The Last Customer (31 page)

           
“Father Gardner,” Winny called out. “It wants you to go down there. Don’t let it beat you. If you do this, you will fail the test.”

           
Gardner turned to Winny with red fiery eyes. They looked demonic, like Sammael’s.

           
“If you go down there the demon will win, and you will…”

           
“It’s already won,” Gardner snapped back. His voice was low, monotone. The creases at the corners of his aging eyes folded deep. His tired, angry face suddenly sparked with determination. “And now, I need to do what is meant to be done—what is written.”

           
Winny braced himself to hold Gardner back. He stepped in front of the hatch, looking back after each step. Sammael could easily make his way into the attic. Winny didn’t like feeling this vulnerable.

Cherri stood in the corner, watching-on, frozen with terror. She wiped her eyes. Winny wanted to comfort her. He knew that she’d developed a connection with Donna. They cared for each other and she had died a horrible death. Winny stopped thinking about Donna. Right now, they needed to contain Gardner. Keep him sane until after they dealt with Sammael. If Gardner went into the hallway—and let the demon destroy him—then Winny and Cherri were destined to be destroyed as well. They didn’t know how to fight such a powerful enemy. But the demon knew how to fight
them
. It had been destroying humans for centuries. The reality of the situation took hold and Winny’s blood turned icy. The sweat which ran down his forehead was cold and his hands shook. If he were to speak, his voice would tremble. It would slur. And then, another terrible thing happened. Sammael began to cackle; mad like a loon. He stood, facing up, beneath the hatch. He called up to Gardner. “Father Gardner? I know you can hear me. I think that we have some business to attend to down here. Don’t you think? I’ll do awful things to her, Gardner. I’m not finished.”

           
Gardner strutted forward. The wooden planks beneath his feet wobbled. Gardner put all of his weight into each step. Winny stood in front of Gardner and grabbed his shoulder. Winny pushed forward. Gardner pushed back. Winny stumbled to the side and Gardner lunged with staggering tenacity. Winny was forced to let up. He couldn’t stop him.

           
Cherri stepped forward and called out to Gardner. It was her last attempt. “If you leave us, we’re done. That thing will kill us. We don’t know how to fight it. We need you.”

           
Gardner turned to Cherri. The madness in his eyes was present, but diluted. He looked like he was going to scream. He settled. It was as if the gentle voice of a woman was enough. His eyes drooped and he stopped fighting.

           
“You will fight him. I’ve seen it in my vision.” Gardner looked to Winny then Cherri. “…and you will walk out of this house, victorious. I can’t say the same for myself. I don’t know if I want to. My fate has been written. I accept my destiny. I’ll do what I can and I hope that God will keep me.”

           
“That doesn’t have to be true. You can use your anger to fight. You can seek your vengeance. You can help us. We can all leave here together. We’ll mourn Donna when we can,” Cherri pleaded. Tears ran from her eyes, in quick currents.

           
Gardner pondered what she’d said. Cherri had gotten to him. It made sense. Winny loosened up for just a moment.

Cherri and Winny lowered their guard. It was too late.

Gardner jumped down the hatch and into the hallway.

5

Gardner scurried down the hatch. Fury fused into every cell of his body. Rage possessed his thoughts and his soul. It drove him. For the first time in his life, he was angry with God, the God that had tasked him with so much.

He spent so many years of his life serving him
.

All he wanted was for his life to be simple and enjoyable. After fighting off so much evil, he felt entitled to it. It was his right. But now, his sweet Donna was taken from him. His reason for living was gone. All of his focus funneled into fighting Sammael. He didn’t care if he were to be killed. He needed to strike the demon. Afterward, if he were to be killed, at least the nightmare would be over. This thought suddenly snapped his sanity back. The well-being of Winny, Garth and Cherri weighed in on his mind, but he didn’t know if it was enough to stop him.

Normally a logical man, even when it came to matters of the supernatural, Gardner controlled his anger. But now, his rage hit its boiling point. Gardner was going to explode. Even the power of prayer wouldn’t stop him.

