The Demon Senders (12 page)

“She doesn’t breathe yet she still lives. She hasn’t eaten in weeks nor has she taken any water. And, Cardinal, I know that I am far from being a doctor, but I could find no pulse in the child’s arms or neck. Yet her eyes were fixed on mine during my visit two days ago.”

“Father, forgive me if this sounds like I am questioning your story, but isn’t it possible that since the child does not breathe, has no pulse and has her gaze fixed, that the child has passed?”

“Dead children, Cardinal O’Keefe, do not move and do not speak. This child does both.”

<<<<>>>>

The tired and rusty car the priest was given when he assumed the position of pastor of the small church could not travel the path leading to the family’s house. He parked the car near the bottom of a trail.

“We need to walk the rest of the way.”

Though the path was not long, it crisscrossed back and forth as it made its way up a very steep hill. O’Keefe and the village priest, both feeling their age, struggled up the sinuous path, passing no one as they drew closer to the family’s home.

“Not much further,” Cortez said.

“I wasn’t expecting to climb mountains on my mission,” O’Keefe joked. “This trek may be the death of me.”

When the steep path began to level, O’Keefe could see several small shacks no more than two hundred feet away. The shacks were made mostly of discarded and then repurposed wood, mismatched sheets of rusty metal serving as their roofs. Though it was midday as they approached the shack, O’Keefe remarked on the absence of any villagers.

“Father Cortez,” he huffed, “are you sure that the family is at home?”

“They are home, Cardinal,” Cortez replied, his voice trailing off. “They will not leave their daughter’s side.”

“And the others who live in the other homes? Away working?”

“The houses are empty, Cardinal. The other families will not stay so close to the child.”

O’Keefe wasn’t sure if the feeling that hung like heavy smoke around the shacks was his imagination or reality. He felt as if each step he took moved him deeper into an unfamiliar world, one that offered known and expected sights but foreign feelings. As he walked closer to the home a stench filled his nostrils.
 

“My God,” he said. “That smell is the smell of death, Father. I am sorry to question you again, but are you certain the child has not passed and is now, forgive my crudeness, rotting away in that home?”

The grunting laughter within the nearest shack captured O’Keefe’s attention.

“The child knows we have arrived.”

<<<<>>>>

There was no door to enter through, just a space where the pieced-together walls formed a gap. As O’Keefe crossed the presumed threshold, the stench dissipated and was replaced by what he could only describe as the smell of blooming wild flowers.

There were no flowers in the two room shack.

A man, his clothes as torn and as worn as any clothes O’Keefe had ever seen, stood up from the dirt floor he was sitting on when O’Keefe entered the home.

“Father Cortez,” the man said in a dialect that was a mix between Spanish and a language O’Keefe had only heard on previous missions to remote Guatemalan villages. “She told us you were coming. She did not say you would be bringing a guest.”

“This is Cardinal O’Keefe,” Cortez said, still standing outside of the shack’s walls. “He is very powerful and important in the church and is here to help.”

“Make it leave my daughter,” the man said to O’Keefe. “Make it leave.”

<<<<>>>>

O’Keefe pulled back a dirty blanket held in place by rusty nails above a walkway, serving to separate the main room from a small bedroom. Before him, on a mattress placed on the dirt floor, was a child. A woman, who O’Keefe assumed to be the child’s mother, sat huddled as far away from the child as the eight by ten foot room allowed. Her face hidden by her hands and resting on her drawn up knees.

“Shall I say something witty? Or perhaps you’d rather take me in silence? Tell me, dear Cardinal, which way do you prefer to have me?” The child’s voice was as innocent sounding as any child’s should be. She was no more than ten, but the hard life and inability to bathe with any regularity forced years upon her appearance.

She was sitting upright on the mattress. Too upright. Her legs were straight out in front of her and her torso was so erect as to create a nearly perfect right angle. Her long dark hair, matted and twisted, framed her dark-skinned face. Her brown eyes seemed too innocent to have a role in whatever play O’Keefe had walked into.

“You seem to know my title,” O’Keefe said. “You have me at a disadvantage.”

