7:9
“Hi Lisa.”
The woman was still rocking in place.
“I’m Sally Benton and this is Jack Sawyer. Can we talk to you?”
“It sounds like you’re already talkin’ to me.”
They sat down on a couch across from her.
Lisa looked them over carefully, “You ain’t the police. Cops dress nicer than you.”
Jack looked down at his wrinkled coat, “No Lisa. We’re not.”
Sally sent her an unsure smile, “We’d like to speak with you, if you don’t mind.”
Lisa sat staring at her blankly.
They sat down on a couch across from her.
Sally continued, “Do you remember Linda Holland?”
“I don’t know nobody by that name.”
“Are you sure? She was a victim of the Howard Killien cult twenty years ago.”
Lisa’s face twisted into a scar of hate, “That crazy bitch weren’t no victim. She could better be described as a, uh, accomplice.”
“So you remember her?”
Lisa looked up angrily, “I remember everything.”
“I understand that this is probably painful for you but…”
She stabbed at Sally with an intense glare. Her eyes were surrounded by dark purple skin.
“But you’re not here to spare my feelings, so why don’t you just get to what you want to ask me.”
Sally was unnerved by her straight forwardness. Lisa didn’t seem insane. She just seemed pissed off.
Sally cleared her throat and asked, “Was there just one type of ritual performed or, were there more?”
“We did all kinds of shit.”
“Well, other than the, uh…” She didn’t want to say the word in fear of upsetting Lisa, but she didn’t know how else to say it, “…sacrifice ritual, could you tell us about the others?”
Her back and forth rocking stopped. She looked at Sally and smiled. Her remaining teeth were dark yellow.
“You want to know about banishing and possession, don’t you?”
Sally tried not to appear caught off guard. But the fact remained that the woman sitting there with them knew exactly what they were after. While Jack and Sally were uncomfortably surprised, she had become overly pleased with herself.
“The devils are at it again, huh?” Then she added sarcastically, “Is what’s in my head gonna save the world?”
Jack spoke up for the first time, “Let’s just sat that any information you can provide would be very important to us.”
Lisa gave them a disgusted glare. She took a deep breath and put her feet down on the floor. She leaned in close to them.
“All right. My cell was the closest to their little…meeting room. I heard them talking all the time. And, I’ve got a photographic memory, so I remember all of it.”
She wiped her nose and continued, “One time they brought this man down there. I don’t know what he looked like. I only seen him once. They did the banishing ritual on him. They used the bird and called out some such crap from that book. We cast thee out from thy temple, or some shit like that.”
She paused to see if they doubted her self-proclaimed photographic memory.
“It was a fucking long time ago, gimmie a break.”
Sally tried to sound empathetic, “It’s alright. Go on.”
“Okay. He was cast out of his body. You know, his soul. And then Killien hopped right in. He possessed him for an hour or so, until the body spat him out.”
Jack was confused, “What do you mean?”
“Look, anyone can take over a body with no spirit for a while. But it will eventually knock yer ass out, cause it doesn’t belong there.”
“So he couldn’t control him for good?”
“Well, not at first. You see, the body needs energy it recognizes, otherwise it rejects it, just like an organ transplant. If it doesn’t like you, you’re outa there.”
“But after awhile the body starts to recognize the spirit? It starts to accept it?”
“Yes. But not because the body changes. Because the spirit changes.”
Sally’s puzzled look was obvious. “I don’t get it.”
“Each mortal body has only one astral signature it will mesh with. As a soul spends time in that body, it will begin to take on that signature, and the more time it can remain in the body. And after awhile, it don’t take long neither, that spirit will have as much right to the person as the original does.”
Jack understood what was happening now. Killien had been trying to steal his body.
“But he couldn’t go all the way. The more his energy matched that man’s body, the less it matched his own.” Lisa laughed to herself, “The sonofabitch’s own body started kicking him out. It served that asshole right.”
“What other rituals do you know about?”
“There were the binding spells.”
“Spells? There were more than one?”
“Yeah. One of them bound a body and a spirit together, after the body accepted it of course. After that the soul was locked in, it couldn’t leave. As long as there was life in the body, the energy was fused together with it.”
“That’s what Killien is trying to do. He wants to steal my body, for good,” a chill went down Jack’s spine.
Lisa looked at him, “If he’s trying to take you, he wouldn’t be performing that spell.”
“Why not?”
“The whole point of all of it for that sick fucker was to gain power. He was becoming a god. And how did he do that, you may ask. Well the sacrificial ritual was more than just that. It was the black communion. That’s where he absorbed the dying person’s soul. Death for the dead.”
“My God.”
