‘Calm your ass down,’ said Hart pushing his Glock into Blake’s forehead.
‘I’m here for the rod,’ he said. ‘Where is it?’
Blake said nothing, weighing his options in his head.
As Hart pressed the cold circle of metal further into his temple, Blake realised he hadn’t got any.
‘Don’t screw with me.’ Hart’s voice was edged with threat.
‘In my coat pocket,’ said Blake. ‘But I warn you, it was damaged in the blast.’
‘Damaged?’
Blake spied concern in Hart’s eyes, as the serial killer glanced over to Mary. Keeping the gun pushed against Blake’s head, Hart patted down the pockets of his captive. He found the outline of the rod within the coat’s material. Slowly Hart pulled the rod from the coat pocket. Once he had the object, he relaxed his weapon and took several steps away from Blake. He examined it closely.
Even in the soft amber glow of the streetlights, the damage to the rod’s outer wooden casing was obvious. Splinters of pale wood stood up from the rod’s time-stained surface. He turned it in his hands and looked down its length, as if it were a pool cue. With the gun still in his hand, he began to work the top section of the rod, left and right. Through gritted teeth, he eased the upper part of the rod free, just like Blake had done the night before. He carefully slid out a thin black cylinder and then held it up to his face. An eerie silence filled their ears, as Hart studied the object for damage.
‘Thank God, thank God,’ he said finally, his expression softening by the smallest fraction.
Shuffling the gun and the black cylinder in his hands, his focus now returned to the rod’s outer wooden casing. Blake watched as Hart traced its pitted exterior with his fingertips.
‘One of the stones is missing?’ he said, a coldness returning to his eyes. ‘There should be twelve, and there are only eleven here.’ The gun was raised again towards Blake. ‘Don’t screw with me, where is it?’ A second later the barrel of the gun was being pressed between Blake’s eyes. ‘You have one chance. Where is it?’
‘I don’t know I swear,’ said Blake, his voice shredded with desperation.
‘Don’t make me do it. Three.’ Hart started counting down. ‘Two.’
The dog was on its feet, it’s large eyes glancing up at Mary.
‘One.’ Hart’s finger tightened on the trigger.
‘Pocket, check the pocket again,’ exclaimed Blake, his voice echoing around them.
With his eyes drilling into his prisoner’s face, Hart dug his hand deep into the pocket of Blake’s coat. His expression broadened as his fingertips made contact with something hard in the creases of the lining. Coaxing it upwards into his hand, Hart pulled it free and inspected it under the streetlight. A pale red light shone over Hart’s hand as he turned the square ruby between his thumb and index finger.
‘In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti,’ said Hart to himself.
Blake immediately recognised the Latin trinitarian formula: In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
A visible sense of relief travelled across Hart’s face as he pocketed the stone along with the other parts of the rod. Lowering his weapon, Hart stared at his captive through his penetrating eyes.
‘I had to make sure,’ he said. ‘After Mary realised that she had dropped the rod in the blast, we went back to the scene to see if we could find it. It was bloody dangerous, what with the police everywhere, but I guess they weren’t expecting us to be around. We thought you must have picked it up.’
Blake didn’t say anything, his stance defiant.
‘You know Dr Blake, we are all on the same side here.’
‘How the hell do you figure that?’ said Blake. ‘Killing innocent women isn’t being on my side,’ he said, his wrists straining against the chain of the handcuffs.
‘I didn’t kill those women,’ Hart said pointedly.
‘You even admitted killing the poor vicar of St George’s at your trial. Or did you forget that?’ said Blake. He hesitated. Goading a convicted killer when he had a gun in his hand probably wasn’t his smartest move.
Hart looked down to the ground.
‘You are stepping into a world you don’t understand,’ he said slowly.
Chapter 45
‘Then educate me,’ said Blake defiantly. Hart looked him up and down.
‘Time is short Blake. What do you want to know?’
