Chapter Twenty-Nine

Hastings Mills, NY, July 20th, one year ago

Ken Webb and Del Hall sat next to each other in the equipment van, watching the different rooms in the Rawlingses’ house on the split screens.

Curt stood by the kitchen counter, pouring whiskey into a cup of coffee. His third of the day, even though it wasn’t noon yet. Ken couldn’t blame him. He and Del both agreed that if they’d been in his shoes, they’d be halfway across the state by now. Or locked in a mental ward.

In the living room, the sofa and chairs floated a foot above the carpet while slowly orbiting the coffee table. In Curt’s bedroom, all the dressers and the closet had disgorged their clothes, which had paired up, pants and shirts, and now danced in wild fashion throughout the room.

None of that compared to the scene in Abby’s room.

Dark, roiling clouds covered her ceiling. Lightning lit them from within. Each flash revealed horrific faces. Men and women, their mouths open wider than humanly possible, their eyes empty black holes. Green slime oozed from the walls and dripped onto the floor, where it disappeared into the cracks between the boards. Abby thrashed on the bed, arms and legs spasming, body writhing, head twisting back and forth. Blisters covered her skin, forming weird cuneiform shapes that constantly changed. Every so often, she’d stare at the camera with the yellow eyes and horizontal pupils of a goat, laugh, and vomit out more of the green ooze. Then she’d go back to her St. Vitus’ dance.

“This is some fucked-up shit,” Ken said.

Del nodded, not sure if his partner referred to the things happening inside the house or the arrests of Stone and Zimmerman. Either way, he was glad to be in the van. If Stone had been there, he’d have insisted they film by hand instead of setting up motion-activated cameras in the rooms.

Of course, even remaining on the property struck Del as pretty stupid. Only loyalty to Stone kept him and Ken from making tracks out of town. That, and the guarantee of a huge payday when everything was over and the footage got released to the world.

One of the computers beeped and a yellow light came on. Ken clicked a few keys and brought up a counter at the bottom of each screen. It showed how many hours of recording they’d made and how much storage space remained in the hard drives.

“Another forty minutes,” he said. “Then we’ll have to switch drives and upload these files to the cloud.” Unlike their original equipment, the new backup drives had to be connected to a separate server to transfer to the cloud.

Occupied with their work, neither of them noticed the smoky tendrils creeping into the van through the open back doors. A wispy strand wound its way up Del’s leg and he stiffened. A second diaphanous tentacle found Ken’s foot. He went rigid as well. Both of them remained like that for a few seconds and then relaxed. Del grasped Ken’s shoulders and began to massage them.

“Forty minutes is a long time. What do you think we should do while we wait?”

Ken turned his chair. “I can think of something.” He leaned forward and Del met him halfway, their gentle kiss quickly growing more vigorous, lips smashing together, tongues entwining. Del ripped Ken’s shirt open and slid out of his own t-shirt while Ken stood and undid his jeans. In moments they were naked and on the floor.

The hazy tendrils dissolved around them, but more slithered through the grass toward the neighboring houses.

Officer Corday Rose pulled up in front of the Motel 9 at the far end of Main Street, right at the edge of the town line. The midday sun burned his tired, aching eyes. Exiting the air-conditioned car was like being transported to a tropical jungle. Sweat broke out on his forehead and under his arms, adding to the stains he’d accumulated there during an exhausting night shift filled with some of the craziest calls he’d ever dealt with.

There’d been Mrs. Ronson throwing hot coffee in her neighbor’s face during a game of Monopoly, which had led to the neighbor’s husband sticking a cake knife into Mr. Ronson’s stomach. Then three women at Perkins had stood up, stripped down to their birthday suits, and offered to have sex with anyone in the restaurant. By the time Corday arrived, two men had taken them up on the proposal while the rest of the dinner crowd cheered them on. After that, there’d been two robberies – the 7-Eleven on State and the Tasty Pizza right next door. Same suspects both times, a pair of teenagers who not only didn’t try to hide their faces, they waved at the cameras and smiled as they left with the money.

And now this. Twenty minutes before the end of his shift, when all he wanted to do was go home and fall into bed. A call from the girl at the front desk, saying there’d been a ruckus in one of the third-floor rooms loud enough for him to hear it down in the lobby.

“All sorts of shouting, and stuff banging around,” the clerk had told Martha. “Like they’re rock stars trashing the place. I’m afraid to go up there.”

Corday exited the car, certain this would be another messed-up situation and he wouldn’t get home for hours. Not that home was any kind of haven. Every time he closed his eyes, visions of Abigail Rawlings floating in the air appeared in his head.