“You want to know my name before you take me? How thoughtful of you. Always a gentleman, I assume.”

O’Keefe tried to see if the child’s chest rose and fell in a familiar pattern as she spoke. He could see no movement. “And where do you believe I want to take you?” he asked, moving a bit closer to the child.

“To whatever heights of ecstasy a sworn celibate like you can bring me to, of course. You’ve come to fuck me, haven’t you Cardinal O’Keefe?”

“I’ve come to help you, my child.”

“You’re much, much too late for that, Cardinal.”

“May I feel your wrist?” O’Keefe said, ignoring the child’s accusations.

“Cardinal,” the girl said as a grin played on the corners of her mouth. “I should have no say in your approach. Though, I must tell you, that a wrist is not an area of a woman’s body that brings about pleasure. Maybe to some, but certainly those who enjoy the finer art of seductive wrist foundling are in the minority. Shall I guide your touches?” She slowly spread her legs apart, her torso not adjusting to the movement of her legs.

“Just your wrist, if you please. I am here only to help.”

“Your inexperience is showing, Cardinal.”

O’Keefe kneeled, his face even with the child’s. He reached a trembling hand out, extended two fingers and searched the child’s wrist for the sign of life he was certain Father Cortez had missed.

“I told you,” the child whispered. “You’re much, much too late.”

He felt no pulse.

Without asking permission, he moved his hand slowly to the side of the child’s neck.

“Getting better, Cardinal. Your touches are increasing in their effect. You have done this before, haven’t you? I won’t tell a soul. Wouldn’t want a scandal to come to light and send your holy career up in smoke.”

O’Keefe stood and backed away from the mattress as quickly as his tired legs could move him.
 

“There must be something medical,” he said in English, absently forgetting that no one in the shack could understand him. “Has a doctor been here to see the girl?” he asked to the mother in the corner.

“There are no doctors here,” the child responded in English. “That one,” she said, shifting her eyes to the woman huddled and now sobbing in the corner of the room, “that one is your mother. I brought her with me as I know how terrible it was when you lost her all those years ago. And the manner in which she left you? How horrible it must have been for a boy to come across his deceased mother, her parting caused by her own hands. How old were you, Cardinal? Weren’t you twelve when you found your mother dead on the couch? Or were you eleven?”

O’Keefe darted his eyes to the huddled woman. Her face still turned down and her long, grayish hair hid her face.
“Was her hair gray when I walked in?
” he thought to himself.

“Mother,” the child said. “Your son is here to see you.”

O’Keefe felt his stomach began to twist and turn. He raised his hand to cover his mouth and prayed that the woman kept her face hidden.

“Mother,” the child said again. “See how your return has affected your only child. Relieve him from his plight of fear and wonderment.” Then, louder, like a growling wolf, “Show your face to your son, you selfish, suicidal bitch!”

The huddled woman slowly lowered her hands from her face, then pushed back the unwashed hair that covered her face.

“I’m so sorry, Joey.”

<<<<>>>>

He was outside, away from the child and the woman huddled in the corner beside the child’s mattress. His heart was beating too quickly, too hard. He bent over, his hands bracing his body on his legs. He drew breaths deeply, trying to clear his mind and bring some energy back to his muscles.

“The odor,” he said to Father Cortez. “The odor in the house. It is a gas, a hallucinogen. What is it?” With all the strength he had remaining, O’Keefe stood, charged and grabbed Father Cortez. “What are you doing to me? To this family?”

Father Cortez pulled away from the grip of O’Keefe. “The girl is not alone, Cardinal O’Keefe. She is no longer pure.”

“It must be carbon monoxide,” O’Keefe said. “That can cause hallucinations. I saw things,” he said, his voice trailing off as it followed his mind’s journey back to the events that happened moments before. “Things that cannot be real.”

“Cardinal,” Cortez said, “whatever you saw, they were not hallucinations. It was the demon inside the poor girl’s soul that twisted reality.”

“The father. The man in the outer room.” O’Keefe started back towards the shack, then stopped and pointed towards the shack. “Did you see him when I left the room? Did you see his face?”

