Chapter 10
The sun had set and darkness began to overtake the earth. Howard looked out briefly from the vestibule of his church. The world around him glowed in an ethereal shade of blue. Dusk had settled. Preternatural stillness had hushed the birds and bugs. All that remained were cyan shadows, and silence. Beyond the door, out in the eerie void, he could feel her. She was near. He was sure of it. And she was growing stronger each day. Like a low hum deep within his core, her essence reverberated through him. He knew he was closing in on her.
Howard slammed the door of the Soldiers of the Divine Trinity Church shut and locked it. He passed through the narrow enclave to another set of doors that opened into the sanctuary. Once inside, he dipped his hand in a large basin of Holy water, crossed himself and genuflected. He walked briskly down the aisle, past more than a dozen pews and stopped just before the altar. He knelt and crossed himself again and remained bowed in prayer. With his eyes closed, he concentrated, listening for God’s words to direct him, to guide him on the path of righteousness.
His path had been filled with innumerable detours thus far, but none could be considered a waste of his time. Diversions strengthened him, reinforced his belief in divine influence. The incident at the abandoned house the day before had been a shining example of a deviation resulting in the fortification of his faith. Being able to make an example of misguided fools a day earlier had proved a worthwhile endeavor. The deaths of teens tampering with witchcraft would surely save lives in the future. Others seeking to summon dark forces, as well as full-blooded witches who walked among them, would learn of their demises and heed the warning they signaled.
Taking the lives of the teens had not been a direct order from God. His Maker’s words had not commanded him. In fact, he had not heard the speech of the Lord in several days. So Howard had been forced to infer what God would have wanted him to do, his decision based on countless other situations when he had been instructed to example others, others who hadn’t been true vessels of evil, but had been pupils of evil. He knew the Lord would have wanted the teens destroyed, just as He had in the past. Howard also felt confident that, despite the taciturnity of God, despite the numerous tests and obstacles presented to him, he would do what was right for humanity.
Tests were not new to Howard. He had been tested his entire life, beginning when he was a boy. His father had been a soldier of God as well, had fought to rid the world of evil. But the law of man had seen fit to take his father from him at a young age. The law did not understand what his father had been up against, still did not understand. Every law-enforcement agency on the planet shared the limited view that only human beings killed and committed atrocities against other human beings. They did not embrace the existence of the underworld, that demons of every kind roamed the earth and hunted humanity. But he embraced that wherever lightness existed, darkness followed; with good came evil. Howard had the vision, and so had his father.
When Howard had been just eight years old, his father had been arrested and sentenced to life in prison for murdering a family who had just moved to the neighborhood. Kneeling before the altar of his church conjuring the painful memories of long ago, he squeezed his eyes shut and remembered his father’s arrest, how police had punished and locked away a servant and soldier of the Lord. His father, Howard Kane, Sr. had been incarcerated for dousing the new family’s house in gasoline, boarding the doors shut and setting it on fire. The blaze had burned for hours, consuming everything it had touched except for the concrete foundation it had sat upon, including a husband and wife and their three small children. The family had been black; a fact that had only been of importance to the rest of his neighborhood, law-enforcement agents and the media of that time. The police department and newspapers had fixated on the color of their skin, had accused his father of a racist act. The men with him had been members of a discriminatory group called the Ku Klux Klan and the police had claimed his father had been a member too. Others in the neighborhood had alleged to have seen his father fraternizing with Klan members, and had charged he had been an active participant in their organization. But Howard had known better. He had known his father had shared his prophecy. His father had told him as much.
He had visited his father in prison. Guards had the patriarch of his family dressed in a bright-orange jumpsuit, shackled and cowed like a common criminal. He remembered the sickliness of his father’s pallor, the pale clammy look of his skin. But neither had left as lasting an impression as his words had on that fateful day. Strong and clear, his father’s voice had resounded with truth when he’d told him not to believe the newspapers or idle gossip. He’d told him the family he’d killed had been corrupt and that he had done a service to mankind by cleansing the world of their existence. Howard had listened intently to his father, especially when he’d told him that God had instructed him to kill the family, that they had been pure evil.
Howard had never bothered to ask if they had been witches. The thought had never occurred to him, not then. He hadn’t heard God’s voice in his ear yet. All he had been told was that his father had destroyed evil, and that was all he’d needed to know. But his father’s explanation hadn’t ended there. His father had more wisdom to share. He had told Howard that he would have to make a very difficult decision in the near future, that he would be put to a test. Howard had asked what that task would be, but his father had said he could not tell him.
A few weeks after his visit to the state penitentiary, his father had been killed by other inmates. As it had turned out, other inmates, black inmates, had been fooled into believing his father had been a racist who’d killed an upstanding family. His father had died, unceremoniously, stabbed to death in the shower room. The other inmates hadn’t known the truth; that the color of evil’s skin had been, and always would be, irrelevant. So they had taken the life of one of God’s warriors, his father.
