“What’s going on?” Phil asked.
“Cindy has some kind of plan,” Mark began, dismissively. “She’s going all Boudica and wants to make wooden weapons to fight the Devil with. She has some kind of new theory that it’s not the Devil, but some possessed guy out there who’s been possessing others. So, they’re going to get the Jeep and try and roll it down the road and out of here, like some kind of tank.”
“A tank for how many people?” Phil asked.
“Thirty or so,” Mark replied. “Doug Perry and the prayer circle bunch are still waiting until they get the word from God or Father Billy to go, so it’s just the rejects.”
“Fuck ‘em. When is Team Cindy leaving?”
“Soon as they make the weapons.”
“When are we leaving?” Phil countered.
“Soon as you’re ready.”
Phil nodded. “Where’s Faith?”
Mark hesitated just a beat, but then turned and pointed out towards the water. Phil saw, out in the distance, two people on the diving platform.
“You coming?” Phil asked.
“This is your quest, Bedivere.”
Phil gave Mark a bemused look, but then headed down towards the water’s edge. As he went, he noticed that the ground was particularly muddy, but then he realized he was walking across earth still so soaked with blood that the dirt hadn’t been able to absorb it all yet like after a particularly heavy rain. Disgusted, he moved closer to the girls’ cabins, eschewing the bloody center of the camp, and finally made it to the lake.
“Heeeey! Faith!!” he called.
When neither Faith nor Maia reacted, he realized they couldn’t hear him. He quickly took off his shoes and socks, placed them to one side and waded out into the water, which was still cold from the night.
“Faiiiiith!!!”
He finally saw that their backs were to him and they were eating something for breakfast. He then saw Faith lean over and kiss Maia on the lips. Just a peck, but Maia grabbed her and pulled Faith’s lips back to her, giving her a longer, more lingering kiss before they both laughed and looked back out to the water.
“Gunh,” said Phil.
It was like somebody had grabbed Phil’s heart and was refusing to allow it to beat, much less allow Phil’s lungs to take in breath. Every feeling in his body was draining out through his feet and he felt limp.
Phil found himself remembering something Mark had said about seeing Rachel after they’d broken up. It was all about in the body language. He didn’t even have to see the kiss to know where he stood. Whenever Phil was around Faith, she reacted to him like she did to everybody else. She was closed off, kept her arms against her body and never opened up, really.
But now he was seeing what she looked like around somebody she like-liked. She was looking at Faith in a way he’d never, ever seen her look at somebody before. She was giddy, she was flirty and she was in love; her face and the angle of her movements telling the whole story. She looked free, more than anything, as if finally having tossed aside whatever shackles had been keeping her down for so long.
Phil looked to the greenish water swirling around his freckled, pasty shins. He knew he should just turn right around and go with Mark, leave the camp and never look back, but he couldn’t do it. Instead, his face red with anger and humiliation, he pushed himself forward into the water and began swimming to the diving platform.
He swam quickly, but was hardly the world’s most graceful swimmer. The further he got from shore, the more the waves pummeled him, splashing in his face and sending him under. He kept going, however, so driven was he and was soon within shouting distance of the platform.
“Faiiith!!” he cried.
Upon hearing her name, Faith whipped around, getting quickly to her feet and grabbing one of the last knives that had been left in the kitchen which she and Maia took out to the diving platform. Maia got up as well, but merely eyed Phil with suspicion.
“Phil?” Faith asked, surprised. “What are you doing out here?”
“We’re leaving — me and Mark are leaving — right now,” Phil said, out of breath as he treaded water a few feet from the platform. “I want you to come with us.”
Faith stared at Phil as if he’d suggested she sprout wings and fly, but then shook her head.
“We’re going to stay here,” Faith said. “But good luck.”
“No!” Phil demanded, the vociferousness of his voice causing Faith to jump. “If you stay here, Father Billy’s going to kill you. You know how many people died last night? Twenty-four.”
“But they killed each other,” Faith retorted. “How can you still say that’s Father Billy?”
“He made them kill each other!” Phil exclaimed, though even he didn’t know how that could’ve happened. “He drugged them or something. This isn’t over. He’s planning to kill all of us. That includes you guys. The only way to avoid it is to leave.”
“If he — if the Devil — or anybody, for that matter, comes out here, we’ll hear him long before he can get to us and we’ll either fight him off or swim away,” Faith replied. “We’re safe.”
“What if he swims underwater?” Phil said, as if incredulous that they hadn’t thought of this.
Which made Maia laugh.
Phil stared at her with venom. “Fuck you!” he yelled. Maia looked at him with surprise, so he added, “You heard me!” For emphasis.
“Phil?” asked Faith, scrunching up her nose. “What the heck?”
Phil looked around, almost crying now. He stared out past the platform to the far sides of the lake. He felt like diving under and never surfacing.
“This should have been us out here,” Phil said, looking right at Faith. “I love you. I’ve always loved you. You, Faith. That’s all. I wanted to be your boyfriend.”
Faith stared at Phil and knew what he was saying was probably true. She thought back and figured she’d considered him as a potential boyfriend here and there, but never seriously. More like a friend she could go to Homecoming with or a band dance or something. She “liked” him, but every time she thought she might be coming around to really liking him, he did something that pulled him up short in her eyes and she let it go.
