On the steeple of a church in a New England hamlet, Samuel Burtwhistle stared at the moon. His left big toe poked from his shoe. The sleeves of his mustard-stained vestments flapped in a breeze. And his beer-crusted mustache tickled his nose. He had waited for hours atop this holy building’s perch, staring up into the clear summer night.
“Come on, you daft blob,” Samuel muttered at the celestial orb above.
The whiskey warmth inside him had faded, replaced with cold impatience. He wrenched a flask from his pocket and pressed it to his lips. He tilted it, shook it, mumbled into its dark throat, but no liquid emerged. He sighed and returned to his moon watch, but then he noticed a glint of red slithering from the orb’s underbelly.
He flung his flask from the steeple and cried, “Yes! Bleed, you beautiful egg!” He threw open a hatch and screamed down the church tower, “The blood moon comes, Benny boy! Ready the book!”
He clutched a rope attached to the steeple’s bell and tossed it from side to side. Dense, melodic clangs erupted through the village. One by one windows grew bright with candlelight as Cherrytown’s residents shuffled from their bed chambers, out into the cool June night.
Samuel released the rope and climbed down a rickety ladder into the belly of the church, bursting into the sanctuary. Garlic hanging from rafters swayed at the fresh rush of air. Smudged mirrors leaned against the back of the altar, facing a humble row of pews. Samuel kicked his nephew snoring in the priest’s chair.
“Wake up, Benny!” he cried. “You sleep through everything!”
“I’m tired,” Benny replied, rubbing his bloodshot eyes.
The rotund, pimply teenager yawned and straightened his altar boy robes. The garment was far too small for the fourteen year old, clearly meant for a child half his age. It clung to his belly like a wet rag and when he walked, his arms bounced like timber slung over a logger’s shoulders.
“I’ve toiled in this miserable town since Easter,” Samuel hissed as he stood over the boy. “I’ve blessed babies, I’ve given communion, I even learned Latin for Christ’s sake all while you just grumbled and moaned.” He paused to relish Benny’s face growing long with guilt, then continued, “Just be useful for once in your life. Get up.”
Satisfied with his scolding, Samuel rushed to an altar cabinet and flung open its doors. He pulled out a large, leather bound tome with crimson-edged pages. Across its cover were hundreds of indecipherable, runic etchings. For a moment, Samuel stared at the thing as if greeting a long lost lover. Finally, he turned to Benny as the boy emerged from his papal rest.
“Take this cursed thing as I rally the town,” Samuel said, shoving the tome into Benny’s chest. The teenager cautiously grasped the book by its edges.
“Why must I hold it?” the boy said, keeping the book at arms-length as if it would bite.
“Because the altar boy always carries the big books,” Samuel replied, already halfway down the aisle of the church. “If it smokes or burps, yell for me.”
He burst through the sanctuary's front doors into the summer night. A crowd of dozens had already formed just up the street; some held candles, some torches but all had their family bibles tucked beneath their arms.
“Give a-me zoze holy vezzelz,” Samuel said in the terrible German-Italian accent he faked whenever he was in the presence of Cherrytown’s residents. He snatched a bible from a woman’s hands and tossed it into the mud. “Ze rezt of you, throw zem down az well.”
One by one, bibles of all shapes and sizes fell into the road. Samuel wrenched a torch from an old man’s grasp and tossed it onto the books. As pages caught fire fathers backed away, mothers yelped and children hid behind their parents.
“I’m sorry, Father Fausto,” a man said, removing a patchworked farming hat from his bald head, “but how does burning our bibles help again?”
“HArbert,” Samuel replied, irritated, “If you-a-came to mass last Zunday instead of drinking yourself into a piss puddle, you’d know.”
But then Samuel paused for a moment, impressed by how comfortably in-character he’d become over the last few months in this wretched town. He’d been summoned here by rumors — a child possessed by demons, the resident priest dead. Broke and desperate he dragged his nephew to Cherrytown for one last con, both of them taking fake names in hopes of winning the hamlet’s trust before the June Blood Moon, the only time a demon could truly be exorcized from a body, would arrive.
His plan was to rid the cursed child of her unholy parasite by utilizing a mysterious book that had come into his possession years ago, back when he was still hunting vampires and werewolves for meager coin. He had been told this ancient tome was capable of devouring the souls of demons, sucking them into its pages for eternity. And though two years had passed before he could test this theory, finally he’d found a real demon and a town desperate enough to believe anything he said, as well as pay him handsomely. He honestly had no idea how to perform an exorcism, but he figured this book would do all the work for him. Now, at the finish line of this months-long con, he could almost smell the pile of coins that would finally rid him of his debts. All that was left to do was banish this demon.