I need to talk to Graves. Or a shrink. Either way, I—

Three stories up, a window banged open and loud music blared out. Someone shouted, “Bombs away!”

Corday had just enough time to jump away from the car before a large rectangular object landed on it with a tremendous crash! The sound of glass shattering disappeared in the wail of the car’s alarm going off. Corday rolled over and saw the remains of a flat-screen TV wedged into the patrol car’s roof lights. Someone hooted laughter and the window banged shut.

Cursing, Corday went to the car and turned the engine off, silencing the alarm. Then he stormed into the lobby, passed the wide-eyed clerk without a word, and banged open the door to the stairwell. As he pounded up the stairs, he called in to Martha to request backup.

“It’s like goddamned Animal House here,” he shouted.

On the third floor, he had no trouble determining which way to go. Rock music screamed from around the corner to his left. He drew his gun and slowed his progress, moving carefully down the corridor. Several doors stood open, but when he glanced in, the rooms were empty.

He wondered where the guests had gone. Certainly not the lobby, it’d been empty.

He eased around the corner. The sounds of Bob Seger singing about a devil with a blue dress on blared from an open door down the hall. Not the kind of music Corday would have associated with druggies. Hugging the wall, he approached the room. The music was so loud it sounded distorted. It reminded him of the time he’d blown the speakers in his car as a teenager.

When he reached the door, he put his back to the wall and peered around the frame.

A group of naked men and women knelt in a circle around a candle on the floor, bloody hands clasped and faces turned up to the ceiling, eyes closed and mouths open. Crude symbols drawn in blood decorated their chests and stomachs. The music came from a bunch of hotel radios piled onto the bed, which had been pushed to one side of the room. Crimson letters dripped on the wall where the TV used to hang.

“—Burnin’ with a fire, unholiest desires! Hellrider, comin’ for you—”

The music cut off mid-verse. At the same time, all the people turned and looked at him.

With eyes of pure black.

The flame of the candle flared bright red and a tower of thick smoke rose from it, forming a dense cloud over the group. Shapes appeared in the smoke, almost like faces, except with oversized horns like a triceratops.

One of the people, a skinny woman in her sixties, stood up, her drooping breasts flopping from side to side like half-filled water balloons.

“Don’t move,” Corday said, aiming his gun at her.

She smiled, and the rest of the group got to their feet.

“I mean it. Not one step.” He heard the wail of sirens. Two minutes away at the most. All he had to do was keep things from escalating until backup arrived.

The entire group took a step forward.

“This is your last warning.” He counted thirteen of them, too many to control if they charged. They ranged from mid-twenties to definite senior citizens, including one bald, pot-bellied geezer with gray chest hair and a tiny worm dick poking out from a nest of white pubes. A pile of clothing next to the bed caught his eye, and a flash of realization hit him.

These were the people from the other rooms.

They’d all gathered together and stripped, and then…what? Decided to hold some kind of weird ceremony?

Like devil worship.

The moment he thought it, he knew it was true. And somehow related to Abigail Rawlings, Stone Graves, and that crazy priest, Lockhart.

“Fuck this.” Corday turned and ran. When he reached the stairwell, he slammed open the door and took the stairs two at a time, using the railing to keep from falling. He raced through the lobby without stopping and reached the parking lot just as two more police cruisers skidded to a stop next to his wrecked car.

“What the fuck?” yelled Mitch Banks, jumping out of the lead car.

“Room three-twenty-seven.” Corday pointed up at the window. “It’s a bunch of devil worshippers. They’re nuts.”

“Let’s go.” Banks drew his gun. The other officer, Emil Wallace, did the same and they ran for the entrance. Corday waited until they got to the door and then climbed into Banks’s squad car and headed for the station.

It was time to talk to Stone.

The sweltering darkness of Costa Rica surrounded Leo in an unending maze of terror.

No matter which path he tried, he ended up in the same place, the clearing at the edge of the village. He’d been running in circles for hours, trying to reach the river, to avoid facing the creature that waited for him.

Death.

Now he stood once again at the tree line where jungle gave way to trampled grass, his chest heaving, sweat soaking his clothes. Ahead of him, fires cast a red glow on the rounded huts. Villagers stood in small groups, waiting for him to come and cast the demon from their midst. A white man in bush clothes was with them. The doctor. Leo tried to think of his name but it refused to come.

I can’t help you. It’s too strong.

He turned to head back to the river. Maybe this time he’d find the right way. Make it to the boat. Then he could—

A young woman blocked his way.

