Satan Claws

 

 

 

 

Did I leave the warmth and sun of Florida for this shit? Adam thought.

But he smiled to meet his families’ expectations, lifting a toast to his dickhead brother, Jon. The brandy warmed his throat. It was cheap shit, the kind you could buy anywhere in Hannibal, like convenience stores and gas stations. The typical swill of family gatherings, even for the Christmas holiday. If he’d quit on life, like his father, Adam would drink enough to dull his senses long enough to get through the next couple days.

The men sat in a small side room his father reserved for drinking and reminiscing about glories of seasons past. Over the years it had become a retreat for the men in the family and any company they had over. That was the way Ted, his father, liked it. That was the way most men in Central New York preferred it, from what Adam remembered. This small town community allowed them to place the blame of misfortune at the feet of fate. How else could they deal with their inability to get ahead?

“If only we got preferential treatment,” Ted said when the frustrations of the world got to him. “You know?”

All too well. Ted raised his sons to be compliant, little robots. Jon fell in line like a lemming, Adam never had. He always questioned, always challenged. That’s why he earned this ‘second son’ status. Where Jon’s meager accomplishments were bragged about at neighborhood picnics, Adam’s seemed to only get mentioned in passing. Where his parents somehow found the money to support a number of Jon’s whims, like the time he had to have a dirt bike so that he could train to become a professional racer, Adam struggled to feed himself through college. The theme had been repeated over and over, throughout the years.

Besides DNA, Ted contributed very little to the man Adam was. Growing up, Adam was always sensitive to how other fathers encouraged their children. Ted criticized. During sports, other fathers worried when their sons were injured. Ted yelled at Adam the few times he went down in a game, including the time he dislocated his elbow. The community never saw Ted as an abuser because Adam and Jon, and their mother, never bore observable scars of Ted’s anger. But they were there, tucked away in the folds of gray matter. Permanent.

Counseling was never paid for. “They’re all quacks,” Ted swore.

Family self-help wasn’t entertained. People didn’t need to talk about their feelings because that’s was what ‘pussies and pansies’ did, Ted reminded his sons.

In Ted’s world ‘men’ simply ‘manned-up’ and moved on. Adam never saw Ted admit he might have gone a little overboard in his criticisms, nor did he ever acknowledge anything that might serve as evidence of a shortcoming.

So in the absence of therapy, Adam did the only thing he knew would help him; he moved. Florida’s heat was oppressive, and the air stank of wet salt most of the time, but it sure as hell beat New York winters and her people. Especially when those people included family.

I don’t want to be here, he thought as he watched his father and brother laugh about yet another story of local origin that was insanely uninteresting. To them, their stories were the epicenter of all that was culture and humor in this obscure world. Hannibal did that to people, made small people feel big. And it didn’t only happen to the likes of Ted and Jon, it happened to almost everyone he knew here. Maybe it was the polluted waterways that were still recovering from decades of environmental crimes by the dead industrial base. Whatever the real cause, this snow land’s people took a stubborn pride in their hometown and its stories. Adam imagined that was natural when there was nothing else going right for the populace.

“You should have seen it, Adam,” Jon laughed, slapping Ted on the back. “I mean, it was sick. He takes the throttle and just cranks it.” Jon embellished his story with the appropriately annoying hand gesture of a sideways fist revving an imaginary throttle. “And then he just hits the jump.”

“Went flying over those handlebars too,” Ted piped in, almost choking on his mouthful of Pabst Blue Ribbon.

“A’right?” Jon slapped Ted on the back again. “Take it easy, old man. You’re going to keel over if you keep that up.”

If we were only so lucky, Adam thought.

“Listen, man, you’ve got to come back up next time the festival happens,” Jon turned to Adam once he was sure their father was not actually choking to death on canned beer. “You sure you can’t hang out a few weeks until it starts again? It’s going to be awesome.”

