Fires Rising (33 page)

A ghostly red mist rose up from the base of the crucifix, winding tendrils traced with phosphorescent halos. He followed the vaporous strands up to the face of the wooden Jesus, no longer gazing toward the heavens in unanswered prayer, but staring at the beast opposing it, brow slightly downcast, eyes showing tinges of life.

Like the painted eyes on my nightlight…

Yellow smoke swelled from the rear of the Jesus figure's skull. The rank smell of burning wood overpowered the hideous stench of the beast. The floor beneath Pilazzo trembled forcefully and his stomach slammed up into his throat, damming his breaths.

With a piercing crunching sound, the Jesus figure's head tore away from the crucifix. Splinters of wood burst out and rained down across the altar, peppering the battling workers who were too busy routing the statues to notice their
true
threat. Pilazzo covered his face with his arms, shielding his eyes from the storm of wood. A few seconds later, as he uncovered himself, another crack of wood boomed through the church and he saw the wooden Jesus leaning farther away from its place on the cross, its back now rendered free, wisps of smoke rising up from the splintered wood on the cross.

Pilazzo looked back at the chaotic battle and saw the beast struggling to rekindle the sputtering fires in the chalice. Pilazzo presumed these fires represented the strength of the beast—just as the rosary offered power to the sinless one. The beast's downcast eyes were fixed upon the glossy chalice and the lack of fires within, arms and legs and tail flailing in noticeable anger and frustration.

There was another incredible cracking noise. A cloud of sawdust burst over Pilazzo's head like a blast of gunpowder. When he looked up he saw the Jesus figure's right arm now free of the cross, sticking straight out in its original pose, blood trickling from the wound in its hand and sizzling as it spattered the altar. There was another powerful
crack
. Pilazzo could see its left arm now unencumbered. It too remained stiff. Like the other, it bled from its wound.

It was a miraculous sight: both of Jesus Christ's arms free of the cross, stiff in their crucifixion position, the fingers flexing ever so slightly, like a newborn's newly discovered hands.

Another earth-shattering concussion sounded. It was here that the beast finally took notice of what was happening, its black eyes fixed with terror upon the twelve-foot wooden Jesus falling away from the crucifix, upper body unencumbered and leaning forward, blood seeping from the stigmata in its hands and feet. The workers gathered before their dark god, forming a wall of inhuman protection, bloodied from battle but still prepared to defend the beast to the death.

With a wood-splitting creak, the wooden Jesus's tortured eyes shifted and pinned the beast. The beast lowered the burning chalice, the fires within reduced to meager sparks.

There was another great cracking noise as the feet of the Jesus figure tore free of the cross. The massive statue thudded down onto the altar—arms still spread wide…and then it seemed to
step
forward. It was here, on the altar, where it stood on its own two legs, eyes aimed at the beast. Pilazzo's mouth gaped open as he stared at the twelve-foot statue with its arms spread wide, its head and neck wrenched in presumable agony, muscles and tendons stretched to snapping points. The feet, now torn apart. And its eyes, surrendering their gaze to the heavens for a contemplation of the enemy standing in before it.

The red mist enveloping the Jesus figure parted, leaving it ensconced in flickering shadows.

All of a sudden, one of the stained glass windows in the ceiling shattered, the flames outside finally fingering their way in. Colorful glass rained down on the altar, onto the standing wooden Jesus that seemed not to notice or care, and onto the workers and the beast, whom cowered like troops in a battlefield. Pilazzo recoiled and released a strangled gasp, choking on sawdust and smoke as he spit his dry labors on the floor. A surge of lightheadedness washed over him. He felt a gush of hot air, and then shrunk back even more as powerful flames leaped across the ceiling.

The wooden Jesus, still in its crucified pose, tilted forward.

The beast roared, the flames in the chalice sputtering, rising and falling, clearly unreliable in their promise for power. It shook the chalice hard with both hands, unable to revive it.

