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The 13th Demon: Altar of the Spiral Eye

By Bruce Hennigan

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CHAPTER 1
Lakeside, Louisiana

Along the western horizon, the sun settled, blood red, the very eye of Satan glaring down upon the man standing in front of the horror that had once been his church. Alone on the second floor balcony, the man’s voice echoed into the coming night.
“God, what have I done to deserve this?” Reverend Thomas Parker spoke to the closed doors before him. He backed away toward the wrought iron railing and gasped as he realized he was leaning against the bent, misshapen portion of the railing where it had all began. He pushed away from the railing, bit his thumbnail and looked around at the huge white columns and across the empty balcony. In front of him were the two huge, wooden doors that led into the foyer of his church. Four windows on each side were coated with caked dust. No one had been inside the church in weeks. But, it was not empty and he had to get to his office.
A squeaking filled the silence and Parker watched in horror as the doorknob began to turn. He backed away until he felt his heels at the edge of the huge, stone stairway. Sweat poured down from his forehead and he felt his dress shirt sticking to his ribs. The squeaking stopped. Silence descended.
“Is someone there?” He whispered. But, from inside there was no answer.
Parker sighed and pushed his glasses back up on his nose. His heart slowed and he wiped his coat sleeve across his forehead. The coat swallowed him. He had lost twenty pounds in the last month. “I’m not walking away this time.” He said to the lifeless door. “You won’t scare me away!”
The door burst open with a rush of wind and a red mist engulfed him. Parker stepped back and he tasted the red liquid in the air. It was coppery, salty. Blood! Through the tiny red droplets on his glasses, he watched a river of blood surge through the open doorway. His foot slid as the pool of blood came toward him and he fell backward, bouncing off the stone banister, rolling down onto the steps, nothing but a mixture of fear and pain filling his mind. He slowed his fall halfway down the stairs and looked up at the open doors. The blood cascaded over the top step and poured down the steps, tendrils of crimson coming for him.
Parker slid back, tumbled once again until he came to a halt on his back on the sidewalk in front of the church. The blood came down the stairs, pooling at the base just inches from his feet. He scooted back away from the pool, watching it grow into a large circle of shimmering red.
“Do you think this is going to scare me away?”
Parker watched the girl and her child appear around the corner of the stairway. Her yellow hair rested on her shoulders and she wore the same cotton dress with sunflowers as on the day she had wormed her way into his life. She couldn’t have been over sixteen but that didn’t seem to matter to the toddler that held her left hand. The boy was dark headed and somewhere between a year and two years of age. His nose was running and he wore only a disposable diaper. The young woman picked up the child.
“No! This is not my doing. Don’t you know what is going on around here?” Parker pointed a bloody hand up the stairs.
“You know what I want. Time is running out.” She said and the toddler smiled.
“Boooopah!” He said.
“Look, it’s in my office and I can’t get inside because of,” he gestured at the pools of blood. “This!”
“I’m not leaving, Thomas. We’re in the nursery.” She disappeared from sight back toward the door under the stairs that led into the basement of the old church.
A fly buzzed by his head and landed on his glasses. He swatted at it and another fly circled his head. He shook his bloody hair as more flies appeared and moved toward the pool of blood. One landed on the shiny, crimson surface and instantly burst into flame. More flies dive bombed into the pool until a circle of flame hovered above the blood. It gently floated higher, growing larger with each dying fly until it was the size of a beach ball.
“No! This is wrong! This is evil!” Parker felt an ancient fear; a dull, sickening ache in his stomach.
More flies filled the evening air circling in dizzying arcs, until they surrounded the ball of flame. A hole opened in the front of the fly ball and the flames showed forth from within. Parker blinked as the opening turned toward him. It was a huge flaming eye held in the air by flies! More flies arrived and flew about the flaming eye to form a spiral that pulsated and spun around the eye.
“We know about the girl.” The raspy voice proclaimed as the eye lifted higher in the air. Parker lost all reason, all civility and scuttled backward like a crab into the road in front of the church. The hot asphalt blistered his palms. The buzzing grew louder and the voice spoke those words over and over. His heart pounded and he heard a high, keening whimper and realized it was his own voice. Against the insane noises there came another roar, approaching fast, and then the sound of squealing brakes, the whoosh of hot wind, the smell of burning rubber and he looked to his left into the grill of a recreational vehicle as it stopped just inches from his face.
Parker glanced back at the eye. It had disappeared leaving only a pool of blood behind. The sudden silence was punctuated by the creaking and popping of the vehicle. Something stirred behind him and a long shadow fell over him as the man stepped into sight.
He was six feet tall with wiry muscles dressed in a V necked tee shirt, blue jeans, and work boots. His hair was reddish blonde and very short, his face tight and devoid of emotion. His eyes were hidden behind mirrored sunglasses.
“How long has it been bleeding?” His voice was barely above a whisper.
“It just started.” Parker wiped blood from his face. “Are you Jonathan Steel?”
