39. Plans of the Fallen One (D1)

__ Deerhead wasn't Deerhead anymore, but he was still grotesque, still something other than Todd, the delivery boy for Pizza King. Ardy watched the creature work, her head mushy and filled with non-thoughts as the pain wallowed up inside her and raged in burning rivers up and down her skin. Her head was pounding like a large dull hammer was pounding her body into a splintered piece of wood.
__ Like a large nail into arcacia wood.
__ St. Peter's church was located on the outskirts of Palley's Woods, but far from the center of the town of Covert. Only the most devout Catholics from the countryside gathered here, and usually only around Easter or Christmas. Other times, it served as a hall for easy stringless marriages or BINGO games. You would think that the eve of Doomsday would bring throngs of people to the house of God to beg forgiveness, especially with the evidence of an August winter and mid day midnight all around them.
__ But as Legad told her as he lay her broken body on the fat beam of wood, "All fornicators. They're saying good-bye to life by living it." He cinched the cord tighter around her arm and whispered in a cold dead breath reeking of stale blood, "Only the idolaters would be caught dead here tonight. Now who's the fool?"
__ Ardy didn't understand the question and could barely understand where she was or why a reanimated delivery boy with antlers jutting through his skull was dismantling the inside of the church.
__ All she could say was, "Water." And it came out weak, pained, and wincing.
__ "Of course, child," Legad smiled crookedly. "None too soon, none too soon."
__ Moments later he returned from the sacristy holding a golden communion chalice. He poured the water clumsily over her mouth and she lapped at it drunkenly. As he poured, Legad giggled like a teenager involved in an elaborate prank, and muttered, "He who drinks my water shall have eternal life."
__ Ardy coughed up the water that went down the wrong pipe and cried out in pain.
__ Legad noticed something below her vision and ducked out of sight. Whatever he was doing was causing new waves of pain to rocket up her legs. When she saw her own tennis shoe fly up against the wall she understood he was simply removing her shoes.
__ "P-Please, dont'," she managed.
__ "Ssssh." The monster reappeared in her face, the one straight eye glaring at her. "Save your strength for your death. You'll need it." Again, the dry laugh.