Thoroughly frustrated and pissed, the beast swiped the chalice through the collective of minions before it.

The bodies of perhaps ten workers went down, blood assaulting the air in ripples. Immediate wails filled the church as heads and arms were severed. The beast roared again, stomping its monstrous feet in fury, staggering crookedly over the fallen bodies, crushing them underfoot. The still-standing workers froze and watched with dreadful silence as those fallen minions still alive crawled broken-boned across the floor.

Without hesitation, the beast shrieked and brought the chalice back. Keeping its aim high, it lopped off the heads of another group of workers. Blood shot up in geysers as their bodies collapsed down alongside the splintered chunks of the statues and severed body parts. The beast's eyes rolled toward two stunned workers making a plea to escape. It lunged and snatched them both up with one claw and bashed their heads together in a fierce clap before casting their lifeless bodies aside like burlap bags.

Soon the scene was clear of the workers, many of them dead, others too injured to move.

The chalice, now rich with the blood of its sacrifants, began to burn again.

Pilazzo didn't need the support of the rosary to know that just as the workers had sacrificed the vagrants to feed strength and power into the chalice, the beast itself, in desperation, sacrificed its own minions in a do-or-die situation to gather the power needed to confront the goodness that stood before him.

The great wooden Jesus.

The beast spun around in a rambling circle, stomping on the bodies, swinging the chalice back and forth, spilling embers and sparks. It darted to the left, over a pew.

The Jesus Christ figure creaked…creaked…creaked…then slowly began to fall. Its arms remained outstretched, but its legs seemed to spread apart and hurdle the sanctuary in a single, wood-splitting motion.

It landed at the edge of the altar and fell across the slaughterhouse of workers, onto the marauding beast.

Somewhere in the darkness, Pilazzo heard bones crunching, and then a howl of pain and agony in the voices of a thousand creatures that shook every beam in the church and shattered every remaining stained-glass window.

The beast arched and thumped below the weight of the fallen statue, sawing into its chest with the talons of its free hand, intending it seemed, to claw out its wooden heart. The statue, perhaps a thousand pounds or more, didn't budge. But it did bleed, Pilazzo saw, thin streaks that glistened in the moving shadows like tiny rivers. The beast's head twisted sideways, its black, horrible eyes fixing Pilazzo, almost seeming to plead with him. Again it roared in a chorus of agonized voices, the unbearable stench of which traveled all the way up to the altar where Pilazzo clutched the rosary and ignored the deep wounds it burned into the palms of his hands.

Stigmata…

And from somewhere deep in the darkness ahead, a voice spoke, whispering but loud enough so Pilazzo could make out its words:
"Drop my chalice, demon, and go back to hell from where you came."

And it was at this moment that Pilazzo struggled with the startling truth of the matter, as though these otherworldly words uttered, in combination with the moving beads in his hands, had sent an answer to all this madness directly into his mind: that the chalice, its power and mysticism, stolen by some chaotic demon in vain attempt to harvest its power, really belonged to Jesus Christ.

Countless theories and ideas flitted about Pilazzo's tormented mind, and he wondered:
Is this the Holy Grail, used thousands of years ago to absorb the sins of Jesus's followers? Were those sins now being used by the beast to wreak havoc upon the world? Or was this an artifact once possessed by the beasts of Hell, only having been stolen by God in His attempt to sequester its dark powers?

Still gripping the burning chalice in its right hand, the beast raised its arm up and rammed it against the Jesus figure's head. Flames burst from it, charring the wood that made up the sculpture's crown of thorns and hair. The beast continued to pound out its fury, each strike against the statue like thunder in Pilazzo's ears. He shuttered his eyes tightly, vaguely aware of debris dropping down around him.

