Afterworld (The Orion Rezner Chronicles Book 1) (2 page)

I
closed the door behind me and followed Father Killroy through the foyer. There at the threshold stood the possessed boy’s mother. Her brown hair hung in frazzled clumps about her face, and her dark skin glistened with a glowing sheen of sweat only partially due to the humid June day.

“Hello, Father. Thank you so much for coming,” she said as she hugged him, despite his drenched overcoat.

“Sir,” she said to me and shook my hand.

“Mrs. Marks, nice to meet you, despite the grave circumstances,” I said and laughed awkwardly. I’m usually a lot smoother with the ladies, but something about demons gets me flustered.

Father Killroy looked back at me like I had two heads as he led Mrs. Marks into the kitchen. I could only offer a shrug for my lack of tact. Old Ben shook his head at me and followed them.

“Remember not only to say the right thing in the right place, but far more difficult still, to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment,” Ben quoted himself over his shoulder.

Since Benjamin Franklin’s ghost first began…haunting me, he has spoken only in his own quotes. My research into the matter informed me that, for whatever reason, ghosts usually cannot speak to the living. I can only assume Old Ben gets away with it somehow by saying only that which he said in life—or he’s just being an eccentric prick—but at any rate, whenever I ask him a question, I get
Poor Richard’s Almanack
. It isn’t always the most useful, as I often figure out what the hell he means much too late.

As I followed Old Ben, I couldn’t help but notice the attention he gave the hallway leading off from the open kitchen and living room area. For all I knew he could see the demon even from here, and I didn’t envy him for his ghostly vision.

“How is the boy, Serena?” Father Killroy asked in an Irish accent as thick as the humidity.

She rubbed her left arm and managed to look cold somehow. “He is more or less the same as you left him yesterday—high fever, sleeping mostly. When he does wake…when he speaks…” She broke down sobbing.

I was in an apartment with a demon AND a crying woman—the only thing that would have made it worse was a freaking clown. To distract myself from the sobs and Father Killroy’s condolences, I nudged my head toward the hall, with wide eyes, looking at Old Ben and trying to get him to go check things out. He simply shook his head and I sighed, frustrated. I pointed at him and then the hall and made the same face. It was then that I noticed Mrs. Marks staring at me as she sniffled. She looked to where Ben was and back at me, like I was a weirdo. Being that only I can see and hear the ghost of Benjamin Franklin, surely I must have looked a bit odd.

Father Killroy led Mrs. Marks to the door gently. “You shouldn’t be here for this. Please, we’ll help your boy. But we mustn’t have any distractions.”

“Is it true?” She wailed at the threshold and blocked the doorway. “Is my baby…is my little Trevor possessed?”

He assured her everything would be alright and led her down the stairs with gentle coaxing.

As their voices became steadily more muffled, a deep silence filled the apartment. I froze there next to a table, my eyes refusing to tear themselves from the hallway. A sound came to me then—a slow, grating moan that I could not at first decipher. I bent to hear it, suddenly obsessed, and the harder I listened, the clearer it became. The hairs on the back of my neck did a ten-hut as I realized that what I heard was a soft whisper. The voice became many, breathing out one word in an endless chorus, “Reznerrr.”

I felt the rank breath of the demon on my neck and shivered uncontrollably. It wasn’t necessarily out of fear; it was more like the seeing-a-big-ass-spider shudder.

“Reznerrr!” it beckoned, its voices promising horrors beyond my wildest dreams.

“Rezner!” Killroy put a hand to my shoulder.

I jolted like a runner at the starting gun and broke wind with a pathetic squeak.

“Get ahold of yourself, man. We have yet to even see the lad.” Father Killroy chuckled and stepped wide of ground zero. I followed his lead to the hallway, though I would rather have been closer to my hot air than a demon.

Old Ben just shook his head as he leaned against the kitchen sink. “What Comfort can the Vortices of Descartes give to a Man who has Whirlwinds in his bowels!” he asked the ceiling.