“Hello, Father.” She spoke softly, with more than a touch of melancholy. One look and he could tell she didn’t belong in this place. Her pale skin marked her as someone who’d never spent any time in the tropical sun. And her clothes were all wrong. A plain white t-shirt and shorts made of blue denim. Sandals far too fragile for walking in the jungle.

All of this he took in with a glance before her eyes caught his attention. Upturned, slightly round. Deep violet, a shade he’d never seen before. The white of her skin made them even more prominent, almost unnatural. Like she could see into his soul. They sparkled with orange, reflecting the flames.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“We need you. The beast has returned.”

Leo looked back at the village. The beast, yes. In one of the huts. His ancient enemy. He turned to the girl.

“I can’t go there. Death waits for me.”

“Not here. Home. I’ve come to take you back. We need you. She needs you.” The woman held out her hand, her pallid flesh so translucent that for a moment he swore he could see right through it.

“Home? I don’t understand. How—”

“We must stop it. But not here. You have to trust me.”

A bestial roar sounded from the village. Someone screamed.

If she knew the way out….

He took her hand. Ice-cold fingers wrapped around his and the sparks in her eyes grew brighter. He realized she had her back to the fires.

A trick!

He tried to pull away but couldn’t break free. Her ethereal flesh began to glow, the supernatural aura intensifying until it enveloped them both. Her body faded away.

The last things to go were her sad, knowing eyes.

Then there was only white.

I’m alive.

Leo knew it even before he tried to open his eyes. His left hand ached terribly, warm sweat soaked the back of his neck, and a dull throbbing filled his chest. Somewhere off to his left, a machine ticked and beeped. When he breathed, something rubbed against his nostrils.

I’m alive. I made it through the surgery.

Relief surged through him. Despite the relative simplicity of his operation, he’d been worried because of his advanced age and declining health. Anesthesia was particularly dangerous for anyone suffering cognitive issues, but his brain seemed to be working fine.

Or was it?

He did a quick memory test. The events of the past few days seemed clear enough. His ride to Buffalo. Prepping for surgery. Even the eerie dreams that had haunted him when he’d been under anesthesia. Nightmares, really. Being back in Costa Rica, and at St. Alphonse. A monstrous demon stalking him.

The ghostly young woman in the jungle….

“We need you.”

The woman had disappeared in a burst of light. Light that still seeped through his eyelids. Daylight? Lights in the ceiling? He wanted to open his eyes, but when he tried, they only twitched. Like they’d been glued shut.

How long have I been asleep? Did something go wrong?

Am I paralyzed?

Sudden fear jolted him. What if his mind worked but his body didn’t? The beeping by his ear sped up in time with his heart. He had to know!

He lifted his arms. They seemed to weigh a thousand pounds but they worked. At the same time, he bent his knees to make sure his legs functioned. Each movement eased the sense of terror threatening to overwhelm him. A sharp pain jabbed his left hand and he lowered it. With his right, he rubbed his eyes. His fingers came away covered in grit but he managed a quick peek before blinding whiteness forced them shut again.

The second time he tried, he succeeded in keeping them open. Tears ran down his cheeks and he had to blink several times before he could focus.

He found himself staring at white ceiling tiles and long rows of fluorescent bulbs. When he turned his head, the glare of the morning sun through a large window only made things worse. He looked in the other direction.

A man sat in a chair right next to the bed.

Leo jerked back, not expecting anyone to be there. The man’s head was bowed, hiding his face, and for a moment Leo thought him deep in prayer. Then the stranger snored softly. A priest from the university? He didn’t look like one. His hair and clothes were disheveled, as if he’d slept in them. A visitor who’d drifted off while waiting for Leo to wake up. But who? He reached out and tapped the man’s arm.

The man rocked back in his chair with a gasp. Wide, terrified eyes stared at Leo and his mouth gaped as if about to let loose a scream. Then his expression relaxed and he grasped Leo’s hand.

“Father! Thank God!”

“Do I—?” Leo lost the rest of his words as a coughing fit overcame him. The stranger grabbed a plastic cup with a straw from the bed stand and held it to Leo’s mouth. The tepid water cut through the stale crust in Leo’s mouth and throat and rehydrated parched surfaces. After two sips, Leo leaned back and repeated his question in a voice still weak but audible.

“Do I know you?”

The man nodded. “It’s me, Father Leo. Rob Lockhart.”

Leo peered at the man more closely. Lockhart…the name sounded familiar, but there’d been so many students over the years, and between the Alzheimer’s and surgery, his memory….