“Got to work,” Adam hid his groan. Was it that hard to understand that responsible people couldn’t take weeks at a time away from work? It was hard enough getting away to come back for this funeral because almost everyone was out for the holidays. Most of the world understood that, but not Jon. He struggled with what it meant to be an adult. “Plus, I haven’t been on a snowmobile since …”

When? 17?

Ted tipped the gold-colored beer can lid at him. “You don’t forget once you’ve done it. Stop being such a pussy. Stick around. You might have some fun. Then your mother will stop bitching about you never being here.”

At the mention of her title, Adam’s mother defended herself. “Don’t bring me into this,” Jennie said from the kitchen where she spent most of her time.

Some things never changed.

“Just saying the kid could stop worrying only about himself and come around more often,” Ted yelled over his shoulder at her. “Don’t need to wait for bad stuff like this to happen for him to get his ass up here. Plus, coming back would get him right again.”

‘The kid.’ Adam was thirty, possessor of a career and home. He was anything but a kid. For that, Ted only needed to look to his eldest son. Five years older, with a history of unemployment that would make the Great Depression blush, Jon was a failure in every sense of the word. Except to Ted. Everyone knew Jon had a marijuana habit too, one he hid from the family priest they would be seeing later tonight. Father McElroy was a watcher, connected throughout the town, and seemed to know the ‘sinful’ comings and goings of everyone for well over twenty years. If there was any ‘kid’ in the family, it was Jon.

“Leave him alone,” Jennie chided. “Flying isn’t cheap. Maybe he doesn’t have the money for it?”

“I’m fine,” Adam started to say, but was cut off—ignored—by Ted.

“He’s got the money for that fancy car he’s posting all over Facebook. So he can fly up here more often so you’re happy about something.”

Jesus Fucking Christ, here we go again.

“I don’t come up here that often because of my job, not because of money,” Adam intervened before this turned even more awkward and regrettable. It was already hard enough dealing with the death of his adored Aunt Celia, the reason for the visit. He didn’t need or want family drama piled on to make matters worse. This trip wasn’t about Christmas. It wasn't about seeing the family he enjoyed rarely visiting. It was about a beautiful woman who left life too soon.

Fucking death. Aunt Celia was the sweet woman they were putting in the ground and he was here to honor her memory, silly as it was. Dead people were dead; they had no idea whether three people or three thousand attended their funeral.

For Aunt Celia.

The next three days couldn’t pass quickly enough. Florida already beckoned.

“Forgot,” Ted snarled under his breath with vinegar tone, “you’re a big man at your company, aren’t you?”

Adam shook his head. Round and round they went. “It’s not my company, I don’t own it,” he reminded his father for the one-millionth time. “And I worked my ass off to get where I am.”

“And we’re proud of you,” Jennie called from the kitchen. Adam had the sneaking suspicion she wasn’t actually doing anything in there. More likely that she was using her ‘work’ in the kitchen as justification to avoid Ted and Jon while trying to enjoy as much of Adam’s visit as she could. It was a healthy decision.

“You don’t need to be using words like that either,” Ted admonished him, returning the feel in the room to the appropriate level of distress. “We’re a Christian family. That language isn’t allowed. See? This is what I’m talking about. Can’t wait until the Father gets his hands on you.”

Adam hid the laugh begging to be released by bringing the beer can to his lips, taking a small sip. Numb from years of mental abuse, he wasn’t bothered by this latest threat. When they were kids, Ted was driven to make them ‘good’ by scaring them into submission, sometimes even going as far as to tell them fantastic stories about the power of Satan being so strong that he could send demons into the real world. Messages that were reinforced at the church, as crazy as it was. In his teens, Adam simply rejected the nonsense out of pure rebellion. As an adult, he’d gotten angry over the twisted manipulation he and his brother had been subjected to. Though, only hours into this current visit, it didn’t look like Jon wasn’t anything but fully bought-into the family dynamic. Adam wondered how much of what he saw in his brother now was a result of decades of unfair manipulation by a father and a priest.

