“That is what your dumb ass has been listening and praying to for the past few weeks. That’s your angel!”
Samson fell silent. They ran toward the subway station, noting the streetlights winking out behind them. The darkness advanced.
“Fuck the subway. We ain’t going to make it!”
“We can’t give up, Samson. Hail a taxi.”
“Are you kidding me? You don’t get out much do you? Ain’t no taxi stopping for us this time of night. Did you forget what color you were?”
“That thing is getting closer!”
“What about a church? There’re churches everywhere. You think we’d be safe in one?”
Seeing that thing come out of the darkness had robbed Samuel of all his resolve. The only hope they had at all was the thought that if hell existed—and that could be the only place that thing could have come from—then heaven had to exist as well. And if heaven existed then God existed. He clung to that promise as the stench of hell, of burning meat and boiling blood, pursued them through the dark streets along with the sound of screams, shredding flesh, and breaking bones. The beast killed everything in its path.
“I don’t know, Samson. I don’t know.”
Samson fell silent again, trying to remember anything he’d read in those old grimoires about sending a demon back to hell.
“I can’t keep running, Samson. I’m too sick. I feel like I’m dying.”
“You’re just out of shape.” Samson said, not wanting to acknowledge Samuel’s disease. Samson scooped him onto his shoulders in a fireman’s carry and took off running again. “You’ve lost a lot of weight.”
“I’m dying, Samson.”
“Don’t say that!”
“It’s true. You’ve got to accept that. Look at the hell you’ve created trying to deny it. You’ve got to accept the fact that I’m dying.”
“I can’t. I can’t.”
Samson turned another corner and almost crashed into a line of party-goers lining up outside of Club Deviance, a gay club in the Castro district. Samson spotted Amon exiting a taxi, but he was so out of breath he could barely speak. He dropped Samuel from his shoulders and gestured toward him.
“Samson! You’re covered in blood!” Amon yelled.
“It’s my brother, he’s hurt. We need your taxi.”
“Oh, sure honey. I won’t be needing one for four or five hours.” Amon waved to the taxi driver, a portly dark-skinned Italian with thick curly hair and a face like a piece of tanned leather. “Wait. This is my dear friend Samson. He’s one of the sexiest men on earth and the highest paid male model in the industry. Take good care of him and take him wherever he wants to go.”
“Thanks, Amon. You’d better get inside the club quick!”
Amon heard the screams. “Gay bashers?”
“No…worse. Just get inside the club and stay there until it passes…and thanks for the ride!”
Samson helped his brother into the taxi and then dove in after him. “Get us the fuck out of here! That way! Fast! Just drive!”
Samuel sucked in shallow gasps of air, broad patches of sweat soaking through his shirt. His color was all wrong, his ashen skin cold and clammy to the touch.
“Don’t die on me, Samuel. You can make it!”
“Samson, what is that thing? You have to know what it is. Try to think. How did you summon it?”
Growing up, Samson always had a tell for when he’d been caught, his signature turn away, that betrayed his inability to hold a poker face. So when Samson turned his face away from his brother, Samuel already suspected what he was about to say.
“I knew.”
“What? You knew what?” Samuel pressed.
“I knew it wasn’t an angel. I knew exactly what it was.”
“How could you do this? Why? What is it? How do we stop it?”
“I tried to call God, I did, but he wasn’t listening. I prayed to every angel, every saint. I got nothing! What was I supposed to do? Let you die? I had to try everything, so…”
“So what? What did you do?”
“I think I really fucked up, Samuel. I think I brought Satan here!”
“It can’t be. One of his demons or some kind of dragon maybe? The Old Testament talks about all kinds of creatures…that…that can’t be Satan.”
Samson lowered his head and said nothing. They watched through the taxi’s rear window as clouds of darkness billowed through the streets. Flames flickered in the dark, a forest fire silhouetting a prehistoric lizard of some kind within the black smoldering miasma. A dinosaur, but not like any dinosaur either of them had ever read about. This one had six heads.
“Faster! Drive faster!”
In the rearview mirror, the cabbie’s thick eyebrows rose high on his forehead. The taxi lurched as the accelerator went to the floor.
“We’ve got to find a church! If that thing is Satan then maybe he won’t be able to enter.” Samuel looked down at his hand. His fist was covered in blood as he continued to squeeze the crucifix in his palm. He opened his fingers and studied the tiny effigy of the crucified Christ. Instead of the rapturous expression he normally wore, Jesus, saturated in Samuel’s blood, writhed in agony.
“There’s a church about four blocks away! The-the big one! St. Christopher’s!” the cabbie stammered.
Samson’s body was a riot of activity. The souls within him seemed to be struggling to break free, to flee his flesh before whatever evil Samson had brought to earth could claim them. His body stretched and morphed as more than a dozen souls fought their way to the surface, their hands and faces pressing against his skin, clawing and biting in their effort to escape. Samuel watched in mute horror, wondering if the beast outside was the only thing he had to worry about.
Sparks flew from the taxi’s rear fender as it rounded the corner on two wheels. A surge of heat blasted the cab and the windows exploded, showering them all in bits of tempered safety glass.
“It’s getting closer!” Samuel yelled.
“I’m doing eighty! I can’t go any faster with all of these turns. I’ll flip the car and kill all of us. Where did that thing come from and why the hell is it chasing us?” The cab driver was having a harder time dealing with everything that was going on than the two brothers. His panic actually relaxed them. Samuel grew dizzy, his chest burned with each breath.
“There’s the church! We’re going to be okay, Samuel!” Samson tried to sound positive even as his face contorted in agony while perspiration issued from him as he fought to contain the restless, panic-stricken spirits within him.
The cabbie turned the wheel sharply and jumped the curb, driving the taxi right up the steps of the church and bashing open the church doors with his front bumper. Samson grabbed his brother and hauled him out of the car, pulling him into the church. Samuel’s legs dragged behind him, his body limp in Samson’s arms.
“Come on little brother, you’ve got to fight. You cannot die on me now!” Samuel was still sweating profusely, wheezing as if he were having an asthma attack. His eyes rolled, focused on nothing. “Don’t die, Samuel. Stay with me little brother. Stay with me.”
The cab driver slammed the church doors shut and bolted them. He scurried about to barricade them as best he could. Samson set his brother down on the floor then joined the cabbie in snatching up pews and piling them in front of the door.
“I don’t think it could fit through those doors anyway.” Samuel whispered in between his labored breaths.
“He’s right. If that thing wants in here it’s going to come right through the wall.”
All three of them turned to look at the wall as if expecting it to implode at any moment. Returning his attention to Samson, the cabbie backed away, wild eyes staring at Samson’s undulating flesh. The souls inside of him bubbled his skin, preparing to mutiny. “What the fuck is wrong with you? You possessed or something? You’re what brought that thing here, aren’t you? What the fuck are you?”