Prologue

Cloud-Shrouded Crimson

Traveler’s Rest, South Carolina

October 13, 2005

Midnight

He stood, as he always stood, in the back doorway of the church looking outward at the dusty, grassy field laid out before him. The double doors of the church were open, both at the front and back where he presently stood, to allow the mid-October wind to scurry through and cool the small room within. The pews behind him were organized in rows, all with Holy Bibles set into their backs, and against the right wall of the church was a large white cross with small candles burning around it. Sister Mary Jane was moving among the pews with a broom in hand, humming to herself, and sweeping peacefully.

Dean McCreery allowed his eyes to scan the dark field lying before him. It was midnight and the sky was pitch black, the field slightly lighted by the full moon’s glow but something was astray, as it always had been. The full moon was blood red—crimson—with dark clouds drifting across it yet it rested in the sky, looming in the distance, directly before the opened double doors of the church, perfectly aligned with them.

Having been just awakened, Dean’s collared shirt was unbuttoned, open, and astray to match his sweat-matted graying black hair. A look of utter worry had flooded his rough face as he noticed the moon and midnight sky surrounding it, glowing dully with countless stars and stirring with the movement of invisible clouds…and something else, something unseen, something hidden, something mysterious; something demonic and deadly, frightful and unknown.

Gripping the wooden doorway tightly, Dean stepped off the sanctuary floor of the Catholic Church and felt dirt and pebbles crunch beneath his boots. In an instant a blinding, flaring pain struck his head; his bright green eyes fluttered, and her collapsed with snapshot images striking his mind and then disappearing just as quickly as they appeared, blurring together, blinding his mind’s eye, and then leaving painstaking residue as they sped away in a frightful array of confusion.

Dean’s mind blanked as a hideous scream of pain and despair bit into the cold midnight air and quieted the pain in his mind, not his racing heart. It beat in his head as his fear finally gripped him and overwhelmed him.

He attempted to regain his footing and failed, falling over once again before trying again and slowly succeeding. Dust clung to his open collared shirt, a shirt as white as paper covered with a coat as black as night, now both discolored with dirt and dust. He regained his feet and stood on shaky legs, slowly raising his head to see the horror of the church within.

The pews with thrown together, thrown against walls, or flipped with Holy Bibles split, torn, ripped apart, and thrown haphazardly around the small room. One had landed on the open flame of a candle and steadily burned into an evil grin. The white cross had been set aflame with hideous hellfire and burned brightly against the wooden right wall of the church. Sister Mary Jane lay before it in a pool of her own blood, quieted, no longer humming her favorite hymn, her broom broken with the jagged head shoved into her back, reddening her long white gown.

The cloud-shrouded crimson moon had come again and this time it had proven itself just as it always did in Dean’s mind; as it always seemed to do right before his very eyes. His bright green eyes grew duller as he witnessed this scene before him and he moved his head over and down to empty the contents of his stomach upon the dusty ground before the opened back doors of the Catholic Church in Traveler’s Rest.

“Dean…” A monstrous hissing yet familiar voice called from within the church. Dean McCreery slowly raised his head and ran a hand over his lips to clear the bile from them, his face torn into a mask of disgust and anger. He met the eyes of the man standing within the church before him, a tall man in dark clothes with a broad smile splitting his face in two, his matching bright green eyes not dulled by the sight surrounding him. In fact, he paid no heed to it as if it was commonplace or as if he hadn’t even noticed it yet. “It’s been a while Dean.”

Dean stepped back into the church with anger now burning in his eyes as he noticed the bloody cuffs of the man’s long coat sleeves and blood-covered hands. He started forward and gripped the silver cross hanging around his neck with shaking hands, muttering words beneath his breath that he could scarcely hear, let alone understand, himself.

