"Deacon Ash"

Chapter 15: Broken Cross

I had awakened seated at the kitchen table the following morning bent over at the waist with my head resting on my forearms. The bottle of Jim Beam and two empty glasses were the first things that I saw when I opened my eyes. One glass was a mere inches from me, and the other was at the other end where Deacon Ash had been sitting.

I had risen from the table to head outside for some fresh air to clear my head. I reached for the front door and grabbed the knob. The door didn't pop open when I turned. It simply turned and turned and turned, teasing me. Desperate for outside air, for freedom, I pulled hard on the door and it refused to budge. I put an ear against the wood and heard the fists of the wind knocking. At that moment, realization had set in that I was truly imprisoned.

In denial, I headed for the back door and was met with the same result. There was no escape, not from the front or back doors, anyway. My compensatory measure had been to exit through a window, upstairs or downstairs. The blacked out windows and their unwillingness to break removed the final touch of emotional defiance from within me.

I returned to the kitchen table, dejected and pulled out my cell phone to call Amanda. I had no signal. Maybe it had been for the best. What would I have told her? How would I have articulated to her that I was a prisoner in my inherited house, held at bay by a dead old man possessed by a demon? The thought alone had me considering that I had gone mad. The sealed doors, blacked out windows, the storm, and the never ending bottle of Jim Beam left behind by Deacon Ash proved that I was sane.

I was back to throwing down glass after glass of Jim Beam and coke to calm my nerves. The buzz kicked in and I had reached that familiar relaxed state, a place where I could calmly think, to try and make sense of it all.

What had Deacon Ash told me? Rules was the word that had broken through the fog covering my buzzed world. The details of his speech had been cloudy until after a few more rounds. He had told me that I had to find a way to beat him. The days are mine and the nights are his. Three days and three nights.

Drink in hand, I stood up and paced the kitchen. I searched drawers, cupboards, and the pantry. Next, the living room. I had even gone so far as to look through the supply closet. All the while, I honestly had no idea of what the hell I was looking for. I had been searching for anything out of the ordinary and found nothing.

The basement was my next option. It had once been my foster mother's lair of holiness. It had been so sacred to her that she kept it pad locked. There had to be something down there.

I went back to the kitchen and sifted through the pile of clothes that I had emptied out of my duffel bag. A layer of jeans, shirts, and underclothes had been spread by the time I came across the tiny manila envelope with the spare pad lock key. I hadn't touched that key since the first time I received it from my foster mother in the mail years ago.

I went to the basement door and unlocked the padlock, allowing gravity to take over. The large square hunk of metal dropped to the floor with a heavy thud.

I took a deep breath and wrapped my hand around the cooper doorknob. It was cold to the touch. I pulled the door open and darkness escaped from the basement. I swiped my hand along the inner wall for the light switch as I kept my eyes transfixed down the staircase. My palm passed over the switch and I flipped it upward. The light came on showing that there was nothing hiding in the absolute darkness but I was expecting someone or some evil thing to come running up at me anyway. Previous events had the fear inside of me working overtime. I had assumed that perhaps Deacon Ash had somehow desecrated the basement and left some horrible trap for me.

Save the storm, it was totally quiet, lifeless. A moment of hesitancy had ensued and even the decibels of the storm had been blocked out by the eerie silence. I had had this burning need to yell out, ask if anyone was down there. I reneged, afraid that someone or something would acknowledge against my best interest.

With the first step of my descent, I had started my downward journey into the basement. The stairs creaked under my weight. One stair had creaked so loud that I thought it was going to give in. I was at peace of mind when my feet stopped on the grey basement floor.

The basement was not in the state as I had last witnessed it. What had once been an organized area for my foster mother's infamous church fellowship nights had been reduced to storage space. It pained me to see what was and what had become, a symbolic message of her passing and my internal punishment under guilt's barrage. I was on the verge of tears, but I refused to break down. I couldn't afford to.

I still had no damned clue what I was searching for. To make matters worse, the basement was a wreck. Everything was covered by tarps or sheets and scattered in a disorderly fashion in the middle of the floor or up against the concrete walls. I passed through, snatching the tarps and sheets back, fanning at the dust clouds that floated around me. In between Jim Beam and coke refills, I must have searched around for at least an hour only to have found tables, chairs, book cases, and decorations. Before long the dust clouds had settled onto me and my drinks. The contamination in my glass hadn't thwarted me from allowing my beverages to go to waste. I had earnestly downed them anyway.

Undaunted, I continued my search until I saw a knee high, wooden chest in a corner that I had somehow managed to overlook. I went over to it and saw the design of a cross carved into the top of it. I knelt down, losing some of my drink in the process, and flipped open the lid.

My eyes lit up as I believed that I had come close to what I had been searching for. I set my drink on the floor and search through the chest. There were various sized shapes and vials of clear liquid. Upon further examination, the containers had the words holy water scribbled on them. There were bibles, some newer looking than others, some old and tattered with pages barely holding on to the binding. There were other items that had drawn me to them, objects that I had no doubt were what I what I needed; crucifixes.

I found the one crucifix that had always been within arm's reach of my foster mother. It was a huge, bronze beast-of-a-cross that had to weigh at least twenty pounds. My thin foster mother required a two-handed grip to hold it. There were times when I'd seen her with the crucifix, standing on the front porch in the middle of those stormy nights. I could never forget the times she'd send me running back to bed when I'd come downstairs to see what the commotion was all about. After each episode, she would come to my room, hold me tight, and warn me to be ready in case it comes for me. I thought nothing of it when I was younger, figured it was a church thing. As I grew and matured, I figured she was crazy.

In a matterof hours, I had been thoroughly convinced that she was not crazy. I took the proven crucifix and my drinkupstairs, ready for night to fall, ready for Deacon Ash and his hellhound tocome and pay me a visit. I thought thatI had found what I needed to fight them. I thought I was prepared for battle, to defeat the demon on the firstnight, and get out of the house, out of Blackwood. I had thought wrong.