Father Macombe's Miracle15:01 Aug 13 2009
Times Read: 569
Father Macombe had seen a LOT of things in the 47 years since he had left the seminary, and become the head of the Holy Trinity Catholic Church. He had seen children mowed down by gunfire. He had seen condemned-to-die murderers will their organs to the sick families they had destroyed. He had seen men savagely beat their wives...and those wives take their own lives, unable to leave. He had seen gang members leap in front of bullets to save school children, and seen children no older than those saved working the streets to support drug habits.
But the Father had never seen anything like this. He was usually such a GOOD judge of character...and he has never been THIS wrong before.
He sighs, and finishes folding his vestments, placing them in the simple wooden dresser that occupied the precious free space in his bedroom. He removes his pants, placing them in his laundry basket, and turns to his mirror, where rested a rosary, hung with a kind of casualness that only long term ownership can bring.
A deft hand and two licked fingers later, he extinguishes the sole candle in the room, sliding his surroundings into a darkness unbroken. With practiced ease, he slides the rosary from the mirror to his hand, and kneels by the window. After a deep, mind clearing breath, he begins to pray.
"Father, I know that yours is the Way, the Truth, and the Light. I know that you have a plan for everyone, and that every soul has a place at your table. I know that Anger is one of the deadliest of sins. I know that, as a shepard of your flock, I am to abstain from all things that drag my soul into debasement. And I know that, above all else, punishment of the wicked is your domain."
His brows furrow lightly, and he frowns, the sudden spark of rage in his owtherwise soft heart causing him to twitch slightly.
"But I must ask. I have served you for nigh on fifty years. I have never asked for a sign, and you have been generous enough to provide them. I have never asked for aid, and you have always let it flow forth from you like a river. I have never once expressed a desire for the wicked to know your wrath...and I have watched you punish them with a justice that far exceeds anything created by man. You have re-affirmed my faith, time and again, though it has never needed such."
His fingers clench, and a single tear squeezes from between eyelids white from being shut to the point of pain. His pulse quickens, and somewhere else....something quickens with it.
"But I have to know. I have to know why such a man as Jerrod Tzelekie is permitted to go unpunished. For years, that serpent worked with the children. For years, doing unspeakable things, and using those...chemicals to wipe their minds. So many lives destroyed. So many minds and hearts broken, and bodies ruined."
At that point, his eyes snapped open, and he locked them on the heavens visible through his window, hatred and fury pouring from him in waves of such intensity, it was a wonder the entire church did not explode.
"When they caught him, I felt that justice was going to be served. That this menace would be removed to the place reserved for such filth. That you had heard the cries of the innocent, heeded their tormented wails, and saw fit to deal with him as you have always done."
With this, he stands, his hands, once held in reverent prayer, now small clenched balls of righteous fury at his sides, still gazing at a sky...now suddenly clouded over.
"And he WALKED! Somehow, that jury voted him INNOCENT! They had everything but a confession, and SOMEHOW, he just walked out that courtroom, scot-free and unpunished! WHY! Why would you forsake CHILDREN? How could you let something like that HAPPEN!?"
He is entirely caught up by his own impossible anger now, screaming out the small window at the top of his lungs, caught in a passion unknown to him. So caught up, in fact, that the soft rippling of shadows behind him goes unnoticed.
"HOW COULD YOU PERMIT THAT!?"
A cough. Soft, like the shadows around the figure that makes it. Muffled, slightly, by the black gloved hand that covered the ruined lips and damaged throat that made it. A voice issues forth from those lips, sounds like broken bone scraping over gravel.
"Father, please. You will wake the dead, if you keep up that racket."
Father Macombe had been blessed with good health his entire life. Strong lungs, good kidneys, and a solid heart. But that voice, so casual and yet so horrifying...and so so incredibly unexpected....almost caused his aged heart to give out completely. The color drains from his entire body, and he turns around to look at the duster-covered horror now occupying the same room as he.
"Who...wh-what..."
The creature tilts its head, blond hair falling greasily to one side as he regards the Father with piercing blue eyes, and then, the destroyed face twists itself into a horrible rictus-grin, and speaks again, casually leaning his body against the wall, resting his hands on the hilt of the weapon at his side.
"I will never, ever, tire of that look. Or the stammering. 'What are you?' 'Oh no, a monster!'...ahh, priceless."
