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Twenty-One
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Devourer of Souls Twenty-Two
TWENTY-TWOEver see the movie Backdraft, Father? By the summer of my senior year, everyone including me had. A good enough movie, it was mostly forgettable, except there’s this scene in which one of the fireman characters mistakenly opens a door without checking the knob for heat first. When he opens the door, his ass gets fried by a huge gout of flame. A backdraft, caused by the sudden rush of oxygen.Now, I’m not exactly sure if that’s what I was trying to accomplish. Point in fact, I didn’t end up causing a backdraft. For that you need a smoldering fire that’s used up all the oxygen in a room. But hey—I wasn’t a firefighter or arsonist. I was a scared and pissed off (but mostly scared) eighteen year old trapped in a room with no way out. The door was guarded and it didn’t matterby whom, because I wasn’t gonna be waltzing by them any time soon.That chanting was getting louder. Weirder. The words all jumbled and mixed together, like from my nightmare of what I’d seen in that clear
Devourer of Souls Twenty-Three
TWENTY-THREENowFortunately not everyone in town was at church that night. A scattered few—those devoted non-attendees our faithful little town tolerated—had of course been at home. Some of them were volunteer firemen. They were the ones who found me in the basement the next morning.“Somehow I didn’t break my neck falling down those stairs. The heat and the smoke of course rose and enough of the floor held and didn’t collapse on me. I ended up spending only a week over at Clifton Heights General for mild injuries and smoke inhalation. I did, however, suffer ligament damage in my knees and ankles from the fall, exacerbated because of my CP. For several weeks I got around first in a wheel chair, then with a walker.”I sat back in the confessional booth, speechless, deeply concerned for the poor man’s soul, wondering about his sanity . . .Except.I distinctly remembered the burning of Tahawus Methodist Church, the summer after my senior year in high school. My father had helped o
Devourer of Souls Coda
CODAThe welcome sign for Tahawus is up ahead on the right. A glance at the dashboard clock on my JEEP shows that, indeed, it is only about forty minutes away from Clifton Heights. I find that hard to believe. It feels like we’ve been driving for hours. Of course, I’ve learned in my few years in the Adirondacks that the back roads feel endless, surrounded on both sides by thick, seemingly impenetrable stands of Adirondack pine. A thirty minute drive to Old Forge feels like an hour and half, most days.As I slow for the turn-off, I glance at Father Ward in the passenger seat. He sits with Nate Slocum’s journal in his lap, staring out the window. He’s been quiet for most the trip. I don’t blame him. His encounter with Stuart Michael Evans sounded harrowing. Of course, he’s now telling himself that clicking sound from Stuart fleeing the confessional booth must’ve been his walker, and not . . . something else. That Stuart had suffered some sort of hysterical break instead of . . .Chang
Devourer of Souls The Skylark Diner
THE SKYLARK DINERSaturday MorningWhen Father Ward enters I can tell by his expression that something heavy is weighing on his mind. In and of itself that isn’t unusual. As priest at All Saints Church and Headmaster of All Saints Academy he’s got a pretty full plate. Preoccupied seems his constant mental state these days. If he didn’t love his work so much I’d worry about it a little, honestly.Truthfully, in spite of how much he enjoys both his vocations, I do worry, but not about him burning out. Father Ward’s got a good head on his shoulders and a healthy dose of common sense. He knows when and how far to push himself, and when to relax. Plus, he served time in Afghanistan as an Army Chaplain. He saw some pretty rough action (though he’s never shared the exact details) and he survived just fine. You don’t manage that without some serious steel in your spine.No, it’s not Father Ward’s busy work schedule that concerns me.It’s this town, and the strange things that hide here.
Devourer of Souls Sophan - One
ONEMy childhood friend Jake Burns is getting pretty upset, stomping and waving next to what’s left of Mr. Trung’s koi pond. I’m sitting nearby, writing this beneath an old Oriental-style gazebo, which looks just like I remember as a kid, except its white paint has faded with time. Honestly, I can’t believe it’s still standing after all these years.The koi pond hasn’t fared nearly as well. Its concrete border is cracked and crumbling. Water lilies clog its scummy surface. And I have to wonder. Have the koi somehow survived the years? Do they still live and breed in the pond’s depths? Are they still waiting, after all this time, for Mr. Trung to wade into the water, hands upraised, chanting . . . ?No.I don’t want to think about that. I don’t want to be here, either.Neither does Jake. He’d beaten me here, was standing over the spot where he once destroyed an old stone chest with a hand-sledge. As I’d thrashed my way through overgrown weeds he’d wave
Devourer of Souls Two
TWOJake Burns never really fit in, no matter how hard he tried. He made crude jokes no one laughed at and possessed few manners. His temper flared at a moment’s notice, bringing a dangerous glint to his eyes. Quite frankly, he was also disgusting, even for an adolescent boy. He burped and farted and picked his nose with reckless abandon, regardless of the company he was in.He wasn’t all bad, though. He could knock a mean line drive down center field (which made him useful during Little League season) and he always found the best fishing holes. But I think we all knew in our hearts Jake was headed for a bad end. We figured he’d do time in the county jail someday for something stupid or that his hair-trigger temper would get him knifed in a bar somewhere.Why did we tolerate him always tagging along?Probably because we felt sorry for him. Jake’s dad beat him relentlessly. Beat him when drunk, when sober, or just on principal when he suspected Jake was “sassing” him.We never talk
Devourer of Souls Three
THREESaturday“Here he comes,” Kevin Ellison muttered as we browsed over a table filled with used comic books at the Commons Trailer Park Yard Sale. I glanced up and, sure enough, there was Jake Burns peddling his clunky old bike down the fairway toward us.I snorted and returned my attention to an issue of Rom: Space Knight. “Peachy.”“Y’know, he really seems to dig you,” whispered Gary McNamara from the other side of the table, where he was perusing an issue of Thor. “I mean really. Like you’re best buds or something.”I shook my head and sighed, trying to lose myself in Rom battling these blobby aliens whose tongues turned into drills that bored into a person’s skull and ate their brains so the aliens could become them. It was a little cruel but as Jake clattered to a stop I wondered if that’s why he didn’t fit in. Maybe he was like one of these aliens. After eating the brains of the “real” Jake Burns a few years ago, he’d never learned how to act like the rest of us.His sne
Devourer of Souls Four
FOURSomething else Jake excelled at was ferreting out deep water holes hidden underneath the creek’s banks and catching what my dad called ‘bottom feeders’ (carp and suckerfish) by hand.I kid you not. Jake would scout out spots along the creek where the bank hung out over the water, lie down and literally reach under the bank into recessed, watery alcoves. He’d then grab either a carp or a suckerfish by the gills and drag it flopping to shore.According to my dad carp and suckers don’t taste so great. But they’re big, sometimes the size of large walleyes or small northern pikes. They provide plenty of meat, regardless of taste. Given the needs of Jake’s family, taste probably wasn’t a big concern. Any type of free food helped.My dad had never taken up fishing by hand because he could never get over the fear that maybe something else waited for him under that bank. Like water moccasins or a snapping turtle. Jake, however, showed no fear. I suppose needing to eat and always being
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