A perplexed look came to Blake’s face. A moment ago, he thought he was going to end up with a smoking hole in the centre of his forehead and now he was being invited to ask questions?
‘What happened with you and her?’ said Blake, nodding over to Mary.
‘You really have no idea what’s going on, do you?’ Hart gave the side of his scalp a vigorous rub.
‘I’m sure you know I was in the army. In the SAS to be precise. I was in Iraq, working undercover when something happened that made me question everything.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Blake.
‘That’s not important. Let us just say, I discovered my faith and my vocation. I left the army and trained to become a priest. During my training, I was singled out to come under the supervision of a man called Father Theodore.’
‘Singled out?’
‘He recognised in me the signs of the charism.’
By the confusion that had broken out on Blake’s face, he decided to elaborate further.
‘Charism are the fruits of the spirit described in the bible. Gifts that God chooses to bestow on His faithful. Father Theodore saw in me the gift of discernment of spiritual agents. It is like having the holy light of God lighting the way on a dark night,’ he said. ‘Discernment is often associated with a spontaneous pigmentation of the skin, like the stigmata, a phenomenon well known in the Roman Catholic church.’
Passing his gun from one hand to another, Hart splayed open the fingers of his right hand. From his knuckle upwards, the skin of his index finger was darkened to almost black. It took a moment for Blake to register the significance of what he was seeing. When he did realise, he shifted uncomfortably on his feet, trying not to look at his own hand.
‘You appear to have the beginnings of it too.’
‘It’s a bloody birthmark,’ said Blake pointedly. ‘Just a bloody birthmark.’
Hart didn’t press the point home.
‘Through my work with Father Theodore, I came to realise that true spiritual evil does exist in the world, and we are all under threat. He showed me things that defy the natural order of this world.’
‘You mean demons?’
‘Let me assure you, Dr Blake, demons are real.’ His voice turned deadly serious. ‘They are not like those depicted in children’s stories and comic books. They are out to destroy every living soul on this planet. They are incapable of feeling love and only satisfied by the desire to do evil. The same kind of satisfaction that people feel when they get revenge on an enemy, a satisfaction filled with hate. With Father Theodore, I learned how to practice the Rite, the holy prayer of liberation and over time I became initiated.’
‘You became an exorcist?’
‘That was part of it,’ he said cryptically. ‘The word exorcism comes from the Greek exorkizo, meaning to bind with an oath. During the exorcism, a demon is commanded to come out of the person it is occupying, in the name of God. You must realise that the demon is a created being, just like you or I, and therefore ultimately subject to God’s power. An exorcism is only conclusive when it is performed in the name of God. It tells us in the book of Matthew that Jesus gave this authority to his twelve disciples.’ Hart then quoted from Matthew 10:1: ‘Jesus summoned his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to cure every disease and every sickness.’
‘The demons, where do they come from?’ asked Blake.
‘They are found in every culture and every religion around the world,’ continued Hart. ‘In the beginning before mankind, God created the
angels to honour and worship Him. Since love not freely given is not love at all, the angels were given the ability to choose. Some of the angels chose love, some chose sin. The ones who chose sin were stripped of their everlasting grace and expelled from heaven. First Satan was thrown down to earth in a lightning bolt and he was quickly followed by his hordes of fallen angels. Cut off from the grace of God, the very natures of these spiritual beings became twisted and deformed. According to the Christian tradition, after the angels fell from heaven, God created the first humans. When this happened, Satan turned his vengeance on mankind.’
Hart toted his Glock towards the sky.
‘We are at a turning point, Dr Blake. A darkness is coming. These killings will be just the start.’
‘If you didn’t commit the killings, why don’t you just hand yourself in?’
‘I can’t, I have to stop this,’ said Hart earnestly. ‘Through Mary, information was revealed to us by the demon that possessed her at the Minories. There will be four killings. Four killings to release a great evil into the world. Yesterday’s killing at Christchurch was the third, one more and I fear that a great evil will invade the world. We are all sleep walking into the abyss.’
