Evil Eternal (25 page)

Two years of training his mind, body and spirit, traveling the globe on a bottomless bank account. Not bad for a homeless kid from New York. The pay and travel were unbeatable, though the job left much to be desired.

The Vatican made sure he received everything he needed so long as he operated in the shadows, much as the demons had conducted their affairs to this point. His days of painting were behind him, his artistic talent left to odd doodlings here and there. Pope Pius XIII had promised him that, if they managed to stem the tide of evil flowing into this world since the debacle in New York City, he would be given ample time to reacquaint himself with his brushes and canvas, as well as a chance to study the masters in every major art gallery in the world, not to mention the Vatican’s own vast store of artistic treasures.

Shane looked at his bare body in the mirror. He was still thin but his muscles were now rock hard. His mohawk, once his pride, had been replaced by a military-style buzz cut. And despite his almost daily scrapes with the worst that hell had to offer, there was nary a bruise on his body.

Father Michael had been right. His gift, as he chose to look at it, was truly remarkable. Through the whim of the Almighty, the citizens of hell could not lay a hand on him. There were times early on when his confidence in his power was less than solid. Now that it had been tested many times over, he was sure to the point of cockiness.

Tony knocked on the bathroom door. “I have some leftover Chinese. You want some?”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

Tony was a good guy. He could be a trifle righteous at times, an expected trait from a Vatican-appointed assistant. He’d been a member of the Swiss Guard until being paired up with Shane. He was the epitome of an upstanding guy. Yet he loved to watch the ponies, and occasionally gamble. It made him human, which in turn gained Shane’s trust.

The smell of Chinese food made him think of Aimee and their countless takeout dinners.

He hadn’t seen Aimee in almost a year and a half now. No one had seen Father Michael since the day he’d sent them off to the Vatican—for protection for Aimee and training for him. The surreal had been replaced by the too real that day, and it made him dizzy thinking about it.

Wondering where either of them could be made his stomach feel like it was filled with restless fire ants. If he thought too much about them, and especially how much he missed Aimee, he would be distracted. His job and the countless lives of others demanded a near-supernatural sense of focus and calm.

To just know that Aimee was all right, that’s all I really need
. He couldn’t put into words how much that would mean. And to have Father Michael at his side, to learn from him, the benefits would be immeasurable.

As long as Aimee remained sequestered and Father Michael missing, he would worry. The trick was to know when to bury his fears and when to dig them up for brief moments of quiet, painful reflection.

Shane threw on fresh clothes, starving and ready to eat.

“Smells good. I hope you got a little of everything.”

He turned the corner into the kitchen and gasped.

Tony’s body was draped across the table, his throat cut, a ragged wound weeping torrents of crimson onto the tiled floor. White boxes of steaming Chinese food had been placed upon his chest. Bloody smears and half-formed fingerprints painted the sides of each box.

The apartment was completely silent, save for Shane’s hollow breathing.

He instinctively reached for his pocket in search of a weapon, only to find his sweatpants had no pocket.

Shit.

Looking at Tony’s body again, he saw raw, empty sockets where his eyes should have been.

Now what? He’d never been found before. The demon in the park must have had a partner that had followed him here.

“If you wanted my attention, you got it,” Shane said to the hushed apartment. “Worst part for you is, you also got me pissed. An angry me is only going to end with a dead you, so there’s no sense in delaying the inevitable.”

Something hit him in the back.

He whirled around to face the demon at the end of the hall. It looked mostly human, only with boil-covered flesh and luminescent, yellow eyes.

A quick glance at the ground confirmed that he’d been pelted with one of Tony’s eyes.

“I’m right here, Godfucker,” the demon hissed, boils popping along its lips and leaking thick, green fluids.

Shane knew the trick was getting to his room to grab a weapon of exorcism before the beast ran off into the night. If it had witnessed the scene at the park, it must have known attacking him was futile. Shane’s room was just behind the oozing beast.

He rushed down the hallway towards the grinning demon.

“Make way, zit boy!” Shane shouted.

Something smashed across his chest. He dropped to the floor. The pain of cracked ribs poking into his lungs brought black specks to the corners of his vision.

“What…the…hell?” he wheezed.

The demon laughed. “Exactly.”

Standing above Shane was a young boy holding a bat high above his head.

It was the boy from the park.

But if he had been turned by the demon, how could he have connected with the bat?

Shane’s stomach convulsed, sending fresh waves of agony as he tensed to keep from retching.

“Better finish him off, kid,” the demon ordered in a gurgling growl.

The boy was panting like a dog. Tears streamed down his cheeks as the bat wavered in his hand.

“But…but,” he stammered.

“Do it or I spend eternity raping your mother in hell!”

The walls shook from the powerful blast of the demon’s command. The boy jumped and dropped the bat. It glanced off the back of Shane’s head.

So that’s how he did it, Shane thought through the haze of pain. It kidnapped and blackmailed the boy into doing its bidding. He couldn’t blame the kid.

He had to find a way to get to his feet and reach the demon without hurting the boy.

“Pick up the bat or I’ll eat your goddamn face off!”

This time the boy did as he was told and took a half-hearted swing at the side of Shane’s head, connecting with his temple.

The world went black. Shane could no longer see or take a full breath.

“Please kid…don’t…” he sputtered. “If you kill…me, it’s going to…to kill you…next.”

Shane felt the world spin around him. Every breath brought fire to his lungs.

