Fires Rising (32 page)

From above, something cracked loudly. Pilazzo diverted his gaze to the spreading flames beyond the stained glass windows in the ceiling. His trembling hands and fingers moved about the charms and beads with inexplicably adept precision. The rosary grew even hotter, settling composure into his racing blood, his rioting heart. He beheld violent images of the fires beyond the walls surrounding him, of the reaching spires that burned through the city like blowtorch blasts, making every hellish attempt to take down the safe haven of the Church of St Peter.

But something was thwarting the fires from doing just this, he realized, gazing back up toward the ceiling. A barrier of some sort around the church, one of an enigmatic nature, powerful and demanding, crafted of pure goodness.

Its source lay squirming in his very hands.

"Please, please," he urged the rosary, hands dexterously shepherding its miraculous power. The air in the church grew from cold to hot in seconds. Tiny wisps of smoke spiraled up from the rosary.

The swelling beast reached its claws forward toward Pilazzo, only to howl and pull them back quickly, as if scalded.

I am being protected…

Through his peripheral vision, Pilazzo could see the workers jostling, slamming together violently like atoms of kinetic energy. Blood appeared on their faces from the random collisions. They'd dropped their trophy heads and were trampling them underfoot. The worker holding the crowbar with Rollo's head shouted, "Surrender the rosary, priest!"

A loud hiss filled Pilazzo's ears. He looked and saw the beast suddenly distracted, jerking its gaze upward to a point just above its head. Its eyes were wide and glossy and it began swiping a taloned claw through the air like a cat pawing a dangling toy. Its jaws were bared, dripping yellow venom.

It seemed to perceive something in the air…something wholly disconcerting.
 

Something…
good.

In this moment of diversion, Pilazzo continued to work his hands about the sliding, shifting, gliding rosary.

Finally, one of the workers—a thin, gray-haired man—broke free from the force that had had him bound. He staggered haphazardly toward the altar, arms swatting his battered body as though on fire. The beast shot the man a wary glance, then let loose an animalistic roar that sent razor-like vibrations throughout Pilazzo's body.

If the roar had been meant as a distraction to the man, it served no good. With nothing more than blind intent, he reached the periphery of the altar...and stepped onto it. A loud
whump
immediately sounded, followed by a blast of searing hot air. A bloom of red flames rose up from the worker's body to a height of nearly fifteen feet. The worker howled like a tortured dog, lurching aimlessly between the altar and first row of pews. The air again was filled with a reek of burning flesh. The worker collapsed down alongside the front-most pew where he curled up beneath the blistering blaze, thick plumes of black smoke wafting up through the hole in the ceiling.

The beast roared again, jerking its reptilian gaze about the altar, back and forth, back and forth. The base of the great Jesus grew even hotter, and then a loud fracture sounded. Pilazzo cowered, fearful of something dropping down on his head.

Yet despite his proximity to the beast and the terror clawing at his body, he stood his ground, massaging the rosary feverishly and making every attempt to keep his mind at ease—to breathe at a controlled pace and soothe his laboring heart. He saw his vision fade into a gray blur. Numbness raced down his spine and out his nerve endings like fire, and although he was highly distracted by the evil din filling the church—the rapid, vicious thunderstorm strikes sounding overhead, and the crackling flames eager to make their way inside—he allowed the dancing rosary to guide him and serve its divine purpose.

Another loud
crack!
rained down from above, hot dust and the hard aroma of burning wood soon trailing in its wake. The priest gazed at the beast. It was reaching through a veil of burning-flesh smoke into the protective domain of the altar, its grasp only inches from the priest's hands, and the rosary. Pilazzo could see its trespassing claws searing, blisters rising up and then bursting to release their thick yellow fluids. The beast howled in agony, its gusting force nearly knocking Pilazzo down. It pulled back, slamming its clawed feet in brutish frustration while snarling in a dozen braying voices.