Dean McCreery skid to a stop before the man with the matching green eyes, his hand still holding the cross tightly, his own green eyes filled with uncontrollable fury and sadness. He studied the tall man’s face including his ridiculous smile and only felt the sadness and fury within his mind grow. He tried to be ignorant of the scene surrounding him—the broken and scattered pews, the ripped Bibles, the burning cross, and Sister Mary Jane’s lifeless body—but found his heart tearing itself apart as the pressure of it dug into him. This familiar, yet unfamiliar man, the destroyed church, the cloud-shrouded crimson moon that could only be an omen from God or some higher power, and the future that it would bring. All these things pressured him, stressed him, battled him and he was powerless to all of them. He was powerless against them but most importantly he was powerless to stopping them, especially the certain future ahead though he knew of what it was and what it would bring.

He desperately wanted to scream his rage and fear as he gazed upon his…

A banging at his bedchamber door awakened him with a frightened start. He sat bolt upright in his small cot against the wall opposite the door and felt the extra weight of an ever-so-familiar thin sheet of cold sweat covering his body. He was naked from the waist up and not only was he himself soaked but his thin blanket and bed sheets were soaked through with sweat that had leaked from his frightened body during the night; during the invasion of that ever-so frequent nightmare; that omen from God, from a higher force beyond his control; a nightmare that had been plaguing his nights for countless years.

His breathing was heavy and quick, his black hair matted and hanging in his eyes; his face was a complete mess being covered in sweat and spittle with heavy black bags under his eyes.

The beating came at his door again, softer then before yet quickened and slightly more panicky. Dean reached over and felt on his bedside table in the dark searching for the lamp switch with a shaking, clammy hand. His fingers brushed it and he flipped it on. The light burned and stung his eyes painfully but it was enough light for him to see around the small room that served as his bedchamber. The blanket had fallen aside and his legs were exposed, clad in long black pants that clung to him in his sweaty mess.

He sighed and ran a hand through his sticky, matted hair. The room was indeed small with his cot against the wall opposite the door, a bedside table adjacent to it, and a desk and chair resting beside the door that opened out upon the small Catholic Church beyond. Dean was baffled yet alert as the beating came again, slightly heightened and faster.

“Yes?” He called to the closed door and unseen figure beyond with a hoarse voice that sounded like a growl as it left his throat. “Yes?” He called again as the beating continued. This time it slowed, hesitated, and then stopped. “What is it?” He coughed and swung his legs out of bed, resting his arms across them as silence answered him.

The voice was soft and hesitant. “Father McCreery, Thomas Callen is here to see you.” It was Sister Mary Jane’s voice, unmistakable with her flowing, singing tone. She was an elderly woman but her voice portrayed her as a woman of young, strong years for that was where her strength truly was.

Father Dean McCreery pushed himself to his feet and yawned. He glanced at the clock on his bedside table (a clock next to and sharing the small table with his lamp) and grew worried at the time portraying midnight. Not many people in Traveler’s Rest, for it wasn’t a large town at all, ever visited him at night and if so they usually appeared before ten o’clock; very rarely ever after midnight.

He moved across the room to his closet and opened it. “Thank you, Sister Mary Jane,” he called through the door as he pulled a high-necked collared shirt and black coat from the closet. “Tell Thomas that I’ll be with him shortly.”

“Very well.” There was scurrying and she was gone.

Dean McCreery pulled the shirt and coat over his shoulders and ran a hand over his face, attempting to fully awaken himself from the nightmare that had plagued him once again. That dream had been reoccurring for years, not every night, but frequently enough for him to tell that it wasn’t just a dream but a vision of something to come. He could recount the entire nightmare word for word and scene for scene by memory for it had been branded into his mind and could not be forgotten. Hanging from a peg on his closet door was the silver cross necklace that had served him so well in his nightmare and because of fear and uncertainty, Father McCreery took it in his hands and pulled it over his shoulder, allowing it to rest against his chest in plain sight for all to behold.

