Fires Rising (30 page)

Here in the darkness of The Church of St. Peter, death lived.

As the screams and wails and horrid thumps of weapons meeting flesh rang true from the rectory, he sucked in his nausea and told himself that the air here was too dense to be resultant of only one fatality.

No, here there were a multitude of deaths. But where?

"It's so dark," Pilazzo whispered. "I cannot see anything…"

The rosary began to twitch in his pocket. Having cooled off after the deaths of Weston and the crucified man, it began to grow warm again.

Timothy pointed the flashlight toward the altar. There was blood everywhere, on the carpet, drop cloths, and great Jesus statue. A desecration of God's home still present, thriving.
In my home…

Timothy pulled the flashlight away from the altar. He turned and skimmed it across the dark the church.

"Oh…my…God…"

Pilazzo jerked around, half-expecting to see a worker hiding in the rafters like he had at Holy Innocents.

What he saw instead was far, far worse.

.
   
Bodies. Perhaps two dozen of them, slaughtered like pigs. Homeless men, religious men, all sitting upright in the remaining pews, heads bowed on collapsing necks into which deep gashes had been delivered. One by one, Timothy delivered the flashlight's beam over them, spotlighting their lifeless faces, frozen in their final moments of terror: swollen tongues hanging blackly from gaping mouths. Clotted blood oozing from slashed jugulars.

Pilazzo fought back his gorge, seeking an answer to this travesty.

None came. The rosary remained cool and motionless.

To the left, more bodies appeared, eight or nine of them charred black like forest-fire tree trunks, the whites of their rictus grins shimmering in the flashlight's beam. Farther along the gruesome procession, two additional bodies, wholly flayed of their skin, rib cages sawed away to reveal still-wet lungs and hearts.
 

"Take it away," Pilazzo demanded of Timothy, and when the boy didn't comply he shouted louder, "I said take it away!" Trembling, he pulled the beam to the floor, away from the butchery—away from the humanity that had been devoured like chum in shark-infested waters. Pilazzo could drum up no reaction to this mastery of death. No want for prayer, no urge to scream. His fear had risen to a point where only shock and numbness existed.

He could only muster enough willpower to beseech the charm that had been meant for him, and seek out its guidance. But it remained dark. Unresponsive.

"What has happened here?" he asked of God.

Timothy tensed up alongside him, answered, "The end of days."

The horrific sights had dulled their senses so much that it was only now that they took into account the burgeoning threat from inside the rectory. The shouts and screams there had slowed, replaced now with groans of weak, near-death agonies. Both Pilazzo and Timothy stood motionless, listening to the aftermath, and for a moment there was only total silence, save for a slow drip somewhere near the altar.

Timothy ran his free hand through his hair, uttered, "They are coming for us. Are you prepared for battle, Father?"

The priest looked at the boy, whose swollen eye twitched nervously. "No. But I will try—"

There was an explosion just outside the church. Two of the stained glass windows in the ceiling shattered and colorful shards coughed through the air. The windows' lead frames buckled and collapsed inward. Pilazzo pitched forward, feeling glass pieces spearing into his arms.

He shuttered his eyes, reached out both arms and caught hold of…of a
body
,

…a warm, slimy, wet, naked, corpse…

one neither he or Timothy had seen in the gloom. In the beam of light Timothy struggled to stabilize, Pilazzo saw that the body had been noosed with a thick rope leading up and away to a beam in the dark ceiling.

With dreadful silence, the flashlight abruptly went out.

The beams creaked and the body swayed and to keep from falling Pilazzo latched onto it with his right hand. His feet skidded in the puddle of blood beneath it as his groping nails sunk into the pliant nudeness. There was a wet tearing sound,
squlap!
, and he imagined the corpse's neck tearing beneath the grip of the noose and the extra burden of his weight. His feet slipped again. He groped the corpse with his left hand, fingernails boring into an open wound, scratching bone. In a panic he embraced the cadaver's entire bulk and squeezed. His cheek pressed against a wet patch. A flurry of dust rained down on him from the ceiling.

Lungs heaving, he called for Timothy—the boy had gone dishearteningly silent.

"Timothy?" he repeated, his voice a faint sob.

No answer.

Tears filled his eyes; he could feel his tortured mind crumbling into pieces. How many times had he offered the host in this very spot, drinking wine from a cup and reciting the Lord's Prayer under the joyful gazes of parish members?
And now look at me, grasping death by the handfuls, my very soul and perhaps the souls of millions dependent on a set of petrified rosary beads.

His hands slipped. The body swayed. Above, the beams creaked. Fearful of breaking a bone of smashing his head against the hard floor, he tightened his hold on it.

"Timothy?" he cried out, a bit more loudly now.

No answer.

He began to hyperventilate, breaths spearing the darkness like desperate cries for help. His heart sunk into a black hole of pessimism, a tiny voice in the back of his head yammering,
The boy is dead! The boy is dead!
And then he thought,
And what of the others? The rectory has fallen silent—not even the evil war cries of the workers remains. Dear god WHAT IS HAPPENING?

The rosary began to move.

Grunting, he cautiously loosed one hand from the cadaver. His body faltered a bit, but he still managed to reach into his pocket and grasp it. Its movements calmed as soon as he touched it. And so, for the moment, did his anxiety.

From behind, near the rear of the church, Pilazzo heard footsteps—they crunched debris, echoing in the strange silence like drops of water in a cave.