Pilazzo pulled furiously upon the rosary, the beads now loose upon their string. Hot tears burst from his eyes, irritated from the smoke unfurling from the burning body. The red light emanating from the rosary exploded across his body, igniting the entire altar like a surge of rising water. A swelling heat filled his palms, and then his entire body as the rosary's beads seared his skin like embers. Still, he held on, praying, sweating profusely, the words of a previously unspoken language spilling from his lips. Never in his life had he felt such an overwhelming gush of emotions. He watched with awe as the drop-cloths on the statues began to billow beneath the churning blasts of hot air, then moved his gaze to the beast…the beast, now trembling like a sickly dog, barking and choking up a mess of ropy, green vomit, its piercing eyes darting furiously about the altar, at the drop-cloths that one by one flew off the statues like fleeing ghosts.

The beast roared and turned to its workers in a seeming panic (the flames on the burning man had tapered down into a molten heap of flesh), looking suddenly frail in the storm of wind and smoke slashing through the church. It barked something unintelligible, seemingly using up a great deal of its waning strength.

As if a cage door had been opened, the workers spilled forward, many of them tripping over themselves and falling down, free of their ghostly bonds. The pair at the front of the group lugged the crate over to the beast and dropped it at its feet.

While the beast used one muscled claw to wrench the crate open, the workers shambled over one another, looking like released rats, their faces bleeding and bruised purple, hands frantically searching the floor for their dropped weapons. Some of them succeeded. Others groped the floor like blind men, lost of their otherworldly guidance, the trophy heads of their victims rolling about like soccer balls.

Those that were armed stood and faced their master's command.

The beast reached into the crate and removed the burning chalice, flames and blood dancing across its glossy black-red surface, and over its yellow talons.

It stepped back and pointed the burning relic toward the altar. It roared with the voices of a thousand burning souls, green vomit still purling from its mouth, and shoved the raised chalice toward the altar: a fearful leader, sending its lambs to the slaughter.

In his spellbinding commitment to the rosary, Pilazzo hadn't noticed the movement from behind. But he'd sensed something else, a thin stretching vibration beating against the thin flesh of his eardrums. It seemed to have traveled down his spine and into his arms, until he realized that something hard was grasping him—something inhuman that despite its warmth, felt strikingly artificial to the touch.

He turned his face up and beheld a miraculous sight.

The red light had receded, the ceiling now an inescapably dark vista of smoke—a black hole that wrenched his mind and shoved forth the stunning reality of the circumstances. Pilazzo wanted to fall to his knees, to cover his eyes and wish away what he was seeing, but there would be no chance of that. He had become a prisoner to a new force, one he hoped fought beneath a luminosity of goodness, and not the omnipresent evil that had instantly flooded his life.

The statue next to him was grasping him on the bicep.

Carved in pure white porcelain, the statue's smooth surface remained inanimate. But its eyes were
moving
, streaked with cloudy blue spirit.

Pilazzo thought,
it can see me…

He looked at the solid white arm grasping him, and the other which remained stiff and lifeless at the statue's side. He made a feeble attempt to pull away, but found it impossible to move. When he gazed back at the statue's face, he could see that the pallid features had gained a bit of hue, the eyes now showing fringes of red, its lips the slightest tint of pink. The corners of its mouth arched up into a delicate grin.

Have they come to revenge the death of their Mother?
he thought crazily.

And then he was being pulled from the forefront of the crucifix, only the statue's arm moving, creaking hollowly as it performed the simple task. A hot breeze sprung up from the center of the altar, causing his robe to flap and flutter like sails in a storm. The statue released its iron grip. Pilazzo shrank down against the rear wall, eyes bulging, skin crawling, arms folded protectively across his trembling form, holding the glowing rosary close.

By this time, the workers had amassed before the altar, assembled in a ghastly pocket of death, a fuming mob poised for battle, flaunting their carpentry-weapons. Pilazzo gazed forlornly at them, sapped of all strength in his vulnerable position behind the moving statue. He felt as if something had sucked all the breath out of him.