He left the shirt unbuttoned around his neck and left the coat open as he closed his closet door and headed to the door that would lead out into the small hallway beyond and then into the main church room with its altar, pews, and cross. Reaching for the doorknob, Father McCreery stopped and reconsidered, allowing his eyes to wander to the small desk beside that same door that would lead him out into the hallway and the church room and altar beyond. The small oak desk was plain and simple, uninteresting yet powerful for the power it held within it.

He moved closer to it and opened the drawer set into it. It was full of documents, written papers, a Bible, pens and pencils, and a notebook here or there. He rummaged through the countless sheets of meaningless paper and finally felt the secure, yet cold handle of the black Model 8000 Series Cougar eleven shot Beretta. He pulled the pistol free of its drawer prison and stuffed it into his belt behind his coat, hiding it so none would see it. Now he was truly ready to venture out into the church where the white cross was standing strong and stable, religious and holy, safe and secure.

A white cross burning with hellfire! His mind told him horribly.

Ignoring it, Father McCreery opened the door and left his room, turning right. He soon emerged from the hallway and entered the small room of his Catholic Church in Traveler’s Rest. The picture was just as it had been in his dream before the horrible accident, but the church looked as it had always looked. It was clean and Sister Mary Jane was currently washing one of the windows, humming her favorite hymn once again.

Humming her favorite hymn, then screaming, and laying in a pool of her own blood with a jagged broomstick protruding from her back.

Rubbing his head, Father Dean McCreery put on his best smile and welcomed the middle-aged man awaiting him at the altar. “Thomas, pleasant surprise seeing you here this late my friend.” He held out his hand for the other man.

Thomas Callen took it and nodded. “Always a pleasure, Father.” The man’s dark brown eyes moved with curiosity and suspicion, as they always had in all the years that Dean had known him. He wore a business shirt, the collar undone and tie missing. His balding head shone brightly in the candlelight…

…Candles beside the cross burning Bibles and flaring with demon’s fire…

…Casting shadows across the pews and closest wall where Sister Mary Jane had moved to cleaning another window with a bottle of cleaner in one hand and a rag in the other. It was different then his dream and for that Father McCreery allowed himself another sigh—this one of relief not fear—and clapped Thomas Callen on the shoulder.

“So, Thomas, what may I help you with tonight?”

Mr. Callen laughed nervously and shook his head uncertainly. He gripped the opened collar of his dark blue shirt and wrung it just as nervously. “Well, Father, what I have to say might sound crazy, but I didn’t know who else to come to…”

“That’s quite all right, Thomas,” Father Dean McCreery answered, nodding for the man to continue. “Your words are safe and secret with me. You can tell me anything, even as crazy as you might believe it is. God will listen no matter what the words.”

Thomas Callen moved closer, his brown eyes searching the priest’s bright green ones, but for what he was seeking, Dean had no clue nor was he certain he could reward the man with it. His eyes portrayed nothing expect tiredness and concern but whether the concern was for Thomas or himself was another story saved for another day.

The curiosity and suspicion had left the middle-aged man’s eyes and in their place only fear and loneliness remained, having taken over and grown. “Father, I’ve seen things…horrible things and I’m not sure whether you’d believe me or not. Hell, I’m not even sure I should even be telling you, but…”

He trailed off.

“Thomas, please continue,” Father McCreery answered supportively, keeping his voice low and concerned. “Take your time. This needn’t be hurried. We have all the time in the world.”

But you know that’s a lie, Dean, his mind screamed at him. You know damn well that it’s a goddamned lie. You know something’s going to happen one day and you know that it’s going to happen soon. And what will you do when it gets here, huh? What will you do, Father? Hide and coward in fear like everyone else? Will you let it take over with no resistance; will you watch it spread from home to home, city to city, country to country and do nothing; will you merely give up and yield to it? It thankfully fell silent and left him alone. The same voice, not his own yet somehow in his mind, came up and whispered, Of course you will. You’ll be no different from anyone else…you’ll yield to it and die! You truly are a coward!