Demons. How had he ever fallen for that?

“Ted,” came the cautious word from the kitchen. How many previous arguments had his mother stopped? Not even a full day into this return home and her tally began again. Like it always did when he came home.

Adam sighed. Three more days. Just three more days. I’m here for Aunt Celia.

He should have followed his gut and got a hotel room. He tried. But being the armpit of the world that Hannibal was, the closest hotel was a dump in Oswego, twenty minutes away. A straight shot past small farms and homes devoid of hope, the half hour it added each way wasn’t a problem for him. But it was for his mother. Jennie asked—begged—him to stay with them. Adam didn’t have a wife or kids to bed down, he didn’t even have time for a girlfriend, so it wasn’t like it would have required a lot of room, his mother argued. She’d even made up his old room. So he did.

And regretted every minute of it even before dinner.

“Yeah, I know,” he responded, not remotely interested in having this conversation again.

“And I don’t need any lip about it either,” Ted set the cheap beer down on the end table with a dramatic thunk. “You can do all that devilin’ stuff in your Sinland, but don’t you bring it home with you. We don’t want any business with that stuff you all do down there.”

Adam laughed. He couldn’t help it. Ted was counseling him while downing what was at least his fourth beer of the afternoon. Tonight they were all going to a dinner. Nothing formal but, under the circumstances, not something to attend drunk. Yet to Ted, drinking like this was only a problem when others did it. It was always about what other people were doing. He was a good Catholic in that way.

Sinland? Father McElroy’s influence. Ted wasn’t clever enough to come up with that term on his own.

“What’s so funny?” Jon leaned toward him. It was a gesture Adam remembered quite easily and not-so-fondly. Jon’s aggression was well-documented through bruises on Adam’s body during their younger years.

“Nothing.”

“Then why’d you laugh?”

“No reason.”

Jon sat back, his can of beer bouncing on his own leg. “Yeah, well, it’s not a laughing matter, Adam. Because you turned your back on Christ doesn’t mean you don’t have to show respect in Dad and Mom’s house.”

“Damn right,” Ted echoed.

Adam held up his hands, a gesture that would feed their egos without costing him anything. His pride was too healthy for these little men to damage. “Sorry. I didn’t realize you were all suddenly religious.” He wanted to say convenient, but why fan the flames? Maybe they had changed over the years? People did. The family had been the typical run-of-the-mill Catholics, attending Mass on Christmas Eve and Easter and virtually forgetting where the church was the rest of the year. But those two times a year when they did go? They knew how to put on a good show, taking Communion and talking up the virtues of Confession like they were stalwarts of the faith.

It was all so Catholic.

Somewhere in Florida, there was a man walking a white sand beach, enjoying the breeze coming off the Gulf of Mexico. Sand between his toes. Lapping waves of an afternoon tide. Adam envied that faceless stranger.

The pair across from him cast dark glances, holding back words entangled in jumbled brains. This could take a while.

But he didn’t need them to because, at that moment, his mother walked into the room, drying her hands in a dishtowel. His smile, already depressed, slipped. “Is everything okay, Mom?”

Jennie looked at her husband and eldest son before coming and sitting on the arm of the chair. “Honey,” she said, pulling a stray hair away from Adam’s face, “we need to talk.”

“Okay,” he offered with a nervous laugh. This was beyond typical family strangeness now.

Maybe they had fallen into the religion well, head first, drowning in the empty promise of salvation without evidence? At least then they committed to something besides the retelling of local triumphs that didn’t register anywhere outside of Hannibal.

“Things,” she paused, looking over at Ted, who shrugged and tapped his beer can, “things have been different here since you left. We’ve changed. Everyone has. It’s been glorious.”

“Okay,” he drew the word out, hoping for understanding.

Jennie drew a deep breath, her gaze moving from his to where she played with that loose strand of his hair. She didn’t say a word. No one did. Adam squirmed.

“It’s probably best if Father McElroy talks to him,” Ted said.

