The Apocalypse Door,
Part 11
by William Todd

Ian dreamed about Fiona; he dreamed of her girlish smile, her long, straight tress of chestnut hair, her heather-colored eyes that twinkled like lights on a Christmas tree, her uncanny ability to read his mind as if they were spiritual twins with interconnecting souls. At one time, she had been the dearest of friends as well as a parishioner at his kirk, Saint Andrew’s, in the small town of Glutter Den in the east Grampian region of Scotland. Though she was still as close to his heart as the Holy Ghost was, he could never nor would ever see her again.

He had known Fiona all his life. They grew up neighbors and, as wee bairns, often shared the same bassinet while their mothers hung clothes out to dry. And at times, she seemed to be the only one who truly, truly understood him and appreciated the labor of love, which he gave the flock he led. When Church elders had labeled him too authoritarian, she called him a proud leader. When they had said he cow-towed to the whims of his parishioners, she called him fiercely loyal. When he’d begun questioning some of the archaic practices of the Church that seemed to stifle its growth, she called him a modern thinker. And when they’d sent him away to Oban for gross misuse of his priestly ascendancy, she called him the most special man on the face of the earth.

Under normal circumstances, a priest dreaming about a woman was nothing new. They, after all, were men also. They had the same urges as other men, they just learned to control and forsake those desires for the cause of the Church. Ian had faltered once, but once was enough. This was his skeleton. He’d tried to resist the urges that welled up within him whenever they were together and to a good degree, he had. But given the right set of circumstances with a woman, especially one as close to him as she, and any man but a saint would fall. He wasn’t a saint, and that sad tale he rewound in his memory then played an encore performance, every piece as bittersweet as the very day it happened:

Ian had prided himself on his abilities to heal wounded relationships, and he was notorious throughout the episcopate for having saved more marriages than he’d presided over. He had been counseling Fiona about tribulations with her live-in boyfriend of five years for nearly three months when she had come to him that crisp April morning a year-and-a-half ago. Their sessions had to be held privately without anyone knowing only because others thought it sacrilegious to give counsel to troubled relationships when the relationship in question was not sanctified by the sacrament of Holy Matrimony.

That morning, she walked down the center isle of the intimate little church and genuflected at the Christ-figure behind the altar then turned her attention to Ian who was diligently polishing the first row of pews. She looked around warily even though they were the only ones there. “Morning,” she said, trying to get his attention without asking him to stop what he was doing.

“Mornin’” Ian returned as he finished off a patch of dull oak. “Makes no sense t’buff up these pews when someone’s bum is just goin’ t’dull it up again. But I guess me bein’ out here every mornin’ must mean I’m doin’ my job right.” He glanced up at her then back to the pew then instantly back up at her once again. Her burgundy sweater was torn at the shoulder. She had her hands clasped tightly in front of her, and she was biting her lip nervously as her reddened eyes darted around the church, lending to the anxiety she already wore. His brow creased with concern. “What’s wrong, Fiona? What happened? You’re a mess.”

She managed a weak smile and let go of her death-grip long enough to wipe her tear-streaked face. “You sure know how to console a girl,” she said shakily.

“I’ve never known you t’be bothered by anythin’ I say,” he said with a smile of his own that didn’t quite hide his worry.

“Can we leave here for a while?” she asked as she again looked apprehensively around the church.

“Sure,” he said. Then he winked at her. “I’ve got t’pace myself, anyway so I don’t finish before lunch time.” He got up from the pew, leaving his polish and rag behind, put his arm around her shoulders and motioned to a back exit in the church.

The morning, as with most early-spring mornings, had been a cool one. The air was crisp and smelled of pine. The moss underfoot was still wet and a bit spongy. But a brilliant sun had just come over the craggy top of Ben Macdui in the distance, helping put a little warmth into the chilled air. From the back of the church, the two followed a path through a thick of old spruce trees cut by the priests and parishioners who often sought the solitude of the woods for quiet contemplation.

Neither said anything for a while. They just strolled along, Fiona occasionally reaching out to a spruce branch to touch the needles and Ian waiting patiently for her to work up the confidence to tell him what had happened.

