Fissure

A priest fights for slavation

Fissure    

 

 

     “That was such a beautiful service, thank you father Gabe.”

     Isbell Partridge still retained her slim, almost dainty figure even despite being the mother of three. The worry lines on her face had deepened over the past year, however and though still young she seemed many times her age with eyes as somber and sometimes watery as they were.

     “A simple providence of comfort I supply, my child, nothing more.” replied the aging priest.

     Cloaked in his black attire and collared in purest white, father Gabriel looked as he was; many years her senior. Wings of white adorned his greying brown hair, with the stubble coating his square chin the salt-and-pepper of a snowcapped mountainside.

     “Will I see you at next Sunday's service?”

     The woman nodded, her young children, two girls and a boy clinging tightly to the flare of her skirts, the dress a bright sunny yellow that was at odds with her timid disposition.

     “Yes of course father. I never used to come to church but the masses have certainly been a comfort since…” her eyes darkened and became watery again, as they were wont to do on the subject.
      The young mother blinked away the tears before they could form, and as she made an embarrassed show of fixing her auburn hair Gabe felt a deep sense of sympathy for her. It was a story he was altogether too familiar with, and in his case uniquely qualified to address.

     All around them people milled and thronged upon the wide church steps. Where they caught his eye they smiled and nodded in greeting. Families, young and old. Some older men, like himself, veterans too. Some lone mother’s corralling children. Some widows. They didn't tend to stray far from the army base afterwards, as though clinging onto a world they knew, but we're no longer a part of.

     “It's been a month since deployment, child. These beginning weeks may seem the hardest, but save your strength for your children.” he smiled and ruffled the hair of the young boy, who shot him a cheeky grin from where he hid.

     “I pray every day that Sam gets back home safe to us. All you need do is the same, and the Lord will provide.”

     Isbell smiled in that sad way of hers and thanked him for the kind words and reassurance. As she turned to descend the church steps he felt a twinge of guilt. He shouldn't have given her such tenuous hope, given the nature of war. Especially this one. Nor had he told her the hardest moments were still to come.

     The wide stone stair scuffed beneath his sensible leather shoes. They were not steep by any means but Gabe felt the exertion in his legs as he climbed nonetheless. He was getting old. And it pained him to admit it. In his army days he'd set track records, been hard and fit and young. Like the men now being shipped off to forsaken lands. Mere boys, to his weathered eyes. He prayed for each one at night, by name if he knew it. Gabe knew well the horrors of war.

     The church loomed above him, all dark granite and ironworked stained glass windows. The figure of the arch-angel Michael stood tall and proud on the right, brilliant white wings and resplendent with flowing red glass hair. He held a sword on guard, facing down the snarling, goat-hooved demon depicted in the opposite pane.

     Many would find the gothic vaulted spire of the Cathedral intimidating. Gabe found it reassuring. Resolute as though the stones would last forever. The silent glass guardian an eternal protector of the faithful within.

     Reaching the top of the stair, father Gabriel turned to catch the last dregs of his flock dwindle away for another week. A few still dawdled at the foot of the stairs, talking jovially about this and that. Wives and husbands paired and talking to others, their children fidgeting.

     The sun shone brightly in a brilliant eggshell blue sky overhead. Among the long low rows of residential buildings that spanned the suburbs of the district, birds flew in flocks about tall proud oak trees and through gardens and yards. Some of those gardens were tended by neighbors who chatted cheerfully. Children ran playing through the streets or riding bikes, laughter echoing. Upon many a front lawn ivory white flagpoles bore the star spangled banner. God's kingdom.

Father Gabe turned to leave, content. The morning grew on, and he had yet to break his fast. The tall, polished and gleaming mahogany double doors before him swung inwards on oiled, well-tended hinges.

     An inhuman scream cut the air.

     The earth beneath Gabe’s feet rolled, the vicious earthquake sending him stumbling back out into the sunlight. Except that the light was no longer palest yellow. The stone below and the wood of the doors were stained blood red by the light now dominating the world. The scream and the earthquake continued. Even so the elderly preacher struggled upright to whirl around and survey the scene before him.

     “Mother's mercy.”

     The sun was black. From its torn hole in the sky deep red crimson shone behind an unnatural eclipse. The sky too was red, the color of rage that spasmed across the heavens in fits of sheet lightning.

     Down below on the street, the gathered families struggled and writhed on the ground, helpless to the throes of the earth.

