The Altar (24 page)

It would have been better if there had been a dozen followers to help out. But the fact that it was taking place here, in its domain, more than made up for the lack of human followers. Its power was supreme here. Even in a human form it was more powerful than anything that could oppose it. The Creator Himself wouldn’t even come into this domain, so rampant with sin and distress. Spending the night here would be worse than diving into an infested sewer.

No, it knew it was perfectly safe here. These mortals weren’t going anywhere—after all, where could they go in this place? And no one could stop what was about to happen. Not even the Creator Himself.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

-1-

As they closed in on the outcropping, they had heard a voice shouting, and then a scream.

“That’s Todd,” Erik had said, trying to remain calm.

“Shhh! Let’s not let anyone know where we are. Come on. Stay low.”

Dovecrest had scampered to the base of the rocky outcropping and Erik had followed. Now the screaming had stopped and they listened as a voice was chanting in some type of rhythm. Dovecrest held a finger over his lips and peeked around the rock. He watched for a second, then slipped back. Erik was almost insane with worry now, and it took every effort of his will to keep from jumping out from behind the rock and seeing what was going on.

Dovecrest crept close and whispered in his ear. “Your wife and son are there. They don’t seem to be injured. Your wife is still in labor. The demon has taken on human form. Now would probably be our best chance of taking it.”

“I’m ready.”

Dovecrest nodded. “You come from one side. I’ll take the other. On my word.”

Each of the men took a position on each side of the outcropping. Erik quickly peeked around to get his bearings. Todd was in front of him, rubbing his arm gingerly and looking down into the sand. The kid looked scared, but not hurt. Most of all he looked angry and defiant. That’s my boy, Erik thought.

Vickie was a few feet to the right of him. She looked weak and haggard. The stress and the labor pains were definitely taking their toll. She needed to be in a hospital, not out here. His heart melted at the sight of her looking so helpless and weak. He wanted to just run out there and take her in his arms and forget about this whole thing. She had no reason to be caught up in this mess, and he just wanted to get her out of here as quickly as possible. She, too, looked afraid, but mostly she looked like she was in shock.

The demon faced the two of them with its back towards the rocky outcropping. It would be just to Erik’s right as he moved around the rock. Dovecrest would come at it from the other side. They hoped to wedge it between them and then kill it. He wasn’t sure how you killed something like this. But at least it looked human now, so maybe some of the traditional ways would work. He looked around in the sand and found a loose rock about the size of a grapefruit. The thing even had a jagged edge. That, at least, was something.

He waited and tried to be patient, as he watched the demon. It was in a trance, with its eyes closed, and it was carrying on some incomprehensible chant. Erik couldn’t understand the words, but even as he knew Dovecrest’s chant had been virtuous, he knew this one was evil and corrupt. The words sounded like rottenness and decay. The atmosphere felt putrid. If it weren’t for the fact that his wife and child were here, he would have run away in disgust.

It seemed like Dovecrest was never going to make a move. Then, when Erik didn’t think he could stand it for another moment, he heard the Indian whistle.

Erik charged around the rock with the stone raised above his head. He found himself yelling at the top of his lungs, without even realizing he was doing it.

In a split second, he was aware of everything around him and saw it all in perspective for the first time. Dovecrest had charged out from the other side of the rock. Somehow, the Indian was in full battle regalia, with war paint, a headdress, and a tomahawk with an obsidian head. Erik had no idea how the man had transformed himself, but then again nothing else made much sense lately, so why should this? Dovecrest was also whooping, and came at the demon with a demonic fury of his own.

From the corner of his eyes Erik saw Todd jump back and then scramble to his feet. Vickie, too, crawled backward, away from the fight. Neither of them seemed to recognize either him or Dovecrest.

The demon jumped up with a curse; it had obviously been taken by surprise. It moved away from Dovecrest and towards Erik, who wound up with his stone and prepared to brain the thing.

It turned and faced him with hate in its black eyes as he leveled the sharp stone at its head. He plunged his arm forward with every ounce of his strength, aiming for a point on the thing’s forehead just above the midpoint of its eyes. Erik had never felt so much hatred, so much passion, so much fury before in his life, and he channeled every bit of his emotions into that one single strike.

