The grin vanishes, his eyes sink in a supplication so devious as to be mocking.
“Father,” he rasps, his quiet, tortured voice filling the room. “Wilt thou save me?”
Poole begins to answer when the ghoulish creature jerks his head back, exposing a bony throat, and screams with such force that a deputy covers his ears. His back arches impossibly, and Andrew hears the tap-dance clicking of bones, the strained creaking of bedposts as their strength is tested.
Poole turns, eyes flashing. “Andrew!” he screams. “Go, damn you!”
*
David slips through the door first.
Once they heard the scream, he and Peter shared a look. A silent agreement. Peter had turned back to address the other awakened boys, told them to stay put.
Now, halfway down the dark hallway, they hear raised voices. The sounds of a struggle? There’s a crack and a man shrieks in pain. David is sweating, terrified, but it helps to have Peter with him. He mocks Peter enough, more than he deserves, and enjoys rubbing his nose in all that blue-eyed goodness he exudes, but the truth is that David respects Peter, even if he doesn’t necessarily like him all that much. He assumes it’s a similar feeling to what one might feel for a sibling. A brother. The feeling where you hate having to be in the same room with a fella for more than ten minutes, but if push came to shove, you’d give your life for him.
Peter tugs at his sleeve as they approach the stairs. “Stay down,” he whispers, and David nods. Once they make it to the banister, they’ll be easy to spot for anyone gazing upward from the foyer below.
Side by side, they crawl onto the balcony, stopping short of the dark oak spindles riddled before them like prison bars, each attached to a slanted shadow, flattened by the muted moonlight coming through the foyer’s solitary round window. Cautiously, they glance downward in hopes of seeing the cause of this incredible, late-night disruption.
The foyer is poorly lit. More dark than light. From the hallway leading to the priests’ rooms, an orange glow spreads outward across the floor like spilled paint. Multiple voices can be heard coming from that same direction, and David assumes that whoever was laughing—then screaming—resides somewhere down that hall.
“Look,” Peter whispers.
David leans forward in time to see the chapel door open. A shadowy figure hurries out, then walks into the glow of the orange light before disappearing down the corridor.
“Andrew,” Peter murmurs, and David nods.
“What do you think?” David says quietly.
Peter opens his mouth to answer when another scream shatters the air.
This scream sounds much different. And David realizes, with a sour twist of his stomach, that it did not come from the same man as the first.
10
“BE STILL!”
Andrew re-enters the room to see the bound man writhing like an angry eel atop the bed, his mouth stretched impossibly wide in some unfathomable torment. Wide enough that Andrew notices that it’s not just his teeth that are black, but his tongue and mouth, as well.
Like he’s been drinking ink.
Poole is tearing at the man’s shirt, ripping it off his bleeding torso. The mattress is already heavy with blood. Red tendrils trickle to the floor like ivy.
“Hold him!” Poole yells, and two deputies grab Paul Baker’s arms, careful to keep their hands away from his snapping jaws. He intermittently laughs, cries, or wails, with seemingly no reason for the rapid changes in response to whatever darkness boils within him.
Andrew rushes over to stand behind Poole, placing the surgery kit, book, and vial of holy water on his dresser. “Father, how can I help?”
“Hand me scissors, the large ones.”
Andrew pulls open the bag, sees the array of field surgery instruments neatly displayed, and pulls a pair of hand-sized scissors from a leather loop. “Here!”
Poole reaches behind, grabs them, and begins cutting the shirt off Baker’s contorting, convulsing body. “Hold him steady, please! I don’t want to stab the man.”
Sheriff Baker enters the fray, pushes down on his brother’s narrow hips as Poole cuts.
Andrew leans over Poole’s shoulder to study the man’s exposed flesh, and recoils. “Oh God,” he says in disgust, then clamps a hand over his mouth in an effort to keep further words from spilling out.
The flesh of the man’s chest is partially torn away, exposing red meat and white rib beneath blood-slicked skin. His entire torso, from neck to waist—on what skin remains—is covered in symbols. Occult and blasphemous. Some designs appear to be roughly tattooed into the skin, others seemingly burned into the flesh, as if drawn with heated steel.
“What happened to him?” Poole asks the sheriff, shocked at the severity of the wound.
The sheriff releases his brother, stares down into his twisting gray face with a pain so profound it breaks Andrew’s heart. “He came running at me, screaming and covered in blood . . . I brought up the shotgun, told him to stop. He flashed a knife, kept coming. I shot him.” The sheriff wipes tears and sweat from his face, takes a breath. “At first I thought I’d missed. He didn’t even slow down. Then I saw the blood, and my men were shooting at the others, putting them down. I didn’t want to see my brother die, so I tackled him, held him to the ground. I had no idea he was so badly injured until we tied him up. My God, Father . . . how is he alive?”
“We’ll need to get the metal out of him . . .” Poole mumbles uncertainly, ignoring the sheriff’s question.
A voice comes from the bed, interrupting Poole. It’s a new voice, a different one than what they’ve heard since the sheriff’s arrival. Andrew assumes it’s as close as they’ve heard to Paul Baker’s true voice, and the sound of it—the innocence of it—is chilling.
“I’m scared, Father,” Paul says weakly. “Don’t let me die. I’m so sorry . . .”
He shifts his head to his brother, who takes a step backward, his face ashen and slick with sweat. “I’m sorry about what I did to that little girl, Teddy. I don’t know what’s happening to me . . .” Paul begins to cry, but he continues speaking through his choked tears. “I’m sorry I drank her blood,” he says, black tongue running over his top lip, as if reliving the memory of it. He begins weeping, shaking his head side to side, his sobs deep and wet.
Andrew, feeling empathy for the poor, foul man, steps forward with thoughts of offering what comfort he’s able.
But then the sobbing grows louder . . . twists into something different; contorts into sounds of hacking, ghastly laughter. When he speaks, the voice is deep, grating. Inhuman.
“But it tasted so fucking good.”
“Jesus Christ,” a deputy whispers, and crosses himself, momentarily releasing his hold on the man’s arm.
Andrews jerks backward as Paul Baker begins to bellow, howling out a chilling chorus of deep, hollow laughter. The sound fills the room like poison. All the men take a step backward, away from the bed. Following his deputy’s lead, the sheriff also crosses himself. Andrew follows suit, whispering a Hail Mary for good measure.
Poole turns to Andrew, eyes unfocused. The old priest appears lost. Confused. He starts to ask Andrew something, then stops, shakes his head. He looks back at the man on the bed, who is now breathing heavily, his lungs filling and emptying in rapid, hiccupping swallows. His black-dotted eyes are wide and vacant, and the fine, crisscrossing veins have burst, filling the whites—previously the color of curdled-milk—with dark, splotchy blood.