Matt crawled down the long hallway. He’d heard lots of screaming from Mommy and Daddy and loud crashing. At first he thought they were just having a fight. He remembered daddy saying that “Sometimes mommies and daddies yell. Yelling isn’t good, even when mommies and daddies do it, but we all sin. Just remember that Mommy and Daddy always love each other and you.” But then there was the crashing. He saw on tv, when he watched it which wasn’t often, that some people threw things at each other and that was something that never happened. So he came out of his room. At first he walked, but then he remembered that being out of his room after dark was wrong unless he was sick or had to go to the bathroom, so he decided to be sneaky and army crawl.
Almost to the living room and he saw ketchup on the carpet. At least it looked like ketchup. He belly crawled near it and saw that it wasn’t. He knew it was blood. He used to have bloody noses when he was small and once he had cut his hand really bad on a knife. Playing with knives was bad, you should never play with knives, but he had and oh the blood. Mommy had screamed til he thought her voice would break. Daddy took him to the hospital. Blood on the floor, lots of blood. Like the time he dropped a gallon of milk. He’d tried to make Mommy and Daddy breakfast, but the milk jug was so heavy.
The puddle of blood stretched on into the living room. Matt had to pee really bad and he was so scared. But he was a good soldier of God and soldiers didn’t get scared. He said a little prayer and skirted the soaked, deep pile still on his tummy. From under the dining table he could see into the living room. There was no more screaming, only the sound of the radio on low. It was the “Candy Man” song. Then he heard a weird sound. It sounded like someone pulling there foot out of a deep mud hole, wet and sucking. Then he felt vibrations coming up through the floor. Someone was walking towards the doorway into the dining room. Someone big, bigger than Daddy. Matt didn’t notice it but he was humming “Christian Soldiers” lightly.
He covered his eyes with splayed fingers. Maybe if he couldn’t see them they couldn’t see him. He did see the man’s legs, thick and covered in red denim. Only the denim wasn’t red, it was more blood. Matt couldn’t help it. His bladder let go and he buried his head in the carpet. The vibrations went away. After what seemed like years he looked up and there was no one there. He needed Mommy. His face was wet. He needed to blow his nose. Mommy was in the living room. He crawled out from under the table and walked through the doorway. It was an ocean of red with little islands of gore. He smelled metal and urine. He felt the man come up behind him. He turned, unable not to. He looked up into the face of the bad man.
Matt sat up in bed with his mouth wide open. Nothing came out. Nothing ever did. At least not that he knew of. His foster parents once complained that he would often whimper in his sleep, but that was it. He hadn’t wet the bed this time. That was always embarrassing as hell. Thankfully he’d never had to share a bed with anyone and honestly the dreams were all that kept him a virgin at one point while he was in the Army.
He went to the bathroom, touching the crucifix mounted on the wall in the hallway outside his room and mouthing “Our Father” silently. Then he went to the little eat in kitchen that looked into his living room. Those four rooms made up his tiny apartment. He could afford better no doubt. His retirement pay from the government plus the money he made from his comics and photography kept him in the green. Most of that went into savings though.
There was little furniture to clutter any of the rooms. His living area had no television. A drawing table, art supplies, and a large recliner for the occasional nap break were its sole occupants. Photographs that he’s taken on his travels around the world, blown up to poster size were the only pieces of artwork on the walls. His bookshelf was crammed with titles on religion, the occult, art, and photography. Not one scrap of fiction or anything that could be construed as a hobby or waste of time. He had two jobs, making art for a couple of Christian publishing companies including two comic books and training himself in his true calling, demon hunting. At least he had felt it a calling until last night. Now he wasn’t so sure.
He had come back to his place to take a little nap before going to see Chris. This time of day on Wednesdays the pastor was usually meeting with staff and prepping for his sermon. He drank a cup of coffee while he thought about how best to approach his mentor. Matt was pretty sure that Chris would believe him to a point. They saw eye to eye on most things down to the reality of demon possession. That, Matt believed, was what had happed to Owen. The shadow had probably been a demon. He didn’t doubt for a second that he had seen something. His eyes had never played tricks on him before. When you earned a living with them you had to trust them. And that something had to be why he had thought Owen was a demon.
He had never told Chris, or anyone else, about his last mission. It was probably about time. He wasn’t afraid of anyone higher up finding out that he had told. He’d signed an agreement not to disclose anything about any of his missions. As important as his word was, at this point telling someone seemed imperative. It was very likely that Chris would tell him to turn himself in to the police. He had after all killed a man. Certainly not an innocent man, at least not by God’s standards and probably not by man’s either, but neither party had given him license to kill indiscriminately. He wasn’t afraid of getting caught, so maybe turning himself in would be for the best.
He finished the cold coffee and dressed in a fresh pair of dark gray slacks and a white oxford. Dark leather loafers completed the outfit. “If you go to the house of God you need to dress like you are visiting the King.” His Mom’s words echoed down to him from over twenty years past. The church was a twenty minute walk. He looked outside. It was certainly pretty enough, but still cold. He slipped on his long dark wool overcoat and set out to see Chris.