The stone hit with a force that would have smashed a ripe coconut in two. He felt it hit, dead center, bulls-eye. The shock of the blow traveled up his arm, into his shoulder and down his back. It felt good. It felt very good. In fact, he wasn’t sure if he had ever felt anything quite so good, quite so satisfying.

The force of the blow drove him back a step, and he lost his grip on the stone. He looked up to see his handiwork.

The demon stood there with the obsidian stone embedded completely in its forehead, and sticking in a good inch and a half. Erik just watched as the monster-turned-man just stood there and grinned at him stupidly, as if having a rock embedded in its head was the most natural thing in the world. Dovecrest then hit it from behind, burying his hatchet deep into the top of its skull. The demon stepped back and looked from one of them to the other, then grinned. It reached back, took the tomahawk from the top of its head and held it in its left hand. Then it took the sharp stone in its right hand and pulled it free. The thing’s skull was dented and cracked like a deflated ball as it looked at its attackers with disdain.

“Welcome to
my
home,” the thing said.

-2-

Todd couldn’t believe his eyes when he’d seen two warriors jump out from behind the rock outcropping and brain the demon with their stone weapons. One of the men was dressed like an Indian war chief, complete with war paint, the feathered headdress, and a nasty-looking tomahawk, which he had smashed into the demon’s head. The other guy looked like something out of a pirate movie, with a rag rolled up on top of his head, his face darkened with soot, and with a sharp rock in his hand, which he lodged right in the demon’s forehead. These warriors attacked with the ferocity of barbarians and were completely without fear.

But even though the demon now looked and acted like a man, it was still a monster. Neither of the death blows had the slightest effect on it. It took the tomahawk from its head, then the stone from between its eyes, and it looked at its attackers with a grin and taunted them.

Only then did Todd realize that the warriors weren’t warriors at all. Suddenly the war paint disappeared. The pirate was just a regular man. They weren’t warriors: just his dad and the Indian. They, too, had managed to come through the portal.

All of Todd’s hope vanished when the demon tossed the hatchet down to the ground with utter contempt. Then he threw the stone off into the sand.

“Dad!” Todd said. “It’s the demon.”

His father looked over at him with utter despair and Todd knew he had known, but that they thought they could somehow defeat the thing if it were in human form.

The demon laughed. “I only look human,” it said. Then it grabbed the Indian by the throat and tossed him to the ground like a rag doll.

Todd’s father backed up slowly, shifting his weight back and forth in case he needed to move. The demon looked at him and laughed again, while the Indian rolled backwards, clutching at his throat.

“So now you have the family reunion you wanted so badly,” it said. “Are you happy now? One big happy family.”

The demon pointed to Todd’s mom. “And about to get bigger.”

“Vickie, are you ok?”

“Yeah, Hon. But it’s getting close. Real close.”

“It’s ok. You just hang in there. I’ll figure out a way to get us out of here.”

“Sure you will,” the demon said.

The Indian had returned to his feet and he picked his tomahawk up from where the demon had thrown it. The Indian approached more cautiously now, and the demon turned to face him. Todd’s father took advantage of the fact to move closer to his son, trying to keep between him and the demon.

The Indian didn’t look so impressive now that his war paint and headdress were gone. Now he was dressed in jeans and a T shirt. Even the tomahawk had become a jagged stone now. But, still, the Indian was defiant, brave, and bold as he stood up to the monster.

“I curse thee and kill thee in the name of the God!” he said, and charged the demon with the sharp stone.

The demon opened its arms wide and laughed as the Indian ran into him and plunged the stone full into its chest. The weapon broke in two and fell to the sand where the demon squashed it under its feet, burying it deeply in the loose sand. It pushed the Indian away with one hand, as if brushing off a fly.

“Your God can’t hurt me here,” he said. “We are in my world now. I make the rules here.”

The Indian went sprawling on the ground and the demon followed him down, punching him and kicking him in the head and face. Todd’s father charged forward and pulled the monster off of the Indian. Then it turned on him.

Todd couldn’t watch and stay helpless. He ran to his father’s side and began pummeling the demon with his fists.

The monster picked him up and held him before its face, grinning.

“Have you already forgotten your lesson, boy?” it asked.

The last thing Todd remembered was its fist heading straight for his face.