“Thank you for the wonderful flatulence anecdote, oh wise one, but I could use some help here. Get your ghost on and find me something useful about this demon,” I told him—and then remembered Father Killroy. He looked me dead in the eye, with an arched brow.

“It’s just Old Be—”

“Yes, the ghost of Benjamin Franklin. And I got myself a wee li’l leprechaun in my pocket. Can we get on with it then?” he said, all businesslike.

I coughed as if clearing my throat and wished for the hundredth time I had kept the Ben thing to myself. Somehow, in this new world in which vampires, werewolves, demons, and monsters are real, people can’t believe that the ghost of Benjamin Franklin is my homey. Whatever.

“Do you have the spells prepared? Are you ready?” asked Father Killroy.

I mentally recited the spells I’d memorized, and felt to make sure I’d brought the spell book I’d need.

All of reality is a frequency, a vibration. Just as a frequency can manipulate water to dance radically, or vibrations can cause sand to form intricate patterns, wizards use incantations to alter, or weave, the fabric of reality.

The secrets behind the crafting and creation of the spell books are known by few and heavily guarded. All I have yet learned is that every thirty-three years a child is born with the mark of the star behind their left ear. They are the creators of the spell books; or rather, they are the scribes with the ability to set spell to paper. Only these Children of the Star can record a spell. All attempts by others always end badly. The books I possess were written mostly by Starchild Arrulas, as he was named. He was succeeded by Starchild Maximus. The cursed life of a Starchild scribe lasts only thirty-three years, and as one dies, another is born. There are never two.

I cast a spell on myself, one that would give me increased strength, speed, and stamina. A wave of power washed through me and I nodded at Father Killroy. He kissed his rosary and turned down the hall. With one last glance at Old Ben, I followed.

Lit by only the dreary glow coming through the heavy curtains in the living room windows, the hall looked the part of a dark passage to hell. A picture of the Last Supper hung on the wall to my left, and I blinked in surprise when the scene turned into one from a nightmare. Apostles tore at each other with savage wrath as the picture came alive and blood flew. I didn’t have to be a religious man to find it rather twisted.

“Never mind his feeble attempts to weaken your resolve, my son,” said Father Killroy as he came to stand before the door. I knew he said it as much to himself as to me. He too had witnessed the carnage within the painting, and his sense of blasphemy must have been great.

“
You
all right, Father? I don’t think it was so much me he was trying to shake up there.”

Killroy looked at me and blinked with a nod, as if reining in his emotions. He laid the sign of the cross over me, the door, and finally himself. And then, to my great surprise, he leaned back, bellowing a prayer in Latin, and kicked the door in like a badass.

I followed him into the room with a sudden pep in my step. That pep quickly turned to a quaking as I beheld the demon-possessed boy. He was sitting up in bed, staring at us and chewing on something. I followed his right hand from his mouth to the mangled body of what looked like a cat. The boy continued to stare as if not seeing us. He reached into the kitty gore and came back with a bloody treat. My stomach rebelled and threatened to spill my lunch, so I turned from the boy and focused on the spells at hand.

Father Killroy’s booming voice helped me to focus as he attempted to verbally bitch slap the demon back to hell. I went to work with the ritual while the demon enjoyed his pussycat. I was really only here to protect the father and allow him to do his work; it was his job to send the demon on its way.

Shrugging my cloak to the side, I took from my jacket pocket the tool with which I would form the ward of imprisonment around the bed—a black Sharpie. The demon continued to ignore us, and I gingerly climbed onto the little bed and began to draw the heptagram for my devil’s trap on the ceiling. Father Killroy seemed in a trance as he recited the long, rambling prayers that would eventually banish our foe. The whole creepy business of demon exorcism is made all the more nerve-racking by the sheer amount of time it takes to successfully remove one. I had at my disposal two spells capable of trapping it in place, but if I could successfully create a devil’s trap instead, I would be able to preserve that much more energy. In fact, just holding the demon in place with a spell could tax me to the limit quickly, depending on its strength.