Feeling an offer of guidance from the rosary, Pilazzo was able to gather his head. He mustered a bit of strength and boldness, took a deep breath, and quickly pushed away from the cadaver. He tottered sideways, feet skidding in the blood, arms spread for balance, eyes desperately searching the all-encompassing darkness. Shards of stained glass crunched beneath his footsteps as he staggered into a pew. A jolt of pain ripped through his hip like a hammer-strike.

The cadaver pendulated. With a deafening
crack
the beam supporting it snapped. It plummeted to the floor with a sickening thud and Pilazzo could see the dark shine of its exposed cavity winking at him. A loud rain of wood followed it onto the floor.

He shouted out, "Timothy?" He lunged through the darkness toward the altar, breath speeding up, brain and heart preparing to confront the evils awaiting him in the bitter darkness. He skidded to a stop somewhere near the steps, suddenly aware of the sticky blood on his hands and face. He clawed at himself as if trying to brush away a sudden swarm of insects.

The footsteps he'd heard earlier grew louder, seeming to approach from every direction. He jerked his head around, but could not make out their source in the dark. Quickly, he removed the beads from his pocket. He held them out and spun around with the same hopeful resolve a vampire hunter might display while baring a crucifix.

He heard a loud creak.

He turned. Looked. Saw an emerging splay of dim yellow light.

The door to the rectory was opening.
 

F
rom amidst a gleam of yellow light, the workers emerged into the church. The first two were holding the ancient crate between them, those behind carrying—
dear God
—the severed heads of their vagrant victims. Pilazzo recognized the lifeless faces of the men he never got to know: Seymour, Dallas, Rollo, Wrath, plus the heads of the previously dead: Wilson, Weston, and the albino.

Where is Jyro?
he thought, unable to locate the vagrant's head among the decapitated, thinking again of how he in his final moments tried to show the priest something in his hand.
Has he been spared from death? If so, then how? And where is he now?

So many questions, and no time to consider the answers.
 

The workers shambled from the doorway in the same wicked frame-by-frame stagger as their outside-world brothers. Their injuries were painfully clear in spite of their jerking movements, many of them bleeding—or, doused in the blood of their victims—some devoid of an eye or limb. Judging from their actions, they appeared unfeeling of the pain tearing through their bodies.

They filled the transept at the left of the altar like a chorus of parishioners. There were at least twenty-five of them in all, those holding the heads standing in front, flanking the pair with the crate on both sides.
There's so many of them
, Pilazzo thought, realizing with dismay that there were many more wreaking havoc in the outside world.
A whole damn city's worth
. He trembled uncontrollably as he held the rosary out, fingers pawing at it furiously, instincts forcing him to shout, "Be gone foul demons!"

The workers laughed in response, voices deep and raucous.

Pilazzo swallowed a hard lump in his throat. He clutched the rosary tightly until his nails dug half-moons into his palm. It dangled back and forth like an ornament in an earthquake.

Amid their laughter, deep livid voices shouted out, "
Bow to the beast priest! Bestow upon him the charm! The vagrants have lied to you! The rosary is a sham! A useless piece of junk!
" On and on their hideous lies went.

A cold swash of air blew into his back, sending ghostly chills up and down his spine. He jerked around as if someone had shouted aloud, but saw only the dark church, its shuttered doors dim shadows in the splay of yellow light spilling from the rectory door. He arrowed his sights back toward the bloody mass of construction workers packing the transept…but…

…but they're staying away from the altar
, Pilazzo thought with a cracking force of revelation.
And I understand…
His mind again went back to his meeting with Henry Miller, how during their conversation outside the church the foreman had said:
Our…our crews are not insured for moving such valuables, Father. I strongly suggest you hire, immediately, a moving company to handle them…

And as Pilazzo stared at the mass of workers—who themselves seemed to be eyeing the altar as if it were a great hive packed with killer bees—that he came to read between the lines of Henry Miller's deliberate words.

That the Achilles' heel of the beast had become utterly clear.

The porcelain statues and the great wooden Jesus. The workers couldn't move them because they
couldn't touch them
. Miller had tried to ploy Pilazzo into getting someone else to move them—someone not under the influence of the beast—because should his workers even so much as attempt to touch them, they would suffer pain and death. And this would weaken the beast.

I can see this as clearly as the image of my dream remains in my head…

His memories quickly switched to his confrontation with the beast, how it had manifested itself upon the altar amid the circle of statues—and before the great crucifix. Pilazzo wondered:
if indeed the workers—the minions of the beast—had been unable to approach the altar, then how did the beast manage to do the same without any suffering?

Pilazzo squeezed the rosary—now warm to the touch—and like magic an answer to this uncertainty bloomed in his mind.

The doomed vagrant Larry had made an attempt to utilize the rosary for its truly benign purpose. He had not been pure of heart however,
a sinless one
, and had consequently failed to bring God's power out, conversely opening a door for evil to emerge and gain strength.

And just as Larry had obtained the rosary, goodness had
used him
to intervene at the exact moment Pilazzo had entered the church. By doing so, Larry could deliver the rosary to the priest
while the beast was exposed, and vulnerable to attack
.

Yes
, Pilazzo thought.
It was divine intervention. Larry taking the rosary and being there upon my entrance into the church. Timothy being there for me soon thereafter. It's goodness combating evil, every stretch of the way.

The entire truth had been revealed, its pieces spread out before him: a knowledge gifted to him by the rosary.
From God.

He saw no other choice but to use it to his advantage.
Follow the message that God delivers to you. Heed His word and do your part to bring down the evil that promises man the end of days…

"Father!"

Timothy
. Pilazzo spun around. Saw the boy.

Trapped in the arms of Henry Miller.