-3-

For the third time in a half hour, Pastor Mark tried to explain again that Erik and Dovecrest had gone through a portal in the altar to destroy the demon and rescue Todd and Vickie. And for the third time in a half hour Captain Burns shook his head in disbelief.

“People don’t just go through rocks and into other worlds,” he said.

“Well, they did.”

“Then why can’t any of my men get through?”

“It’s not that simple,” Mark said. “You have to say the right things....”

The captain just shook his head again. He paced back and forth in front of the altar, stopping once to pound on it with his fist.

“That thing’s solid as a rock,” he said. “Pardon the expression. There’s no way anyone’s going to go through it.”

Mark sighed. “So you’re willing to believe that a demon has run amok in western Rhode Island, destroying a town and killing over forty of your men and maiming a couple dozen more, but you’re not willing to believe that it escaped through a portal to another world? That, Captain, doesn’t make sense.”

“I never said I believed this was a demon.”

“Then what is it?”

“I don’t know. An alien force, maybe. It could be anything. But I don’t believe that this rock is a gateway to.... Where’d you say it led?”

“To hell,” Mark said. “It leads to hell.”

“There’s no such thing as hell. That’s a fairy tale you preachers make up to keep people from misbehaving.”

Mark shook his head in frustration. “Well if that’s what it is, it doesn’t seem to be working very well, does it?”

The soldier stopped for a moment and laughed. “Yeah, you got me there,” he said. “No, I guess the threat of hell hasn’t stopped many people from misbehaving. Not lately, anyhow.”

“I’m glad you find that amusing,” Mark said. “But I’m telling you that my friends have gone through that portal and are in hell—or wherever it is that demon has gone. I can’t allow you to destroy that altar stone until they come back.”

“I’m afraid, Pastor, that you don’t have the authority to tell me what I can and cannot destroy. Whatever that thing is, it poses a threat to national security and it disappeared into that rock. I don’t know how, but it did. It might have gone back to its own world, or maybe it’s become part of the rock. I don’t know and, frankly, I don’t care. All I’m concerned with is keeping it from coming back here. And I think a thousand pounds of explosives should do just that. No problem.”

Mark stopped and looked at the ground. Maybe he was going about this the wrong way. He didn’t want to get into an ego contest with this soldier. He was just a humble pastor and sure to lose.

“Ok, Captain,” he said. “I understand that you want to close that thing up forever. So do I. They left me here to stop that thing in case it tries to come back out.”

“You’re going to stop it.”

Mark sighed again and tried to remain patient. The soldier didn’t know or understand what had happened here. And he didn’t have the time or the energy to teach theology right now.

“Yes. I know the right words to drive it back in. That’s how we drove it away the first time.”

The soldier rolled his eyes, as if to say “yeah, right.”

“The point is,” Mark continued, “That there are some very good people in there and they’re going to need a way out. If you destroy that stone they’ll be trapped forever.”

“I have to destroy it. I have my orders.”

“Ok. But do you have to destroy it now? Can’t you give us some time?”

He thought for a moment and looked at his watch. “It’s midnight now,” he said. “It would be better to set up the charges in daylight. I can justify that. You have until seven a.m. Then we start setting charges. When they’re done, we detonate.”

“Thank you, Captain. I suspect that if they’re not back by morning, they won’t be coming back.”

-4-

Erik knew he was in trouble now. Dovecrest was down and probably unconscious; his son had been knocked out and pitched into the sand. And now the demon was coming for him. It turned and faced him and glared at him with hatred in its eyes.

The thing didn’t look so menacing in human form. But it had one distinct advantage: it couldn’t be killed. Then again, they were in hell. Were they already dead? He looked past the demon at Dovecrest. Most of his face had been smashed in, yet the Indian was still alive, slowly sitting up and holding his injuries. Maybe he couldn’t be killed here either, Erik thought. Or maybe if he were, his body would just return to earth. There was no way to know.

The demon took a step forward and Erik backed up a step to keep the distance between them. Even as a human, this thing was powerful. It hadn’t taken on the shape of just any human. This wasn’t your typical computer programmer or historian. This man would have made a formidable human, a bodybuilder or a linebacker or, judging from the way it fought, a boxer or a soldier.