But that wasn’t what he was going to do. He remembered and felt the weight of the Beretta in his belt as he faced and spoke to Thomas Callen. He would not yield to it, he would not surround, he would not coward, but instead he’d fight on and do what he could to slow it, to delay it, and eventually stop it.

“…They were in my dreams, Father McCreery,” Mr. Callen continued in a thin, shaky voice. “And they terrified me to no end. I haven’t gotten a decent night’s sleep in two weeks.” It’s been years for me, good sir, Dean thought sadly as he listened to the man’s account. “I couldn’t take it anymore…I’m sorry but I had to tell someone.”

Father Dean McCreery smiled and shook his head, clapping the man on the shoulder once again. “It’s quite all right, Thomas. You know you can talk with me or with Sister Mary Jane if you ever need anything. We’re always listening and willing to help you in anyway possible just as God is willing to spread His Graces upon you.”

Thomas Callen chuckled nervously and rubbed his forehead uncertainly. “They’re awful, Father. I see people dying—people I know and care about—and I can’t do anything about it. I see everything destroyed and burning. The fire is terrible yet it’s everywhere unable to be stopped.”

The white cross, broken and shattered, burning with eternal hellfire!

His own nightmare came back to him, striking home, as Thomas continued with his tail and it pained Dean McCreery even more then before. Yet Thomas Callen continued unaware of the pain and stress and confusion coursing through the priest’s mind.

The man tilted his head. “And it’s always nighttime, pitch black, and monstrous. And there’s always a crimson full moon…”

“…Crimson full moon,” both Thomas Callen and Father Dean McCreery finished as one, with a horrible expression falling upon both their faces as their eyes met. Shell-shocked would be best to describe how they felt for indeed it was horrifying.

“…You’ve had the same dream?” Thomas asked questionably, hesitantly.

“Indeed I have, my friend, though I refer to it as a nightmare.”

Thomas Callen moved closer and glanced over his shoulder to see that Sister Mary Jane wasn’t listening or paying attention to what he wanted to be a private conversation. But she was busily at work, still humming her favorite hymn—or had see moved on to another one? —and now sweeping the floor rather then cleaning the church’s windows.

With a broomstick in her back she fell and never rose again…

Father McCreery violently shoved the thought away and kept his face as pleasant as could be. “Thomas, walk with me.” The middle-aged man moved beside him as they started across the church floor towards the double doors at the back, which to his horror, stood wide open with a black sky awaiting outside across the grassy plain beyond.

“Are we crazy, Father?”

Dean laughed merrily though he doubted his own voice. “No, I don’t think we are. Remember, Mr. Callen, God works in mysterious ways. And, of course, this is one of them. I don’t know what these dreams mean but I’m certain that they can’t be anything too dreadful.” Though he knew damn well that it was a lie as soon as it left his lips. He knew they were omens of things to come but he didn’t know when they would come. And he swore to himself that he’d be ready for it.

They reached the open doors slowly, cautiously, and Father McCreery couldn’t help but look outside at the night sky beyond. And in an instant all his worries, stress, happiness, clear-headedness, and relief flooded away and scattered leaving him helpless and alone.

Resting in the near sky was a cloud-shrouded crimson full moon. “It’s happening,” Father McCreery whispered hoarsely to no one in particular. “It’s finally here. It’s finally begun.” Horror was the only emotion conveyed in his voice. “Dear God save us all.”

Beside him, Thomas Callen just began to breath heavier and then scream as frightening realization suddenly flooded his senses. “No! It can’t be true! It’s just a goddamned dream!” His brown eyes were as wide as muddy puddles in his sweat-covered face, which shone as brightly now as his bald head above it.

Everything happened at once just as suddenly as it had happened in his dream—his nightmare that had haunted him for so long and now it was real. It had finally come and now that it was here he wasn’t sure if he could truly deal with it as a whole.