Adam tried to ignore his mother’s lingering fingers in his hair. He looked up at her. She blinked, trance-like. “Yes. Yes, I guess we should,” she answered.

Adam had no interest in talking to Father McElroy. As an awkward high school senior, Adam was forced into compliance with the ridiculous Catholic faith. That was the last time he saw the man. A laugh boiled in his chest at the memory. And he’d fucked with the priest, giving his confession that he masturbated no less than ten times a day. Every day. Adam smirked as he recalled McElroy’s expression. All these years later, understanding the crimes of the church, Adam wondered what perverse thoughts that old bastard had rolling around in his lustful mind as he imagined that teenager pulling on his hard flesh-tube so often.

Their church was a fundamental Roman Catholic congregation. They didn’t believe in using Confessional booths, that was how cowards and cheats confessed their sins to God. Hannibal’s sons and daughters were proper Catholics, the type who confessed their sins face-to-face with their priest. The way God intended.

All pain, no actual gain.

He wasn’t in a hurry to see the priest. But he’d have to at some point; McElroy was conducting Aunt Celia’s ceremonies this weekend.

“What’s going on?” Adam broke their silent strategy session.

No one answered. Even Jon looked morose.

“Come on,” Adam urged, his heart thumped a little harder.

Ted examined him from across the room, his gaze unwavering. When he spoke the discussion ended. “We wait.”

 

***

 

And wait they did.

Dinner was awkward, the conversation empty and forced. They talked about the same things they always talked about. Local news and happenings. Stories of old, when they were kids and the town was relevant.

And throughout it, Ted and Jon continued to drink. Adam didn’t bother trying to count how many beers the pair shared. Their new drinking habits didn’t interest him. Plus, it would have been nearly impossible to keep count. The more they drank, the faster they consumed. Newfound drinking buddies. Adam couldn’t help but feel for his mother, cooking and cleaning up after the pair; who ate, drank and laughed like a knight and his squire. She was never independent. Her generation grew up on the tail end of gender and role conformity, the last of a people who refused to entertain ideas of fluidity. But now she seemed even more docile than Adam remembered. More subservient.

“We need to get ready to get down to the church,” Jennie said softly when she finished.

Ted and Jon’s laughing stopped abruptly. “Already?” his father asked, flicking his wrist in an attempt to get the watch to spin so he could read it. Ted squinted, struggling. “Damn watch,” he grumbled, finally giving up.

“What are we going to the church for?”

“We have some things to take care of,” Ted said, his statement followed by a harsh hiccup. It was harder than ever to take him seriously.

“What things? Isn’t Aunt Celia’s family handling everything?”

Jennie patted his hand. “Now, now, Adam,” there was a charmed lightness to her tone, “they can’t do everything. Celia’s death … it was hard on them.”

Death was like that. Hard. Adam believed in appreciating every day while he was alive to enjoy them. He doubted Celia’s family appreciated her until it was too late, but he wasn’t about to bring that up. Aunt Celia was sweet, but her husband and kids could be downright assholes. To her and everyone they knew. The first time Adam took a punch it wasn’t from his own older brother, but from Celia’s kid, Tosha. In Celia’s family, the kids were all equal bullies. That might have been a major reason why she was so good to him and all the other neighborhood kids; she was making up for the twats she brought into the world. They all took her for granted, a lot of people did, Adam’s parents included. Later in his teenage years, when he understood the world a little better, Adam empathized with Celia. Her eyes were perpetually cast downward, her shoulders slumped. She walked with the confidence of someone who’d lose out on the lottery if someone told her the winning numbers beforehand. Her family had done that to her.

It was hard to feel for them.

Celia was the first one to congratulate him when he was accepted into Central Florida University. Ted was too drunk to care, Jon too jealous, and his own mother too mournful to celebrate. But Aunt Celia did.

So he would do this for her, even if it meant going to the church with this merry band of losers. “Okay,” he nodded, “what do you need me to do?”

