Fires Rising (22 page)

Pilazzo tried to expel a shout. Unanticipated fear knotted his tongue. He threw a glance toward the praying man and planted a trembling right hand on his grimy shoulder.

"Are…you…okay?"
he managed to blurt.

The homeless man stopped his prayers. In the damning silence that followed, Pilazzo could hear the wet, squelchy distribution of the blood as it continued to saturate the drop-cloth, thin rivulets now trickling down.

He was about to grab the bum by his shirt and pull him away, when the vagrant, eyes still diverted to the ground, muttered stridently, "This is the end of days...
priest."

J
yro stood at the door, waiting. He heard nothing and when he peered into the hallway, saw Timothy's shadow hovering about ten feet away.

"What are ya doin', kid?"

"It's too dark…I can't see anything."

"Did you go to the end of the hall? Did you look in the church?"

A brief pause. Then, "No."

"You need to go there and see what's happening."

Jyro felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned.

Wrath looked down at him. He nodded once and turned his eyes toward the steps. "In the bedroom…I will look for a flashlight to help guide the boy. It's safe there now."

Jyro nodded. Indeed, the level of threat seemed diminished without Larry up there. He peered back through the door at Timothy. "Wait right there, kid. We're gonna find you a flashlight."

Wrath alerted the men to what he was doing and Wilson offered to go with him. Like a dark shadow, the hippie followed the big man up the stairs. Both of them disappeared around the bend.

The seconds felt like minutes as the small group waited in the center of the room. They all looked up at the ceiling and listened as the pair's footfalls made their way into the bedroom. Jyro could then hear them rummaging through the closet: feet shuffling and the errant clanging of tools. Moments later, their footfalls traveled the length of the upstairs hallway and the carpeted steps coming back downstairs.

They appeared around the turn like angels in the mist, Wrath in the lead holding a flashlight and a hacksaw. Wilson followed right behind him with an awl, a screwdriver, and a claw hammer in his hands. For a moment Jyro considered the group of them, and then himself, and he wondered,
We were useless beings, sickly and pained. Wanderers waiting for our tickets into heaven to be punched. Now we are warriors, seemingly strong, our troubles and ills no longer obstacles in this life. We are being healed…

"There's a level and a ruler up there too, but that's it." Wrath handed the flashlight to Jyro, who turned it on and returned to the hallway door.

"Here ya go, kid. Keep it aimed to the floor so no one will see you coming."

Timothy reached his hand through the gap and took the flashlight. Jyro could feel a slight charge of electricity as the exchange was made.

"Thanks." Timothy aimed the flashlight's beam toward his feet, then walked off into the shadows. Jyro and Wrath watched as the beam wavered across the dark floor like a searchlight.

From behind them came a loud tearing noise, like the sound Velcro makes, only bigger. It came again. Jyro whipped his hands through his hair and spun around. He caught Marcus's eyes, big and drooping. There was a delayed chorus of groans from the men as they all saw what the thin, raspy-voiced vagrant was up to.

Marcus had a broom in his hand. He was using it to roll Weston's corpse against the wall alongside the crucified man's body. As his body rolled over, his burnt arm—quite well stuck to the carpet—tore off at the elbow, making that noise,
thrrrip!
Black stuff oozed out from both ends of it onto the carpet.

He shrugged stupidly. "Just gettin 'em out of the way."

Jyro shook his head, unsure of what to say or make of the man's decision. He decided it wasn't worth his energy and turned his attention back to the hallway, where he saw only darkness beyond the slight gap.

The flashlight was out.

"Timothy," he whispered. "You still there?"

No answer.

A moment later, someone screamed.

T
he praying vagrant twisted his neck and faced Pilazzo.

The priest screamed, looking not just at the vagrant's bloody eyes, but at the rest of his face: cheeks, stripped of their skin, wet and glistening beneath the shadows. Nose, a running channel of gore joining bleeding lips.

The vagrant uttered one word, "
Priest…"
, then grabbed the bottom of the bloody drop-cloth, and yanked it off the statue.

It flew away like a ghost in a haunted house, landing on the altar alongside the pulpit. Pilazzo shrunk back as dust assaulted his face. He coughed, rubbing his eyes of the dirt.

Again, low and guttural:
"Priest…"

He returned his gaze to the beaten vagrant, who was still raking him with those bloody eyes…

…and then to the exposed statue.

Sickness struck him like a sudden charge of volts, his mind refusing to accept what he was seeing—it wasn't logically explainable, in his eyes or in the eyes of God. And yet here it was, the statue of the Virgin Mary, she, cradling a porcelain baby Jesus in her arms.

She was
bleeding
…

…and in his mind, he sees a shadow on a wall, and it is in the shape of this statue, and at the same place where the blood taints the statue, there is a stain on the wall that mimics this horrific desecration…

The blood ran from the statue's groin, down across its base and onto the floor between it and the injured vagrant. Pilazzo could see a hole in the altar floor...

oh my God…

…and within the hole existed a…a
thing
like nothing he'd ever known to exist before…a wide patch of gnarled flesh that...that…
oh dear Jesus
…looked exactly like the vagrant's knotted ear.

It was moving.

The fleshy thing was fused to the hole's jagged edges: splinters of wood assimilating with tangled lumps of soft tissue. It pulsated like a slow-moving heart, sickly rhythmic. The canal at its crux opened and closed hungrily.

A jet of blood spouted out of it, spattering the statue.

Pilazzo attempted another scream, but could not so much as murmur beyond the panicked wheeze escaping his burning lungs. He felt a terrible tension seizing his insides. Gazing upon the befouled immorality before him—this true incidence of
evil
thriving amidst the skeletal remains of St Peter's Church—he realized that he was grossly overmatched.
How can this be?
his mind struggled to comprehend, his entire being wholly troubled with the thought of having to confront such an incomprehensible thing.

