THE CHURCH OF BLOOD

Chapter Eleven - "Accursed Be He Who Useth This Knowledge Unto An Evil End..."

Father Clark glared at Anita through inhuman eyes, his face twisted into a maniacal sneer. He stood on the opposite side of Antony's bed, close to the headboard, his right hand extended over Antony's nude form which in the process of levitation. The young man was unconscious, limp as if in a coma, eyes closed, his legs and arms hanging loosely just inches from the mattress. The priest was in the middle of a strange ritual, and Anita was interrupting.

"You miserable little whore," he spat, his voice abnormally low and inhuman.

Anita jumped out of her skin when he spoke, his voice and words cutting through her like a knife. The tears started to fall and she wanted to run but she was frozen in her spot, shaking uncontrollably. She cast fearful yet loving eyes at her comatose son, feeling helpless to do something, anything for him. The scene before her was something straight out of a horror movie. It scared her to death.

Father Clark stepped away from Antony's side and began walking toward her, his shoes crunching on the pieces of broken glass that had come from the window. There did appear to have been a struggle between priest and teenager. Father Clark had a busted lip and Antony's left shoulder revealed a cut, possibly from the window.

But how did Father Clark even get in here?

With the priest slowly approaching her, Anita merely cowered mumbling with quivering lips. She couldn't move, the fear gripping her like a cold, icy hand. A thousand pleas to the Holy Virgin Mother Mary ran through her frenzied mind. Surely help would come soon. Hopefully.

Please help me, Mary, Mother of God!

"That bitch can't help you," Father Clark hissed, reading the poor woman's thoughts like an open book. "She's dead! Do you really think those stupid rituals and pathetic prayers are really worth your time? It's all pointless, woman of God! And a pathetic god at that!"

He clapped his hands together loudly and the room literally shook. Anita screamed, piercing the interior with frenzied looks of horror. Her son was unaffected by the bizarre commotion.

"God can never give this kind of power," Father Clark replied in the same strange demonic voice. "He's weak, sending His own Son quote unquote to earth to do the dirty work for Him. Even watching His precious Son die on a cross. What kind of loving Father does that to His own? And this is the God you worship? Hmm?"

He stopped in front of her, glaring at her with eyes suddenly gone black. He stood there for several moments, saying nothing.

Anita didn't know what to do. She was too petrified to move, too frozen to even blink. She just watched this insane priest continually stare at her with jet black eyes.

Father Clark tilted his head slightly as if mocking her. "ANSWER ME!"

The room shook again, darkness ebbing its way into the atmosphere like a cloud.

Anita shrieked and suddenly found the courage to turn and run out of the room, sprinting down the hallway and toward the stairs with all of her might. She took to the carpeted stairwell like a petrified rat running from a hungry feline, her house shoes coming loose on her feet and causing her to slip, landing and sliding downward on her bum. Her hands groped the wooden balustrade, attempting to use it as support to get back onto her feet so she could scurry into the kitchen and use the landline phone to call the police and get them over here to deal with...what? A psychotic priest (if you could even refer to him as a priest at this point) who summons whatever powers of hell causing supernaturalistic phenomenon to occur and who is now holding her son in a hypnotic state? Sure, why not? She could only hope the cops had super power bullets to kill that dastardly excuse of a priest and end this nightmare.

Anita somehow found her footing and scampered into the kitchen. A knife. Find a knife! Any knife! Then grab the phone!

"Fee fie foe fum!" Father Clark bellowed from the hallway close to the stairs. "I smell the blood of a scared little housewife! And how scared she is!" He then laughed, a deeply disturbing gravely noise. It chilled Anita to the bone.

Anita seized upon the largest knife from the utensil drawer then darted back across the kitchen to grab the phone.

That was when the doorbell rang.

Anita stopped. She listened. There was no noise from upstairs.

The doorbell rang again followed by a knock.

This was no doubt a chance of escape.

Anita sprang past the stairs and toward the door, wrenching it open and revealing Detectives Beynolds and Nyles, and a young woman she hadn't met before.

"Help!" Anita screamed, her crying intensifying. "Help me!"

Beynolds and Nyles drew their weapons while Tabitha embraced Anita and led her out of the way and into the living room.

"Father Clark!" Anita managed. "He's upstairs! He's upstairs!"

Beynolds reached the stairs first and stopped.

Antony stood nude in the middle of the steps, awake but as if in a daze.

"Mrs. Eldridge," Beynolds called. "What's wrong with your son?"

"Antony!" Anita pulled from Tabitha's grip and joined both Beynolds and Nyles. She saw Antony and fell to her knees. "Antony!"

The young man's gaze was blank, staring straight ahead as he sluggishly descended the stairs. There was an inverted pentagram drawn on his abdomen in red liquid, although upon closer inspection it was blood. Beynolds caught the teenager as he stumbled into the wall while Nyles bolted past them and into the hallway with the .45 in his grip, searching for Father Clark.

Antony was breathing heavily and was incredibly weak. Beynolds cradled him in an attempt to keep the young man warm as he was shivering. "Tabitha, call an ambulance. 235 Eckhard Street."

Tabitha nodded. "Sure." She removed her cell phone from her front jean pocket and punched 911.

"Mrs. Ettison, do you have an extra blanket?" Beynolds asked the distraught woman.

"Um yes...yes, uh, I do..." The poor woman was lost.

"Mrs. Ettison, I need you to calm down. It's going to be okay. I need you to get a blanket. Okay?

Anita nodded vacantly, rising to her feet. She took close to four steps before she collapsed.

Tabitha rushed to the woman's side, carefully turning her over and cradling her head in her arms. "The ambulance is on the way," she replied.

"'Accursed is he who useth this knowledge unto an evil end, be he accursed in this world and in the world to come.'"

Beynolds glanced down at Antony as he recited those words and then the young man blacked out.

"What the hell was that?" Tabitha wondered.

Beynolds shrugged and shook his head. "No clue." He glanced up the stairs.

"Nyles! Any sign of Father Clark?"

Nothing. No sound.

"Nyles!"

Nyles appeared at the top of the stairs. His gaze was fixed downward and he was silent.

"Nyles!"

Nyles took a sluggish step backward.

"Nyles?"

Suddenly, an unseen force picked the muscular detective up off the floor and flung him like a useless ragdoll down the stairs.

©2017, All rights reserved.