I had connected six of the seven lines in the ward when a hand grabbed my ankle. I looked down and was shocked to see the boy’s hand begin to smoke on contact. He quickly retracted it with a hiss. Puzzling over what had just happened, I connected the last of the lines and hopped quickly off the bed. With a wave of my hand I said the incantation and the ward pulsed to life. The effect was immediate. The demon, who had previously acted lethargic and slow, snapped to right quick. His body floated high above the bed until it nearly touched the ceiling. I looked nervously to Old Ben as the demon began his own chant in a variety of voices, all of which gave me an uncontrollable case of the heebie-jeebies.

Father Killroy began to pray louder and the demon’s voices rose to match. Back and forth they went like auctioneers selling heaven and hell. The demon’s voice eventually drowned out that of the good father, and to my horror, the ward dissipated in a shower of sparks.

The possessed boy fell like a stone onto the bed and came bouncing at me like a demented doll. I ducked out of the way but managed to catch a glancing knee to the forehead. He landed on the wall like a spider and looked back at me with eyes of pure black.

Father Killroy hit him with holy water, which sizzled and smoked on contact.

The demon screamed and fell to the floor, writhing in agony, and the father doused it repeatedly as he bellowed scripture in Latin. The demon convulsed and then lay still as stone. The boy began to cry, and I hoped beyond hope that it was over. Killroy, however, was not convinced. He looked to me and shook his head, never skipping a beat in his chanting.

“What happened? Where am I?” the boy asked, looking up terrified at the priest.

Trevor was no more than seven years old and not big for his age. He curled up on the floor and covered his ears from Father Killroy’s loud preaching, and looked to me with tear-filled eyes.

“Mama, Mama!” he cried, so pathetically that I couldn’t help but feel bad for him.

The father bore down with cross in hand and touched it to his head.

“Help me!” Trevor cried. “Please.”

I looked on horrified as the boy’s short black hair sprang forth and became long, red ringlets. His face contorted, and I reeled back as I looked upon my little sister.

“Please, Owion, help me,” came my sister’s voice. The mispronunciation of my name ground my guts and threatened to rip my heart out.

“Mary,” I heard myself gasp and took a step closer. “Father!” I yelled over the priest’s chanting. He simply shook his head “no” and pressed the cross to my sister’s forehead.

She let out a mournful cry and reached for me, her little hand trembling. Tears streamed down my face, and I took another step across the bedroom toward her. The stain of blood crept across her quivering lips, and her beautiful blue eyes filled with tears.

“Why won’t you help me, Owion? Why did you let them take me?” she pleaded, and I let out an animalistic mewling.

Father Killroy pushed her head back against the wall with the tip of the cross and doused her with holy water once again. Mary cried in pain as the water hit her skin like lashes of a whip.

“Help me, Owion!” she cried, and it was more than I could bear. A part of me knew this wasn’t my sister, that it was only the demon impersonating her. But that part wasn’t the one in control. With a scream of rage I leapt the short distance, grabbed Father Killroy by the throat, and tackled him to the floor. My increased strength helped me to subdue the bigger man easily.

“Leave her alone, you son of a bitch!” I screamed, banging his head on the floor repeatedly as I choked him.

“Resne…” Father Killroy croaked in a strangled voice.

“He hurt me, Owion.” Mary’s voice came from behind me. “He is still hurting me!”

“Leave her alone!” I screamed.

Father Killroy’s face turned white and his eyes danced wildly as his mouth desperately formed silent words.

“Trust thyself, and another shall not betray thee,” the ghost of Ben Franklin said in my ear. The words pierced the veil of my temporary insanity, and I released Father Killroy, horrified by what I was doing. I looked down at the gasping Father and realized what was happening. The demon began to chuckle behind me.

Oh, shit
!