Is this, dear God, truly the end of days?

The vagrant started sobbing. Pilazzo's gaze fell upon him, and then the wooden rosary in the man's hands. It was glowing slightly, a reddish illumination dousing the vagrant's crust-laden fingers. Tiny flames fluttered across his exposed arms like hummingbirds. His neck swelled out like a balloon and erupted with yellow pustules that oozed down his chest in rivulets.

And his ear, that knotted hunk of flesh…

While Pilazzo gazed in disbelief at the wounded vagrant, the thing in the hole
bulged
. He could see that it was undeniably
alive
, sentient in its own right, expanding to show that it had dark jagged teeth inside its rapacious orifice. They were wet with blood, grinding up and down to create the wickedest of sounds.

Pilazzo broke away and backpedaled down the steps leading away from the altar. With a muffled thump, he landed on his rear. Sawdust rose about him in a cloud. He shot his hands up signed the cross over the hellish scene before him.

A deep, strident chortle surfaced from the creature. Blood erupted from it in intermittent spouts, spattering both the statue and the vagrant. It opened wide and from within its organic depths swelled a bulbous membrane—a great blister bursting with pus—swelling nearly three feet up and out.

Pilazzo could see something writhing beneath the membrane's pinkish surface.

With a slick, wet burst, the membrane popped. Pilazzo flinched back, seeing something hideous birthing from its bloody overflow: two reptilian claws covered in greasy scales, swaying and writhing back and forth like entranced cobras. They reached a height of perhaps two feet and unfurled three curved talons that latched onto its fleshy foundation.

The vagrant fell helplessly forward, face and arms searing as they came in contact with the carpet. Dark puffs of smoke rose around him.

Pilazzo struggled to his feet, watching as the vagrant's heavy, trembling hand extended toward him. In it was the rosary. The vagrant twisted his sightless gaze up, eye sockets gushing thick, oily fluid. Tiny flames swarmed on his face as he made an attempt to speak. The words were broken, but intelligible:

"Take it…"

The wooden rosary fell from his grasp onto the steps, a few feet from Pilazzo.

Rosary…rosary…rosary…

In a response that was more instinct than bravado, Pilazzo dove forward and grabbed the charm.

He cried out; it was extremely hot in his hands. He nearly dropped it, but managed to hold on despite it searing his skin. He crossed himself, then held the charm up and began reciting the
Hail Mary
. Thin tendrils of smoke rose from it like incense.

The vagrant made a vain attempt to crawl away, arms and legs clawing at the bloody carpet. With a horrible gushing sound, the reptile-arms lunged from their fleshy womb and seized his head.

"Kill it!"
the vagrant cried, his words nearly unintelligible. He then began to scream with amazing force.

Pilazzo looked on, feeling an intense wave of brutal fear and hatred toward the thing.

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee…

The claws squeezed the homeless man's head. The vagrant jerked and writhed, arms pistoning frantically. Blood gushed out from between the constricting talons. The vagrant's face took on a horrible reddish-purple look as it attempted to absorb the horrible pressure it was under. He let out a long shrilly wail that was cut off with a terrible bone-crushing sound. The vagrant's legs swept weakly across the dusty floor in spasms, and then fell deadly still.

Blood poured from his eyes, and then from his ears. His neck bulged, turning purple with pressure. The talons remained hideously still as they continued squeezing, like vice grips under some unimaginable force.
 
What followed was a
pop
like a firecracker. Pilazzo flinched, squeezed his eyes shut, feeling warm pieces of the vagrant's head pepper him. When he opened his eyes he saw a shocking spray of blood fountaining upwards from the vagrant's neck stump. The body fell to the altar. The claws clutched and clasped, rubbing the blood about as if it were lotion.

Clutching the rosary tightly, Pilazzo screamed hoarsely and shambled back down the aisle to the closed doors at the rear of the church. His footfalls were wet and tacky, and he imagined a long line of bloody footprints trailing behind him.

He grabbed the door handles, but hadn't a second to pull on them before a blue flame rose up out of nowhere and buried his hands in agony. He howled out and backpedaled, then fell to his knees and gazed at the white blisters rising up on his skin like milk bubbles blown through a straw. The rosary, still wrapped around his fingers, glowed faintly red, appearing undamaged by the otherworldly attack.

"Help me!" he screamed out, eyes searching the heavens. "Help me! Is there anybody here?" A tremendous pain shot from his burnt hands to his spine. He could hear his labored breaths inside his head.

And then came a string of bone-crushing fractures from the front of the church.

Wide-eyed, Pilazzo turned and faced the wicked scene. The beast in the floor was devouring the vagrant, claws operating like the pincers on a crab, grabbing the headless body, puncturing the waist as it pulled it down to feed itself. The body was gone to the hips, legs in the air, spreading out further and further until they cracked into a gruesome ballet split. The arms were still twisted back, still out of the hole. But the thing surged, chewing and eating, the vagrant's legs jutting and jerking, cutting through the air like batons.

Pilazzo tried to look away, tried not to hear the wet, crunching sounds, tried only to concentrate on the painful burns on his hands. But then came a new set of cracking sounds, like tree branches splintering in the wind. The thing had swallowed the body to the knees, claws grabbing thighs, guiding it in. The body's arms, outside of the hole's periphery, popped off like twigs and landed on the altar with wet, muffled thumps. Thick, viscous grunts emerged from somewhere deep inside the thing, and Pilazzo wondered for a sickening moment if the vagrant had produced them. The vagrant's legs from the calves down swelled into shapeless tumors and hemorrhaged as they were at last sucked in like strings of spaghetti.