The Altar (17 page)

CHAPTER NINETEEN

-1-

Erik didn’t know what to do. He sat in the fellowship hall of the church and watched the television, hoping for an update on what was going on. There was nothing new, though, and the newscasters were resorting to old footage and old reports. Apparently, the authorities weren’t letting the news people get too close and the government wasn’t saying anything. It seemed apparent that they weren’t letting anyone into town, and were encouraging people to get out.

Erik knew the truth, but who would listen? And if they did, what good would it do? He knew the demon had been on the outer edges of town earlier. Now he might be anywhere. He felt like he needed to get Vickie and Todd to a safe place in the city; he also felt like he had to stay and help destroy this thing, or else no one would be safe anywhere.

Vickie hurried in, pulling Todd in tow. Her face was pasty white.

“We’ve gotta go, Hon,” she said.

“Is it...time.... The baby?”

“No, no,” Mark called. “The thing just ruined Dovecrest’s place. It’s headed this way.”

“Does the staff know?”

“They’re on their way out. Come on. We’ve gotta run. They want us to meet at our house.”

“Let’s go out the back. It’s closer.”

He led them up the back stairs and out to the parking lot. He could hear screams from the front of the church, and knew that the thing was in sight..

“Hurry,” he said. “And don’t scream or yell, no matter what you see. It’ll only attract it.”

Erik was glad they lived in a small town where you didn’t have to lock your car doors. He jumped into the car and started it up as Vickie slid in beside him and Todd hopped into the back seat. He was hoping the thing wasn’t in the driveway or the road—he’d just have to assume it wasn’t and hope for the best. He gunned the engine, peeled out of the parking lot and around the front of the church.

Sure enough, it was waiting in the street right outside the church’s front door. It looked different now, though, no longer hot and fiery. Now it was cold and black, the exact color and texture of the altar stone, in fact. It was as if the demon’s lava flow had cooled and turned into volcanic rock. Even the once-human twin head on its neck seemed petrified. In fact, for a moment he thought he was looking at a statue. Then the thing moved.

With amazing quickness, the thing charged forward. That’s when Erik saw where the scream had come from. It was Vera, the church secretary, an elderly woman, who was standing frozen on the front steps to the church. The demon reached out and grabbed the woman by the throat, stifling her screams immediately. The woman flailed her arms and legs like a windmill, and her eyes bulged out in their sockets.

The demon shook her like a rag doll. Erik pulled the car to the far side of the driveway, hoping he could make it around the monster. He debated whether to help old Vera—but he had no idea what he could do.

Suddenly Vickie gasped and clenched her belly.

“Contractions,” she said between gasps. “Oh, dear God, not now.”

The dilemma regarding Vera resolved itself quickly; the monster stepped forward and hurled her like a major league fastball against the stone foundation of the church, where she hit head first. Erik could hear the cracking of her skull even through the closed windows of the car. He took a quick look and saw a dark patch of blood flowing down the wall and pooling up on the ground. Vera’s twisted body lie contorted and lifeless on the ground.

“Todd, get down on the floor,” Todd said, as he gunned the engine in a desperate attempt to race past the demon before it noticed him. “Hold on!”

He targeted the right part of the driveway where it joined the road, punched the gas pedal to the floor, and prayed with all of his heart. The car rushed forward, throwing him back against the seat. He tried not to look at the demon, but he couldn’t help it. It was like trying to drive by a car wreck on the highway without looking—you knew it was wrong, that it wouldn’t be good to see, and that it would just hold up traffic even more. But you looked anyway.

He had hoped the demon would be more interested in what was inside the church than what was outside. His hope was only partially fulfilled. The thing smashed its head through the front door, but then turned around when it heard the car racing towards it. It looked almost comical, like something out of a cartoon—this huge, fierce, rock-solid demon, now complete with horns and quartz-like fangs, standing there with a smashed door around its neck like a broken picture frame. If the effect had been done in a horror movie, Erik would have laughed. Instead, he just gritted his teeth and pressed as hard as he could on the gas pedal, gripping the steering wheel so hard that his knuckles turned white.

