The Repentant Demon Trilogy Book 1: The Demon Calumnius

The Repentant Demon

Book 1: The Demon Calumnius

––––––––

Samantha Johns

Copyright 2014

Copyright 2014,
http://samanthajohnsauthor.blogspot.com/

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the publisher.

This is a work of fiction
.
All names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons either living or dead, as well as any events or locations is entirely coincidental.

In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, any means of reproduction, either electronic or physical, of any part of this book, without written permission is unlawful piracy and deemed a theft of the author's intellectual property. You may use the material from this book for review purposes only. Any other use requires written permission from the author or publisher.

Chapter 1.  The Demon Watches

Chapter 2.  The Demon Covets

Chapter 3.  An Eventful Date

Chapter 4.  The Demon in the Mirror

Chapter 5.  Abigail Loves Flying

Chapter 6.  Old Friends and Camels

Chapter 7.  New Friends and New Camels

Chapter 8.  An Old Demon Enemy

Chapter 9.  End of Iraq and a New Beginning

Chapter 10.  The Demon Meets Abigail

Author Info

I
n the shadows, Calumnius watched.  He roared, turning his huge horned head and showing his terrible fangs. Standing eight feet tall, no earth shadows could hide him.  He lurked rather in a shadow world, unseen by humans.  Another like him was near.  He smelled his breath, the odor of burnt sulfur, even before he heard his steps approaching. This was his catch, he warned, growling.  Go away.

Then Zechaniah appeared seemingly from nowhere.  This one, though bull-like in his head and curving horns, was darker in color and more human in his body parts.  He had no fur like Calumnius covering his lower limbs and groin; therefore he wore a loincloth and leather boots.

“The earth is abundant with victims tonight,” he said, making small talk, assuring Calumnius that he was not after his victim.  “It's been like that for ages now.  The fields are teeming with prey, more so even than in the Middle Ages.  Good hunting, friend.”

“Good hunting to you, also,” said Calumnius, glad that he was leaving.

Yes, there were ample souls to snare.  It was easy now that the humans so universally did not believe in demons.  Such fools they were, it was like slaughtering sheep—so easy that it no longer even seemed a sport.  The time for the final battle would come,
and we are winning
, he thought.

The Church fights back in vain, increasing the numbers of exorcist priests dramatically.  But it will not help them.  We demons have infiltrated their numbers, as well as rising to positions in high places in governments around the world.  These are the humans who have succumbed to possession willingly, to reap earthly rewards beyond belief.  They live among the ordinary, only recognizable to a few very accomplished exorcists.  But even those elite clergy will make no attempt to expel them from their hosts.  Entrenched, willing servants of the Lord of Evil, these poor souls work for Satan's cause behind the scenes in the human world.  Many such people of the earth have with their own free will sought us out, wanting riches, power, and luxuries more than they care for their eternal fates.  These humans are so easy to capture, so weak and worthless.  I have turned to seeking prey that would challenge me—I seek a true believer.

He had been watching this one for weeks, stalking her, trying to decide what her fate should be, if she was the one, and how to attack her.  It had been taking him longer and longer to choose a victim, and with every effort he sought to appease the demons that drove him mad with their tauntings.  The others would come down hard on him if he returned without a tremendous tale to tell about seduction and shame or torture and cruelty.  For the past hundred years, Calumnius had been cheating on his colleagues—taking the easy path because his heart was no longer in the pursuit of souls for the cause of evil.  They were evil enough on their own, he surmised.  It had become no challenge to tempt them.

Often he lurked unseen in dark alleys in the worst places on earth, sensing the evil in the air, especially loving New York City, London, and Moscow.  Calumnius looked for despicable human beings about to commit horrendous crimes and lurched at their very souls, taking credit as the final instigator before the killings, rapes, child molestations, and brutal crimes of humanity against humanity.  This practice of his, in this realm where cheating and defrauding were considered virtues, would not have been so acceptable if it involved cheating or defrauding Satan's cause.  What he had been doing was to steal the credit for evil he himself had not produced.  Calumnius had been getting great grief from demons who demanded he return to his former glory—lead them with vigor as one of the powerful ones as in days of old.

He had once been ambitious like them, dwelling in convents and monasteries to snare the ones who presented a challenge, ones not so easily tempted.  He looked for prominent people admired by others for their qualities of generosity, compassion, and piety.  Their destruction had felt good to him, depriving God of His followers and wounding Him.  He knew it wounded Him deeply to suffer the loss of one soul like the lost sheep that could never be found.  It had once been easy, given his opinion of these beings was so low and his anger so intense.  They were unworthy of life and breath.  Calumnius enjoyed watching their tortured souls writhing in the fiery abyss.  They deserved to suffer, not only for what they had taken from his race, but for their own lowly nature mired in weakness and wretchedness.  All anyone need do is look at them to see justification for hate and disgust.  They were like insects thrown into fire for the fun of hearing their bodies crackle and sizzle as their flesh burned without ceasing into eternity.

Abigail Rayetta Fitzgerald unknowingly drew him to her by the color of her aura—white, a hue seldom seen in these days.  It marked her as having goodness in her that had been tested.  More commonly one would see blue—the innocents, born that way only to change as their characters developed.  Few remained either color for very long in this world.  The children of the earth were losing their innocence at younger and younger ages.

