Ash Return of the Beast

CHAPTER 70



Trails End Trailer Park…

Pastor Pete’s mind was reeling, confused, terrified. If he could only stall for a little more time, maybe his son would show up and save him, put an end to this nightmare. He looked up at the hooded figure standing over him. “The book…” he said, choking the words out, “…what is it? Wh…why do you… want it?”

The Doppelganger chuckled. Perhaps it was time to enlighten the old bastard.

Pastor Pete listened, awestruck, horrified by what he was hearing as the hooded figure provided a gruesomely detailed picture of the grim events that would soon unfold.

“It will be a glorious time, believe me,” the Doppelganger said. “But right now, time is wasting. The house. Where is it?”

The scenario of terror the Doppelganger had impressed into the pastor’s mind was unimaginable, couldn’t possibly be true. He didn’t want to believe it and he wouldn’t have believed it except for the fact that what was happening to him right now, right this minute, was as real as anything he’d ever known––in some ways, more so. How could he not believe it? But what about Sarah and her mother? If he revealed the location of the house he’d be responsible for what would happen not only to them but to Brian, to everyone, to the entire world. “No, I can’t,” he said. “I…I can’t tell you. I w-won’t tell you.”

“No? Well, I think you will.”

“I won’t.”

“You will.”

The Doppelganger waved his hand over the old man. The old man’s body contorted and then went rigid. He suddenly found he was flat on his back, virtually paralyzed. He tried to speak but he couldn’t make a sound, couldn’t even open his mouth. Only his watery eyes were free to move as they followed the hooded figure circling around him like a lion deciding which part of his wounded prey to devour first. Then the Doppelganger knelt down and extended a finger toward the pastor’s forehead.

The old pastor wanted to get up, to run, to escape whatever was about to happen but he couldn’t so much as turn his head. In his mind he heard his own voice screaming: Wh…what are you doing?

A little bit of decorating, came the answer.

The old man realized then that the hooded devil was somehow inside his head. The monster could hear his thoughts. Pastor Pete mentally bellowed a curse: Damn you to hell!

The Doppelganger’s finger touched the old man’s forehead and began tracing out a circle, slowly searing the Lucifer Seal into the pastor’s pallid skin, burning it from the inside, out. “Hear me, O Lucifer! Son of the morning! Approve this invocation with the seal of my Master! Thy will be done! Aum-Ha!”

Pastor Pete’s face contorted, his eyes winced and wept from the pain. Thick drool seeped from the corners of the bloody mouth that he couldn’t open and from which his screams could not escape.