At eight years old, Howard had been left with only his mother. Still, his stomach churned at the thought of her. After his father’s death, his mother had transformed into a sinful woman who had poisoned her body with drink and drugs and had allowed her body to be used by any junkie who had offered her a nightly fix. Relegated to his room, he had begun reading the only book he’d owned: the Holy Bible. Night after night he had read from it, and just shy of one month after his father’s murder, he had read the Bible from cover to cover. Certain sections of it spoke to him more than others. Exodus, Deuteronomy, Galatians and Revelation had been of particular interest to him. He had absorbed the vital messages communicated in each. They condemned witchcraft and sorcery, and the evocation of spirits. They denounced heresy. Every single night he had read the word of God, had absorbed it like a dry sponge absorbing water. He had prayed each day and night, begging God for strength and guidance, all the while his mother had panted and moaned in the next room with a different overnight friend. Every day that he’d prayed, he’d thought he’d felt something, an inexplicable sensation that had filled him with utter peace. That peace had calmed him daily, and had made sleep possible while his mother had become inebriated and cavorted with a steady flow of men.
One night, however, his peace had been interrupted abruptly. He had awoken to strange sounds unlike the sighing and huffing he’d usually heard in other parts of the house. The light bulb above his head had begun flickering. He had wondered whether it had been an electrical surge, or something more nefarious. When the bulb had hissed and sputtered, he had believed his unspoken question had been answered. He had leaped from his bed immediately, had felt a cold sheen of sweat cover his entire body and he had dashed down the hallway to the living room. Experience had taught him to never surprise his mother when she was with a man. She had not liked it when he’d done that, and had beaten him badly on more than one occasion. She had even allowed one of her friends to beat him as well. He dared not surprise her again and incur her wrath, or anyone else
’s for that matter. He had crept slowly to the den and saw that his mother and two men had gathered around a board, a Ouija board, he’d learned later. He had stared in shock and horror as he saw his mother chanting to spirits, summoning them from the pits of hell. They had laughed as though their godless actions had been a joke. But in that moment, when Howard had looked into his mother’s eyes, he had seen the truth. She had been one of them, one of the evil ones that stalked humankind.
His father had warned him of the evil that lived among them. Howard had run off to his room, away from the incantation, away from his mother. In the safety of his room, he had dropped to his knees and implored God for guidance. And on that day, God had answered. God had given him his first order.
With his task fresh in his mind, Howard had waited several hours until his mother and the friend she’d selected to share her bed had slept before he had snuck downstairs and selected the largest, sharpest carving knife from a drawer in the kitchen. He had snuck back upstairs and stole into his mother’s bedroom. Howard had hovered over the sleeping man first then drove the knife into his heart. The man’s eyes had opened for an instant. He’d flailed and shouted, waking Howard’s mother, before life had escaped him. His mother had awoken and had been shocked. She’d begged him to put the knife down, to leave her unharmed. Though he had not threatened her immediately, her inhuman sense had told her otherwise. He had drawn back the blade and, trembling, had plunged it into her chest. He had pulled it out, only to return it again and again, thrusting the sharp blade in and out of her flesh.
Killing his mother had been the toughest job he’d ever undertaken. He had stood beside her bed long after her lifeblood had left her. Only when he had been certain she had been dead did he leave the room and return to the kitchen. He had picked up the telephone and called the police to tell them what he’d done. When the police had arrived, they had stared at him in disbelief, had marveled at his ability to compose himself at such a young age after he had killed his mother and her lover. They had been fools, all of them. They had not known he had been chosen by God to war with evil on Earth. He had heard the words “psychopath” and “sociopath” mentioned several times that night. He had not known what those words had meant when he had been eight years old, but he knew now. He had not suffered from a personality disorder then and he certainly did not suffer from one now. His missions had never been spontaneously violent or aggressive acts for which he hadn’t felt remorse. They had been well thought out, well planned acts for which he hadn’t felt remorse. God had charged him with destroying wickedness. He neither mourned nor repented the death of the wicked. And evil still walked among man, prowling in the shadows, scavenging for souls. The Sola, a seer of the devil himself, lied in wait. She was the lone huntress, sent from the depths of hell by Lucifer himself, to unite those who bowed to darkness on Earth and overtake humanity. But Howard would not allow that to happen.
Kneeling before the altar of his church, a feeling began to stir. Familiar and welcome, it spread from the center of his body and traveled, tingling and prickling, to the tips of his fingers and toes. The sensation pulsed from his core, shivering and vibrating to every part of him, invigorating him with renewed conviction and faith in his mission. God was not speaking to him, but he could feel Him, feel His divine commands, and feel His righteous might. Howard Kane knew he must find and kill the Sola, utilize his Lord’s support fast, and rid the world of her foul existence.