St. Damned

Novel Excerpt

“Jesus H. Christ!” Officer William Shaker exclaimed when he turned and saw them, his heart—already pounding—shifting to turbo. “Where the hell did you two come from?”

The two teenage girls stood shoulder-to-shoulder, awash in his flashlight beam.

It took a second for his shock to pass. Then it took another second, no more, for him to realize that this whole thing was—wrong

Terribly wrong.

Both girls were as naked as God had made them, their dark skin loose and ashen. One looked to be twelve, maybe thirteen. The other was older, definitely high school age. Both were pretty, or would have been, if not for their sunken eyes, slack mouths—and the long deep slashes that had opened their necks, set into stark relief by the glare. Despite his shock, Shaker remained enough of a cop to infer a thin bladed weapon. A razor, maybe.

Somebody cut their throats…

His first thought was an ambulance. In fact, his hand was halfway to his radio before he realized with mounting horror that there wasn’t any blood. None at all. More than that, the wounds looked puckered, as though with age. The jagged, blackened flesh stood out starkly in the glare of his flashlight. And suddenly, Bill Shaker—“Shakey” to his friends—understood with an awful, unnatural certainty that the blood in their girls’ veins had drained away long ago.

He further understood that the pair of them stood between him and the only exit, their small hands hanging at their sides and their eyes hidden by large silver coins.

Coins for Charon…the ferryman.

Shaker only vaguely remembered the old Greek myth from his school days, but it struck the forefront of his memory now with such force that it felt almost like a physical slap.

These girls are dead.

Holy sweet fuck…they’re both actually and truly dead.

“Get out…” he began, waving his gun at them ridiculously, all his weapons training forgotten. His mouth felt dry and his heart kept slamming against his ribcage as if trying to break out. Licking his lips, he regrouped. “Get out of my way!”

Neither girl responded. They didn’t even move, making him wonder if they were aware of him at all. This thought actually offered some hope. Maybe, if he could stay calm and keep his peace long enough, they’d wander off and let him out of here.

Then his radio chirped, sounding like a thunderclap in this cold darkness. "Shakey! I need you! Where the hell are you?"

With a cry, he fumbled for it, almost dropping his flashlight in the process. When he finally got the damned thing to his lips, his eyes never leaving the two dead things in front of him, his voice came out as an arid, desperate croak. “I’m in the church! The front door opened and I saw this girl. She looked like she was in trouble. So, I followed her in. I followed her up. But now there’s two of them…and they won’t let me leave! Please, man. Help me. I—”

Without warning, the two teenagers blocking the archway stepped aside. They did it smoothly, without so much as a shared glance, as if acting with one mind.

A male figure appeared between them. He didn’t come from anywhere. He didn’t “step forward.” He just—appeared, as if the shadows had simply made him and deposited him there.

Shaker’s throat closed and his mind seemed to freeze solid. He didn’t even know he’d dropped the radio until he heard it clatter to the dusty floor at his feet.

“They are of me,” the figure said, the words seeming both distant and hideously close. “They are my lambs, my congregation, my tools.”

Shaker tried to speak, tried to bark orders, tried to remain a police officer. He still had his flashlight and his gun, after all. But they felt heavy in his hands—so heavy.

“Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls.”

“W—what?” Shaker heard himself say. “Who are you?”

“I am the alpha and the omega,” the figure intoned. “I am the sower who now may reap. I am the shepherd of my flock and the master of my house. I see that now. I see it so clearly. They’ve waited for me. All of them have waited for so many years. And now, at last, I’ve come.”

Shaker heard this but made sense of none of it. “Get out of my way, all of you.” He demanded, surprised by how steady his voice sounded.

Did the figure grin at him? In the gloom of the archway, still half-hidden behind the dead girls, it was hard to tell. “Rejoice. In moments, you will join us.”

“The hell I will! Now step aside or I’ll shoot!”

“My lambs,” the figure said, speaking with the smooth, calm cadence of a parent—or a back alley con man. “Take him.”

Suddenly, both girls moved. It happened so fast that it took Shaker’s overtaxed brain a moment to process the change. One instant they were as motionless as statues, and the next they lunged forward, their small hands coming up and reaching for him like claws.

Shaker tried to fire, but they were on him too quickly. Fingers, cold as ice and strong as steel cables locked around his wrists and arms. With a single squeeze, he felt the bones of his right hand snap, the gun falling from his grasp. Pain, shock, and panic all hit at the same time. He struggled wildly, but the girls held him in place as easily as he might hold a toddler.

Shaker screamed, loud and long.

Meanwhile, the figure in the archway slowly advanced, abandoning the shadows.

And, yes, he was grinning.

Wordlessly, one of the girls ripped the flashlight from Shaker’s grasp and threw it away. For a moment, its beam danced wildly across the cavernous interior of the church. Then he heard it strike something, the floor or a wall, and wink out.

Shaker tried to scream again; he really did. But the other girl shoved her small fist into his open mouth. Her flesh tasted cold and putrid against his tongue as her hand drove deeper and deeper still, first gagging and then choking him.

His eyes bulged in useless panic as his entire body convulsed.

“The wages of sin are death,” the man from the shadows intoned. “Let me show you…”

Then Officer Bill Shaker of the Camden, New Jersey Police Department was swallowed by smothering darkness.