“It’s finished,” she finally blurted.

“What is?” Ian asked, pretending he didn’t know what she was talking about.

A long sigh rushed from her lungs. “Us--me and Owen. I--I guess I’ve just had enough.”

Ian was quiet.

Fiona asked, “Well, aren’t you going to say anything?”

“That depends,” he replied, putting his hands in his pockets for warmth. “Do you want me t’respond as your priest or your friend?”

She gazed at him with those once twinkling eyes. Their sparkle had faded. “I sure could use a friend right now.”

Ian smiled. “I think I remember how t’do that.”

They entered a small clearing with a large, round boulder with a flat top at its center, used as a seat along the roughly half-mile stretch of paths that wound through the woods. They sat at it facing each other with a three-hundred-sixty degree wall of evergreens surrounding them. At the moment, they seemed to be the only people alive--the only things alive. The air was still in the solitary place. Even the sky above, usually filled with clouds hurrying along by the constant Scottish winds, stood in suspended animation like busy-bodies taking time from their chores to hear a bit of gossip.

Fiona could only glance at Ian then look away with a failed expression on her face. She would try again, only to turn away once more.

Finally, Ian said softly, “So why don’t you tell me about what happened. How you got your shirt all ripped up, there.”

Tears welled again in her eyes. She wiped them away and rubbed her wet hands on her jeans. “I--I tried. You know that, don’t you?”

“Aye, I know that. But it takes two.”

“Aye, two, and I finally figured out that I can’t do it for both of us.”

“Well, was he at least willin’ t’hear the suggestions I offered?”

She shook her head no and wiped a stray tear from her cheek. “All he ever wants to do is go clubbing with his friends, which I don’t mind, really, but he always comes home three-sheets.”

Ian gave her a sympathetic nod. “What about you? Are you finally gettin’ out more. You need the company of friends, too. We all do.”

“I’ve tried, but besides work and aerobics, I usually end up staying home. I’d put so much energy into this relationship, not to mention five years of my life, that I didn’t have time for a social life.” Her head sank, and she stared at the mossy ground under her feet. “That’ll change now.”

Ian motioned to the ripped sleeve of her shirt. “And that?”

“I told him it was over this morning. I was tired of trying. He--he didn’t take the news very well. He said that he hadn’t spent all his money on me these past five years for me to just up and leave him high and dry.” She looked at Ian with a sternness she seldom displayed. “I told him that I never spent a dime of his money outside his share of apartment expenditures and that, yes I was, going to leave him high and dry.” She played with the frayed wool fabric on her sleeve absentmindedly. “He didn’t think I would do it. He watched and taunted me as I packed, but when I came back for my last suitcase, he grabbed me and tried to stop me.”

“Ian’s forehead widened in surprise. “My god, woman, what did you do?”

Fiona gave him the biggest smile and exuberantly exclaimed, “I belted him!”

Ian inched closer to her. He tried to refrain from laughter because long before she had gotten the fire in her belly to stick up for herself, he’d wanted to rip the man from limb to limb. How anyone could treat a precious flower like Fiona the way he had was absolutely beyond him.

“I really think that what you did was best,” he said.

“As a priest or as a friend?”

“I left my collar up on my night stand.”

She inched closer to him. She took his hand in his. “I just feel like I’ve let you down. You counseled me, spent months giving advice, and I let you down.”

Ian thought a moment, looked up into the idle sky, then around him. When he engaged her again, he said, “Bein’ a priest aside, as a counselor I’m not always obligated t’help save a relationship. Some relationships aren’t meant t’be. I’ll be honest with you. I felt, as your counselor, that this might be one of those relationships, but, as a friend, I also wanted t’try and help you any way I could. I truly wanted t’see you happy, and if this man made you happy then . . .”

Fiona’s eyes filled with tears once more. She grabbed Ian and hugged him tightly as she sobbed in his ear. “Why can’t men be like you, Ian? Why’d you go off and become a priest?”

“I was called,” he replied feebly, holding her closely, enjoying her warmth. “The Church needed me.”

He felt the wetness of tears on his neck when she whispered, “But I needed you, Ian. I did.”