The Father manages a moment of composure, and steps a bit farther back, the rosary still clutched tightly in his hand. He narrows his eyes at the being in the room, and wracks his mind for any mention of such a twisted thing from all his years of learning...and finds none. So, being a fairly strong willed man, he opens his mouth to speak to the other.
"Are you...here to kill me? For questioning the will of God?"
There is movement of the flesh of the mans face, and if he still had eyebrows, you might assume one was cocked. That awful rictus deepens, and something like a chuckle emergs from lungs that sound as wrecked as the rest of him.
"No no, my dear Father Macombe. I am not here for you. I am here for your rage. I am here for your indignation. Something...horrible...has happened, and all it takes is one truly good soul to know pure righteous fury...and here I am. I am, in short...the answer to your prayers."
The Father is stunned. Never ONCE in his life has he EVER heard of anything like this happening. The Lord works in MYSTERIOUS ways...only in the bible, in the Old Testament, did he send angels to....and realization dawns.
"You're...you're an angel!"
At that, the man gives a laugh. Genuine, and full sounding, but still wraped up in the sounds of shattered things grinding in meat.
"No. No Father, I am far from an Angel. I do not serve any God, or Devil. I come only when there is something so twisted in this world that not only does it need to be snuffed out...but a message must be sent to those like them, so that such a tragedy never occurs again. I am the Righting Force. Karma. Vengence. The mothers cry in the dark. The fathers scream for help. I am what comes when nothing else listens...Man's fury given flesh, beyond any small religious concerns."
He fixes his eyes on the Father, holding him in place as the shadows writhe and boil behind the black-clad figure with a squirming life of their own.
"I am Ahz'real."
Macombe cannot process all of this at once. He steps away from Ahz'real, and moves to the bed, easily found in the dark after decades of sleeping in the same spot. He sits heavily on the bed, the rosary falling from his hands to clatter, unheard, to the hard stone floor. His mind whirls, unable to properly grip reality, as the silence pulses in his ears.
Then, it is broken, as the nightmare speaks again.
"His name, Father. It is all I require."
And suddenly, the Father does not want to give it. He does not know this creature, but something, some part of his animal instinct, tells him that once this thing has a name...the man is dead. And more than that....as he doesn't for a moment think that this creature will stop with killing.
"A name. And you have your miracle."
And that is what does it. Those words tip him over the edge, and the mans name is muttered from the Fathers lips, spilling like blood across the silence, and in that instant, that tiny, tiny instant, the Father is ashamed. He has knowingly taken another man's life, an action he had no right to do.
"Worry not, Father Macombe. I have it on good authority that if not for you...this man would not have been punished. Ever. The Devil protects his own, is how the saying goes, I believe."
The Father is still sickened. He still feels the sting of his actions, for they were committed before this...thing...had reasurred him. But the reassurance does help somewhat, because Father Macombe believes Ahz'real. He has to. He would go mad otherwise. Then, a thought occurs, and he looks at this broken thing once more.
"You call yourself Ahz'real, yet claim no alliegence to our God. If that is so, why have you taken the name of an Angel?"
Ahz'reals face hardens, then, and his gaze becomes one of cold fury, though his following words offer no resolution to the Fathers question.
"I did not take my name from the Angel. The Angel took his name from me."
And with that, the shadows behind him reach out feathery tendrils, quickly enveloping him within their inky embrace...and within moments, all that is left of him is a terrible memory in the Fathers mind.
He rises, and goes to the window. He stares out it a long time...before silently turning and sliding into a restless, fitful sleep.
The rosary remains on the floor...forgotton for now.
COMMENTS
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Myrka
15:59 Aug 13 2009
Nice! Poor Padre. Ahz kicks ass.
imagesinwords
12:10 Aug 14 2009
That's great, man... I'm impressed with your terminology, knowing a liturgical church somehow down the line.
This is my favorite kind of 'scary'.
faeriemoon
21:53 Aug 29 2009
Enough mystery to keep you guessing and enough answers to keep you satisfied. I love it. Can't wait for the next installment. :)
TalithaTensai
03:31 Sep 28 2009
This one, while really good, misses something compared to the other two stories. The dialogue seems somehow a little stilted, like there was maybe more to be said. And a bit more back story on the man Father Macombe wants to see punished would have fleshed the story nicely. But all in all, very well written, though not as eerie as the other two.