“Just be there,” his mother answered in a dreamy voice.

Ted and Jon tapped their beers together and took long, silent swigs.

 

***

 

“Adam! It’s so good to see you,” Father McElroy’s voice boomed across the empty church foyer. The man hadn’t lost much vibrancy over the years. It was still the smooth voice of ages past, the same voice that told him demons were real and masturbation was bad.

The same gold font Adam told the priest he’d pissed in half a lifetime ago stood between them, a quirky reminder of a past when this place severed his sense of normalcy and taught him to hate himself. He hated this place, hated the fabrication, and great expense of creating an image to sustain a lie.

Adam played the part, wearing his best smile. For Aunt Celia, he reminded himself. “Good to see you too,” Adam replied, intentionally leaving his greeting free of titles of reverence. The silence behind him and the slight quiver in the priest’s face were all he needed to know that he’d struck first.

They weren’t going to pull him into their little game this time. He was a grown man, someone who didn’t owe any of them deference. The games of doctrinal hierarchy were of no interest. McElroy was a man, just like any other. There was nothing special about him and, in fact, Adam had a hard time understanding and trusting any man who chose the lifelong prison of celibacy. That shit wasn’t normal.

To his credit, the priest’s practiced smile returned quickly. “I hope your flight was a good one. It can always be tricky landing in Syracuse in the winter. It’s just wonderful you were able to make it.”

Adam grunted and Father McElroy moved on quickly.

“Come, let’s start. I want to show you some of the changes we’ve made,” Father McElroy slid his hand into Adam’s before Adam could protest, pulling him into the chapel. McElroy pointed out an impressive number of improvements they’d made over the past decade. Adam swallowed the bitter taste as the priest gave thanks to God instead of all the actual people who made the improvements. Adam faked his enthusiasm all the way through.

They reached a door in the far corner of the chapel. Father McElroy stopped and finally let go of Adam’s hand, pressing his own to his chest. A sign above the door read: Rebirth Baptismal.

“What’s this?” Adam asked, pointing out the sign.

“Our pride and joy,” the priest beamed like a new father, opening the door with a sweeping gesture, encouraging Adam to step inside. “We’re in the hand of God in here. Come, let me show you.”

Sure you are. When Adam paused, Ted whispered caustically, “Don’t be a pussy. Go in.”

Father McElroy didn’t appear to hear the inappropriate comment.

Adam held his sigh and stepped into the room. The quicker he entertained their pietistic masturbation session, the quicker they could get to the reason they were here. Aunt Celia.

“Come,” Father McElroy tugged his hand, “let me show you.”

A black cloak of darkness hung over the room, making it feel larger than the entire church. Massive candles, as broad as an adult, lined a walled rectangle in the middle of the room. The candlelight didn’t reach the edge of the room. A short wall, no more than three feet high and twenty feet wide, cut the space in half. They stepped toward it. A strong scent of iron made Adam pull back, pinching his nose. Behind him, in the descending shroud of darkness, the door banged closed. The stiffness in the room was palpable as if the rest of the world had detached itself, wanting no association with these proceedings.

“This cost us over one hundred thousand dollars, the entire project did,” Father McElroy was saying when Adam could focus again. It was hard to do. “It took years of fundraising but, with the graces of God smiling down on us, we were finally able to start construction. Then it was a matter of the congregation jumping in and providing some sweat equity. And let me tell you, did they ever. God has been good to us.”

They approached the structure. It looked like a long, rectangular wading pool. It stretched out beyond the candlelight and into the darkness beyond. A low and constant rumble came from the far end. Adam imagined the pool was being fed by an underground spring. But it was a weird sound, not rhythmic, like a pump or a spring. Erratic. Like the water was moving on its own, without mechanical assistance. Adam peered into the darkness, but the priest pulled his attention away.

“This is the baptismal,” Father McElroy said, with an air of awe that Adam didn’t feel. “It’s our proudest accomplishment.”

“Amen,” Ted said behind them. The reverence in his voice was thick.