He tried to pull himself away, but the urge to stay locked in that embrace was more powerful at the moment than priestly vows. Her sadness and fears, wants and needs--and passion now seemed a part of him. A part of him he could not do without. Their months of private sessions had brought them even closer together than they already were. His hugs, once only given platonically and sympathetically, now had more meaning in them. More meaning than he’d wanted. But he couldn’t stop the tide of feelings that continually ebbed closer to his heart. He’d never wanted to let Fiona know about these new feelings. He was a priest, after all. But with her last revelation, he knew that she already knew; his embraces had betrayed him.

A soft, warm, wet cheek rubbed against his own as they slowly moved their heads back but not away. Fiona’s eyes, once glittering, then waning, now blazed. Ian could feel their wanting as she stared into his eyes. He knew his eyes shared in that fire. Plumes of chilly vapor ran the narrow passage between them but that passage closed shut as warm lips embraced.

Along that moss-blanketed path behind the kirk, the two shared each other in forbidden pleasure. It was something that he had desperately wanted--and eschewed at the same time. And although both new the ramifications of the act, neither regretted that special moment.

Within days of that incident, Fiona had announced--with more than slight reluctance--that she was leaving Glutter Den and moving to Inverness to stay with family and start over. Ian agreed that it was the best thing to do, although his heart ached at the thought of her leaving. And as he hugged her one last time and watched her drive away, even then, he had the feeling that he would probably never see her again.

Subsequently, after her departure, his confession to the Bishop of his transgressions had landed him in Oban with ill feelings toward the Church instead of the prayer and penance he’d actually sought.

All the while and the months thereafter, he thought about her almost every day. Not as a lover, although he could never totally escape its sweetness, but as a very special, very close friend. That felt infinitely better to him than the sexual liaison had.

Even now, even in a dream, Ian could taste the sweetness in her lips; feel the softness of her milky skin as another part of his being was simultaneously rebuking him for letting himself think such thoughts. The end was near, within arm’s reach. He could feel it, sense it. He often thought that maybe the penance he never received for his transgression was to give up his own ghost on this, his last holy mission. So he indulged in a memory he knew he would never be able to relive.

He wanted to keep the mental picture of Fiona frozen forever on his mind. He could never tire of looking upon her, but something deep within the shadows of his conscious told him to wake up.

Art was in the same position that Ian had remembered him in when he’d fallen asleep--staring at him from the corner of his eye. The man’s cold, indirect gaze shot a jolt of ice-shivers down Ian’s back, and that was enough to completely wake him.

Art quickly redirected his attention to his side mirror.

“How long’ve I napped?” Ian asked with a yawn as he adjusted himself in the seat.

Art didn’t answer. He just kept watching a line of upcoming traffic in his mirror.

“Art?”

“Huh? Oh, a while,” he replied with more than slight indifference. His voice was dry, gravelly. He tried to clear it, but that only seemed to make it worse.

As the first car passed, he slowed the truck down considerably. He turned back to Ian. His eyes had that same lost, forgetful look in them that they’d had earlier as he deliberated what to say. Then with a smile that couldn’t quite fully blossom, he tried to spark up conversation again. “Never saw a man--um--sleep as--uh--soundly as you did.” His voice became even coarser as he spoke. “One of these--uh--these days--um--uh.” He fell silent, never finishing the sentence, and the weak grin faded quicker than it appeared. His face grew slack and his eyes seemed to gloss over like little, dark, polished marbles.

An inner feeling of dread overcame Ian at the sight of the big man and his loss of words. He was beginning to wonder if Art didn’t have a medical condition, something which made him, at times, act this strangely if not properly medicated. He hoped that maybe the sound of his voice would snap Art back to reality. “Art? Art! You were sayin’ somethin’.”

Art squirmed in his seat--not fluidly but in jerks and starts--and slowed the truck down even more. He now divided his time between the road in front of him and the cars passing the truck on his left. He seemed strangely intrigued by them, forgetting completely the conversation he’d tried starting.

Ian looked out his side mirror. The Interstate stretched like an undulating snake to the azure horizon in the distance behind them. Three more cars were about to pass them then not a car in sight as far as he could see. The highway would be deserted to their rear.

