This is the third in a three part presentation of a novel. You should go back and read Victorian Dreams Ch 01 and Pt 2 to gain context before reading this third piece.
This part, as well, as the two parts that preceed it are Copyright 2003, 2004 by Charles F. Johnson and all rights are reserved and protected under the Copyright laws of the United stats and other countries.
Chapter 57
There was only one problem. Though their hooved feet and strong muscular legs made them speedy outside where they patrolled each night, on the stone floor of the basement, they had difficulty gaining traction and never did get up to speed before Haley reached the steps that led to the relative safety above.
As she ran up the steps two at a time, the ogres reached the bottom after she had only covered about half the distance to the door frame above, and a fourth of the way to the safety of the room the stair emptied into. One of the two ogres stepped onto the bottom step and launched himself up after the fleeing Haley.
Grabbing her by the leg, he started to pull her back into the chamber below. His hand started to smolder as it landed on a part of the overalls, which had received the treatment of mist when Haley had stopped by the humidifier on the two passes by it enroute to the chamber. Releasing her leg, his hand slid to her foot, grabbing the tennis shoe the woman wore.
Fortunately for Haley these weren’t form fitting athletic shoes and only cheap canvas tennis-style shoes, she had purchased for tasks such as painting and cleaning, for her foot slipped easily out of the shoe.
She regained her feet and continued to climb up the stairs. The ogre lost his balance slipped backwards as her foot came out of the shoe, and he fell to the bottom step.
He immediately regained his footing though and started up the stairs, his hooved feet managing to gain traction on the wooden steps better than the stone floor.
Haley was just making the doorway when the ogre, covering the steps in mighty bounds started up after her. He reached her just as she entered the mist from the humidifier.
He recoiled as the fine spray of holy water hit him, like a giant fist had slammed into his chest, and clattered down the steps to end up in a heap at the base of the stair knocking his sibling down as he fell backward.
Haley escaped into the kitchen, shaken and shocked by the close call she had just experienced. She sat in the kitchen trembling for a moment, and watching as the two ogre creatures attempted to climb the stairs several times only to be repulsed when they encountered the mist of the Holy Water. After several attempts, their efforts ceased.
Once Haley regained her composure, she went outdoors.
Though it was nearly dark she could see the window had already been closed, though in the dark it was hard to tell if her nearly catastrophic attempts to clean the window had produced any results.
The woman was almost calm after her harrowing events of a few moments before, and her mind was already at work on a way to circumvent this setback. Fortunately, she had already been considering the possibility her efforts today would be rendered moot with the over night delay her plan called for.
Returning to the house she went to her stash and got a small container of the metal dust created from the melted religious paraphernalia and walked boldly up to the window by the basement. She sprinkled the metal dust on the edges of the shrubs on either side of the gap created when she tested the holy water.
No discernable result was apparent immediately.
Disappointed she returned to the house and started her preparations for the next day. She considered as she went the possibility her plan wasn’t valid. No reaction had been apparent when she had dusted the thorns with the ground up metal dust. So the efficacy of the dust might not exist.
She had estimated she would need 4 gallons of paint to coat the north and east walls of the basement chamber, so she added a half bag of metal dust to each of the four, gallon cans of paint pigment base she had purchased, then filled each with holy water, making a gallon of paint in each pigment base can.
She used her drill and a paint stirrer attachment to thoroughly mix the paint in each can and replaced the lids on the cans. She had two bags of holy metal dust remaining for the next phase of her plan.
She moved the paint and the brushes and rollers and roller pans to the top of the stairs that led to the basement chamber. She checked the humidifier, and discovered the level of holy water in the reservoir had gone down only slightly, even though the humidifier had been putting out a constant spray of fine mist for almost 10 hours. She topped off the reservoir as she intended to leave the humidifier operating throughout the night.
She wasn’t certain if having been discovered in the basement by the evil entities if perhaps they might come for her now, seeing her presence there as a sign she had succumed to their wiles.