Wait. Lockhart. His old student from St. Alphonse, the one who’d gone on to seminary. He’d passed the course on exorcism and then…there’d been some kind of scandal. Last he’d heard, Lockhart had been stripped of his clerical status. Laicized.

Why was he here?

“Well, it’s kind of you to visit me. I’m sorry if I don’t—”

Lockhart took his arm. “Fifth Dallas. Kylie Johnson.”

Leo’s heart gave a painful jump and for a moment his vision went dim. The monitor by the bed emitted a shrill squawk.

Fifth Dallas! The deaths. Asmodeus. His dreams!

“I’m sorry to bring up bad memories, Father. But you need to come with me to Hastings Mills. It’s an emergency.”

“What? I don’t under—”

Lockhart’s hand gripped tighter as the door flew open and a nurse ran in.

“It’s back, Father. The demon is back.”

Leo Bonaventura sat in the passenger seat of Robert Lockhart’s car and stared out the window as they raced down Route 17W toward Hastings Mills. His right hand clutched the armrest on the door so it wouldn’t shake, while his other hand fidgeted nonstop with the hem of his shirt.

An exorcism. The fool had conducted an exorcism on that little girl. And in the process, released…what? Could it really be the unspeakable one, the demon that had haunted him through the decades?

No. That would be impossible. The wards are in place. It has to be another. Demons lie, they don’t give their true names.

But his dreams….

Some kind of premonition. Perhaps I felt the presence of evil before I left town and my subconscious automatically focused on the thing I fear most.

He glanced at Lockhart, who kept his attention on the road ahead. Tendons stood out on the man’s clenched jaw and beads of sweat decorated his forehead. Together with his bloodshot eyes and pasty color, they added up to someone fighting the call of a different kind of demon. Alcohol.

Was that what brought about his dismissal? It had to have been very bad.

No wonder Dr. Ho Sing had fought so hard to keep him from leaving. He’d been comatose for almost four days and now insisted on checking out in the company of a man who looked like he’d just wandered in from a homeless shelter. A man who’d needed two broken fingers of his own set and bandaged.

“My opinion is that you should stay another day,” Ho Sing had said after running several tests. “Your heart looks fine, but the complications were so unusual, I think more observation is warranted.”

“My doctors in Hastings Mills will monitor it,” Leo had replied. “Along with my other treatments, for my…condition. But this really is an urgent family matter I must attend to.”

Ho Sing had hemmed and hawed, but in the end the surgeon agreed. It was almost noon by the time Leo left the hospital, his legs shaking but his mind clearer than it had been for months, after promising to take it easy for a few days.

If I survive what’s to come, I’ll have the rest of my life to sleep.

Right now, he had the Lord’s work to do.

And damned if it didn’t feel good to be needed again. Even if it meant cleaning up a mess that never should have happened.

Why had they done it? Lockhart, of all people, should have known better. He’d had enough training to understand the dangers of his actions. And the rest of those fools as well. Bringing obvious telekinetics in contact with a supernatural entity? In a house where a family had been tainted by a demon and a suicide had occurred? A true recipe for disaster. Hadn’t any of them read his books?

Of course not, you silly old fool, his inner voice scolded. You’re two generations removed from them. Everything they know comes from the internet or TV. On the heels of that came another thought.

What do you think an over-the-hill, doddering priest with a stent in his heart and incipient Alzheimer’s can do to help?

A road sign flashed by, announcing the exit for Cuba (Cuba Cheese Shoppe! Best in New York!) coming up. Only another twenty minutes to Hastings Mills.

I guess I’ll know soon enough.

In his head, Leo began making lists of the things he’d need.

Officer Corday Rose descended the stairs into the holding area. In the second cell, Stone Graves and Randi Zimmerman looked up. Stone immediately cursed and slammed his fist against the wall.

“We need to talk,” Corday said.

“More bullshit interrogation?” Stone asked. “What’s the matter, your chief can’t be bothered to do it himself?”

“Stone, shut your damn mouth and let him speak.”

“Screw you.” Stone glared at Randi. “I wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for you.”

“Oh, fuck off.” The woman flipped him a middle finger and sat down as far away as possible.

“Shut up, the both of you!” Corday had no time for their petty bullshit. “Do you really believe all this demon stuff?”

“I do now,” Randi said. Stone scowled and then peered through the steel bars with narrowed eyes.

“Looks like you do, too, Rose. What happened?”

Corday chewed at his lip before answering. “I saw something today. A disturbance call at a local hotel. When I got to the room there were all these people. Naked. Doing some kind of black mass or something.”