Westridge Christian Church had about five hundred regular attendees split between its three services. The first two were Sunday morning, the third in the evening. It met in an old, rambling elementary school. Matt walked in the front door and went straight to Chris’s office. He had to walk through a maze of halls and nodded to various staff members, but didn’t speak. Finally he came to the right door. It stood wide open, which usually meant he was alone. It always meant come in.
“Shine” by the Newsboys played at a comfortable listening volume. Chris sat in his large burgundy vinyl office chair with his eyes closed. His lips were moving and fingers tapped against each other to the music’s beat.
Matt waited and when the music stopped his pastor opened his eyes and swiveled to meet the young man’s gaze. “Hey Chris.”
Matt didn’t realize it but Chris had been praying for him in a very focused way for the last few days. He came around his desk and hugged Matt, who returned the embrace. The older man was a good three inches shorter with a headful of frizzy red hair. They broke it and Chris gestured for him to sit. “Hey brother. Good to see you.” Chris sat on the corner of his desk, displacing a few stacks of paper and a half dozen open books. “What brings you by?”
A sigh that came from the tips of Matt’s toes helped him to relax his shoulders. He knew that Chris was probably the only person on Earth that wouldn’t judge him and he needed to do this. “I did something very bad last night.”
“Are we talking bar fight bad or letter bomb bad?” Personally he couldn’t imagine Matt ever going in to a bar, much less starting a fight.
“There’s no way to sneak up on this, Chris. I shot someone.” He slumped down as far as he could without sliding out all the way. “I killed him.” His voice was barely a whisper.
Chris didn’t say anything. He went to his office door and closed it almost all the way. He came back and knelt beside his friend. “Father, before we go any further with this discussion I want to lift this time up to you. Sounds like we have a tough discussion ahead and I pray that your spirit will be here with us. Whatever has happened help us both to understand that your grace is more than sufficient. We lift these things up to you, in Jesus’ most powerful and holy name we pray. Amen.” He patted Matt on the leg and stood. “Okay, go ahead.”
“Did you read the paper this morning?”
“No. Haven’t had time to get to it yet.”
“Here.” Matt pulled the front page out from inside his coat. It had been folded in thirds. He held it out a bit like one might hold a sharp knife by its blade.
Chris took it. The headline said, “Billionaire Developer Slain”. It went on to detail all of the good things done by Walter Owen over the last thirty years. The list wasn’t nearly as long as one might expect from a man with as much wealth and power as he had. Or maybe it was longer. In either case it didn’t mention any of the bad things. This particular paper had had a run in with Owen before and even in death he was apparently a man you didn’t mess with. “So you’re the ‘vile assassin’ in question? “
“Yeah. You’d think that I had killed Mother Theresa.”
“So why Matt? I mean I know more about the quality of this man’s life and the media’s leaving a thing or two out, but I know you aren’t Bernie Goetz. No matter what he’s done it doesn’t make sense.” He sat back on the edge of his desk.
“Okay, I know how this is gonna sound, even considering the audience. I’m not saying that I heard a voice from God and I definitely didn’t get this from Satan. And in any case obviously I as wrong.”
“So? Why?” The wooden edge of the desk bit into the backs of his thighs. “Why risk that much heat?”
Matt scrubbed his face with both hands. “I thought he was a demon.”
Chris sat there without saying anything. He could see that Matt expected derision, rejection, something negative that was for sure. Chris was very careful to rein everything in. It would be easy enough to react to an announcement like that. So he just waited.
“It turns out that he was just possessed. I’d tell you how I know what little I do, but right now that’s not the point. I need to know what I should do.” He straightened his back and dropped his hands down.
“I think you know what you should do. Turn yourself in. I’ll even go with you and we’ll beg for leniency. That’s the only thing that you can do. Anything else would put you and a host of people in harm’s way. You don’t want that now do you?
“Of course not. I killed one man and that was one too many.” Another deep sigh. “You’re right. I need to do it. They’ll call me crazy and stick me in a padded room when I tell them why and what I saw. But I’ll tell them the truth and the rest is in God’s hands.”
Chris nodded. He wasn’t sure what Matt had experienced. “I don’t think you’re sick and neither will your friends. No matter why you did this and no matter the outcome we’ll always be here for you.”
“Thanks. Look I promised Robin that I’d eat dinner with her tonight and tell her what’s going on. I owe her that much. So twenty-four more hours as a free man and then we’ll go to the police.”
Matt’s word had always been good in the past. He saw no reason to disbelieve him now. That was good because Chris didn’t think he’d be able to report the man himself. He had a sworn duty to respect private confessions like this and as painful as it would be to let Matt get away with this, he would be forced to. The men knelt and prayed for the remainder of the afternoon, seeking solace and wisdom in their faith.