She didn’t think the concubines, as vaporous beings could manhandle her to the basement, but felt certain the ogres could as they had with Clarice.
She had seen the mist of Holy Water repulse them already and so hoped if her presence had somehow set in motion a possibility she could now fall victim to the chambers horrors, she could somehow delay it by keeping the ogres at bay until she could complete her plan the next day.
Chapter 58
She peered into the chamber but could see no activity. Even the noise and the moans that were characteristically emanating from down below were strangely absent. The only noise was the sound as the humidifier disseminated its holy mist of water.
She had gone about her preparations in such a deliberate manner the scare of an hour or so earlier had completely left her mind. Now she was famished, not having had anything to eat since early that morning, and then only a toasted English muffin with a little jam. She stopped and ate the sandwich she had prepared at noon, but had been unable to eat. The bread was a little stale after having sat on the cabinet all afternoon, but the sandwich worked well to sate her hunger.
She went to her room and removed the alter vestment and placed it on a chair back to finish drying before bed. She went to the sitting room and as she sat on the antique armchair in the room, a let down occurred. The impact of the close encounter suddenly registered in her mind and she began to sob violently.
After a time she performed one of her rituals of self-castigation and got her crying under control, she was suddenly worn out and decided to go to bed.
Returning to her room, she removed the overalls, and replaced the vestment muffler style around her neck. Kneeling at her bedside, she spoke the 23rd Psalm prayer again and then snuggled down into the bed.
She was wearing the holy water shirt and the vestment and the cup and pitcher of holy water stood ready by her bed. She fully expected to receive evil visitors that night, because the moon was just past new so the skies were dark, and because of the events of earlier that day, but the only visitor she received that night was Clarice.
Fatigue quickly overtook Haley and she was almost asleep when she felt the familiar draft on her cheek. She opened her eyes to see the vaporous image of the girl floating in the space beside her bed as usual. She smiled and Clarice spoke.
“You did good today, but you must be more careful.”
“I couldn’t foresee the unfortunate chain of events, but considering the outcome, it appears I had adequately prepared for it.”
“Yes, but a lot of it was luck and chance and more times than not those won’t work to your favor when you are dealing with an evil as you are here. Rest now for you will need all your strength tomorrow. I will stay by your side tonight so your sleep isn’t disturbed.”
Clarice caressed her face as she spoke the final words to her human friend, and Haley, comforted by her presence, drifted off, quickly, to an exhausted sleep.
She awoke as the sun’s rays bathed the room in warm light the following morning. As she sat drinking her morning tea, she reassembled her plan in her mind. She hadn’t planned it that way, but the day she would attempt to permanently thwart the evil in her basement, was Sunday.
Appropriate she thought as the fact registered in the young woman’s head. While she drank her first cup of tea, she turned the 4 cans of paint upside down to allow the metal particles, no doubt settled in the bottom a chance to re-suspend in the paint.
When she finished her first cup of tea, she went to the tool storage and retrieved the paint stirrer attachment and her drill. She went to her room and placed an old T-shirt she wouldn’t mind getting paint spattered in the basin of holy water. She also placed the alter vestment in the basin and added additional holy water to thoroughly cover the two articles.
She didn’t like the idea of possibly getting paint on the alter vestment, which she intended to return after this ordeal was over, but there was no way she was going to go into the basement chamber without the proven certain safety it provided.
She wasn’t certain, but she felt at least, if she encountered the evil they would have to convince her to remove the religious items she wore, the soaked shirt, the vestment and the crosses before they could potentially force her submission to their service.
She slipped off her T-shirt from the day before, and pulled the wet one from the basin, wrung the excess water from it, and slipped it on. The effect was the same as it had been the prior times, but again, it didn’t have the embarrassing effect it had the first time when her breasts were brought to prominence by the cling of the wet, thin fabric, and the cold reaction of her nipples.