“Hallelujah,” Jon echoed.

Adam swallowed a scoffing laugh forcing its way out at his family’s newfound devotion. So much had changed in the past decade.

Father McElroy looked beyond Adam, to his family members, and nodded. “Your family is good people,” he said. “Some of the best in our congregation. We’re very lucky to have them.”

Adam nodded, it was a slight gesture that wouldn’t betray his disagreement.

Father McElroy smiled with eyes that devoured the humor. “And they’re worried about you, Adam.”

“I guess,” he said. “It’s tough for them with me living so far away.”

Father McElroy shook his head. “It’s not that at all. They’re worried about your soul and, from what I hear, rightfully so.”

“How so?” Instant bitterness. Adam hoped it cut the priest.

Father McElroy’s eyes narrowed, taking a stony appearance. He spread his hands wide. “You have fallen away, Adam. The church … she misses you. But you miss her more, whether or not you know it.”

Adam couldn’t help himself. He laughed, even though he knew it would piss off his father and hurt his mother. But this was garbage and he didn’t have to tolerate it. “I promise, I’m fine.”

But Father McElroy wasn’t listening. The priest’s eyes were taking in the baptismal as if it held the response he sought. “The wayward,” Father McElroy started, “they don’t realize that they’re wayward. That’s why it’s so important to have a life centered on the church and its teachings. You have a family who cares, and a church community who wants you to come home.”

The priest turned around, looking past him, and gave a slight nod of his head. Adam didn’t have time to wonder what the gesture was about. Because in that instant Father McElroy did something Adam would have never anticipated; he reached up and pulled his white chasuble over his head, tossing it to the floor. Then Father McElroy pulled his alb down, leaving it piled at his feet. The priest was completely naked.

“What the fuck?” The moment couldn’t recognize the delicacies of the church. If the Father McElroy didn’t appreciate his language, then the priest could put his goddamn clothes back on.

Father McElroy wagged a finger, frowning. “See? The foul mouth is the foul soul. This language of the devil you’ve embraced in your time away? We weep for you. The church cries for your soul, Adam, and we want you to come home.”

There was movement behind him, a light hand touched his shoulder. His mother’s hand. “We want you to come home,” she said, moving past Adam. Naked.

Adam stumbled backward.

“Mom?” He said, averting his gaze as she moved up alongside the priest.

She didn’t answer.

“We want you to come home,” now Jon, naked as the day he was born, took his place by the priest, opposite his mother.

“I don’t know what the fuck is going on, but I don’t want any part of this. You all can keep this shit. I’m leaving.”

He bumped into something. Someone. “You’ll stay here,” Ted’s voice was close. His firm hands grasped Adam’s shoulders. Ted’s steely erection pressed against Adam’s back. “We want you to come home.”

Adam froze as Father McElroy approached, laying his hand on top of Ted’s, pressing down on Adam’s shoulder. “It’s time for you to be reborn, Adam. That’s why you’re here and it’s what your family needs. You must do this for your family. It is what our Father commands.”

But Adam had no intention of doing this for anyone, especially the people he’d run away from as soon as he was old enough to do so.

In one swift movement, Adam ducked and spun, breaking free of Ted’s grip. Holding out an arm toward them, his voice shook even as he warned them away. “This — this is nuts. What the fuck is wrong with all of you?”

The four people moved, circling Adam, closing around him. “We want you to come home,” they said in unison. “We want you to come home.”

Tighter and tighter. Adam backed away, trying to avoid this becoming physical. He couldn’t hit any of them. But this was beyond weird! It was perverse. If violence was the only way out, it was the route he would take. “Back up!”

But they didn’t. They stepped closer, inching toward him as they chanted in unison, “We want you to come home.”

With each collective step closer, Adam back away. They were shepherding him toward the pool, forcing him into this corner. He wasn’t going to be part of their sick ritual. Never again. “Stay away,” his voice shook.

“We want you to come home,” four voices said as one.