__ Ardy continued to fall in and out of consciousness for the next hour, or so it seemed. All the while, Legad - as he had introduced himself at one point - busied himself trashing pews with a fire ax and lighting candles. One moment he was in a rage and decapitating the wooden Christ figure from the large cross over the alter. The next he was quietly humming Amazing Grace as he lit candles at twelve points around the church's interior.
__ Her breathing was labored and came in rattles and rasps.
__ "Do you know why--" he suddenly snapped, appearing at her right ear and startling her. She jostled and felt new waves of pain, not just from her legs but her wrists and arms now too. "-- I'm keeping you so close to death but refusing to let go of the rope?"
__ Ardy could barely comprehend the miasma of memories swimming through her soupy brain. The only returning image that meant anything to her was that of Doug. His memory was keeping her grounded, keeping her hopes alive. She knew he would come for her soon. As for other dreams: resurrections, heavenly guardians, gravelly drags through hell, gunshots, snow, Deerhead.... She let them swim behind her eyes weakly without trying to decipher them. The only thought keeping her from giving up the ghost was Doug. If not for him, it would be that easy. Somehow, she knew that if she just let her heart break - that would be the last part of her to die.
__ "Not going to answer? C'mon, Ardelene, you have to keep your strength up."
__ "He'll come," she whispered.
__ "He who? Douglas?"
__ She would have nodded but was using what little strength she had to hold still. It was hard enough to breathe as it was. Then it dawned on her to keep her thoughts bottled up. If this thing knew Doug was coming for her....
__ Legad sat on the post of the communion rail and sighed. "You can't keep your thoughts from me anymore."
__ Ardy turned her head slightly to look at him. When the reanimated face showed no emotion, she turned back and closed her eyes.
__ "That's right. It wasn't your power at all. It was mine - well, his."
__ When Ardy refused to acknowledge him, Legad kicked out at something by her feet. A wooden scrape sounded and bolts of pain in her legs, feet, arms, hands, and chest made her come alive with a scream.
__ "Pay attention," Legad cried over her lingering scream. When she fell silent again, he smiled, "Better."
__ Ardy's dry and cracked voice winced, "W-who is he?"
__ "Ah. Glad you asked." Legad stood and started to pace. "The age of darkness, the reign of the Fallen One, is upon us."
__ "Lucifer," Ardy whispered.
__ "Clever girl. Or just a churchgoer."
__ "Follower."
__ "Follower of the Son, huh?"
__ "Father, Son...."
__ "Blah, blah, blah. Listen."
__ Ardy forced herself to meet the gaze of the horned head, the bent eye.
__ "All that stuff on TV, movies. It's great."
__ When he wouldn't elaborate, Ardy took a shuddering breath and offered, "What's great about it?"
__ "It's all sin. All of it. The Way," Legad said with arms raised heavenward, "Is lost."
__ "Lost," Ardy smiled weakly, "Like the TV show?" Her laugh brought spasms of agony and her scream was weak and pitiable.
__ "Pride goeth before the fall, Ardelene. Not funny."
__ "Before - gasp - the fall - gasp. That's your boss - gasp - you're talkin' about."
__ "My boss, as you call him, has ruled his domain for thousands of years. Yours," Legad started pacing again, "Well, yours was nailed up to a tree - much like you are now - by people like you."
__ Ardy now recognized the source of the new pains. She forced herself to turn her head to the left. Her left arm, outstretched on the cross that once held the decapitated Jesus, was bound with curtain cord. A thick knife of metal, she guessed from a broken candle holder, had been hammered through the carpal tunnel of her wrist. There was no feeling but pain from her elbow-up. She didn't even bother to look across at her right. The pains matched. And, though she couldn't look down at her feet and badly broken leg, she could imagine what Legad had done there.
__ And then the full of it cascaded down over Ardy. She was going to die today, for good and forever. Doug wasn't going to save her after all. This was the last day of Earth. This was the end.
__ But something didn't seem right in what was left of her mind. "No," she whimpered.
__ "Yes," Legad laughed. "Oh, yes."
__ "No," she weakly explained, "This is. Not right."
__ "Hm? How? -- Oh, don't answer. Save your strength for the end. I'll fill in the blanks for you."
__ Legad was suddenly joined by a host of dark phantom creatures, the Alterlings. Nine of them gathered around Ardy's cross and set about the task of lifting her upright. As they hoisted, repositioned, and clumsily jostled her one degree higher at a time, pain gave way to numbness. If not for the cord pulled tight around her broken and bruised legs, her chest, and her arms, Ardy was sure the weight of her body would pull her down off the cross. She hung limply, limbs burning.
__ All the while she rose higher and higher, Legad entoned, "Earlier I asked you a question that you didn't answer, sweetheart. I asked you why it was you thought I was keeping you alive, or killing you slowly. You didn't answer."
__ Ardy's only answer this time was a grunt and truncated scream of agony.
__ "The reason is bait."
__ She released a final groan as the cross was propped against the wall behind the altar. The Alterlings drifted down, six on each side of the church. Legad sat in one of the unbroken pews and steepled his fingers. "We gave up two of our angelic powers to a couple of humans far from the site of the Son's return.
__ "One was given the sight of the future, the other the sight of the heart - the ability to literally walk in someone else's shoes."
__ Legad scratched at a raw spot on his forehead where one of the antlers had poked through. He crossed his legs before continuing. "We knew that would open the door, distract the guardsman - so to speak - and allow us to walk the earth which was rightfully ours to toy with in the beginning.
__ "So we brought the darkness.
__ "If you weren't here, you'd probably be home watching or listening to the news, hearing about the strange goings on in the Middle East, the strange turn the war is taking, and about the very special prisoner of war being transported out of Jerusalem.
__ "A thief in the night," Legad muttered to himself more than to Ardy.
__ "Ardelene, my dear, you served us well. But your time is over." Legad stood, took a sharpened curtain rod - fashioned someone like a spear - and approached the altar. "Even now the other gifted one approaches, and brings his soldier. It's been a long time since my master and the archangel have spoken. Should be quite the reunion."


__ Gravity had been playing its part. The true tool to bring death in crucifixion was not the nail or the hot sun, the deprivation of food or water. With the body weakened and the arms held outstretched, pulling open the ribcage, breathing becomes toxic. The expanded lungs have no muscle power to push out bad air and the victim begins to suffocate with his own air.
__ Ardy was already too weak and her breathing broken. Legad wasn't trying to keep her awake. He was trying to kill her quicker by making her scream and talk. She was dizzy and couldn't keep her lolling head up to gaze upon the creature that had done this to her.
__ Her body was already dying. Pain was trading hands with a cold numbness and periodic aching waves as nerves slowly died off.
__ She hadn't really heard any of Legad's speech. She was busy trying to form her thoughts into prayers and mental cries of repentance.
__ Then she saw Legad approach her with the makeshift spear.
__ He said, "It's too bad you won't be here to see it."
__ She used the last of her energy to force a smile and whisper, "Forgive--"
__ Then Legad thrust the pointed rod into her side. Ardy felt the skin and organs puncture, but there was no agony left to be felt. Instead she felt her spirit tumble out of her body and soar up toward the warmest, most loving light imaginable.