He focused his attention back to Art. Rivulets of sweat trickled down the trucker’s forehead, which he wiped away.

Again, Art looked out his mirror at the empty highway behind them then watched the last car slowly overtake and pull away from the truck. Away, away, away until it was just a colorful blob on the gray highway ahead of them. His head jerked once spasmodically.

The man’s behavior made the hair on Ian’s neck stand erect. Now the instincts he had drawn upon and sharpened the last month took control. Something deep within his marrow felt wrong. Somehow, he knew Art was not having a medical episode. It was stranger than that. He tried to push back a lump that was beginning to form in his throat. Suddenly, the truck began to pick up speed quickly, which pushed Ian back in his seat. The force of acceleration for a truck that size surprised him. Wide-eyed, fear mixed with quandary, he glared at Art.

The sign for the exit to a rest area a quarter-mile up the interstate whizzed by Ian’s window as Art began to breath heavy, aspirating air wildly as though he were suffocating and couldn’t draw in enough oxygen.

“Are you all right?” Ian asked, more alarmed than ever.

Art said nothing, just stared ahead blankly. His head jerked back twice more, the force of which would have seemingly snapped vertebrae.

That’s when Ian noticed a long gash rip across the back of the man’s right hand just below the curve of the knuckles. It was deep on his meaty hand with muscle, bone and tendon clearly visible, but no blood whatsoever seeped from the wound.

“Art, your hand!” Ian cried.

Without warning, the truck abruptly swerved right onto the rest area exit. Ian was thrust hard into his seatbelt as the blue beast made the curve. The parking lot was vacant save a tan Saab, and its occupants were already heading back to the on-ramp to the interstate when the big rig screeched to a stop in front of the restroom facilities.

“Art--Arthur, what’s the bleedin’ matter with you!” Ian exclaimed as he rubbed a welt on his neck left by the seat belt.

Art turned completely in his seat and stared at him. That odd grin had fully returned. It no longer looked silly on the trucker’s full-mooned face but evil. It was the smirk of a devil.

His eyes bulged, so much so that Ian though they might explode from his head. He watched in horror as the man’s skin ripped like torn fabric from the bridge of his nose to the crown of his head, revealing pink-white bone. Art never winced nor cried in pain. In fact, he seemed oblivious to the fact that his skin seemed no longer capable of covering his skeleton. His body must have been absent of blood for none but the tiniest of trickles of crimson wept from the horrible gash. His smile faded, he tried to speak but only hoarse, gurgley air came out. He mouthed something unintelligible. With that, he opened the door and with dexterity not naturally given to a man his size, he jumped from the truck and ran into the rest room.

Ian wasn’t nearly as fast. He fumbled with his seat belt for what seemed an eternity before it finally freed him, and then he almost fell out of the rig as he opened the door in almost a full run.

Inside, the restroom was yellow tile and green cement-block walls flanked by a row of urinals and toilets on the left side and a row of sinks on the right side. At the far end was an exit to the back of the facilities.

Art was at the last sink looking into a mirror when Ian rushed through the front entrance. He gazed upon Ian with eyeless sockets now, and chunks of skin fell from his arms like the autumn leaves hurrying to the ground outside. The left side of his face had receded from his skull further and drooped in layers as though he was made of paraffin and was melting.

The room was beginning to take on the smell of death.

Ian stopped just inside the door, his heart skipped when he saw the sight before him. “Who are you?” he whispered. “What are you?”

“Don’t be afraid,” the gravelly voice said. He held out his peeling arms for Ian to inspect. “It’s only decomposition. Tissue happens to do that when it’s dead. There are some forces of nature which even I cannot master.”

Ian instantly knew what he was dealing with. It was the monstrosity from the catacombs. This was the first direct encounter with it since its escape over one month ago. The fact that it was inside someone’s body both surprised and terrified him because he was unaware of this capability. “Come out of him and face me,” he said with an unmistakable quiver to his voice.

“See now if I did that, then we couldn’t have this conversation because I can’t talk very well outside a human body. Call it a--a handicap.”