     There was a cacophonous sound like every thunder strike he had ever heard culminating in the same instant.

     The earth split and tore in a huge chasm running the length of the paved road before the church stairs. Fire roiled upwards from the depths, surging and flailing with a mind of its own, possessed. The rent in the ground widened, and the fire abated though the horrid fissure still vented thick black smoke that rose towards the bloody sky. The earth's rage stilled, the titanic shaking ending with the stilling of the colossal hole in the crust before him. There was a sharp, fetid stink to the air. Volcanic. Sulphurous.

     From the voids of the hole, a hand rose to grip the edge. A singularly thin hand, made simply of fleshless bone, black and rotted. Another joined it to make a pair. The bones tensed with the strain of hauling the body below upwards towards the edge of the abyss.

     Clatters resounded in Gabe’s ears as a dozen more grasping, heaving skeletal hands gripped the edge. Then dozens more. Then hundreds. The maw began to birth an army, the skeletons clawed their way from the bowels into the day and onto the earth. Their bones nearly obsidian black and encrusted with soot and burnt remains.
      What had once adorned their bones if anything at all had to have been beyond horrific to behold. The skulls of the damned invaders were twisted and misshapen, sprouting short horns, the leering perpetual smile of each festooned with needle-like fangs in place of teeth, and the tips of their bony fingers all ended in cruel sharp points.

     Those gathered before the terrible horde screamed their horror at the massing creatures and at the sky itself. Their fear seemed to attract the attention of the things as the roiling crowd closest to them turned to sniff the air like bloodhounds. They emitted shrieking cries that chilled Gabe’s very blood, the same piercing wail of bloodlust that had stabbed through the air before the chasm opened. The families, women, children, and the few men began to fall back to the steps in terror, scrambling blindly in their individual bid to escape.

     Father Gabriel reached deep into the folds of his priestly robes with his right hand. From the depths he withdrew it again, and in his grip was a gleaming brushed metal pistol. A 45. Caliber Beretta M1911, the slide glinting murderously in the dull ochre light of the dead or dying sun. As the priest levelled the weapon one-handed, the light flashed over the engraved crucifix crosses adorning the slide and the grip, with a deeply gilded golden cross upon the back of the hammer. It was blessed. Sacred. It had delivered him from evils unfathomable during the Vietnam War so many years ago during his younger years as a chaplain in the army.

     And the weapon spoke in his hand. A great booming roar followed by a gout of muzzle flash. The bullet, blessed and sanctified iron with its own minute engraved crosses, flew straight and true. Down below near the foot of the steps, a skeleton-demon's head exploded outwards, the bone shards skittering away across the asphalt of the torn road. It staggered a step onwards and promptly collapsed.

     “To the church!” shouted the father to the frantic families below. “Get inside the church!”

     His terrible weapon spoke flame again, and another of the abominations below tore apart by its spine. Carrying their screaming children, the parents dashed up and past Gabe. Fear filled their eyes and many too were crying as even their children were. He paid them no heed. He would console them later, if there was time. Safely ensconced inside the Cathedral to his rear, they would be safe on hallowed ground. He kept firing.

     The creatures now littered the staircase, coming ever closer as he fought to keep them at bay. Then, suddenly, there was a hush to them. A stillness that seemed barely kept in check as though at any moment they would surge forth again. But they didn't. To a one they had all frozen deathly still.

At the chasm, still pouring fiends, there was a sharp crack and rumble of breaking stone. The preacher looked up, towards it.

     The head of a huge axe blade, larger than a man slammed down into the concrete at the edge, spraying stone chunks and destroyed abominations alike. A massive figure levered itself over the rim, at least fifteen foot tall. It rose upright, tearing the blade free of the earth savagely.

Massive curling ram's horns. A giant wedge-skull head with beady liquid-black eyes and a fanged mouth, all skinned in red darker than blood. It had the body of a giant, humanoid but so contorted with bulging muscles it was nigh on unrecognizable. And all over its hideous hide were symbols, engraved into its very flesh and puckered with scar tissue. They made Gabriel’s mind warp and hurt to look at, every twisted and hooked shape blending into the next in an insane tapestry.

     The beast lifted its goliath head and roared, deep and undulating and terrible. As though a billion bonfires had condensed into one gout of infernal wrath.

     Father Gabriel Machias swallowed hard. Then raised the holy pistol again in his hand and fired. And fired and fired again.

The bestial demonic horde drove forth and up the stairs.