do about this case?” Brendan asked.