She slipped the vestment on next and pinned it in place, then slipped on her overalls, in hopes the bib on the overalls would protect the vestment from some of the paint spatter.
She returned to the kitchen and filled a spray bottle with holy water. She retrieved her hammer from the toolbox, and went to the yard. When she got the west side, she immediately noted where the metal dust had been sprinkled on the shrubs had killed them back further.
She felt emboldened now as she walked up to the basement window, and started beating it with the hammer. After the glass shattered, she continued to beat on the window destroying the casement along with the glass, as well. Creeping along the ground, the thorny vine moved toward the woman’s ankles from both ends of the damaged growth.
Haley felt the vine wrap around her right ankle, and a shot of fear went through her. She felt her preparations would work, but now she had to see, as she felt nothing was entirely certain. She reached for the spray bottle of holy water hanging from the hammer loop on the leg of the overalls, and started applying the sacred spray to the vine around her ankle. It quickly recoiled from the mist of burning liquid its thorns cutting her ankle deeply as it quickly unwrapped from around her leg in retreat. The wail of the day she tested the water on the vine began again. The vine that had started at her feet from the other direction stopped its advance.
Haley again started raining hammer blows on the remnants of the window casing, seeking to destroy the window completely. As soon as she started to strike the house again, the vine that had stopped advancing toward her stated moving in her direction again.
Haley saw the movement of the vine in her peripheral vision and turned the spray bottle on the approaching evil plant. The spray stopped it again, and satisfied her efforts on the window were satisfactory considering the danger that existed by her continued presence, she retreated from the spot by the window.
At a safe distance from the thorny vine to stop, Haley turned to survey the damage she had managed to inflict on the window and that the vine had managed to inflict on her ankle. The glass was gone, the casement all but destroyed, from her vantage point, she could see the light of the sun falling on the far wall in the room below.
Mission accomplished.
Chapter 59
Her ankle flesh was ripped deeply, the bone all but revealed in a couple of places. It was bleeding though not an untoward amount, so Haley proceeded with her plan, just pulling her sock up to cover the ankle wound.
Returning to the house, she quickly removed the lids from the cans of paint and stirred them with the electric drill. Then she ferried the paint to the basement in two trips. The first trip revealed the room bathed in sunlight, though the morning sun was on the other side of the house. The place on the wall where the sunlight struck the strongest was just below the shackles where the common concubines hung each night. The wall smoldered as the rays of sunlight struck the evil residue the wall was coated in.
After ferrying the second load of paint and the painting supplies, Haley walked around the room, spraying down the walls she intended to paint with the holy water. The north and east walls both smoldered briefly at the application of the water, but when she sprayed the west wall, nothing happened. Haley quickly concluded the north and east walls were where evil ingress portals could be achieved, and not on the west wall.
The south wall was under the staircase, so not of concern to Haley. She hoped she wouldn’t come to regret not checking that wall, but to get in behind the stair would not have been an easy task, so she was content her original plan to only paint the east and north walls was sufficient.
Besides the next phase of her plan, should eliminate any threat from the south wall.
Returning to the ground floor, she refilled the spray bottle and the humidifier, and then went to the basement again.
She stirred the first can of paint with a stir stick and poured some into the roller pan. Filling the roller with paint, she began to roll it on to the wall. As she rolled she continually recited the Prayer of St. Michael she had memorized that night on the Internet.
‘Most glorious Prince of the Heavenly Armies, Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in our battle against principalities and powers, against the rulers of this world of darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the high places. Come to the assistance of men whom God has created to His likeness and whom He has redeemed at a great price from the tyranny of the devil. I venerate thee as my guardian and protector; to thee, the Lord has entrusted the souls of the redeemed to be led into heaven. We pray therefore to the God of Peace to crush Satan beneath our feet, that he may no longer retain men captive and do injury to thy children. We Offer our prayers to the Most High, that without delay they may draw His mercy down upon us; take hold of the dragon, the old serpent, which is the devil and Satan, bind him and cast him into the bottomless pit ... that he may no longer seduce the nations. Amen’
She had added the ‘Amen’ just as she did with her 23rd Psalm prayer repeating the prayer over and over as she went about her work.