“Get up.” He walked back toward the RV. Parker grabbed the grill of the RV with bloody hands and pulled himself shakily to his feet. He followed the man around the vehicle and through its open door. The man had disappeared into the rear and Parker looked around at the interior. A table with two laptops and one large monitor sat where he would have expected the kitchen table to be. The man reappeared with a black backpack in one hand and a plastic container of disinfectant wipes in the other. He handed Parker the wipes.
“Clean up. You stink.”
“What? Hey, I asked you a question.” Parker pulled wipes from the container and wiped the blood from his hands. “Are you Jonathan Steel?”
The man opened a cabinet and took out a huge flashlight. “Are the lights working inside the church?”
Parker wiped blood from his glasses. “I don’t know. Listen, you haven’t answered my question.”
The mirrored sunglasses turned in his direction. “Yes. I am Jonathan Steel.”
“What are you going to do?” Parker tossed the blood stained wipes into the sink.
“We are going inside.” Steel pushed past him toward the open door.
“But, don’t we need to sit down and talk about this?” Parker followed the man out of the RV. “Maybe over a cup of coffee? Maybe after I’ve had a shower?”
Steel ignored him and paused at the pool of blood. A fly landed lazily on the surface of the pool and then burst into flames. “Now there’s something you don’t see every day.”
Parker grabbed the man’s arm to turn him and paused at the feel of rock hard muscle. He swallowed. “No one has been inside for six weeks.”
Steel took off his sunglasses, and Parker was shocked by his bright, turquoise eyes. Steel glared at him. “Whose blood is this?”
Parker looked at the blood and then back into Steel’s penetrating gaze. “I don’t know. It just appeared.”
Steel nodded and slid the sunglasses into a pocket of his tee shirt. “Then, we need to find the source. Let’s go.”
Parker watched in horror as Steel squished through the puddle of blood and started up the stairs. He hurried after him, trying his best to avoid the rivulets of blood on the stairs. They arrived at the upper level and Steel paused in front of the closed doors. Blood still trickled from the threshold. His head turned as he studied the walls, the windows and finally, the wrought iron railing that ran around the huge balcony. Parker followed the direction of the man’s gaze and felt a chill when it stopped on the far railing. He knew that if Steel went to the edge and looked down he would see the impression where the body had landed in the soft, grassy soil. The grass still had not grown back. Steel reached for the doorknob and paused.
“Wait a minute!” Parker said. “Why do I have to go with you?”
“This is your church. It is about you. Not me.” Steel frowned. “You cannot be afraid.”
“I asked you to come help with the church. Go on in and clean up all of, all of, this.” Parker motioned to the blood on the portico. Steel just stared at him with those intense, turquoise eyes. Parker wiped his forehead and sighed. “Look, you didn’t see that blood gush out of that door like a living thing. You didn’t see that eye of flame that came out of that puddle of blood, surrounded by this spiral . . .”
“Spiral?” Steel interrupted him. He grabbed Parker by the lapels of his suit coat and pulled him up onto his tiptoes. “There was an eye surrounded by a spiral?”
“Yes, down there.” Parker slid down into his suit. “It came out of the puddle and the flies flew around like a spiral.”
For a second, Steel’s skin relaxed, his gaze seemed to settle on a distant memory and seemed lost in an infinite well of sadness. His hands relaxed and Parker slid back down onto his feet. Then just as quickly as the change had come, the stony face returned. Steel’s gaze returned to Parker.
“We are both going in. Now.” Steel turned and pulled the doors open. They flew outward toward them and Parker stepped behind Steel’s bulk to avoid the mist of blood. Instead, the air was filled with a chilling, icy vapor and the temperature plummeted. Steel stepped into the church’s foyer, his breath misting in the cold air. Parker hurried after him. He glanced around at the chunks of ice that covered the offering table and icicles that hung from the old chandelier. The blood was frozen and smelled like freezer burned meat. The outer doors slammed behind them engulfing them in darkness.
“What is going on?” Parker huddled up against Steel’s back.
Steel’s voice seemed calm and unchanged. “Someone is trying to scare you, Reverend Parker.” Light gushed from Steel’s flashlight and Parker screamed.
Huge, red spiders hung around them, suspended from the ceiling, their scrabbling arms coated with frost, their multifaceted eyes black with menace. As the light burst through the darkness, the nearest spiders retreated along their spindly webs into the dark shadows of the foyer corners.
“Where did they come from?” Parker shouted.
Steel walked toward the inner two doors that would lead into the sanctuary. “Ignore them. They don’t like the light.”
Steel pushed open the doors and the cold, bitter air was replaced with a hot, fetid wind redolent with the fragrance of vegetation. Parker stumbled over something and looked down at a huge vine stretching across the center aisle. Huge roots and vines covered the pews, the aisle, the walls, and the stained glass windows. They stretched upward to the edge of the roof. The inner doors slammed behind them and Parker bolted forward against Steel’s unmoving back.