He wouldn’t have believed that anything so large and so solid could move so quickly. The effect was even stranger now that the demon had transformed itself into a solid shape. It was like watching a rock run. Erik instinctively knew that he wouldn’t make it. The demon would catch him just as he reached the road.

Without even thinking, he turned the steering wheel hard right at the last instant. The car jumped the curbstone and went up onto the grass and directly for a tree. He yanked the wheel left, scraped the side of the tree with the passenger door, then tugged it to the right. He could feel the demon close now as its solid presence cast a shadow over the car. Vickie was still gasping in timed rhythm next to him. Todd, thankfully, was quiet and on the floor. Erik hoped he had his eyes closed and his head buried in his hands.

He felt the car slam into the landscaping, taking out a layout of flowers and running over and through a small stone wall. Sparks flied as the chassis scraped cement. The right front wheel rode up the stone wall and Erik thought the car would flip. Then it jolted back down, almost knocking him against the roof.

He saw the demon’s hand shoot out towards the car and just miss grabbing the roof, and the car righted itself. He felt the stone fingers scrape along the back of the vehicle like nails on a blackboard, searching for a grip. The car slowed and he gunned the engine again. It leaped forward, eluding the grip for a moment. Then he felt the car slow and stop as the demonic hand wrapped around the rear bumper.

He pressed the accelerator down so hard he felt like his foot would go through the floorboards. The wheels spun as Erik engaged the demon in a terrible tug-of-war. He felt the car being pulled backwards. Then, as if it were suddenly being launched from a slingshot, the car lurched forward. Erik looked in the rear view mirror and saw the demon holding the bumper in his hands. It twisted the metal into a pretzel and threw it to the ground as Erik maneuvered the car onto the road and sped down Route 102 towards Farmington Road and his home.

-2-

The demon knew it had missed a major opportunity as it watched the car speed off into the distance. It half-thought of catching it, then decided it wasn’t worth the effort. At least not yet. There would be time for that later.

It twisted up the mangled bumper like a paper clip and threw it on the ground. It hadn’t realized that the woman was in labor until it was too late. Those were the best kind—a two for one. And what could be more innocent than a mother and her newborn. That would have been very good.

But the brat wasn’t born yet, so it had time. That’s one thing it did have—plenty of time. It had eternity.

It looked back at the church, the home of its enemy, the home of those who would destroy it. Something would have to be done about this church. It would send a clear message.

It stepped through the shattered doorway and stopped. The place was empty. That was disappointing. Especially since it’d killed the woman too quickly. It would destroy this place though, so no one could ever return to it.

It stepped forward down the aisle leading to the altar, and it recognized the hated sign, the sign of the cross. It had memories of that sign, when it had last walked the earth. Many of those who had sent it back had carried that sign. It felt wrath and rage burn from within it like a furnace. There was an alcove in the back of the church, with an open door leading to the altar, and glass windows making up the top section of the way on each side. It strode forward and smashed his fist through the middle section of windows. Glass flew everywhere, splintering and shredding into a billion pieces that embedded themselves on the floor, on the walls, and even in the ceiling. The sound was like music to it. The thing that had been its human contact woke up on his neck and looked at it in puzzlement, wondering why the endless burning had ceased. But now the demon Wrath wanted to make it more personal, more hands on, at least for now.

It walked through the glass wall, shattering the waist-high wood and plaster wall and walking right through several rows of pews. It looked at the cross at the back of the altar. That was its prize.

But as the demon stepped forward to pluck its prize, it felt a sudden barrier, weak at first, but definitely there. It stopped and probed ahead with its mind and its powers. There was no life. But power. Definitely power. It let out a deep, throaty grunt that sounded like fires churning from deep inside a volcano.

It stepped forward again, ruining another row of pews. The force was stronger now. It pushed back harder.