Chapter 60
It took several hours, but Haley painted and prayed as if possessed. Once she had concluded painting both walls, she went back and touched up the places where the actual portal existed and where the common concubines hung chained to the wall. Both places had bubbled up after they were painted. The spray down with Holy water had apparently prepared the other surfaces adequately, because nowhere else did the 'holified' paint react to contact with the walls. As Haley finished touching up the two places, she was running out of paint.
She left the basement chamber and returned to the main floor of the house and noted the time. It was 1:45 and it would be 3 before the next phase of her plan would execute, if all went well.
Haley was decidedly calm, figuring her plan was likely going to work fine. The chamber first off was bathed in sunlight and the walls were coated with paint made from Holy Water and containing the particles of metal from the ground up religious paraphernalia.
She felt as if the house had taken on a festive air. She prepared herself a light lunch and made a pitcher of iced tea. The portals would be blocked only temporarily by the holy water, but even when the paint dried, the metal dust particles ground from the religious articles should continue to serve as an effective barrier.
At least that was what Haley hoped would happen,
but there was another step to her plan, and that would be concluded in just a little while. For now though, the sunlight, Holy Water based paint, and metal flakes would certainly hold back the tide of evil that might attempt to reenter the basement chamber. It would seem no ingress portals existed any longer.
Haley was however a lot wiser than when this all started and she had no doubt there could exist other avenues of ingress for the evil.
In her Bible studies she had noted the number 6 had significance in Revelations in relation to the devils existence, and had heard news accounts when she was younger about ‘666’ being the devils number.
So she surmissed the fact the basement west wall was on a perfect 6 degree to 186 degree axis was for a reason and that was why the architect had been so adamant about the laying of the foundation and had required the builder restart it numerous times.
That coupled with the European gargoyles and no doubt the Comanche burial ground, all combined to make the house attractive as an entry portal for the Master and his minions, and as a base of operations as they sought to unleash their evil on the unwitting human mortals of the earth.
After eating the lunch, she went back to the basement to see the result of her work. The walls were almost dry to the touch and as she ran her hand along the wall, she could feel the rough texture created by the metal dust.
She thought to test the paint job, and it seemed dry enough to do so. She used the spray bottle of holy water and sprayed all over the walls and no where did she get reaction from the application of the water, indicating to her in her mind the evil threat was probably eliminated, yet her plan wasn’t complete yet. She went to the verandah and took the time to doctor and bandage her ankle where the thorny evil vine had attacked her earlier.
Though the wound was fresh, it already appeared to be infected. The vine-induced illness of the Mexican landscape crew came to Haley’s mind.
Removing the sock that covered the wound caused it to start bleeding again. She thought to wash it with Holy Water, but rejected that idea for fear of a severe exothermic-like reaction to any evil residue the thorny vine might have left behind.
Though she didn’t like the prospect, just as Clarice had thought her sacrifice would have been worth it if she lost her life in her pursuit of burning the house, if her leg got infected and ended up scarred or even if it ended up having to be amputated it would be worth it if her attempts today were successful.
Chapter 61
At 3 pm precisely the trucks arrived.
Two cement mixers pulled in and as she sat on the verandah, the alter vestment put away, her shirt all but dry. The first driver asked where she wanted the concrete delivered.
She limped as she came off the verandah to greet and give direction to the drivers of the trucks. Her ankle had started to swell where the thorny vine had cut into her flesh. The bandage had already soaked through once with blood and had been replaced with a fresh bandage. Haley was a little concerned about the wound, considering the facts she knew about the Hispanic workers health issues after their encounter with the vine and its attack on them. The bloodied condition of the workers that morning weeks earlier when they had removed the original vine from the property was vivid in her mind.