In the hallway, he gained his footing. The demon Sammael stood before him. His fists were clenched. Snakes slithered across and around him. They ran between his legs, around his neck and waved up his chest. He was covered in the scaly creatures. They hissed and snapped at Gardner.

This was the demon. The demon he’d fought all those years ago—and had beaten. Gardner’s rage was going destroy him. He didn’t care. He lunged forward as the snakes sprang at him.

           
Tearing down the hall, as though he’d be able to tackle Sammael to the ground, Gardner’s logic sunk-in. If he were to go through with this—let the anger and insanity of what had happened get the best of him—he would not only lose and be defeated, but he would fail the test. That’s what this was—a test. If he failed, his great works would be disregarded. He’d be sent to a place where Sammael would laugh and torment him, forever. But in this moment, he disregarded the idea. His humanity got the best of him.

He didn’t care.

As Gardner slammed his body into Sammael’s torso and tackled him to the ground, his fury escalated, peaked and then dissipated. The laughter on Sammael’s face was overwhelming. The anger returned. It seemed like the child of his mind was turning the light switch of anger on and then off, over and over again. The switch released logic and anger, logic and anger. Sammael watched Gardner’s emotions flash back and forth across his face.

Gardner saw how delighted the demon had become.

           
Gardner hoped for an answer, but there were no visions. There was only simple emotion and Gardner couldn’t escape it. When he looked across the hallway and saw his wife’s corpse lying in a pool of blood, his anger further reddened. It snatched the sanity from his weary mind. He screamed, “You vile piece of filth!”

           
And in that moment, he didn’t know if he was speaking to the demon or to his God.

6

Winny stood with Cherri in the attic. They were lost,
anxious
 
and
didn’t know what to do. Standing defensively, Cherri knew that one of them or both of them would have to jump down and fight. Raising a finger, Winny snapped his attention toward Cherri.

“I think I can help him,” Winny said.

           
Cherri watched Winny say this, but she didn’t believe it. What she knew about Gardner was that he was a man that could fight and defeat something like a demon. Winny was a simple man. He couldn’t defeat Sammael. Not even with an army of ten thousand. He just wasn’t capable.

           
“When I was outside, with Garth…well…not Garth, but that thing, I begged for it to let my brother go. For a moment, Garth came back. It worked.”

           
“You don’t know that it was Garth—not for sure. It was probably the demon playing his tricks on you, making you believe that it was Garth when it wasn’t. He was lowering your guard, trying to make you believe that you could make a difference when you couldn’t.”

           
Cherri suddenly realized what she’d done. She’d stripped away Winny’s hope. For a moment that was all he had. Without hope they might as well jump down into the hallway and give up. Let the demon destroy them. When Winny lowered his head to look at Cherri, her stomach felt like it was filled with ice. But Winny turned to her and said, “Maybe you’ve given up, but I haven’t. You can either help me or you can stay here and hope for the best. Either way, I’m going to try.”

           
Before Cherri had a chance to retort, Winny jumped down the hatch, into the hallway.

           
Cherri’s nerves shot into high gear. She didn’t know what to do. She wanted to help Winny. Even if she failed, at least it would be a valiant effort, even if the outcome was death.
And maybe that would be fine.
If she fought, then maybe she would die—quickly, with no pain.

           
Cherri stepped forward. She looked downward. She heard the shouts and screams of Gardner and Winny, and above their cries, she heard the demon laughing.

           
For the first time, in a long time, she closed her eyes and began to pray. She asked for guidance. She’d never gone to church a day in her life. She was vaguely aware of religion at all. She didn’t know what she was doing when she bowed her head. She asked God to help her—
to help them
.

           
With shaky legs, Cherri stood and moved toward the hatch. Slowly, she stepped down into the madness that awaited her.

7

Sammael clamped his hand around Gardner’s throat, tight. His elongated fingers dug into the skin on the back of his neck, palm smothering his Adam’s apple. Gardner’s feet dangled, scissor kicking in the air. His toes barely scraped the floor. They danced, four inches off the floor. Winny dropped, slinked back, and curled in a ball behind them.