“Whoop-de-fucking-doo.” Stone leaned against the wall. “You came here to tell us you busted up an orgy? Or maybe you joined in?” He waggled his eyebrows.

“No. What I saw was…like the other night. In Abigail’s room. Except all of them…their eyes…all wrong. And there were things in the smoke, not human….” Corday stopped as Graves’s face drained of color and he stepped away from the bars.

“You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?” Corday grabbed the bars. “What the hell did I see? What did you people let loose in my town?”

“It wasn’t us,” Randi said. “This started before any of us got here.”

Cold spiders ran down Corday’s back. “What do you mean?”

Stone snorted, but he still looked scared. “She means your town has been fucked up for a long, long time.”

“Stop at my apartment before you take me to the house.”

Robert grunted as he took the exit ramp that led into the west side of town, by the university. He’d been mostly uncommunicative during the ride, his hands gripping the wheel so tight Leo thought his bones might pop right through the skin. Sweat matted his hair and for the last fifteen minutes there’d been a muscle twitching nonstop in his neck.

As they crossed the town line, a memory hit Leo so hard he rocked back in his seat.

A warm, sunny day just like this, fifty-five years ago. Driving from his hotel to the campus, a jar of impossible yet real beetles in a box. Beetles that had come from the mouth of a dying boy. In his head, the last words that boy had spoken.

“Your time will come, Father Fucking Bonaventura! You cannot kill me, for I am eternal.”

Robert pulled into the parking lot of the retirement complex and Leo told him to wait in the car. The man’s grubby, wild-eyed appearance would be impossible to explain. Inside the apartment, Leo ignored the warm, musty air and went right to his bedroom closet, where he kept a small satchel filled with the essentials of his trade: a Bible, holy water, a rosary with a cross, and a packet of communion hosts. He went to shut the closet door and then reached inside again and removed a second cross, this one made of silver. The surface was tarnished and the arms twisted slightly out of shape. For more than forty years, it had remained in its wooden box.

It had defeated Asmodeus once before. It might be needed again.

After pausing to take one of the heart pills Ho Sing had given him, he hurried as fast as his aged legs would take him back to Robert’s car. With each passing moment, a sense of wrongness grew stronger inside him, a sure sign that something definitely was off in Hastings Mills.

Heading down State Street toward the campus, Leo caught sight of yellow tape up ahead. When he saw which building had been cordoned off, he shouted for Robert to stop.

My church!

The top half of Holy Cross was gone, with nothing but charred beams poking up from the stone walls of the first story. The stained-glass windows and front door were boarded up. Black soot marred the granite.

“Dearest God, what happened?” Leo didn’t even know he’d spoken aloud until Robert answered.

“I don’t know, Father. It was fine two days ago. I came here for holy water and candles.”

Leo turned sharply toward Robert, and then back to the ruined chapel. So many thousands of masses he’d said there over the years. So many memories. Weddings, christenings, funerals. Guiding young children on their first steps as Christians….

And it burns down right after Robert visits?

That couldn’t be coincidence.

Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the Devil, for the Devil has been sinning from the beginning. A quote from the apostle John. Robert certainly had made a practice of sinning, anyone could see that. From his alcoholism to whatever forced his removal from the priesthood, which in Leo’s experience only happened in the most extreme cases of misconduct. In fact, the only three reasons he’d ever heard of were embezzlement, violent crimes, or…sexual assault.

He looked at Robert again as they pulled away from the curb. Had his drinking caused him to lose control in more ways than one?

Had his gluttony opened him to the Devil’s influence?

‘And give no opportunity to the Devil.’ Ephesians 4:27.

Robert had said he’d spent the last several years traveling the country and performing exorcisms and banishments as a private minister. That meant a lot of contact with evil.

Oh, Robert, have you slipped too far?

Preoccupied with his thoughts as they passed the St. Alphonse Cemetery and approached the campus, Leo didn’t notice anything amiss until Robert gasped and pulled over once more.

Fifth Dallas.

Construction vehicles sat parked in front of the magnificent, ivy-covered building. Dumpsters outside were filled with plaster and wood. There were caution tape and red cones around the building. The windows were missing.

God in Heaven, no! They couldn’t have.

But there was no mistaking it. And in that moment, Leo understood everything. Robert, Abigail Rawlings. The fire. His own dreams.

“Your time will come, Father Fucking Bonaventura! You cannot kill me, for I am eternal.”

Robert had been right all along.

They’d woken the demon.