Step.

Adam’s heels bumped into the front wall of the pool, his hand braced against the top of it. “Back off. I mean it.”

But they didn’t. The four naked bodies closed in around him. Their vacant eyes no longer recognizing the son and brother he was.

“He has you in His grasp,” the priest intoned, “and we mean to free you. Free you from Satan’s claw.”

The iron smell in the air was powerful this close to the pool. Adam’s throat throbbed as the four pressed in on him. Panic rose. He was going to have to fight his way out of this. Fight his own goddamn family! This was their choice, though; they were making him do this.

Father McElroy stepped closer, ahead of Adam’s family. The priest’s erection was thick, pulsing. “Satan’s claw has grasped your heart and we mean to free you.”

Before Adam could ask another question, before he warned the priest away, Father McElroy grinned and shoved Adam, sending him reeling backward.

Adam fell over the top of the wall and into the pool. Bracing for impact against the concrete bottom, Adam only felt himself falling. He panicked, trying to upright himself and swim toward the surface. He opened his eyes as he struggled and couldn’t see anything. The water was dark, thick. Adam couldn’t make out the candlelight in the room above.

He kicked harder, now unsure where the surface was. As he did, Adam stretched out in all directions, hoping his hands or feet would brush against a surface so he could orient himself. But he felt nothing more than the viscous water.

Squirming and kicking, Adam tried to stand but his feet couldn’t find purchase. In a moment of hysterical confusion, he wondered how deep the pool actually was. And the water was filmy as if it was polluted by an oil–based substance. It made his movements sluggish. He swam in what he thought was the opposite direction of his fall. Up.

The distance was impossible to judge without an indicator of which direction to head. Swimming in this baptismal felt like the inside of an oil barrel. Right before his lungs exploded, Adam’s head broke the surface.

Gasping to draw breath, Adam pinched his eyes closed and tried to tread water with just his feet so he could wipe the goo from his eyes. Blinking away the slimy water was doing nothing.

When his opened his eyes his vision was blurred, burning. Adam gagged. The smell of rusted metal was stronger than ever now that his head bobbed above the water.

“We want you to come home.” The chorus boomed with more voices. No longer four. Adam rotated around noticed that the congregation of the church, 50, 60, maybe more, lined the baptismal. All eyes fixed on him. Each member of the parish just as naked as the priest who led them into this madness.

“We want you to come home.”

“Come home!” One young voice rebelled against the monotonous chorus, pleading with Adam to comply.

“We want you to come home.” The chorus grew. Adam spun to discover why. Candles were being lit along the pool, running another 50 feet into this massive room. Hundreds of people stood near the pool walls as even more filed into the open spaces. They watched Adam tread water while he tried to —

— but it wasn’t water.

With immediate recognition, Adam vomited.

What he was swimming in wasn’t a pool of water at all. It was a pool of crimson blood. This structure, this baptismal, massive as it was, was filled with blood. Whose blood? How much blood would it take to fill something this size?

Crazy thoughts, he knew, but thoughts he couldn’t avoid.

The blood rippled around him. There was no escape route with the pool surrounded by the congregation. Adam scanned the group, looking for the most elderly, the frailest. He would swim there, pull himself out of this madness, and fight his way out if he had to.

“Please come home.”

“Please come home.”

“Please come home.”

Each time the iteration of the disturbing hymn was louder than the previous.

His skin itched.

Father McElroy stepped on top of the wall, his arms spread out in celebration of the gathering. “Brothers and sisters, we come together on this very important day to bring Brother Adam home. To rend the devil’s mind! To rip out Satan’s hold! Pray with me as we call on our heavenly father to free this young man from his sinful ways. His behavior spits in the face of God and his son and the Holy Spirit! Pray with me and call on the spirit to rid Adam of Satan’s claw!” The priest’s cock bobbed with each powerful proclamation.

Adam took in the congregation. There was no sorrow. There was no empathy or concern. Mindless compliance.