A door slammed behind them and noises followed: pews being thrown about, pages tearing and sizzling as they burned, the cracking of numerous objects, and finally the screaming of a woman that Father McCreery knew all too well and was saddened to see and hear for he knew that Sister Mary Jane was now dead, just as it had been foretold in his dream. A tremendous heat was at their backs and shadows danced around the room but were they truly shadows? No, they weren’t. Dean looked again and realized that they were indeed spirits floated across the Catholic Church’s walls desperately fighting to break free and begin their reign of terror and evil upon the world.

Dean spun on watery legs to see his church exactly as it had been in his nightmare. “No, this can’t be.” Thomas sobbed as he witnessed the scene before him. “This can’t be happening. No, it just can’t be. It’s only a fucking dream!”

Father McCreery let his eyes wander around the church and waver on the spirits and ghosts trapped within the walls surrounding him, calling to him, moaning, screaming, and clawing for release. The moved as if the paint was alive (indeed it was at the moment) and begged to be freed, begged and beckoned to the priest; they clawed and torn at one another to try and get ahead. It truly was a sight worthy of nightmares.

That’s when he noticed Sister Mary Jane laying by the burning cross—it was just like his dream and the demonic spirits surrounding it burned and melted with it and agonizing fits of terrible groaning and cursing—with the severed broomstick in her back. He jogged to her side and saw that she was still alive, but barely.

“Thomas, help me!” The sobbing older man suddenly seemed to be torn back into reality and noticed the dying woman before him. “Help me damn it!”

The man in the business suit ran to their side and fell to his knees. “I don’t know what to do, Father. She doesn’t look as if she can hold on much longer.” And it was true. The nun was an elderly woman, her eyes were closed, and her breathing was slowing. She wasn’t going to make it and they could do nothing for her.

“Dean!” That same familiar, monstrous voice from his dream called from behind them. Both men turned and looked at the double doors at the back of the church in which they had just left and saw a human shape outside, cloaked in shadows and invisible to them. Yet two red eyes burned from the darkness and blinked, disappearing briefly before returning in the shape of two small crosses. “It’s been a while Father.”

The man’s bright green eyes had disappeared for in his dream they had matched Dean’s but now they were merely two burning holes in the darkness outside.

Dean was amazed at how well he was handling this situation, which at the moment, was much better then Thomas was. He hadn’t vomited like he had in his nightmare nor was he entirely afraid of what stood beyond the doorway of the church. He knew who and what it was but he wasn’t afraid of it for he was surrounded by a House of God and nothing evil could step within and take his life away.

Two burned hands reached through the doorway and gripped the sides as the man pulled himself into the church. Except for the eyes, he was exactly as he had been in Dean’s nightmare: tall, wearing dark clothes, and with an awful smile across his hard, rough, slightly charred face. He was the embodiment of evil and now he had stepped into a sanctuary of God…and nothing had happened. Father Dean McCreery revolted in terror as the man stepped forward, once, twice, three times, and then again without a scratch or scar on him. Nothing was happening yet here he stood with God’s Grace around him.

“Like them, Dean,” the tall man asked hauntingly with a shadowy glint to his fiery eyes. He spread his arms wide, palms up, and glanced around the room as the steadily blackening walls around him and ceiling above him. He smiled brightly at the tortured spirits that floated around them, at their agonized screams of pain and suffering, and continued, “They’re mine. These poor tortured souls of Hell; and they obey me and no other! They are mine and will forever be mine; they shall conquer this spiritual plain for their own!”

“How can it be?”

The tall man laughed happily. “Dean, how can you ask such a question? You know what I am, what I have always been, and what I will soon become. I am the true embodiment of evil and these,” he swept his glowing gaze around the room again, “are my minions and they shall obey my command.”

“I know what you are,” Father McCreery agreed, “and I know that it has begun.” Thomas gave him a wavering, bewildered glance but Dean had no time to explain. His nightmare had come true; it was occurring around him this very minute, and it truly was an omen but he wasn’t sure if it was from God anymore. The man standing before him couldn’t have been there and this made Dean temporarily question God’s will and His power.