This woman he watched intrigued him by the things she said in the classes she taught; the story of human culture over vast epochs of time.  Her understanding of ancient history was immense, though flawed.  Often he wished he could join in on some of those class discussions.  He had lingered so at the feet of Socrates and Plato.  Yet for all their intelligence, their civilizations had met with ruination—because of evil ones like himself.  No matter how brilliant their minds, no matter how noble their cause, they fell.  All of them.

He carefully watched and listened for many weeks before deciding if she were the one he would choose.  What amazed him was that she knew all this horrid history of man, yet she remained moral and seemed to love, even to admire humanity.  She helped people when able, attended church, and had remained chaste through thirty-one years of life on this planet.  Throughout all of this she remained pleasant, even cheerful.  And her energy was boundless.  Not in a physical sense, but in her never-ending pursuit of knowledge and truth, which was remarkable.  This was truly a specimen worthy of his attention. 

She studied at Washington University in Saint Louis where she taught Anthropology courses to supplement the grants and her meager investment savings, which enabled her to travel and pursue her dream of unearthing some spectacular archaeological discovery.  Her interest lay mainly in uncovering sites from the biblical era between 6,000 B.C. to 100 A.D.  It was her ambition to help prove the stories in the Bible as fact.  Much historical evidence had already been found, and she longed to make even a small contribution that would add to the body of knowledge.

This woman was firm in her faith and confident that no discovery awaited anywhere in the world that would do anything but bolster her belief in God.  Such sentiments did not come from the mind, but from the heart.  She had the gift of faith, given by God to her, marking her as one of his own.  This is the very kind of soul Calumnius sought to bring down, to turn evil.

Calumnius studied her, not only because he enjoyed doing so, nor to confirm the wisdom of his choice, but mostly to learn her weakness, so that he would know how to attack.  She presented more of a challenge than he had experienced in many earth ages.  He often would face her, eye to eye,  his breath inches from her face, and challenge her to feel his presence.  Staring intently into eyes that looked past him, through him, he would wait and watch for signals of discomfort in her demeanor.  Such fun this was for him, seeing her react with some involuntary response of irritation, some feeling of bodily discomfort, as humans do when they sense they're being watched.

Although he had done this several times, she did not run screaming into the night for help, as many had been prone to do.  Some had actually sought psychiatric help after their bouts with him.  And even more humorous were the ones who sought the help of ghost hunters.  There were those who felt tortured enough even to commit suicide.  And for those that sought the help of a priest, most would not intervene to help them.  Many priests themselves no longer believed in evil, or worse, they
did
believe and were afraid due to their guilt or sense of unworthiness. 

Abigail Rayetta Fitzgerald, as he always called her in his mind, enjoying the beauty and flow of the name, had offered a new challenge for Calumnius as he indulged in this game with her.  Once, it shocked him when it was he who turned away first.  He who felt a moment of discomfort.  She looked directly into his eyes, as if she could see him, which was impossible.  He knew that.  But he saw for a brief moment something that startled him.  It only took a brief time to realize that it was her soul that he saw.  It was stronger than he had imagined.  This brief glimpse confirmed for him that he had wisely chosen his next victim.

Calumnius had once enjoyed his work, so he began to hope perhaps he would again when the sweetness of success healed his ailing spirit.  He had taken great pleasure in bringing down holy ones in the olden days.  He had conquered popes, hermits, nuns, and monks over the centuries and had basked in the glory of hell over these victories.  He reveled listening to the moans and groans of human souls agonizing and regretting their sins, longing to see the face of God, which would be denied them forever.  To Calumnius, this was the fate these miserable creatures deserved for the sin of their very existence in the universe, a universe that would have been perfect without them.  He considered them ugly beings, mistakes of God.

Lowly creatures though they were, humans were not the root of his problem.  God was.  He hated these creatures of God because they could obtain His forgiveness—something he could never do.  It had taken a long time to acknowledge that he, Calumnius, actually wanted to be with God.  To be one of His holy angels, as he once had been at the dawn of time before Lucifer rebelled.  But even to want such a thing was theoretically impossible, as he had always assumed—until it happened to him, until he looked into the very face of forgiveness itself.

His view of the nature of this virtue akin to mercy had changed irrevocably about a hundred years ago during his temptation of Alessandro Serenelli in earth year 1902.  This was a nineteen-year-old boy. What an easy job it should have been.  All of them were naturally filled with lust.  The other six deadly sins were virtually unneeded where they were concerned.  Calumnius planted a seed of desire in the boy, planted it deep in the fertile ground of a physical body raging with emerging male hormones.

“You want to have sex with that young girl who just moved with her widowed mother to your parents' farm.  She is a beauty,” he whispered to him.  “She has a sweet luscious body, and she is right for you—small so she could not overpower you like the girls your own age, and so innocent she cannot possibly compare your inadequacies with other males.” 

Maria Goretti was twelve years old and unaware of the feelings boys had for her.  She dressed modestly and covered her hair with a shawl.  Still her beauty showed—her lovely dark eyes fringed with heavy lashes, her full mouth sensuous and soft, and her form overdeveloped and clearly evident beneath her simple dress.