Absence of Faith (35 page)

"Now everyone...gather close to the
edge of the pentagram and repeat after me," he
commanded.

"Emperor Lucifer, master of the
rebellious spirits, I beg you to be favorable..." Kyle paused and
waited for the others to repeat.

"Now that I call for your minister
the great Lucifuge Rofocale."

The small crowd repeated the
words.

"As I desire to sign a contract
with him. In the name of Satan the ruler of the earth," Kyle said.
"...The king of the world, I command the forces of darkness to
bestow their infernal power upon me. Open wide the gates of Hell
and come forth from the abyss to greet me as your brother and
friend. Grant me the indulgences of which I speak. I have taken thy
name as part of myself. I live as the beasts in the fields,
rejoicing the fleshly life. By all the gods in the pit, I command
that these things of which I speak shall come to pass."

Kyle picked up an athame off the
table, a ceremonial dagger that tapered towards the
point.

"Now each and every one of you,
repeat after me, 'Hail Satan, Hail Satan, Hail Satan,'" Kyle said
holding the dagger in front of his face.

The members repeated the
slogan.

"I call upon the messengers of doom
to slash with grim delight this victim we have chosen. Silent is
that voiceless bird that feeds upon the brain pulp of him who hath
tormented me and the agony of this shall sustain itself in shrieks
of pain."

Kyle turned again and brought forth
a golden chalice. "Drink now," he said. "The life force of this
world."

He sipped the liquid in the chalice
and handed it to a tall thin man standing near him. The man slowly
brought the cup to his lips. "It's blood!" he said.

"Yes it is the life force. Drink,"
Kyle replied.

The man handed the cup to a woman
standing near him. Every member of the group took a turn drinking
from the chalice. Kyle placed the chalice back on the
altar.

"Bring the sacrifice - the center
of our annoyances and hate," Kyle said.

Two men stepped forward out of the
shadows of the room, and then vanished through the large wooden
doors. They returned minutes later, each holding the arm of man
with only a black sack tied around his head. The man had trouble
standing up, and the two men had to keep lifting his arms to
prevent him from falling. Some of the woman in the group gasped
when they saw him. The two men laid the man down on the ground in
the center of the pentagram. One went towards the south wall and
released a long rope that was tied to a hook in the wooden wall.
The rope swung across the room and stopped over the center of the
pentagram. The rope passed through a large wooden block that was
secured to cross beam in the roof. The other man grabbed the rope
and tied it around the ankles of the man lying in the pentagram.
After a few minutes, the man joined the other man, and both began
to hoist the naked man up over the pentagram. The naked man groaned
as his body was lifted into the air. The men pulling on the rope
grunted and gasped for air.

"Remove the hood and let him see
his accusers," Kyle said. One of the men by the wall walked over,
untied the hood, and removed it. Several women in the group gasped
again. One side of the man's face was covered with dried blood and
his eyes were glassy and empty.

Nick woke up and saw heads floating
in front of him upside down. His own head swelled with pain, and
his thoughts were slow in coming. He was cold, his ankles hurt, and
he felt nauseous. The floating head closest with the darkest eyes
held a dagger in front of him. Nick thought he was having a
nightmare. Then the floating head spoke.

"Accused! You are doomed. A
pestilence to our majestic group," the voice said. "You are one of
the holy who has mocked our Satan and tried to stop us from doing
his bidding. Die pig! Die pig!"

Nick was convinced he was having a
nightmare even until he felt the slight piercing pain of the dagger
in his side. He feebly reached up and felt his own warm blood
trickle through his fingers
. I should wake up now
, he
thought. But he didn't. Instead, he saw the blade strike his other
side and the pain was the same. The blood trickled down his chest,
up his chin and into his mouth. He tried to scream, but it came out
as a whimper. The floating heads began to vanish and Nick thought
he would wake up soon.

L
inda
snuggled into the wood post bed and turned on the China rose prism
lamp on the small oval night table. The glass shade with three hand
painted roses each a different shade of crimson cast a soft,
romantic glow into the room. The lamp was one of her most prized
possessions having purchased it from an estate sale in Charleston,
South Carolina on their third wedding anniversary. The estate
manager told her the lamp was made in 1864 and was typical of the
Victorian lamps that populated the parlors of most Southern
mansions during the Victorian period. The family had the lamp
converted from oil to electricity in 1912.

She picked up
Love's Fury
, a
Harlequin novel by J.P. Polk and removed the bookmarker on page
121. If she did not have to work, she could read one or two novels
a day, she thought. There were two large boxes of novels she had
read with yellowing pages still unpacked in the basement - she had
not decided if she would keep them or give them away. She reached
over and turned on the clock radio to an easy listening station.
Then she began to read.

About an hour later, there was a
rumbling sound, very faint and far off. She turned off the radio
and listened. The rumbling sound came from the west, a low sonorous
sound - it was thunder of an approaching storm. She thought of
Carson working all night, and then returning in the morning looking
like he hadn't slept in a week. She smiled to herself picturing his
haggard face, dulled eyes and "I don't give a shit about anything"
attitude. It was a perfect time to ask him to do something or
approve a purchase he would normally not consent to without a lot
of persuasion. She turned the volume up slightly on the radio and
went back to her book. Several minutes later, the wind began to act
like a mischievous little boy - first rattling a couple of
clapboards on one side of the house, swinging around and rattling
some on the other side. Linda listened as the wind whipped around
the house. She began reading again, but the words turned into
meaningless images on the page and her eyes felt very heavy. She
turned on her side, hugged the pillow, and let the pleasure of
sleep take over.