“Ve burn zes bibles, everyone,” Samuel continued over holy flames while staring at Herbert with brows furrowed in impatience, “because zey are like goose cooking over hearth. Hellspawn cannot rezist ze fragrance and thus emerge much quicker from their mortal host. Remember mein flock, ze blood moon lasts for but a moment, so anything we can do to hasten ziss process must be-a-done. Understood?” Everyone, including the bald farmer, nodded. Pleased with his performance, Samuel smirked and said, “Now continue burning az I fetch ze child.”
He pushed past the growing throng of villagers and marched up a muddy street before stopping at a decrepit house. Dozens of crucifixes lined its facade, clattering in the wind. Every shutter was drawn and claw marks lined the wood frame of the entryway. He took a deep breath, then pounded on the door.
“Margaret,” Samuel shouted just as guttural howls erupted from inside the home. “Margaret, itz time. Please open ze—“
The door snapped open just a hair and a woman stared at Samuel with fearful eyes. She held a candlestick beneath her chin. Little shadows danced across her face.
“She’s angry,” the woman whispered.
“Margaret,” Samuel said, “let me in.”
But Margaret didn’t budge.
“Will it hurt her?” she asked.
Samuel solemnly nodded. “It vill be ze vorzt pain she has ever felt,” he said, “but once ze rite is complete she shall be free. Whole again. A child vonce more.”
The woman’s lip quivered. “But could she die?”
Samuel stared at her as the screams behind the door grew louder.
“Perhaps,” he replied, “but she vill surely perish should ze demon remain inzide her. You must trust me, Margaret. You have seen me marry many people in this town. I have baptized babies and sent the dead to rest. I assure you, I am a professional of the holy papal order. Exorcisms, though indeed tricky, are unfortunately routine in these troubled times.”
Margaret considered his words for a moment. She studied Samuel’s composed, thoughtful eyes, glanced over his priest vestments, saw the rosary beads strung across his neck. She sighed, nearly blowing out the candle beneath her chin. Then she opened the door and stepped aside as Samuel rushed into the home.
He was immediately greeted by a girl, no older than ten, writhing in a clumsily constructed wheelchair. Her wrists and ankles were tightly bound with rope. Black veins pulsed along her neck. She screamed and barked at the fake priest as he stood in the doorway.
“Do you have ze money?” Samuel said to Margaret who stared with both pity and fear at the girl in the wheelchair. He snapped his fingers at her, breaking her gaze. “My fee, Margaret.”
“Oh,” Margaret said. “Yes.” She dashed to her mantle and lifted a large urn, but as she turned she tripped and dropped the ceramic vessel, shattering it across the floor and spilling hundreds of coins everywhere.
“Christ, Margaret!” Samuel shouted. “Is it four hundred at least?”
“Much more than that,” Margaret replied. “Everyone pitched in! I’ll clean it up, I’m sorry!”
“I’ll come for it after,” Samuel said with a huff. “There’s no time.”
He leapt behind the possessed child as she thrashed and howled.
“You lied to them,” the demon girl screamed as Samuel wheeled her through the home, crunching over coins. “Just like you lied to your nephew. Like you lie to yourself every day.”
Ignoring her, Samuel pushed the hellspawn-riddled child out of the house, into the muddy streets.
“You’re weak,” the girl continued. “You’ll burn like your brother, like your niece.”
He wheeled her through the crowd of townsfolk, back to the mound of burning bibles. Benny approached with the crimson book. Samuel released his hold on the wheelchair and took his place beside his nervous nephew, facing the villagers. Between him and the hamlet’s denizens, the flames of burning holy books twisted upward toward a moon now engulfed in red.
“My fellow villagerz,” Samuel shouted over the demon girl’s screams of protest. “Ze blood moon haz arrived. Vis zis book, handled viz ze utmost care by my ezteemed altar boy, Garfunkel von Schӧrtsing, who you have all grown to know und love, I shall vanquish ze demon inside sveet Lily’s mortal coil and finally return order to your most humble town.” He leaned down to Benny and whispered, “Has the book done anything yet?”
“Like what?” Benny replied.