Blake’s brain was churning. His mind replayed the words that Mary had written in her own blood on the walls of her room at the shelter. He had been able to make out most of the blood writing in the photographs.
FOUR BLOOD ALTARS
FOUR BLOOD SACRIFICES
FOUR BLOOD COINS
FOUR BLOOD MOONS
‘You’ve seen the police report of the arson?’
Blake nodded. ‘What happened at Mary’s exorcism?’ he pressed.
‘There were three of us. Mary, myself and the vicar of St George’s. It is quite normal for a practitioner of the Rite to call upon the services of another to assist in an exorcism. Strength in numbers, you might say. It can be a long and arduous process and it places great physical and mental demands on the people involved. I hadn’t met the vicar before, and I sought assurances from the church elders that she was strong enough in faith to withstand such a spiritual onslaught.’ For a moment, Hart’s eyes turned downwards. ‘An exorcism is a crusade against a very clever and dangerous enemy. If the demon detects a weakness in a practitioner’s spiritual armour, it will use it to its advantage.’
‘Go on,’ said Blake.
Hart continued, but as he did so, Blake could see that Mary’s eyes were filling up with tears.
‘A room was prepared at St George’s for the exorcism, and Mary was brought to us. She was in a very bad way.’
‘A bad way? How?’
‘Disturbed, hearing voices and seeing dark visions. She refused to look at us. This is one of the signs of possession, that the subject is unable to look into the eyes of the exorcist. Another criterion to discern possession is the subject’s aversion to signs of the sacred. I asked her to say the word ‘Jesus’ and offered her communion, both of which she refused to do. Her face was vacant, shut up, as if she were no longer present. After saying prayers, I opened my bag and retrieved a bottle of holy water. When I sprinkled it over her head, she began thrashing out and screaming as if the water were burning her skin. A deep, grating voice erupted out of her, nothing like that of a woman. Then the temperature in the room suddenly dropped, and with it came the smell of sulphur. She was like a trapped animal, howling and spitting.’
Blake could feel a sickening feeling spread through his body. His throat tightened.
‘We carefully moved closer, all the time asking God for His protection. As we approached the demon, it kept chanting over and over, “Shut up you stupid priest, you have no authority over me. My master is coming, my master is coming.” I tried to reach out with my crucifix and touch her head with it, but as I did so, I started to feel hard blows to my shins, as if someone were kicking me, but it wasn’t Mary, it was something else. Her face was so contorted, you couldn’t recognise her anymore. We backed off, realising the great strength of the demon inside her.
‘We locked her in the room and rested outside for an hour to fortify our spirits and pray for God’s protection over each other. When we went back in, we found Mary sitting on a metal chair in silence. As we edged closer, we could see although her eyes were shut, her eyeballs were moving rapidly beneath her eyelids. With duct tape from my bag, we carefully tied Mary’s arms and legs to the chair. With her body restrained, we began reading passages from the bible. Recognising the sounds of the scriptures, her eyes snapped open and she began to fight against her bindings.
‘“You don’t really believe in those kid’s stories do you?” she sneered to the vicar in a high-pitched voice. These are the tactics demons use to rattle their opponents. They are liars, trying to find any chink in the spiritual armour of their adversary. The demon started goading the vicar about her personal life and her struggles with her vow of chastity. That’s another sign of possession, the knowledge of facts that should not be known. I knew time was running out, and so I started to recite the prayer of liberation.’
Blake watched on as Hart’s face replayed the scene.