“I demand it!” Ian shouted.

“You demand nothing from me! I can kill you where you stand before you take another breath!”

“I want to see you.”

“You have.” it said, grinning a razor-smile from Art’s mouth. “In your nightmares.”

“Come out!” he pleaded again.

“You’ll see me soon enough. The entire world will see me and all my kind by dawn tomorrow. Even beings greater than me, ones which I could not hold a candle to, will be sitting in judgment over this place by then.” It paused a moment, then giggled malignantly. “Listen to me! Beings greater than me? Such humbleness. Sickening, isn’t it? It’s another of my despicable afflictions. I am, after all, partly human.”

“Wh-What are you?”

“Oh, you know what I am, priest-man. Your Bible speaks of my kind. How can you not know what I am? I’m a solitary beast that was cursed to endure the punishments of both worlds. The forgotten. A bastard child of Earth and Hades, outcast by both the physical and spiritual universe. No one wanted me. Not my earthly mother who bore me, who shrieked at the sight of me, who died between the clutches of my damnable hands. Not my angelic father who chose, rather, to spend eternity in Hell because he despised anything human. You see? No one.” It shook its rotting hand at Ian. “But that will all change when I find that key, and I open those wretched gates that hold back the one, true power, and I become the savior of my tormented kin. Ah yes, then, then I will be wanted.”

“My god,” Ian said to himself, realizing now just what the thing must be, couldn’t be but must be. “Genesis two, the book of Enoch, they were literal . . . true.”

“You’d be surprised just how much of that sickening book is true. I should know,” it said matter-of-factly, “I was around for all of its writings.”

Suddenly, almost instantly, it traversed the space between it and the priest and was now standing right in front of him, bulging globes of molten silver protruding from Art’s eyeless sockets. Multi-rowed fangs embedded in that hellish smile.

Ian was startled backwards, but the bathroom wall caught him. He felt the cold bite of the cement blocks radiate through his coat and chill his back. He was now as icy as the death that was about to take him.

More skin ripped away from the human shell that used to be Art. A protruding black mass from within him seemed to be slowly ripping his body apart as though he was being used as a golem costume.

“Get thee behind me, Satan!” Ian exclaimed.

“Flattery will get you nowhere, priest-man.” It picked up Ian by the neck and began squeezing. After a moment, chunks of skin and bone fell away, revealing an impossibly bigger, talon-tipped black hand where Art’s had seconds before fell to the floor. Ian instantly felt the power in its stiffness like cold, hard steel, yet at the same time, it felt as dead as Art’s hand had.

“I actually feel rather glum having to kill you so slowly, making you suffer in as much excruciating agony as I possibly can. Really, I do. I guess I’ll just have to work on controlling these repulsive emotions.” It laughed with such force, with such a blood-curdling sonority that Ian screamed just so he could try to hear his own voice over its laughter. It squeezed tight though, cutting off Ian’s cry. He choked and gagged under the tremendous power of the beast as it alternately squeezed then loosened its grip on his neck. He’d turn blue then gasp for air, turn blue then gasp for air, and each time the noose-like clutch lasted a bit longer than the previous, and the beast would laugh more jubilantly.

Art’s nose fell from his putrefying face and landed at his feet with a wet splat. His chest was augmenting at an alarming rate as though it was a balloon filling with air and quickly reaching its exploding point. The buttons on his flannel shirt popped, revealing several vertical lacerations in the pasty-white skin that kept tearing as the chest expanded. Several ribs snapped like dry twigs then cut through their covering of skin. The dark mass of the demon within was pushing its way through.

Blackness began to creep in around the periphery of Ian’s eyes. His chest burned for air. Somehow, he managed to reach into his coat pocket and pull from it a vial of clear liquid, holy water, which he’d taken from the monastery before leaving Scotland.

The demons grip became tighter, still. It no longer felt cold but like a red-hot poker cauterizing his neck. He was sure within seconds the vertebrae in his neck would snap.

It laughed impossibly louder, almost in the throws of some morbid ecstasy.