“Yeah. And you need to travel to do that.”
Sally looked at Jack, “He’d want to continue his work.”
Lisa’s voice became a whisper, “It’s the other binding spell he’d be looking to do on you.”
“Tell us.”
“The other one lays claim to a mortal body. It makes the universe recognize it as his. That way he would still be free to travel, perform rituals, and everything.”
“But what would that do to me?”
“If he took your place on earth, well, you’d have to take his place. You’d switch with him.”
“What’s his place?”
“If there’s any justice at all, I suppose his place would be in Hell.”
Jesus.
Jack remembered the swirling torment, the pain he saw at the outer realm. That was Hell. The souls there were screaming in the pain. And Jack had seen him. He was sure it was Killien. He was the only one that had the power to leave. He was glowing bright, very strong.
My god, I could end up in that place. I can’t let that happen. But how do I stop it?
“How do we beat him? Please tell us.”
“If he has as much connection with your flesh as you do, God help us all.”
“There has to be a way.”
“You couldn’t do it by yourself. You’d need help.”
“From who? God?”
“Let’s just say I’ve been present while Killien consumed more than twenty souls. He’s almost as powerful as an angel.”
“As powerful as an angel?”
“No. Almost. He’s not a god yet.”
“So we would need the help of an angel?”
“Don’t be fooled. There are two kinds of angels. While one might help you, the other might trick you.”
“How do we know the difference?”
“God casts away those who don’t follow him. If you can find God, you can find his angels.”
Jack remembered the extraordinary feeling he’d gotten from the exploding cloud,
“Heaven. That’s where God is. I’ve been there.”
“He and the place are the same. If you’ve seen heaven, you’ve seen God.”
I touched God?
The wonderful sensation of bliss that he’d felt had been from God himself. Jack could barely comprehend it.
Lisa didn’t want to them to leave just yet, “And the book, you’ll need the book if you want to use the spells against him.”
“But how?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know everything.”
A nurse walked up and put a hand on her shoulder, “It’s time for lunch Lisa, alright?”
She stood up,
“Just know that it’s a war. It’s been going on since the beginning. You can be the turning point or you can be a casualty. Either way, you’re not just fighting for yourself. You’re fighting for all of us.”
7:10
Sally stood in the frigid air next to the Nissan. She shivered waiting for Jack to unlock the door. They got in and he started the engine. Cool air blasted at them from the vents. He turned down the fan.
“We need that book. Do you think you can get it?”
“I don’t know Jack. What if I got caught? What if she…”
Sally could hardly believe that she was afraid of her own grandmother.
“Think of what’s at stake. We have to get it.”
“I know, I…wait. The house next door to hers is empty. It’s been up for rent for a month now. If I could get in there I could wait till she’s not home, or something.”
“I’ll drop you off at your car. Please, do whatever it takes. Just get the book.”
“And then what Jack? What do we do, even if we get it?”
“I don’t know.”
The winter storm that had subsided that morning was beginning again. The temperature was down to fifteen degrees. By nightfall if would be below zero. It had started again. Jack hoped that he would have an opportunity to see the sun again. With each passing minute, it seemed further and further away.
7:11
Linda rested her cheek on the receiver. After three rings the woman at the other end picked up. Linda’s voice was friendly and cheerful.
“Hello, Betty? Yes, this is Linda. You’re still coming, aren’t you?”
A pause.
Linda held the plastic charcoal lighter in her left hand. She clicked the trigger and a flame shot out the end. She held it up staring into the orange fire as it twitched.
She spoke again, “Yes, of course gin rummy…Well, I don’t know how to play regular rummy either.”
Another pause.
”Yes…Oh and Betty, go through the alley and come in the back door, would you? The front’s jammed completely shut. Must be all the moisture we’re having…Alright, fifteen minutes. See you then.”
7:12
Jack watched as Sally sped away in the Volkswagen. He could not go with her. He had his own task to accomplish. He thought about what Lisa had said. Could everything that was happening now really mean the end of the world? It seemed ridiculous.
The death of God? God can’t die, can he?
He didn’t even believe in God before all of this started happening. And now, he was rushing to find him. He had to if he was going to save himself and everything, from Killien.
He clicked open the deadbolt with the key Sally had given him. He entered the bookstore. The metal chair was still sitting in the middle of the room. The yellow nylon rope lay in a winding pile on the floor. He pulled the purple velvet box out of his deep coat pocket. With the lid open he took a few seconds to watch the ever-flowing liquid in the glass vial. The blood that had once pumped through the veins of the Nephilim looked black and cold.
copyright ©2002 Brian Holtz
All rights reserved