‘“Be humbled under the powerful hand of God. I adjure you, accursed beast, in the name of Jesus Christ, depart from this creature of God,” I exclaimed. Thrashing and screaming, the demon started spitting in my face. I knew I was close. “In the name of Jesus Christ,” I commanded, “I order you to stop and leave this woman.” The demon started screaming and biting at the air. “My master is coming. No one can stop him, not you, not anyone”.’ Hart took a breath and stared at Blake square in the eyes. ‘The more an exorcist sincerely invokes the help of God, the fiercer the evil fights back. Then it started reciting the phrase that Mary had written in blood on the walls of the shelter. “Eve can’t blink, Eve can’t blink,” it sneered with pure hate in its eyes. In one final effort, I planted my crucifix onto her temple and shouted, “In Christ, I command you to be gone”.’ Hart took a gulp of cold air. ‘Then it departed her,’ he said, throwing Mary a strained smile.
‘As I untied her from the metal chair, I remember noticing that the back legs had been bent completely out of shape.’
‘How could you tell for sure that it had left her?’ asked Blake.
‘The shadow.’
‘The shadow? What do you mean?’
‘It’s like a stain that gets left behind. I found it under Mary’s chair. When a demon is commanded out of a person, it leaves an angular mark on the inanimate surface nearest to its exit point from the body. These marks are usually found on floors or walls close to the victim. It marks the point where the demon leaves this world and enters the void looking for a new host.’
‘It isn’t killed?’
‘According to Father Theodore, once they have been expelled from their victim, they survive for a short time in the void, searching for a new body to possess.’
Blake tried to say something, but a knot had formed at the top of his throat.
‘After we had made Mary comfortable and informed Angelo Ricard and the church elders that the exorcism was successful, I went out into the church gardens to get some air. I can remember the sounds of the birds singing in the trees, and I gave thanks to God for His mercy.’ He paused. ‘Then it happened.’
Hart dropped the hand holding the gun down by his side. Blake heard him swallow hard.
‘The spikes of a gardening fork came out of nowhere. If I hadn’t turned in time, they would have skewered three holes in my neck. Pivoting around, I came face to face with the vicar, her eyes blazing with sheer hatred. In her grip was a gardening fork she had taken from the shed, and she was jabbing at my body. She was demented with rage and unbelievably strong. I tried to defend myself as best as I could, but as she lunged at my face with the spikes, I lost my footing and fell backwards onto the ground. Within moments she was on me, like a rabid animal. Her strength was unbelievable, like nothing I had experienced in all my years in the military. Unnatural power,’ Hart said coldly. ‘I grabbed at he
r wrist, the one holding the fork and with her drool falling into my eyes, I managed to slowly twist the spikes back upwards. Shouting up to God, I pushed against her with all my might. Suddenly, the fork jerked free and its metal blades plunged into the woman’s neck. That’s when Ricard arrived. I was covered in blood, holding the weapon.’
‘Didn’t you tell this to the police?’
‘Of course, I told them everything, but what were they to believe? I had killed in self-defence. In self-defence from what? A demon? The police, the jury, my legal team, no one believed a word of it. I was sectioned and sent to Broadmoor. I broke out, not to continue the killing, but to stop it. There are things you don’t understand, Dr Blake. Monumental things that happened at the Minories long ago. The very soil of that place is steeped in evil. The seeds of darkness have started to germinate in the ground there.
‘The area surrounding the Minories has been cursed for millennia. History only records a fraction of the murders that have taken place in a circle around the Minories. The Jack the Ripper Murders and Radcliffe Highway murders are the most infamous, but now a new wave of sacrifice has started, and again around Hawksmoor’s pagan temples.’ Hart waved his gun in a long sweep in front of himself.
‘Here at Crossbones Graveyard are buried the bodies of London’s forgotten people. The poor, the dispossessed, the rejected. These are people that our Lord Jesus Christ set his ministry to serve. The victims of all the Hawksmoor murders are the same struggling people. A homeless woman, an immigrant, a prostitute. The person carrying out the killings is perverting Jesus’s ministry of hope into a sacrifice to evil. It has to be stopped before an even greater darkness is released into the world.’
‘If it’s not you, then who’s doing the killing?’ asked Blake sternly.
The Devil’s Architect: Book Two of the Dark Horizon Trilogy Page 17