“Phil, I’m sorry,” said Faith quietly, squatting down on the platform to be closer to him. “The last couple of days have really made me think about things and this is where I belong. I don’t know if it’s where I belong forever-for good, but it’s where I belong for right now. And as I have no idea, and neither do you, how long ‘right now’ is, it may as well be forever...”
Phil didn’t let her finish, but simply turned around and started swimming back to shore, unwilling to show her his crying eyes. He was in real, physical pain, wasn’t even sure he could make it all the way back, but kept his arms pumping away as his heart and mind raced. All he wanted to do was head into the woods, find Father Billy or the Devil or some other demon-possessed kid and ask them to stab him dead right there and send him straight to Hell.
“I fell in the lake,” Phil told Father Billy, finally.
Father Billy scoffed, but then got to his feet, extracting the iron spikes from his pocket, an act that couldn’t help but change the tenor of their palaver.
“I’m going to tell you what I’ve told everyone else,” Father Billy began, wearily. “When I kill you, I need you to tell God that without Divine Intervention, I will just keep killing, make others kill, and make people kill themselves. I will not stop. You two will die because of His inaction, not my action.”
Phil stared at Father Billy and now knew that not only was Mark right about who was behind the killings, but also that Father Billy was completely and totally out of his goddamn mind. He had acted normal, obviously for some time, but this was the real man they were seeing for the first time; a loony who had detached himself from rational thought entirely. A man who was using mass murder as others might use a telegram.
But all that said, Phil couldn’t escape the same question facing the pr
iest – why hadn’t God killed him?
Phil turned quickly to Mark, but saw something on his friend’s face that he recognized as sympathy.
“Shit – that’s why you’re doing this?” Mark said, regarding his would-be killer wearily. “What happened?”
“What do you mean?” Father Billy asked.
“What do you mean, what do I mean?” Mark replied, sounding annoyed. “I, we, have known you for awhile, so we have to figure something happened to you. Something changed.”
Father Billy stared at the two boys for a long moment, but then nodded. He hadn’t told a living soul about the pulse in the sculpture and even though he didn’t particularly like Mark that much, he’d always known him as a curious kid who never failed to raise interesting theological questions, even if he was doing it just to piss off his Sunday school teachers who may well have no idea the answers.
“Have a seat,” Father Billy said, nodding to the ground in front of him.
Mark sat down, but Phil remained standing. He blinked, as if he was going to bolt, but Father Billy was back on his feet, faster than any human Phil had ever seen. He raised an eyebrow at Phil, who finally sat down, his eyes like those of a rabbit who finds itself down a foxhole.
“It started on Good Friday, this year...”
Father Billy told them his story from start to finish, the sound of the beating heart, the feeling of the pulse, the fall to the pulpit, the lies, the prayers, the counseling of sin and the ensuing silence from God leading him to his current course of action. All through the story, Mark nodded and clicked his tongue, engrossed, all the answers falling into place.
Phil, however, didn’t hear but every third word. He’d focused on the feeling of a nail being driven through his skin. How many stabs would it take to kill him? Could he get away? Could he play dead? Could he fight him? Should he strip off his backpack to move faster? Should he try to strangle Father Billy? Why was Mark taking this lying down? What the fuck? This was supposed to be their escape. Why did he listen to his jackass best friend? They were going to die and there was absolutely, positively nothing they could do about it but wait.
Phil focused on creating a single image in his mind, that of Faith smiling at him, and knew that he wanted it to be the last thing he ever thought of. He started to focus on it, almost as if he was meditating. His eyes began to close, but neither Father Billy nor Mark seemed to notice.
“And that takes us to this morning,” Father Billy said, finishing up. “If you’d kept walking, you would have found the bodies of Shane, his friends and all the others.”
Mark nodded for awhile, processing the information, but then turned back to Father Billy.
“If I was a priest and I felt God had done that to me, I would respond in the exact same way you have,” Mark said with a sigh. “In the greater scheme of things, I think you’re completely justified in your actions.”
Father Billy nodded gently, smiling over at Mark, his first real smile in quite some time. “Thank you.”
“That said, I don’t know if everyone will understand it in the same way,” Mark continued. “You get blinded by worldliness and think only about your life on Earth, not the more important part that comes after.”
Father Billy grunted. “You’re right. It’s true. Phil?”
Phil’s eyes blinked open and he looked over at the pair with rage. He just shook his head, having heard this last part.
“I guess I understand,” Phil began, his voice shaking with anger. “I just don’t know why Mark’s being so full of shit right now.”
Mark turned to him with surprise, seeing tears in Phil’s eyes.
“What do you mean?” Father Billy asked.
“Mark’s an atheist,” Phil replied. “So am I. We don’t believe in any of this shit. He won’t say it, but we both think, you’re just a psychopath.”
Father Billy turned his heavy-lidded gaze to Mark. “Is that true?”