She pointed to the west side of the house as she came off the porch. When the man backed his truck up, and then got out, she thanked him for being so punctual.
She had gotten rather abrupt with the man at the cement yard when he had charged her premium for delivery on Sunday, and had told him under no uncertain terms he better be punctual.
She queried the driver regarding the viscosity of the mix. He told her he had never delivered a load as viscous as this. He said that wasn’t a problem, it would still dry, but he had never seen a project that required concrete this loose.
Haley told him it was to seal the basement so she needed it soupy to find all the corners. She also gave each of the drivers 3 of the 5-gallon jugs of holy water and a bag of the metal dust and asked them to mix them in with he contents of their mixers.
She then had each of the trucks back up to the window and empty their load of concrete into the basement. As the liquid concrete flowed down the chute and into the window, she watched the room fill. As the loosely viscous concrete sought the corners and filled every space in the room, she sighed a sigh if relief and thought that perhaps finally she would be able to see her plans for the completion of her B n B reach fruition.
As the concrete reached the gargoyles standing in the corner, they burst into flames when the concrete contacted them and Haley felt certain of the Holy characteristics of the concrete. It was strange to see something as non-volatile as clay or ceramic or whatever similar substance had been used to create the hideous little statues spontaneously burst into flame and burn so readily in the corner.
The concrete flowed so quickly into the chamber the statues were covered quickly, so even the fact they were burning at no point placed the house in jeopardy of catching on fire.
The next morning on her way to work, she dropped the alter vestment at the cleaners to have it cleaned.
When she got home, she went to the west side of the house and checking on the progress of the drying, found the concrete had almost completely hardened to a solid mass. Yet she could still feel heat coming from the surface as she reached through the window to test the concrete.
What was really surprising but an extremely pleasant surprise was the thorny vine was completely gone. In its stead a full mat of Bluebonnets and Indian Paint Brush covered the beds where the thorny mass had grown. This wasn’t too strange as the Bluebonnet is the state flower of Texas, and grew wild all over the state.
Usually the bright blue flowers were accompanied by the yellow and red Indian Paint Brush, also wild and native flowers.
What was uncharacteristic was the plant was a short day bloomer and only had a brief period where it bloomed and flourished and that was in the spring, in late April and early May. Yet, it was September. Yes the days and more importantly the nights were approximately the same length as they would be in the spring, but the heat this time of year in Texas was just starting to abate from the relentless high temperatures of summer and usually after the bloom in the spring you never saw these two species again until the next spring.
Chapter 62
That night Haley received visitors again. Five in total, four she recognized, but the fifth had to be introduced to her. The first to appear was Clarice. The familiar cold draft on her left cheek brought her out of that floating state you feel right before sleep overtakes you.
Haley opened her eyes to see the deep blue pools of Clarice eyes looking into her own. The look on the girl spirits face was different, somehow happier. As she came awake, she noted three spirits standing at the foot of the bed, as well.
The two common concubines and the raven-haired lady were standing there.
Usually the common concubines would be in the corner of the room when the raven-haired concubine appeared and only come to the foot of the bed after she had moved to Haley’s side. It was as if their ‘station’ in the scheme of things was lowlier than that of the Master’s concubine and they were held to a more servile position in the room. But this time all three stood at the end of the bed as if ‘station’ or caste or whatever it was had changed.
Though they wore the same style of diaphanous clothing as before, the color of all three women’s garments was now white like Clarice’.
They stood at the foot of the bed making no attempt to come any closer to Haley. Perhaps they thought she might recognize them, as she had, but not recognize the uniform change, which she had.
She felt no fear at all. Only the magnificence of being in the company of so many benevolent spirits apparently with no possibility of being visited by evil, spirit or otherwise.
