Ultimate Thriller Box Set - Crouch Blake - Страница 36

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Father Thrist's chest swelled.

“I am honored. Lucifer Michael it is. I was named after the arch angel Micha-el. Did you know him?”

“Nooooooooo.”

“Tell me about God again,” Thrist said.

He felt like a child who never tired of his favorite bedtime story.

“God is pure blissssssss. He’s watching us right noooooow. He loves yoooooooou.”

Thrist closed his eyes, trying to imagine being in the presence of God. Thrist had never known bliss. It sounded too wonderful to bear.

“Let us save your soul then,” the priest said, “so you may once again be with God in heaven.”

Father Thrist nodded and patted the satchel he carried. In it were two copies of the Missale Romanum—the Latin Mass. Bub would serve as the choir and read the responses. The bag also contained a vial of holy water, a goblet, an unleavened circle of bread with a cross imprinted upon it, and a small bottle of red wine.

“We shall celebrate Mass,” Thrist said. “You shall be baptized, get Penance, and finally receive the Body and Blood of Christ.”

“Through the glasssssssss?” Bub asked.

The priest shook his head. “I shall be in the habitat with you.”

The creature uncrossed his legs and stood. He approached the Plexiglas slowly.

Bub whispered, “Aren't you afraaaaaaaaid?”

“Of course not, Bub. I have no reason to be.”

Father Thrist marched over to the side hatch without fear. He opened the small door with the assurance of his faith.

Big mistake.

Bub was waiting for him when he entered. He grabbed the priest in his claw and held him up against the inner wall of the dwelling, five feet off the ground.

“What are you doing?” the priest asked, more surprised than afraid.

Bub grinned, a mouth of daggers.

“Open the dooooooooor,” the demon said.

“This is not the way to be saved,” Thrist said. “That door isn't the door you need to worry about. The door to heaven is...”

“Shhhhhhhhhhh,” Bub held a talon over Thrist's mouth. “Enough talk of heaven and God and Jesussssss. I met Jesus, priest, but not in the desssssssert. I met him in a whore hooooouse. He was fat and uuuuuugly.”

“Lies,” Thrist’s voice was barely a whisper. He couldn’t get his mind around what was happening. “Blasphemy.”

“The whoooooooores didn't want to touch him. He had to pay extraaaaaa. But at least he didn’t die a virrrrrgin... like yooooooou.”

The reality of the deceit now weighed fully on Thrist. His friend, Rabbi Shotzen, had been right all along. In his eagerness for proof, he had eschewed faith.

This time, the epiphany had come too late. He was a fool to think he could change the devil.

But he wasn't fool enough to listen to his lies.

“I... renounce you, Satan.”

“Open the doooooor.”

Bub traced an upside down cross on Thrist's left cheek, drawing blood. Thrist was terrified, but the holy man refused to flinch.

“Let meeeee give you Holy Communion, Faaaaaaather.” Bub barked a laugh. “Hoc est enim corpus meum!”

Take and eat this, for this is my body.

Bub pinched himself in the pectoral muscle and removed several ounces of his own flesh. The wound knitted itself instantly.

Thrist tried to turn his head away, but Bub forced the raw meat into his mouth. It was warm and smelled of decay, and it seemed to wiggle and squirm as if still alive.

The priest vomited, staining his vestments.

It would be the first of many stains.

“Open the doooooor.”

“Never,” Thrist spat. “I will not do the work of the devil.”

“Christ died in paaaaaaaain.”  Bub said. “Your death can be woooooooorse.”

Bub moved his face closer to the priest's. Thrist could smell his fetid breath and see ragged bits of sheep still clinging to his teeth.

“The Lord is my shepherd,” Thrist said, “I shall not want.”

“Heeeeere comes the paaaaaaaain.”

Thrist felt Bub's claw sliding down his left leg. The demon grabbed it tight and slowly began to twist. There were cracking sounds, and then a loud pop when the knee gave out.

Thrist screamed, the first time he'd ever screamed in his life.

“Now waaaaatch.”

The priest felt a pressure in his chest, akin to suffocation. Then his body was enveloped in a fold of warmth, a warmth so complete that Thrist thought the Holy Spirit had rescued him.

He was mistaken.

“I just healed yoooooour leg”

Thrist was astonished to find the agony completely gone. He moved his leg and it felt normal.

“Here is cooooomes.”

Bub twisted the leg again, faster than before.

Again Thrist cried out, but this time Bub opened his toothy maw and a black tongue snaked out, slithering into Thrist's mouth and silencing the cry.

Tears streaked down the priest's face as Bub wiggled the broken leg this way and that way, his vile tongue raping Thrist's throat.

Father Thrist prayed for death.

It didn't come.

Just as he was close to passing out, Bub removed his tongue and allowed him to breathe again.

“Do you want me to heeeeeeeeeeal you?” Bub whispered.

Thrist's face began to spasm, his left eye blinking uncontrollably. His facial tic had returned.

“Open the doooooor.”

The priest said nothing. The pain in his leg was overwhelming, but even worse was the left side of his face. Every twitch of his upper lip pierced his soul.

“What's wrong with your faaaaaaaaaace?”

Thrist's entire world was reduced to despair. The facial tic was proof. His God had forsaken him.

“I can make it wooooooorse,” Bub said.

He gave the leg a twist and Thrist blacked out.

*

When the holy man awoke, there was no pain.

“We can do this all daaaaaay,” Bub said.

He grabbed the same leg. Father Thrist gagged at the thought of the oncoming agony. He knew he couldn't handle it again. The very idea made his gorge rise.

“...please...”

“Where is your God nooooooow?”

Thrist’s eyelid was blinking like crazy. “...no more...”

“Pray to me, Faaaaaather. Pray to me to not to hurt yoooooooou.”

“I... I...”

“Kneeeeeeeel, priest.”

Thrist knew he was a dead man. The moment he'd stepped into the habitat, his fate had been sealed. But that was the fate of his body. The fate of his eternal soul remained unresolved.

Until now.

Father Michael Thrist silently asked God for the forgiveness of his sins, and thanked the Almighty for the privilege of his life and the opportunity presented to him. Thrist had come there today expecting a baptism, but it turned out he was the one about to be baptized.

The Church called it the Baptism of Blood. Dying a violent death in the name of the Lord.

Thrist embraced martyrdom like a gift.

“No.”

“Nooooooooooo?”

Thrist faced the demon. His facial tic had disappeared, and he stood proudly, without fear. Jesus died for mankind’s sins, and Thrist was honored to die in His name.

“I shall not kneel.”

Bub lifted the priest up and twisted each of his feet backwards. Thrist began to cry, and Bub held him on the ground in a kneeling position.

“Worship meeeeeeeee.”

“No,” the priest said through clenched teeth.

The demon took one of Thrist's arms and bent it back at the elbow. It snapped with the sound of a gun shot. Thrist screamed again.

“Proclaim your loyalty to meeeeeeee.”

There could be no worse death, Thrist thought. Or no greater death.

“I proclaim... my loyalty...”

“Yesssssssssssss.”

He looked up, past Bub, past the ceiling, past the two hundred feet of earth above them.

Thrist said it clear and strong, “To my Lord, Jesus Christ.”

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