“For a man of God, you sure are scared.” Steel growled at him over his shoulder.
“Look around you. How can anyone NOT be scared?”
“I’ve seen worse.” Steel said.
“You’ve seen worse? How could it be worse?”
“Never ask that question.”
“Yeah, probably a good idea.” Parker fought off his trembling. He should be the strong one. Not Steel. He drew himself up and straightened his coat. “I’m sorry. I’ve been through a lot. But, now that we’re here, I need to find something.” A huge curtain of vines was draped across a door leading out of the right side of the sanctuary. “My office is over there.” He pointed.
“No hurry.” Steel passed the flashlight beam over the ceiling. Strange writings covered the old acoustic tiles. He fumbled in his backpack and retrieved a digital camera. The darkness was interrupted by flash after flash as Steel took dozens of pictures of the ceiling. Parker saw ghostly figures in the afterglow of each flash. Finally, he closed his eyes until Steel was finished.
“Pictographs of some kind. I don’t recognize the language.” Steel said as he slid the camera back into his backpack and pulled out a small video camera. “We’ll need a linguist.”
“A linguist?”
Steel ignored the question and motioned toward the front of the sanctuary. An altar table sat in front of the pulpit. It was covered with blood that dripped and ran in tiny threads to the floor. A huge, dead flower arrangement sat in the middle of the puddle of blood. Behind the pulpit and choir loft, something glowed with an orange light. “What is that?”
Parker pushed his glasses up on his nose. “Something is in the baptistery.”
Steel hopped over the low choir rail and weaved his way through the three rows of chairs in the choir loft. His face was illuminated by pulsing reddish light as he stood in a chair and glanced into the baptistery. Parker hurried after him and climbed up on a chair next to Steel. He peered over the front edge of the baptistery. Where there once existed the warm, welcoming waters of baptism, a pool of radiant energy filled the deep chamber. Its surface moved with eddies of orange and red energy.
Steel switched on the video camera and began recording. “Baptism by fire?”
“Of course not. What is it?” Parker felt himself drawn into the mesmerizing ebb and flow of energy currents.
“An energy field. Something in this church can manipulate other dimensions of space and time.” Steel said.
Parker glanced at him. “Dimensions?”
Steel turned off the video camera and looked at Parker. His face was bathed in the reddish glow of the baptistery. “We’ll need a physicist.”
“We need a linguist and a physicist. What about a florist for that dead flower arrangement?” Parker threw his hands in the air. “How can you be so casual?”
“Reverend, you have no idea what I’ve seen.” Steel played the flashlight beam over the choir rail. “Who else is in here?”
“No one!” Parker said.
“I thought I saw someone move in the choir loft.”
Parker shook his head. “If you could just help me get through those vines over there. I need to get something from my office . . .”
“You’re lying to me.” Steel flicked the beam into of his face.
Parker put up his hands to block the light. “I’m not lying. There is no one in here but us. No one has been in this sanctuary in weeks.”
Steel pointed the light toward the vines over the door. “So, what is so important in your office?”
“Records, paperwork, uh, . . .” Parker said and he felt something on his shoulder. He glanced over into the eyes of a huge red spider. Parker screamed and brushed at the spider. He stepped back and something squished beneath his feet. The air filled with the sound of soft chittering; the sound of a thousand tiny legs tapping and moving. Steel focused the beam of light on the floor. The spiders were all around them, scuttling along the vines converging on Parker. Parker backed into the altar table and blood splashed down his legs. He bounced away and ran toward the door leading to his office. A curtain of crimson spiders converged on the vines and blocked his way. “Mr. Steel, do something!” He screamed.
“The light isn’t stopping them.” Steel said. Suddenly, a gust of wind swirled to life behind Parker and swallowed him in a tornado that sucked up debris and dust into a column of whirling air. Parker felt himself lifted helplessly into the air. Wind buffeted him, spinning him upside down until he hung in the center of the vortex ten feet above the floor. Steel backed away from the funnel of air as bits of glowing energy spun from the baptistery, coalescing into a tumbling mass of gleaming metal slivers.
Parker watched the tiny metal flecks hurtle across the loft to pause just outside the vortex. Slivers of metal tumbled and spun and assembled themselves into tiny, metal spiders. The metal arachnids swirled into the vortex. Sparking and flashing in the glow of the baptistery, they ripped at his clothing, shredding his suit coat, ripping his pants, even tugging off his shoes.
Parker's open mouth finally found sound and his scream tore through the roar of the wind. Suddenly, Steel was beneath him, pulling him down. Together, they fell out of the vortex of wind. Parker pushed himself off of Steel and without pausing, ran down the aisle, flung through the inner doors, slipping in the clotted blood, his body sliding out through the outer doors onto the portico. He tumbled down the stairs and came to rest in the parking lot, his eyes filled with sweat, blood, and dead leaves. Bruised and scratched, dressed only in his underwear, he stood up and ran down the hill to the parsonage where he lived, his mind filled with unspeakable horrors.

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