The demon growled once again. From deep inside, it relit the fire within itself. Time to put this place to the torch. The fire grew slowly, and the demon’s fires ignited. Its solid, black form turned orange, and became fluid. The human twin on its neck began to scream once again, and the demon laughed. Its body turned into a living volcano of superheated lava. It looked at the cross on the church’s altar and shot its hand forward. A piece of fire flew forward, like a meteor.

It all happened so quickly that an ordinary human eye wouldn’t have seen what happened. But the demon saw. Before it had traveled the fifty feet or so to the altar, the fireball had cooled, become solid, and turned into a rock-solid cube of black ice. The crystal stopped just inches from the cross, stopped dead in its tracks. It hung suspended in the air for several seconds, then dropped to the floor and shattered into a thousand harmless pieces each no larger than a grain of salt.

The demon stood in stunned silence. Even its human attachment stopped screaming, though the fires still burned at him. It felt its rage and wrath burn within itself, heating to a crescendo. Then, the tiny ice crystals reassembled themselves, magically, into a rock solid shape, the ice cold shape of a cross. The demon roared but could not find the strength to move forward. The cross then shot across the room and fastened onto what would have been the demon’s chest. The cherry-red fire turned white in the shape of the cross, and went out, cooling the area around it. Within seconds the demon had returned back to the black volcanic rock it had come in with. Only this time the transition wasn’t of its own choosing.

The cross burned it with the ironic fire of ice, an upside down cross that melted into its very chest like the cross of an ancient crusader, and a poet’s words lingered in its mind. “Some say the world will end in fire, and some say of ice.” The demon had courted fire. This new scenario had caught it by surprise.

It snarled in anger and found that it could not break any more pews. Its body had become cold and lethargic. Its will was even going.

“No!” it screamed. “Hellfire and brimstone will win. But for now the ice will suffice.”

Furious, it walked out of the church. This place was too strong. At least for now. And he had other things to attend to. But he would come back and mess this place up when he became stronger. And each new life made him strong. So now he would go and kill some more. He’d kill children. And he’d take that baby that was just about to be born.

-3-

Once he had left the church behind, Erik did not look back. He knew that the thing could be just inches behind him, waiting to destroy him and his family in some steaming wreckage. He wasn’t going to let that happen, though. He was going to go home, meet the others, and figure out what to do.

Vickie’s contractions were becoming worrisome now. Though her due date was a couple of weeks away, Erik knew that nature was very unpredictable. He also believed in all of Murphy’s Laws and their corollaries that basically said that things went wrong and usually at the worst possible time.

His breathing and heartbeat didn’t even begin to slow down until they were turning onto Farmington Road.

“Is everyone all right?” he finally asked.

Vickie nodded rapidly, fighting off a contraction.

“Yeah, Dad,” Todd said softly. “We’re fine.”

Erik passed the shopping center and noticed a few National Guard soldiers in the parking lot. He sped past before they could flag him down. He noticed a smoldering ruin where Dovecrest’s cabin had been. He could only assume that Mark had called after the place had been destroyed and that they hadn’t been already killed.

Finally, he saw the comforting sight of his home ahead on the left. Though this new home hadn’t been much comfort, he thought. The tiny place where they’d lived in the city was looking better and better now.

He pulled his car into the driveway behind Vickie’s SUV, then just sat back in the front seat for a long moment to catch his breath. He looked up and saw Mark and Dovecrest running over to meet them.

“Thank God you’re all right!” Mark said.

“It was headed for the church. Did everyone get out in time?”

Erik shook his head. “It got Vera. I don’t know what happened after that.”

The two men were silent. “Poor Vera. She was a good woman,” Mark said, finally.

“So what do we do now?” Erik asked. “I’m sure this thing’s rampage isn’t over. It’s not going to just go away, is it?”

Dovecrest shook his head. “It gains power with each life it takes.”

“I still say it cannot stand up to God!” Mark said. “We must stand and fight it.”

“You are right, Pastor. It cannot stand up to God. But it can stand up to men. We cannot fight it alone. We need to have God on our side.”

“He is on our side,” Mark insisted. “God will not allow evil to rule over the earth. We must cast it out in his son’s name.”