“Forgive me, Cardinal. I did not notice his face.”

O’Keefe’s eyes filled with a mixture of terror and tears. He raised both hands to his face, palms opened, fingers extended. “His face was fluid. It was like a cloud covered it. What was that? What happened in that home?”

“The child is infected, Cardinal, but not by any poison, gas or drug. She is possessed and she has been waiting for you to arrive. The family, I fear, have lost whatever battle they were still fighting when I visited last. They, too, are infected.”

Cardinal Jeffrey O’Keefe steadied his breathing and calmed his trembling body. He drew a deep breath through his nose as he pulled himself to his full six-foot frame. He turned to face Father Cortez. “I need to go back in with the child.”

“I know you do,” Cortez said. “It knows you must as well.”

O’Keefe walked towards the ramshackle home, through the opening guising as a front door, and disappeared from view.

The speed and ease at which she climbed through the political ranks amazed and astonished her. She had help from others and certain obstacles, namely certain people, were disposed of. But still, ascending from supervisor of a small Ohio town to Congresswoman in less than five years? Astounding.

Once she accepted the promise and the conditions of Henry’s offer, she knew there would be forces laying clear her path. Forces that drove others in her way to do things that destroyed their careers. Things, but for this force, they would have never done.

There was the county legislator who was found with a hard drive packed with pictures and videos of children, most in a very vulnerable and compromised situation. The state senator who, despite eight years of sobriety, found it impossible to resist the temptation of the offered needle and liquid euphoria the needle’s promise afforded. The popular congressman who, driven mad by the allure of available power and wealth, accepted one too many offers from a lobbyist and saw his own meteoric rise to power sent crashing to the ground in an embarrassing and criminal heap.

Of all the events that paved and leveled her climb, it was the lack of inquisitive minds that astonished her the most. When one level above hers was vacated, she was the obvious choice. When another level, more respected and filled with even greater responsibilities and expectations, became in need of someone trustworthy and confident, it was her shoulder that was tapped. And when the office doors to which she was destined to obtain were thrown open, she strolled in, voted in by an overwhelming majority of citizens grown tired of the embarrassing and attention-commanding scandals.

As she sat behind the mahogany desk in the Capitol’s wing reserved for junior members of Congress, Stacy Flannigan waited for the expected call to ring her cell. She knew he would be calling, not to congratulate her, but to remind her of her mission. As she waited, the thoughts of her success fuel to her burning fire of hatred, she turned her attention to her true desire.
 

To what she had been promised. To what was being held over her.

“Follow me,” he had told her, “and you will sit beside me and rule as you choose.”

He had warned her countless times of the dangers of succumbing to the transitory glory and power that her inevitable earthly position would offer.

“It will be fleeting, a momentary flash of pride. And you know as well as I do, what pride can do. Wait,” he scolded, “until our mission is completed. Then pride will not result in burning pain, but in everlasting power.”

She didn’t trust him, nor did he expect any trust to be extended. He only asked for loyalty over the one who they all believed demanded it. That one, impotent in his rule and void of all manner of due respect, was, in the end, their unionized target.

“He is twisted in his thoughts,” her leader had told her. “His original choice still causes regret and remorse in his vacant being. And that, his regret and remorse, are a weakness that cannot be strengthened and must be manipulated.”

As the steady stream of well wishers and hopeful ass kissers began to slow, her office began to take on a silence too deep for her comfort. For when the silence came, the distant screams of horror could be heard. Congresswoman Flannigan called out to her aide, whose name was too far down the list of important names to remember.

“I need you to collect some information for me and to arrange a few meetings.”

“Of course,” the nameless aide responded. “What information and with whom would you like to meet?”

“I’ll give you the names shortly. I am expecting a constituent to call soon who will tell me with whom—to mirror your proper use of the English language—I need to meet. As for the information I require, I do insist and expect that whatever I ask for and whatever I share with you will be kept confidential.”

“Of course,” the aide said, smiling proudly after being entrusted with something of such importance despite her young age. “Everything will be considered confidential unless you suggest otherwise.”