The Jesus figure remained on top of the beast, arms still spread wide, feet now fused back together through some unobserved magic. Tiny bands of fire spread across its head and body, each meandering five or six feet before withering away. Beneath it, the beast continued thumping and bucking and roaring. Torrential winds swept through the church, sending debris and dust everywhere. Chips of wood brushed by Pilazzo. He coughed and rubbed his eyes furiously, chest rising and falling. When he pulled his hands away from his eyes, he stared back at the battle and was relieved to see the beast succumbing beneath the oppressive weight of its adversary.

The fires on the wooden Jesus's head had spread across its back, sending dark spirals of smoke up to meet the spreading flames on the roof. The beast brought its heavy fists down on the Jesus figure's burning head, howling so loud that Pilazzo had to clap his hands over his ears. The fire consumed the entire upper half of the sculpture and was now spreading onto the beast. The beast shrieked in agony. Yellow liquids oozed from its face as the flames took to its thick hair and dry scales. Still, it maintained its desire for freedom, making every effort to fight back, arms flailing, body bucking. Its efforts were in vain, and soon its face was nothing more than a black and yellow pulp beneath the spreading flames, its movements tapered down to muscle-triggering contractions.

Clearly overmatched in both power and spirit, the beast tossed the chalice aside. The wooden Jesus, now completely on fire and charred black, cracked in half and rolled off the beast's body, burning embers writhing across it, looking like veins. The faceless demon rolled over and crawled away, scaly legs kicking up a cloud of dust and blood and glass.

Still on fire, still shrieking, it reached for the chalice.

A shadow emerged from the dark. Pilazzo's heart skipped a beat…until he saw the figure's face in the flickering firelight.

Jyro.

The vagrant grabbed the chalice. With a single lunge, he leapt at the beast, and slammed it into its burning head.

An unimaginable chorus of sounds filled the church, of men and women and children screaming for their very souls, of flesh tearing and wood sputtering beneath cracking flames and shaking beams, of terrible animalistic growls.

When the smoke cleared, Pilazzo saw the beast leap up and shove Jyro back, despite its head having been crushed. Tail rattling, it darted on all fours down the center aisle and leapt at the inner doors of the church. The doors exploded into a violent storm of wood.

Pilazzo scrambled up. He looked at the bloody pool of dead construction workers at the foot of the altar, and then beyond to the smoldering heap of wood that used to be a Jesus Christ figure nailed to the crucifix behind the altar.

He took a deep, painful breath and stepped forward.

He looked up.

The fires above had gone out, only glowing cinders and gray smoke evidence of their recent rage.

He stepped off the altar and worked his way across the battlefield of severed arms, legs, heads, and torsos, through tacky puddles of blood and glistening organs, shards of stained glass and fragments of porcelain, down the strangely silent aisle.

In a faint, dry whisper, he called out, "Jyro?"

From between the pews came a rustle. Then, a shadow.

The vagrant stood up, gripping a pew for support.

He looked at the priest, face soiled black. "Been a helluva day, eh father?"

Pilazzo nodded, just once. Then looked past Jyro toward the rear of the church.

The inner doors were gone, but the doors leading outside…they were open.

He limped down the aisle, looking again to the ceiling just to reaffirm to himself that the fires had indeed ceased.

He looked back to the doors.
The open doors.

He peered at Jyro as he walked by, then to the floor where Timothy's body remained, head askew, blood seeping from his mouth. In silence, the vagrant joined Pilazzo and they both journeyed all the way to the vestibule.

Here they stopped. Stared.

Tears filled Pilazzo's eyes at what he saw.

Somewhere in the brief moment between ripping through the inner doors and reaching the large twin doors leading out into the injured world, the beast fled the human body it had possessed. What remained behind, laying motionless on the floor in the vestibule, was a bloody, misshapen lump of human flesh that just days ago used to be Henry Miller, foreman for Pale Horse Construction.

A single eye, wet and socketless, looked up at them.

It was moving.

He was still alive.

Two thin flaps of flesh separated in a spot four inches below the horrible staring eye. Pilazzo saw a dime-sized tooth in it. A harsh, faint whisper emerged, followed by a thin line of bloody saliva.