Dean knew that this man—this familiar creature before them—had murdered Sister Mary Jane because he had already noticed the man’s bloody hands and cuffs, just as he had in his nightmare, but it was almost impossible. This creature was quick and far from human. It had done all this damage but not alone. Its so-called ‘minions’ had helped it for Dean had realized that this place—his Catholic Church in Traveler’s Rest, South Carolina—was a portal between two realms, two dimensions; not two worlds. This church, God’s holy ground, was a portal between Hell and Earth and it had opened.

“The conquest and siege of Earth has begun, Dean,” the hellish creature before him laughed. Thomas opened his mouth to speak but couldn’t quite find his words to explain or question what was happening here. It was too much for him mind to accept. “Whose side are you on?”

Father Dean McCreery gripped the silver cross around his neck and pulled downward, breaking the thin chain. He held it firmly in his left hand and pulled the Beretta from his belt with his right. He pointed it at the creature standing before him. “I’m on God’s side!”

“Don’t point that gun at your brother, Dean,” the creature laughed. “Come now, dear brother…”

“What…” Thomas Callen began questionably.

“…Put the pistol away,” the tall man finished.

Dean pulled the trigger back and an echoing blast filled the small church, quieting the flickering flames of the burning cross and the groaning voices of thousands of Hell’s tortured souls. The bullet slammed into and disappeared into the man’s black coat as a thin stream of smoke began to rise from the heated barrel of the handgun. The tall man grunted, staggered backwards, and balanced himself breathing heavily.

He looked up with those burning eyes and glared at Father McCreery. The smile on his face had disappeared completely and he began to snarl. “I wanted to talk to you, Dean, that’s all and look how you repay me! Look what you did to your own brother!”

He started forward and closed the distance between them very quickly. Dean felt fear flood over his senses as his deceased brother stepped up before him—his charred skin and burning eyes full of fury—and knocked the pistol from his hand. Dean felt a blistered hand wrap around his left wrist and another closed around his neck. His heartbeat violently increased and soon he was washed with blind fear.

Thomas stepped forward and punched the creature in his jaw.

The tall man with the burning eyes slowly turned his attention to the middle-aged, bald man. “Adam, no…” Dean tried to plea with his remaining breath but his brother ignored him. Dean helplessly watched as his brother lifted a boot and slammed it into Thomas’s stomach, doubling the man over but as he waited for the finishing blow, much to his surprise it never came.

The man returned his attention to Father McCreery as Thomas collapsed to the floor, his chest heaving up and down searching for much needed air. “You’re on God’s side?” The creature hissed furiously. His steaming breath hit Dean in the face and nearly gagged him as the two brothers’ noses nearly touched—one normal and one burnt, blistered, and charred from a deadly fire—and their eyes met. But only one was the bright green of their family; the other had been damaged and possessed with something unnatural and ghostly. “You may wear one of His titles, my dear brother, but God has abandoned you now.” He looked up at the ceiling with its clawing, tearing, and ripping, screaming souls. “Where is His divine power now when you truly need it? Where is His power when His children are dying; when His created world is being conquered and destroyed?” He started moving forward, forcing a choking Father McCreery to stagger backwards blindly. Dean felt a steadily growing heat against his back as he neared the wall of hissing, bleeding spirits. “Pray tell me that, brother? Pray tell what your Bible says for you know it is false now. I hold the playing cards, Dean, and I have total control.”

Dean spit in his brother’s blistered, darkened face. “Burn in Hell you demon!”

It laughed. “I have, Dean, I have.”

The tall, darkly clothed man stopped and Dean felt a tremendous heat against his back now as if it were touching him. He spun Father Dean McCreery around and Dean found himself face to face with the white cross, which was still burning with that blindingly hot hellfire.

The man moved his blistered hand and gripped the top of Dean’s left hand, which was closed in a fist around the silver cross. He slowly moved it towards the fire with that hideous smile once again growing on his face. “Adam, no, please don’t do this…” Dean once again tried to plea frightfully as his hand neared the blistering heat, his muscles struggling to get away, his eyes wide with unmistakable fear.