And something else in those eyes.

Joy! That’s what it was! Everyone appeared to be nearing utter ecstasy.

He tread backward, toward an older couple. They would be the ones he would fight through, he decided.

Father McElroy dropped one hand, leaving his right arm extended by his side. Adam watched as his mother climbed up onto the edge of the wall. With a quick nod from the priest, she turned toward Adam. “We miss you, son, and want you to come home. We love you, no matter the wrongs you’ve done, no matter the sin you’ve committed. We love you just the same.”

Adam didn’t want to draw the attention to himself. To get away, he’d have to be subtle. Not even the older couple he was targeting could notice. So he remained quiet, allowing them to spread their gospel of weird.

Father McElroy dropped his arm and Adam watched as his mother stepped back down. The priest raised his other arm and Jon stepped up onto the edge of the pool. “You’ve heard the Father, you spat in God’s eye and you need to be cleansed so that He can love you again.”

Without another word, Jon stepped off the pool. Father McElroy shook his head at Adam’s lack of reaction. “Let us pray for this sinner as his earthly father, the man who spawned him, joins me.”

The group picked up their chant exactly where they left off. Lemmings. But one did not pray with the group. One did not stand in robotic compliance, mindlessly uttering the same phrase over and over. One was different. Ted.

Adam blinked the remaining blood out of his eyes, unsure that what he was witnessing was actually happening.

Balancing on top of the edge of the pool wall, Ted kneeled before the priest.

As the congregation prayed for Adam, he watched, mesmerized, by what happened between the two men. Ted, his father, the bigot who hated him and all he had become, turned toward the priest’s crotch and opened his mouth, accepting Father McElroy’s cock.

Louder, the congregation chanted.

The pool of blood. Ripples grew into waves.

“Pray brothers and sisters,” Father McElroy shouted above the clamor. “Pray for the hand of God to purge Satan’s claw from brother Adam!”

The priest shouted as Ted fellated him. The congregation, if it noticed what was happening between the two, didn’t break their rhythm. Over and over, their voices rose, united, in their pious chant, “We want you to come home.”

The pool of blood undulated.

Father McElroy threw his head back. Laughing.

Ted’s head rocked up and down on the priest’s cock.

Bubbles of blood exploded around Adam; huge bubbles, some larger than five feet in diameter.

Father McElroy thrust forward.

Waves of blood crashed against the sides of the pool.

The congregation prayed louder, drowned out by the noise around him.

Ted bobbed faster. Up, then down. Deep. Taking all the priest could offer. Like a good servant.

The priest gripped the back of Ted’s head and, with one final thrust, released.

The chanting echoed off the walls, off the ceilings. It was as if the pool of blood could feel the energy in the room. Adam didn’t care to hide his intent anymore. He swam as fast as he could, no longer caring if they were onto him or not.

Before he could make it to the wall, the pool erupted, sending a shower of blood piercing the air, painting the ceiling, and raining back down on the congregation. Their pristine skin bled.

The congregants screamed in joy, holding their hands up at the gift of the rain of blood.

And then Adam saw it, a shadow on the wall, cast by hundreds of candles. A shadow much too large for anything human.

For anything explainable.

A monstrosity rose out of the pool. The pool with no bottom.

Larger than life, a hand that spanned 40 feet rose up toward the ceiling, blocking out the candlelight. The congregation’s chant grew louder, orgasmic, as massive fingers extended, scraping the ceiling.

“Our prayers have been answered and brother Adam is being cleansed!” Father McElroy screamed from the end of the pool, his cock still buried in Ted’s mouth. “God has judged him and he will be cleansed!”

The vast hand descended on Adam, moving volumes of air as it fell. The assault of wind struck before the hand did.

There was nowhere to run, there was nowhere to hide. Adam couldn’t avoid the reach of the hand of God.

His lucid mind acquiesced to madness as the hand slammed down, thrusting him under the sea of red.

The baptismal.

To be born again.

 

END