And then he heard that scraping sound again, like dry fingers rubbing against plastic, and when he turned and looked he saw that all the statues were moving away from their positions that he himself had moved them to weeks earlier. St. Peter, St Michael, St Thomas, St Luke, and a second Virgin Mary, open-armed and devoid of baby. They bent and flexed ever so slightly, the creaking sounds of their joints supernaturally amplified, sounding like earth-tremors.
They're alive
, Pilazzo thought, allowing their very presence to fill his world with a sickly sort of dependence. Was this good fighting evil, or one evil challenging another?

The beast raised its arms high, displaying the burning chalice cockily, tiny flames spilling out and skittering down the length of its massive arm like fleeing roaches. It pulled its bulbous lips back showing teeth and blood-red gums that glinted with fire. It shook its malformed head and bellowed fiercely, pinning Pilazzo with huge, black eyes. Pilazzo felt the ground shudder beneath him. The hot stink of the monster's breath washed over him. The beast spun and swung its arms about maniacally, the sound of its massive claws dividing the air an unrelenting whisper. Flames spilled from the chalice now in splashes and burned the floor in oil-slick patches. Its free claw struck the nearest pew, sawing the polished wood into two wilting halves, the raw insides exploding into a smoldering shower of splinters. Its tail, now four feet long, rattled incessantly.

Slowly, the statues plodded forward, creaking noisily, descending the steps in uneven totters. Once off the altar, they became immediate targets for attack. The workers—screwdrivers and saws and drills raised high—advanced upon them.

With terror and awe and something else he couldn't put a shaky finger on, Pilazzo gazed in disbelief at the defending statues, two of them made of white porcelain, the others carved in wood and intricately hand-painted in perfect blues and reds and browns. They moved sluggishly, like b-movie zombies, way too slow to demonstrate any form of lethal defense. The collision of the workers and their tools against them emulated the roar of murderous thunder. This was quickly followed by the ear-splitting sounds of metal on porcelain, metal on wood, and the death-grip cries of those beaten workers too weak to challenge the otherworldly presences opposing them.

It seemed evident to Pilazzo that the five slow-moving statues were not intended by the spirit of the rosary to perform some ultimate battle against evil—the saints were
not
fighters. No, their combined purpose was one more cunning in nature: to act as a distraction.

The true adversary of the evil going down in St Peter's church was still rising from its post-ceremonial charms, a life bigger and more powerful than the five others combined.
It just needs more time
! a voice in Pilazzo's mind shouted. He choked on a small piece of wood that had found its way into his throat: a splinter that had come free from the tearing wood three feet to his right.

The five statues were now completely surrounded. The beast stood back from the fray, flaunting the chalice and watching with serious interest as its workers stabbed and chopped and sawed at the wood and porcelain figures. The saintly figures, now unmoving, tilted and rocked amidst the corral of attacking arms, their faces not resembling anything like saints anymore: dark, filthy chips pocking the porcelain pair, the wooden figures gouged deeply, the lumber inside their colorfully painted skins a stark, unblemished tan.

But the most inspiring of all sights was taking place right alongside Pilazzo.

The great, crucified Jesus...it was…

Father Anthony Pilazzo realized at this moment that he'd never been more afraid in his life, more than when he first beheld the beast possessing the floor before the statue of the Virgin Mary; more than just a moment ago when he beheld the hideous transformation of Henry Miller shifting into the beast. And more than a moment ago, as he watched the church statues come to life and sacrifice themselves in this battle of good versus evil.

A huge crack sounded, like a wooden bat to a baseball, and it nearly deafened him. He prayed that the sound was imagined, but then there was another more forceful sound: the ripping shriek of tortured wood. He crawled to his right along the rear wall of the church, and gazed at the incredible sight just feet away.