Adam McCreery, Dean’s deceased brother, laughed joyously. “God can’t help you now, Dean!” He thrust Dean’s hand into the fire and held it firm, the skin smoldering and melting, the silver melting into the skin; the metal cross blaring and burning. “You wanted to wear His mark, Dean. Now you have the honor and privilege!”

Dean’s scream of agony filled the church and was much more piercing then the pistol shot had been. It floated out the opened doors and filled the midnight sky with the crimson full moon still burning overhead. With his eyes squeezed closed, his screams still penetrating the air, it felt like a lifetime of distress before Adam pulled Dean’s hand from the fire.

The priest couldn’t even look at his own hand; he couldn’t even find the strength to open his eyes. Adam laughed as he pried Dean’s hand open and ripped the melted cross free, receiving another cry from his brother, whose eyes were still closed. “You always wanted to see His divine power, Dean, well I’m gonna give you that fucking chance!” He pushed the smoldering cross against Dean’s left eye and branded the symbol into the priest’s face before pulling it away and stuffing it back into Dean’s pocket, patting it friendly and securely as he stepped away. “Now you know my power, Dean!”

Father McCreery collapsed beside Sister Mary Jane’s body and began to shiver as the unbearable pain washed over him. A gasp and crash beside him forced him to open his right eye and see Thomas standing over his brother, the pistol in hand, and Adam McCreery, or rather the creature he had become, fall against the burning cross. Adam’s shirt and skin immediately caught fire but he paid no heed to it.

Thomas Callen shoved the pistol into is belt and staggered over to Dean. “Father, get up! Come on, we have to get out of here!” The middle-aged man’s arms helped Dean to his feet and soon they were both moving across the threshold of the Catholic Church before they plunged into the cold midnight air outside.

Dean ripped his sleeve apart and fell to his knees beside a puddle of rainwater from the night before. He soaked the cloth through and pushed it against his left eyes, which was beginning to swell and throb even more then before.

“My car, Father,” Thomas told him as he helped the wounded man into the passenger side before running around and climbing into the driver’s seat himself. “We need to leave now and fast!” Fear clouded and portrayed deep emotion in the older man’s voice.

As the engine started, Dean’s head rolled back against the seat and his pressed the cold cloth tighter against his skin. The burning wasn’t disappearing and he was beginning to feel sick. The night air suddenly lit up as the small Catholic Church caught fire and nearly exploded. A black wave of tortured souls and demons flew out the door into the world beyond. It had begun and now mankind was almost completely helpless to fight it and stop it.

“What the hell’s happening here?” Thomas asked as he threw the gearshift into reverse and slammed his foot down onto the gas. The small dark blue car skid in the dirt and started backwards as Adam McCreery, still aflame and grinning, appeared at the doorway of the church and stepped out onto the dirt covered ground.

“DEAN! YOU CAN’T ESCAPE ME…!”

“It’s begun,” Dean muttered tiredly in a soft almost inaudible voice.

“What’s begun?” Thomas Callen frantically asked as he turned the car around and threw the gearshift into drive. They were making their way down the dirt path towards the back road where they’d do their best to get as far away as possible.

“The siege and conquest of Earth,” Father Dean McCreery answered in that same small voice, eyes closed once again, and throbbing painfully. His left hand was going numb from the intense burn, which was a little relief but his fingers were stiff and he could barely move any muscle in his hand. It was already beginning to blister where the skin still remained. “The apocalypse has begun, Mr. Callen, and that creature is leading the forces of Hell against Earth.” He sighed and felt grief rise up inside him. He couldn’t believe his own voice or words. “But he was right. I hate to admit it but he was right when he said that God won’t help us anymore. This is mankind’s battle and it’s a battle of survival. If we fail then we will either be wiped out or turned into eternal slaves.”

“All is lost,” Thomas whispered hoarsely as he drove through the blackened midnight air with the crimson full moon still hanging above them. “We are doomed.”