“I dunno, puffs of smoke?”
“No.”
“Is it warm?”
“Not at all.”
“Did it jiggle or shake?”
“Nothing.”
Samuel groaned. “Well, stand in front of me and hold it open at least.”
“What page?”
“Doesn’t matter, just open it.”
Benny shuffled in front of Samuel and opened the book, revealing blank pages.
Samuel then shouted, “I vill now read from zis ancient text.” But then he glanced at Benny and whispered, “Higher.” Benny lifted the book up to his chest. “No, above your head.” The boy obliged.
“Foulezt creature!” Samuel cried as the girl in the wheelchair wailed and shook. “Reveal zyself from your wretched void. By zis ancient vessel, I DECLARE!”
He glanced at the tome. A blank page flapped in the wind. Benny shrugged.
Samuel closed his eyes and continued, “By ze power of Christ, of God and all ze angels, of Joseph and Mariah, of Hinklesmith and Jean-Claude and Renaldo… all ze Saints—“
“Sam!” Benny screamed.
Samuel opened his eyes to find his nephew suddenly hovering off the ground, his hands still clasped around the open book. The townsfolk gasped and muttered prayers. The demon girl viciously laughed. Samuel pointed at her.
“Unhand him!” He said.
“Help! Sam!” Benny cried.
The boy was already above the rooftops, floating higher toward the blood moon as clouds began to swirl around him.
“Let go of ze book, Garfunkel!” Samuel shouted, having no idea what to do but still trying to stay in character. He glanced around at the crowd who looked to him for guidance.
“I can’t!” Benny replied.
Blood suddenly erupted from the thickening clouds, pouring over the town and drenching Samuel and the villagers with a crimson monsoon. Torches and candles extinguished. Everyone ran for their homes but found their doors and windows locked. They banged against them.
“Sam!” Benny cried from high above. “It’s shouting! The book is shouting!”
Yet Samuel was immobile as thunder clapped and lightning struck. He watched, stunned and silent, as blood rained across the town, worse than any storm he’d ever witnessed. He found it hard to see, to even breathe in this torrential downpour.
“I will devour all you love,” the demon girl shouted, still bound to her wheelchair. “With this book you have brought me, forged from the skin of ancient evils, I will quench a thirst that has grown for millennia and extinguish the candle of every soul in this wretched world. All will hail my name — Ammi, Goddess of Wrath.”
Red light engulfed the hamlet before a deafening thunderclap erupted from the book. A shock wave rippled through the town, hurling Samuel into the mud. Shingles tore from rooftops. Windows shattered. Lying in the road Samuel curled tight like a bug. He clenched his fists and shut his eyes. The ground shook beneath him. His ears popped as wind howled and grabbed at him with a thousand fingers. He felt he might die, that maybe even the whole world might die. Then he wished that damned flask hadn’t been empty. He wished he could have had one last drink before the end. To feel that very particular kind of numbing rather than terror as wind, rain and screams grew louder, louder, louder until…
Silence.
Samuel opened his eyes. The red light was gone. The crimson rain had ceased. The sky was clear and the moon was white again. Yet where the burning bible mound had been was now an enormous crater which took up the width of the road. Every home was drenched in a glistening red and where the townsfolk had stood, only their soggy clothes remained.
The ancient tome splashed into the mud beside Samuel. With trembling hands he picked it up, opened it and thumbed through blank pages. He sighed and tossed it back into the muck.
Above him, his nephew’s child-sized robes fluttered through the early morning breeze before sinking into the crater. It splashed into a bloody pond where the little demon girl was still bound to her wheelchair. But now her eyelids fluttered as if stirred from a deep, dreamless sleep. She yawned, then looked up at Samuel.
“What happened?” She said.
She pulled at her hemp shackles, jostling the wheelchair back and forth. Brown waves rippled across the murky pond beneath her.
“Why am I tied up?” she said, examining her legs, her arms, her feet and hands all covered in red. “Is that blood?” Her breathing hastened. “Why’s there blood on me?” She erupted into screams, glancing back and forth between this mud-covered priest above her and the surrounding crater she was trapped inside.
But Samuel just watched her in a daze from the edge of the pit.
Because everyone else in Cherrytown was gone.
Well, that didn't go as planned. An interesting read and a suspenseful ending to the first chapter.
Thoroughly enjoyed this read, Jason! You've done a great job of grounding the story in the real before delving into the more fantastical and mysterious elements.