“Well, yeah,” Mark said, taking a deep breath before elucidating. “But God didn’t show me a miracle. I’ve never seen a thing on this Earth that’s made me think there’s any kind of God up there in the sky or, more importantly, anything that happens to us after death. To me, there’s no God. When you drive that nail into me, there’s still no God. If I died seventy years from now instead of today, still no God.”
Mark hesitated for a moment, staring at the ground, but then looked back at Father Billy, who looked surprised at his words.
“That’s why it’s pointless for you to kill us,” Mark added, like an afterthought.
Phil snorted. Father Billy did not, but instead, just eyed Mark, waiting for an explanation.
“God asks one thing of us, right? Faith. I don’t have it, Phil doesn’t have it. You kill us and, if you’re right, we’re going straight to Hell anyway no matter who does the deed. We’re not going to see God or see Heaven, it’s Outer Darkness for us.”
Father Billy got to his feet without a word, extracted two of the nails and walked over to Mark, placing them both at his throat, but the boy didn’t flinch. Father Billy tensed, as if he was about to stab the nails right into Mark’s neck.
“I need to know,” Father Billy said, in a beseeching tone. “I know what I saw. I know what I felt. It was real. It wasn’t in my head. It was in front of my face.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Mark replied. “Like I said, I’d need to know, too. But as I said, it wasn’t my miracle. You telling me does nothing to make it more real.”
Father Billy stared at Mark for a long moment, but then, finally, took away the nails.
“If I don’t kill you, would you see that as a miracle?”
Phil turned and looked at Mark, suddenly wondering if their salvation was a possibility.
“Fuck no,” replied Mark, derisively, but Phil could tell his voice was quivering.
This time, Father Billy took the nails away for good and, after a moment, stepped away from the two boys for good.
“The rest have to die,” Father Billy stated, unequivocally.
“Unless God stops you,” Mark offered.
“Yeah, unless God stops me,” Father Billy agreed. “If I let you have the rest of your lives, what I need from you is twenty-four more hours of mine. A full day before you call the police. And, you have to swear to God. My God. And you have to know that, if you’re wrong and I’m right, that’s on your soul.”
“I swear to God,” said Mark.
“Swear to god,” whispered Phil, suddenly quaking all over as if from a chill.
“Go,” Father Billy commanded, finally. “God be with you.”
“Well, for what it’s worth, I hope He’s with you,” Mark replied.
Father Billy nodded, and then walked away into the woods.
As soon as the priest had completely disappeared into the trees, Phil began crying hysterically, dropping to the ground as he gritted his teeth and made all kinds of strained, keening sounds. Mark squatted down next to his friend and put his arms around him, hugging him tightly. They sat there for a number of minutes, Phil clinging onto Mark like a drowning man.
Finally, Mark made a move to lift Phil to his feet.
“Let’s go,” he whispered.
Phil nodded and the two boys staggered forward through the trees.
Back at camp, Cindy was overseeing a massive operation. Kids were tearing up floor boards, pieces of porch, columns, shelves, you-name-it, all in the name of creating weapons with which to fight the Devil.
“We have to think of this differently, now,” Cindy announced that morning to the surviving campers who had gathered in the mess hall. “We have to assume that, perhaps, Father Billy was wrong and the man in the woods isn’t the Devil at all, but a man possessed by the Devil, like David Boss and the others were last night. If that is the case, then maybe we can fight him the same as we fought them.”
She paused a moment to allow the campers to reflect on the fact that, yes, they had done the impossible and successfully fought off the forc
es of darkness. Or, at least, Ian Hester and his two friends had.
“What we cannot do is to allow our actions to be governed by fear,” she continued. “If we’re too afraid of this man to fight him, then the Devil has already won. If we do fight him, God will surely be on our side. That is the test Father Billy told us about.”
Not all of the increasingly traumatized campers believed her that the murders were the result of possession rather than the Devil himself appearing on Earth, a point particularly countered by Becca Roy.
“You don’t know,” Becca yelled at Cindy. “I met him. I saw him speak. I saw the bodies. He was the Devil. We can’t fight him.”
It became quickly obvious that Becca’s was the minority opinion and she left the group to join Douglas and his prayer circle in the classroom. Cindy had originally gone to Douglas, explaining the situation to him and his acolytes and inviting them to come with her, but he would have none of it and advised the others of his group to not go along with her, either.
“God is the only salvation, here, and we have put ourselves in His hands,” Douglas said, icily. “Not yours.”
Cindy nodded and didn’t try to convince them otherwise. She had secretly hoped that would be their response as she didn’t think fifty people on the road would be anywhere near as manageable as the thirty she had planned for. The only thing that was still troubling her was the absence of Faith and Maia.
Throughout the day, she’d glanced out to the diving platform where the girls had erected their lean-to to keep out of the sun and were, it appeared, happily reading their library books. She’d called out to them a couple of times, but there was no response. She didn’t intend to swim out there, but she also had no idea what she’d tell their parents when she came back without them.
But part of her hoped that, by then, she and her group might’ve killed whoever the man in the woods might be – if there even was one – as easily as Ian had killed David, Peter and Jeffrey the night before. Then, they’d reach civilization and would be able to send back busses for the prayer circle kids as well as the two girls on the diving platform.
Ian, she sighed.
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