With darkness closing in on him, death only a heartbeat or two away and still choking, body convulsing, he barely managed to pop off the cork stopper with his thumb, almost losing the precious fluid from his failing grip and splashed the holy water over the demon-thing. Instantly, Art’s face began to bubble, and it wailed in unearthly agony as the water burned into the decaying flesh like acid. It threw Ian from the wall, and he smashed against a mirror and fell hard onto the sink below it then to the floor.

The griffin lunged at him but suddenly cringed backwards when, through gasping breaths and searing pain, Ian succeeded in pulling out a crucifix from another pocket and held it out in front of him. It threw its rotting limbs up over its eyes and bellowed with such a force of pain and anger and abomination that the row of mirrors above the sinks cracked, and Ian was pushed completely under the sink.

“I should kill you right now, priest-man!” it spat vehemently at him, trying to guard against direct eye contact with the outstretched crucifix. “But I’ve had a slight change in heart. I want you to see just what’s going to be released--what you released upon this world when that key is in my hand. No, you and your kind will be left alive to suffer the torment of the Hell you try so hard to avoid, and how badly I want to see you suffer! I want the entire human race to feel the wrath of the innumerable damned souls--souls you helped lead to their punishment. And to think it’ll be because of you. YOU, priest-man! There will be no hiding behind acid water or your dead savior. Hell’s coming.” Suddenly, it looked around as if it heard a stealthy noise and was trying to pinpoint the direction from which it arose. “Shhh. If you listen hard enough you can hear it’s faint but growing thunder. Do you hear your heart pounding in your ears?” It drew closer.

Ian swallowed hard, his face and hair saturated with sweat.

“Are you shaking in fear?”

Ever closer.

Ian’s heart jackhammered at his rib cage.

“Are you in pain?”

It knelt down just beyond the reach of the out-stretched crucifix, seemed to wince at its closeness, repressing a pain of its own, being in the presence of an icon of God.

Ian could smell the decay on its panting breaths.

“Multiply the worst pain you can conjure by eternity and that, priest-man, is Hell.” It flashed its razor blade smile. “And it’s coming for you!”

With that, the shell of Art’s body fell limp to the floor, and a flash of something tremendous and black whisked out the back exit, almost knocking the metal door from its hinges.

In pain, Ian stumbled to his feet and staggered over Art’s lifeless shell to the back exit and looked out across the browning grass and empty picnic tables into the deep woods. Gone.

He stumbled back out to the rig and got in.

“Damn it!” he cursed out loud. He’d gotten in the wrong side. He jumped out, went around to the other side and got in again.

He eyed the instrument panel, the CB, the cell phone, all the gadgets and gauges and knobs and buttons. He might as well have been sitting in the cockpit of a jet aircraft. Lucky for him the truck was left running, and he did know how to drive a standard.

He quickly grabbed the stick shift and pushed down on the clutch. With the transmission unengaged, he hurriedly went through each of the gears to get a feel for the big machine. After a moment of practice, when he was comfortable with its workings, he put the truck in gear and slowly brought the beast to life. It felt awkward driving something that size and on the wrong side of the vehicle, but desperation had taken over where partiality left off.

Cautiously, he got the Kenworth back out onto the interstate, all the while eyeing the wood line that raced past him on the right. Was it still in there? Following, taunting? Or was it already miles ahead?

From the side pocket of his coat, Ian retrieved the map he’d bought, already folded to reveal the route needed taking to get to Thurmond. He laid it on the over-sized steering wheel so he could glance at it as he drove.

It’s all your fault, it’s all your fault, it’s all your fault. Those words drummed over and over in his ear. It was almost too painful a realization to bear.

He tried desperately to lift his spirits by rationalizing that someone else, at some point in the future would have eventually dug that tunnel out and come upon the unspeakable thing, and maybe they wouldn’t have had the resources or will to stop it. At least in his mind as long as he drew breath, there was still a thread of hope but a hope that was running low.

It was a sprint to the finish line, now. He needed to find the man, Amos Walker, who held that damnable key, the key that could unlock quite literally a realm of evil, chaos, death, eternal suffering. Find it quickly, he thought. But as he drove the Kenworth down the highway, Ian felt as woefully slow as that paunchy, moon-face Arthur must have been.

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