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She followed him down the hallway. “At first, I actually enjoyed having another soul possess me. Now, I only want to die. I want a peaceful, eternal sleep – as if I’d never been born.”
As he reached for the phone, she shook the keys in her hand. He pulled back as she tried to kiss him again.
“I’ll be dead soon, and you’ll be to blame.” He chased her as she ran out the front door, got in her car and started the engine. He caught up with her and tried to reach through the window to grab the keys from the ignition, but she closed the automatic window to all but a tiny crack, forcing him to jerk back his hand.
She spoke with a raspy masculine voice. “Burn in hell for hurting my daughter.” She almost ran over Stephen as she drove away. In what seemed like slow motion, he saw her leave and felt powerless to save her.
Once her car left his sight, he called the sheriff’s office and reentered his home to sit at his breakfast table. He noticed his shirt felt soaked near his armpits. “This is Father Stephen Keller for Sheriff Comeaux. It’s an emergency.”
“The sheriff’s busy now,” said a male voice with a Texas accent.
“Please send someone. Julie Comeaux just left my home. I think she plans to hurt herself or her daughter.”
“Don’t worry. Mary’s fine, but we’ll check on Julie.”
“She told me she plans to kill herself.”
“And, I just told you we’ll look for her.”
Stephen put the phone down, confused by the deputy’s abrupt tone. Instead of driving drunk to the Comeaux family’s home, he called a cab and fidgeted during the ten-minute wait. When it arrived, he tore Julie’s address out of the phone book, ran down the driveway and begged the driver to hurry.
As the cab sped down Magnolia Street, Stephen saw emergency vehicles near the bridge. At the river’s edge, a group of paramedics surrounded Julie’s body When Stephen stepped out of the cab, he heard one man warn they lost her.
Senator Walker closed the portal again. “Do you want to join our revolution?”
Ed nodded with mixed emotions.
“Promise you won’t lose your resolve.”
“I promise.”
Senator Walker handed Ed a USB flash drive. “Last night, I received these digital photos of Mary Comeaux in the warehouse. Hide them in your brother’s house.”
“Frame him for sex crimes?”
Senator Walker repeated his annoying chuckle then handed Ed a printed photo of a five-year-old child standing between her mother and father. “She’s cute isn’t she? Now, why did God let anyone hurt this precious child?”
Chapter 14: Visions
Ed already regretted making his promise. It infuriated him that Senator Walker would hurt an innocent little girl then joke about it. Senator Walker waited at the door. “I see you’re already having second thoughts.”
Ed realized he had nowhere else to hide from the cops. “No. I’m with you.”
“Good. Remember, you’ll be held to your promise. Don’t betray our trust in you. You’ll soon face our loyalty test.”
When the senator left the room, Ed took a deep breath, trying to make sense of everything. He didn’t want to be anyone’s pawn. Soon afterwards, the woman with dark hair, pale skin and crystal-blue eyes approached him. “Deep down, you realize you can’t replace or defeat God. Repent and celebrate His creation! Admit fault and seek forgiveness while He still offers grace. You’re not damned, yet. Don’t believe the lies.”
Her probing stare reminded him of everything vile and disgusting inside himself. He worried she was the loyalty test mentioned by the senator. “No! Get away from me, devil. Stop toying with me,” he said, fleeing the room.
The adjacent room further blackened Ed’s mood: Cold and dark, with cobwebs and the odor of mold. In the corner, he saw a tall statue of a chalice made entirely of human bones, with a ring of outward facing skulls that circled the top. Two pillars of skulls and cross bones flanked its sides. Above him, he saw a chandelier decorated with human bones near strings of skulls, draping along the beams of the ceiling. He had once seen photos of something similar in a small chapel called the Ossuary in Sedlec in the Czech Republic. While that church only contained the bones of roughly 40,000 persons, Ed guessed this chamber might contain more than ten times that amount.
The high-pitched voices giggled. “Humans with short, futile lives amount to little more than someone’s candle holder. Where is their god of love now?”
“Get out of my head.”
A portal opened on a wall, and Ed recognized his own voice as he saw an image of himself standing before a microphone at a large outdoor music concert: “Die with me in dignity, and rise again as a god. There’s no escaping the super plague.”
Adoring fans held black banners and hailed him as “the new messiah.” Bodyguards fought back fanatics, who tried to touch him.