Cherri twisted in order to see Donna. She was lying in a slippery pool of blood that formed above her head like a vile halo. Sadness consumed Cherri.

           
Quick as her sadness set, it was gone. It was replaced with fear. Sammael was watching Cherri and smiling. He’d taken the boyish face of Garth and turned it into a sinister grin, reflecting the death and destruction that he sought. Cherri was sick of being tormented by this vile thing, tired of being bullied. She was tired of feeling afraid. She was fed up with being exhausted. Most of all, she was sick of the unknown. Even more, she was sick of the demon,
her demon
. Sammael could see this. It was written upon her face. The demon received great pleasure in destroying Gardner, but still, he couldn’t help but refocus his attention to Cherri, as though he couldn’t turn away from the opportunity to destroy something new—fresh meat.
Gardner wasn’t enough.
The demon savored the consumption of everything good. His appetite was insatiable and Cherri was mocking him
;
because her fear of him was diluted. The fear she should have felt was replaced with annoyance. Her limit had been reached.

Sammael’s maniacal grin fell into an eager, fearfully intense stare. He tilted his head in Gardner’s direction, eyes darting forward, intently. The demon was tormented. It couldn’t choose—it’s appetite for flesh was selfish. The demon wanted everything, to kill all.

He must be thinking— destroy what he had or go for the girl?

A scaly snake shot from Sammael’s mouth, it coiled around Gardner’s neck and, even though it was dark, Cherri could see that Gardner was gasping for air. His eyes ballooned and bulged. His skin flushed crimson and then purple.

           
The floorboards creaked. Dust jumped. Gardner hit the hallway floor like a sack of dirt. Sammael had squeezed the wind out from him, causing him to pass out—he’d choked consciousness from him.

Cherri didn’t know what came next.

Sammael locked eyes with Cherri. With each breath he took he seemed to enlarge. Looming larger again as he stepped toward her. Cherri didn’t budge. She couldn’t. The thought of death and dying swirled erratically through her spinning head. Flashes of her childhood—all of the worst things she’d done in her life and all of the good she’d done accumulated in her mind like cumulus clouds. It seemed, for the moment, that Sammael didn’t matter. The only point that mattered was doing the right thing—now, when it counted. It didn’t matter if she died in the process, she would be redeemed. She didn’t back down. She stood tall. Her stance was solid as the beast hovered near her. She smelled its foul breath. Its pungent odor was remnant of burned and rotting flesh.

           
“You can kill me, but you won’t defeat me. So get on with it!”

           
The maniacal smile illuminated Sammael’s face as though he’d never enjoyed a more extravagant invitation. His face was seized with sinister glee.

8

Sharp pins and needles struck every molecule of Winny’s being as his consciousness returned. His legs, arms, body and mind were famished and stung horribly. For a quick moment, he didn’t know if he could rise. His body was giving up. Pain coursed his torso—every joint, muscle and bone ached. The fight had taken its toll on him. He was beaten. He didn’t know if he could handle any more strain. Shaking his head, facing forward, he looked to Cherri as she faced-off with the demon, a stubbornly fierce aura radiated from her. It made the demon cringe.

The surge of energy that flowed through Winny when he realized that Cherri wasn’t scared inspired him to flex into a straight plank and then stand. He hobbled toward her.

Sammael didn’t budge as Winny stumbled forward. A clicking sound tapped through the air. Winny watched the
slithering thing
shoot from Sammael’s mouth. Its jaws snapped while it rounded the demons lips and shot backward. The look upon Cherri’s angered face seemed to be screaming—
grab that stupid thing and twist it
till
he chokes
!

           
And as if synchronicity caught step with Winny’s thoughts, he grabbed the slithery snake and held it tight in his grip. He pulled the fibered serpent taut and tried to rip it in two. Sammael stumbled backward. In the moment that it took for Sammael to spin around, Winny saw the fear of
falling
burn across Sammael’s face. Mass confusion seized him as if he couldn’t fathom being beaten by these
people
.