A low faint tinkling noise seeped
into her consciousness as she slept on and off, awakened by an
occasional peal of thunder and the white light flash of lightening
that splashed into the small room. The tinkling noise was followed
by a loud thump that reverberated through the walls of the house.
She bolted up in her bed like a dog trained to hunt - her eyes wide
and ears tuned to the slightest sound. She knew the thump was too
close to be something outside like a lawn chair blown against the
house or a door slammed in the wind. She glanced over at the clock
radio – 3:09 AM glowed on its face. Too early for Carson, she
thought. She cautiously turned on the China rose lamp and grabbed
the frumpy robe her mother-in-law had given her from her clothing
closet leaving the door open. After putting on the robe, she
quickly opened her door, knowing the hinges would not squeak when
it was thrust open like that. The light from her Victorian lamp
spilled out into the stairway. She descended only three steps and
stopped. She knew the fourth step and three others squeaked like a
cranky old woman who didn't want to be bothered. It was as if the
steps protested each time someone stepped on them. She listened for
several minutes. A zephyr wafted up the stairway carrying with it a
briny, wet odor. The tinkling sound heard earlier replayed itself
in her mind
. Maybe a tree branch blew down and broke a
window
, she thought.
Maybe a lawn chair was blown into the
window. Maybe, someone broke in.
This last thought made her
shiver. She immediately discredited it, but remained leery just the
same.

She moved onto the fourth step and
its protests seemed as loud as a 20-piece band playing downstairs
in the parlor. After the initial shock of the sound, she moved
quickly down the stairs and headed for the light switch that would
turn on the Victorian-styled room lamps. She reached the switch and
pushed it up. The lamps lit as usual. The wind from the storm
whipped the delicate curtains that she had just put up last week on
the window behind the sofa. A loud and long peal of thunder shook
the house and she thought it would never stop. She walked closer to
the window, but then stopped to avoid stepping on the shards of
glass that lay scattered on the floor. She moved closer and stopped
again. Her bare foot had touched a wet spot on the rug that could
not have been soaked by the rain that was being blown in by the
wind. Or could it?

She slowly turned and moved towards
the stairs and took each step cautiously looking in every direction
like a cat on the prowl. The kitchen was dark so she ruled out
using the phone there.
Once I get back to the bedroom, I’ll be
safer
, she thought. She moved quickly up the stairs, taking
long strides to skip steps to avoid the noisy ones. When she
reached her room, she closed the door and locked it, then sat on
the bed and picked up the cordless telephone. The room seemed
different as she dialed 911 with a bit of relief, not paying much
attention to her instincts.
If there was someone in the house,
the police would flush him out,
she thought. Her thoughts and
energy focused on calling 911.

She opened a small drawer in the
night table and reached in for a tiny canister of mace that Carson
had bought her when they had moved in since she was afraid of guns.
She got up and headed towards the closet door to get a pair of
slippers but when she put her hand on the glass doorknob, she
stopped.
The door, the door, the DOOR WAS OPEN!
screamed in
her head! The door suddenly exploded forward, hitting her in the
face and knocking her onto the bed. The telephone bounced and
tumbled on the rug and landed under the night table. She also
dropped the mace canister. Linda found herself pinned on her bed
with a figure dressed in army fatigues and a black ski mask over
his face. He pushed his hand over her face. His hand had something
in it, something soft that smelled medicinal like rubbing alcohol.
She lifted her arm and slammed her fist into his face, and felt the
pressure on his hand release momentarily. She screamed and the
piercing sound seemed to pull the man out of his temporary daze and
he pushed his hand harder against her face. She thrust her hands
forward, grabbed the man's throat, and immediately tightened her
grip around his neck, squeezing, squeezing...then she felt his
powerful grip on her wrists and her hands were pulled away. She
felt something entangle her hand then disappear. He thrust her hand
down hard on the bed, but she pulled her hand free thanks to the
hand cream she had put on earlier. She reached over for the China
rose lamp and managed to get her hand around the narrow base. She
mustered all her strength to lift the lamp and slammed the glass
shade into the man's head. She watched in slow motion, as the
hand-painted crimson roses broke apart and splintered into several
white and red shards of glass. A small shard with one of the leaves
still intact moved down the man's cheek slicing the skin like a
surgeon's scalpel. She brought her arm back again and moved her
fist towards his face again, but when she slammed it into his face,
it was like thrusting her hand into a giant marshmallow. The
marshmallow head slowly faded into darkness and she could no longer
feel her arm. She could no longer feel anything. The man, the room,
all of her surroundings slowly faded into blackness that seeped
into the room.

* * *

The call from Linda's cordless
telephone was routed to the Allenwood State Police Barracks in
nearby Wall Township since Ocean Village did not have its own
police force and contracted the state police for protection. The
call went to the state police computer and the number was entered
into the database. The computer did an instant search taking a
little more than three nanoseconds. Dr. and Mrs. Carson Hyll and
their address flashed on the screen in front of 911 dispatcher
Denise Middleton. Denise listened closely on her headset. She
looked over to the snapshot of her two redheaded boys at camp
hanging next to the display and then pushed a button on her console
and spoke into a tiny microphone attached to her
headset.

"I think we got something here.
There was a scream, but no one is talking now. I can hear
scuffling. We need to send a car out," she said.

"Maybe, it's a kid playing with the
phone," overweight dispatcher Todd Jacobs said.

Denise’s face went cold. She pushed
another button and spoke again.

"We have a possible break in or a
family dispute at fifty six Cherry Blossom Boulevard in Ocean
Village. Send a car immediately."

* * *

Linda awoke with a pain in her head
so severe that she thought there was a large weight on her head.
Her mind was foggy and thoughts streamed in fragments - the broken
window, the closet door bursting open, the man in the green
fatigues. The China rose lamp...
oh it can't be broken
, she
thought.