Besides had not Clarice said the servants and minions of the Master couldn’t visit while she was in the room. All these thoughts raced through her head, as the spirits hovered at the foot of the bed, casting off enough pure white light to appear it was daylight, instead of the minimal light that normal prevailed less than a week after the new moon.
Then Haley noticed another spirit, hovering just behind and beside Clarice. The lack of recognition on her part to this fifth being caused Clarice to speak.
“Dear friend, this is my mother.” Clarice spoke, her arm embracing the spirit that floated beside her.
“Your selflessness and you diligence to destroy the evil here, has given her back to me. It has earned you a special place in The Holy Father’s presence, as well. These others were also freed with your success.” Clarice gestured to the three at the foot of the bed.
“Now they too can take their rightful place in heaven with the Holy Father and his Son.”
“When you destroyed the evil in this house, you broke the bonds of servitude the master had over these women. Their weakness has been recognized and their transgressions forgiven, by a God who knows no ill intent toward any of his true believers.”
Haley finally spoke, a touch of irony in her voice.
“How can they be called ‘true believers’ if they served the Master of consummate evil?” Clarice response was simple.
“In order to believe and follow absolute evil, you must first believe there is absolute good. The Holy Father and his Son understand the wiles of the Master are treacherous and powerful. They love all his children, and want all to have a place with them in heaven. They are incapable of bearing ill will. He will punish those who don’t believe though, as what purpose would it serve to have those around him that don’t believe in his divine greatness?”
While Clarice explained, the concubines slowly drifted to the side of the bed. An explanation having been tendered to the woman, they probably felt she would feel no threat if they moved closer. Standing next to her, the Raven-haired lady took her hand and stroked it gently, then spoke once Clarice had finished.
“You freed us from the bonds of service to the evil Master. For that we are all three grateful. When you find your place in heaven after your time here on earth is done, we will all be united again and we must certainly celebrate the great good you have done.”
The common concubines almost in unison offered their appreciation to Haley.
“Thank you Miss.”
Haley blushed at the accolades she was receiving. Thinking to say something to make light of her efforts, and to point out her principal purpose, at least in the beginning, was to merely secure her investment in the house. But understanding the only way to graciously accept a complement or apology, she simply replied, “You are so welcome.”
The concubines slowly dissipated out of existence, at least in the room anyway. At almost the same instant the concubines disappeared, the spirit of Chirsty Johansson appeared at her side where they had hovered the instant before. She took Haley’s hand as the raven-haired lady had, and held it tenderly in her own. Haley noted warmth to her touch she hadn’t experienced with the others.
“Thank you for restoring my soul and allowing me to be with my precious daughter again.” Haley felt the drops of moisture on her arm as the spirits tears dripped from her face.
Clarice spoke again.
“You have earned a place in the Holy Father’s kingdom equal in stature to that of the Apostles and the other sainted ones. You have prevented a Great evil from being unleashed on all mankind. Your service to the Father and the Son and the protection you have provided his children is great in his eyes and your reward shall be eternal. But not like the eternity promised by the evil Master. The Father’s eternity is real and one worth being proud of and worthy of the greatness you have achieved. You are Seraphim in God’s eyes now. You need no longer to fear the evil. From this day forth, evil will tremble in your presence. You have been designated by the Holy Father as a warrior equal to or greater than the great warriors of his Kingdom, like Michael the Archangel. You need fear nothing, my friend.”
Clarice had a huge endearing smile on her face, as she bent and kissed Haley on the cheek.
“Will I ever see you again?” Haley asked the spirit of the girl.
“I am here as always if you need me.” The spirit said as her and her mother slowly faded away. The room was suddenly dark, and Haley just as quickly felt completely alone.
Also occurring in her mind was she knew nothing of the concubines existence before they had become minions of evil for the Prince of darkness. What had their lives been like? The lives of Christian, Chirsty and Clarice Johansson had been fairly well documented in Clarice Diary and in the gaps she had filled in, in the discussions the two had participated in.