He was as helpless as a baby.

“If you ever want to see your mommy again, it’d be best not to listen to him.”

Shane tried to raise a hand over his head and fell to his side. A splinter of rib pushed into the soft tissue of his lung.

Time to go, he thought. Hopefully there will be someone else to fight this war.

I love you Aimee, and I’ll wait for you
.

There was a crashing of glass, but it sounded distant, followed by grunts and frantic thumping. To Shane, it was all happening behind the gauze of a faintly remembered dream.

Muffled screaming, then another voice, too low to discern individual words. A voice more felt in the pit of his stomach.

Was it real or just the last gasp of a dying brain?

It didn’t matter, so Shane let the tide of infinite black drag him under.

He awoke with instant clarity and bolted upright as if warning bells were sounding around him. The pain in his head and ribs was gone. The apartment was once again silent and seemingly empty.

He scrabbled to his feet and ran to his room, grabbing a crucifix-dagger.

When he stepped back into the hallway, his foot kicked up gray motes of ash from a pile by the doorway. A similar, smaller mound of soot lay several feet away.

Kneeling, he ran his fingers through the ash, glancing at the smaller mound across from him.

The boy. Dear God, the boy.

He took a deep, painless breath.

Sunlight trickled in through the half-closed blinds of his bedroom window.

“Father Michael?” he whispered.

Silence.

And again, only louder and filled with as much hope as fear, “Father Michael? Father Michael!”

About the Author

Hunter Shea is the author of the novels
Forest of Shadows
and
Evil Eternal
. His stories have appeared in numerous magazines, including
Dark Moon Digest, Morpheus Tales
and the upcoming anthology,
Shocklines: Fresh Voices in Terror
. His obsession with all things horrific has led him to real life exploration of the paranormal, interviews with exorcists and other things that would keep most people awake with the lights on. He is also half of the Monster Men video podcast, a fun look at the world of horror. You can read about his latest travails and communicate with him at
www.huntershea.com
, on Twitter
@HunterShea1
, Facebook fan page at Hunter Shea or the Monster Men 13 channel on YouTube.
 

Look for these titles by Hunter Shea

Now Available:

Forest of Shadows

The dead still hate!

Forest of Shadows

© 2011 Hunter Shea

John Backman specializes in inexplicable phenomena. The weirder the better. So when he gets a letter from a terrified man describing an old log home with odd whisperings, shadows that come alive, and rooms that disappear, he can’t resist the call. But the violence only escalates as soon as John arrives in the remote Alaskan village of Shida. Something dreadful happened there. Something monstrous. The shadows are closing in…and they’re out for blood.

Enjoy the following excerpt for
Forest of Shadows:

They screamed.

And impossible as it seemed, George Bolster was grateful for his family’s unbridled cries of terror as they masked the other unearthly sounds that ghosted their every move.

Whump. Whump. Whump.

The steady beat of an unseen giant’s footsteps up the stairs.

“Into the bedroom, now!” George shouted at his panicked wife and sons. They scrabbled into the room at the end of the hall while the floor quaked beneath their feet. Once inside, George slammed the door shut and braced his back against its oak frame. His sons, Cory and Matt, clung to Sharon’s sides, their eyes wide and terrified, darting around the room, looking for death in benign shadows.

“Sharon, push the dresser over.”

Stifling a sob that made her entire body shudder, she reluctantly pulled away from the boys and ran over to the large dresser. George grunted as the unseen force in the hallway pounded against the door.

“Hurry!”

Matt leapt to his mother’s side to help push the heavy piece of furniture across the floor and against the bedroom door. Cory, who was only six and barely forty pounds, could only curl up into a corner and whimper. A clap of thunder made the entire house quake and they all shrieked in unison. George still pressed his weight against the door while Sharon and Matt gathered as much bulk as they could find and piled it as high and as fast as they could on top of the dresser.

The door shook as it was rammed again and again, so hard that the arch above the doorway began to crack. It wouldn’t be long before the entire wall would collapse and then where could they go?

A deep thrumming emanated from beyond the door, a sonorous hum that was not so much heard as it was felt. It hurt like hell. They felt it vibrate their chest walls, disrupt the hammering rhythm of their hearts. It crept up their spines and exploded in their skulls, threatening to liquefy their brains.

So they screamed. Fighting fire with fire. The pile of debris stashed against the door shook as the pounding on the door continued. Staggering on jellied knees, George peered out the sole window into the moon bathed woods outside. It was only a drop of twenty feet or so. Maybe, if he jumped first, he could catch them one at a time and they could run into the woods. But it was so damn cold, well below zero, and they didn’t have a coat between them. Could they possibly navigate their way through the snow steeped forest to their nearest neighbor a mile away?

Suddenly, everything stopped. The pain ceased and they all dropped to their knees. What sounded like a thousand tiny claws ticked across the hardwood floor of the hallway, retreating to the other end and descending the staircase that lead to the living room below.

George shook his head and went back to the window.

“Is it gone, Daddy?” Cory whispered.

“I don’t know. Everyone stay quiet.”

He kept his eyes on the faintly illuminated yard and his ears tuned for any sounds within the house. Matt and Cory muffled their cries into their mother’s breast.

“What are you thinking?” Sharon mouthed.

George pointed out the window and used two fingers to simulate running. It was their only chance.

“George, we’ll freeze to death.”