“No, we must fight,” Dean told him as firmly as possible in his weakened state.

Thomas was silent for a moment unable to find his words to speak as he guided the small car down the abandoned road with the high beams gleaming out in front of them. Trees swayed about in the wind as the sky darkened further into a deeper shade of jet black; the crimson full more disappeared for a moment before appearing again, this time darker blood-shot red then before.

“Who was that?” Thomas Callen asked, amazed.

Father McCreery was silent for a moment before sighing deeply, turning his one good eye to face the man behind the steering wheel of the small blue car. “That was my brother, Adam McCreery.”

“Your brother?”

Dean nodded. “Yes, that was my brother but Adam’s been dead for nearly five years now. He wasn’t the most honorable or trust-worthy man in life. He wasn’t the kindest man alive and now he’s back…somehow, he’s back.”

Thomas turned and met Dean’s gaze with one of complete terror. “Father,” he slowly began, glancing back at the dark road that twisted through the trees underneath that crimson sky with its floating ocean in the middle. It was an ocean of flowing blood above them waiting to spill into the bowl of Earth and drown all its souls within. “If your brother’s dead, then who was that, really? Father, I’m not a truly religious man but I want the truth now, no Bible bullshit or faith shit either. Don’t lie to me about a greater good because I’m not seeing one right now. Just the truth.”

Dean McCreery nodded. “The truth?”

“The truth, Father,” Thomas Callen agreed, glancing at the pain-stricken priest sitting in the chair beside him.

Dean couldn’t find his words just as Thomas hadn’t been able to find his earlier. They had deceived him and he had been completely left behind with no help whatsoever. He knew what needed to be said but going about it was a different story for it was a story that neither of them truly wanted to hear.

He swallowed heavily and pulled himself upright in the seat, screaming as his left hand brushed across the armrest uneasily. Thomas jumped and nearly screamed himself. “All right, Thomas. The truth it’ll be then. That man—my brother Adam—is the embodiment of evil, Mr. Callen. That is the leader of these armies, the leader of the Underworld whose conquest to conquer Earth has just begun and we can’t let him win.”

“Are you telling me that he’s Satan?”

“Don’t know, Thomas. I truly don’t know. I just know that he’s a demon that needs to be stopped. How, I don’t know but there has to be a way.”

A giant thunderous blast echoed through the air, throughout the sky and even possibly the Earth. It penetrated the walls of the car and pierced their ears as they continued down the winding back road unsure of where it headed or ended. All that Dean knew was that they were trying to get as far away from his church as humanly possible.

Thunder echoed around them as lightening split the dark sky, lighting it and in the distance Father McCreery was certain that he saw those tortured souls from his church flying about into people’s homes and higher into the midnight sky. They seemed to be spreading out as the first steps of the invasion of Earth began. He watched as they laughed and grinned as they went about their work.

“Are they following us?” Thomas Callen asked looking over at Father McCreery whose one good eye was staring out the back window watching this happen as the sky lit up with each separate blast of lightening.

Dean was tired, dizzy, dazed, and weak. “It doesn’t matter if they are.”

“Father, are they chasing us?” Thomas screamed at him, terrified. No answer. “Father, this is no time to quit on me!”

“No, they’re not chasing us.”

Thomas sighed and turned his eyes back to the road. “I’m sorry, Father. I’m scared and I don’t know what’s going to happen. Ha, neither do you, do you?”

Dean shook his head. “No, I don’t Thomas. I never knew my church was the gateway to Hell. Damned fool am I. I don’t know what’s going to happen anymore Thomas.” His voice was weak and strained as darkness slowly crept over him.

“Where are we going, Father?”

Dean was silent, thinking. Pain flooded his mind and that’s all he could think about at the moment. He muttered, “Far away,” as sleep finally overtook him, darkening his senses as Thomas drove the small blue car between the walled trees on either side of them down that back road of Traveler’s Rest. “Far away.”