Yet, Haley had no idea regarding the other three women. Had they been robbed of rich lives and consigned to lives devoid of ‘normal’ happiness after falling victim to the seduction of the Master or some of his evil hoard? Had their destiny been slated toward significant discovery that would have benefited all mankind?
Haley could see where a young scientist poised to discover a cure for cancer or an ambitious young leader positioned to prevent a war might become the target of evil, for these results, favored by all mankind, would run contrary to the plans of the evil lord. It seemed to fit his agenda, to not only bring evil and ill will to all mankind, but to stand in the way of discoveries that might serve to benefit man.
The accounts of his evil deeds spoken of in the Bible and less credibly in the fiction and lore that came down through time giving testament to his sole purpose of preventing man the comfort he sought and the goodness the Father and his Son promised to those who followed his teachings of goodness of character and obedience to the basic tenets of living life following the right path and doing the right thing for all of his fellow men.
It was comforting to know despite their transgressions, if falling to the temptation and the wiles of the devil could be considered merely a part of the fallibility of man, and not a transgression, that the Father and his Son were willing, out of an abundance of unconditional love, to accept them back into good graces and the promise of eternal salvation. At that moment she felt a new appreciation for those who felt it their calling to spread the word of God to those who would listen with an open heart.
Having fought with the devil, Haley couldn’t help but wonder what the lives of these unfortunate women had been like before they fell into the evil Masters trap of lies and deception.
She lay in her bed for hours, not sleeping, not afraid, and yet feeling somehow incomplete. Then something miraculous occurred.
Chapter 63
Across the room from where she lay, an image appeared. This image was of two men, looking ancient and wise, one sitting on a great throne, the other sitting at his feet. Cherubs, laughing and giggling and having a merry time, surrounded them. Some tumbled and rolled around on the floor, while others hovered on gossamer wings, on the sides and above the seated men. The older one seated on the throng spoke, his voice seemed to shake the very earth itself.
“Go in peace my child, I am with you always.”
Haley felt a warmth steal over her and sleep came.
Haley awoke the next morning, feeling as if the world had been whitewashed pure and clean. When she arose from her bed, she noted the limp was gone and there appeared to be no infection in the wound created by the evil vine. When she removed the bandage, there wasn’t even a hint there had been a nasty wound there the day before. There wasn’t even a scar, yet the wound had been almost to the bone in a couple of places and had bled profusely, soaking first her sock, then one bandage and almost soaking its replacement.
She went to work, and everyone commented on her freshness of spirit. At lunch she went to the dry cleaners and picked up the alter vestment.
After work, she went by the Catholic Church to return it to the priest she had befriended during the ordeal she had just passed through. When she explained to him she had stolen the garment and why, and started apologizing profusely, he stopped her and in an almost reverent tone spoke.
“My child, I knew you had taken the item the day you took it. The night before your first visit here, I had a dream, and in that dream an angel of the Lord appeared to me and told me not to seek its return. I was reminded of the story where the angel appeared to Joseph in a dream telling him not to divorce Mary for being with child, for the child she carried was of the Lord.”
“The angel told me a Holy Warrior had been born and had use of the item. The angel advised me to support you in whatever way you needed, and said you were sent to me by God because of my deep faith. I was complemented by the message. It is yours to keep and I thank you for coming to me when you sought the Grace of Our Lord, the Holy Father and his Son our Savior.”
Haley was again astounded at the reverence in which her meager fight for Good over Evil had elevated her to. This characteristic humble nature seemed to complement the humble nature God looked for in his warriors. It was the same humble attitude exhibited by Father Andrew.
She stayed and talked with Father Andrew for a couple of hours that night and visited with him from time to time in the days and months that followed. They became good friends, and she learned a great deal from him regarding religion, though she had no intention of pursuing a faith-based lifestyle.
In fact, she was rather disappointed with Judeo-Christian beliefs and the fact they stumbled forward in a kind of blind optimism, choosing to ignore the fact the evil that counter-pointed the good of God and Jesus existed. This was a regular topic of discussion between Father Andrew and herself.
Father Andrew was really at a loss to explain why things appeared this way. He stated the Catholic Church had rites and masses that were designed to rid demonic possessions, and similar occurrences, and even had priests who specialized in administering these rites.
The only explanation he could give as to why followers weren’t routinely given instruction on how to rid their surroundings of demonic presence was it required a precise approach and the danger associated with an attempt was too great to subject lay believers to.
Moreover, he felt the Lord would rather have people coming to him for the rewards of eternity in heaven rather than to avoid the potential of eternity in the kind of satanic hell that was the other side of that coin.
Chapter 64
Haley had continued to study the Bible after her harrowing experiences with the evil bent on its downfall. This to better prepare her should another occurrence present itself that required she do battle with the forces of evil. She was supposedly a ‘holy warrior’ now, so she needed to arm herself should another call come. She felt the ‘rose-colored glasses’ approach of the church was a selfish approach. or immature at the very least, because the bible clearly stated and graphically depicted the results of not being found faithful in the end.
Father Andrew didn’t whole-heartedly agree but he didn’t disagree either, having pursued an independent study of Biblical doctrine. Yet, he explained he was constrained from deviating from the doctrinal teachings of the church, time tested through Centuries.
When she arrived home that night, she placed the alter vestment, in its protective dry cleaning bag in the top of her closet in the ground floor bedroom of the house.
The evil vanquished, Haley set about the restoration of the house. She never moved to Clarice old room, finding comfort in the ground floor room that had been witness to the battles she had just won.
When the concrete in the basement dried, Haley went to look at the result of her handy work. The level of the concrete was about two feet below the level of the floor above, so she could crawl around and move in the space that remained. She wished it had filled completely. But the extremely loose concrete that had been used to fill the basement would not have easily been contained with the window gone.
She was disappointed but not alarmed to discover the space behind the stair had not filled completely with concrete. The liquefied mixture had streamed into the area at first, but once the floor around the stair had started to fill, the flow had been stemmed somewhat.
This left a gap under the stairs. She wasn’t overly concerned about it, but would rather to have had it completely blocking all the walls in the chamber. The stairs were on the south wall, and the north and east walls were the ones that had apparently been used as the portals. Yet the point where the south wall met the east wall, directly under the stair, wasn’t filled in with the Holy mixture she had concocted.
In the corner where the north and west walls came together and the Gargoyles had stood a depression existed in the level of the dried concrete.
Haley rightly figured this was because the statures hadn’t completely disintegrated until after the concrete had been poured and started to set. Then when the space below became empty, the depression occurred. It wasn’t filled with adjacent flow as it had set hard enough it didn’t flow into the newly formed space left when the concrete with the aid of gravity settled into the newly formed space created as the statures were reduced to dust. The only thing that bothered her was this left a rather large space on the north wall, where her understanding left her feeling a new portal could be established.
Not to mention the fact the north and east walls had two-foot gaps from the top of the layer of concrete and the floor above that made up the ceiling of the room.
Haley used the entry to the stair as a storage room, building a floor, level with the adjacent floor and shelving along the walls that were used to mark the descent path into the chamber below. When she was finished you couldn’t even tell it was once anything other than the storage room she had created.
The similar treatment was performed on the window space in the west wall of the house. She covered it, and other than looking newer than the adjacent walls, it looked as if a window had never existed there. The flowers that had spontaneously grown on that side of the house covered the space effectively, as well. So you had to get on your hands and knees next to the house to see the non-weathered appearance of the repairs contrasting with the appearance of the adjacent foundation walls.
She finished restoration of the house and it opened as a B n B the next spring. The actual restoration work the house had required had diminished from her original estimates. It was almost as if the evil had run the house down to prevent interest in it and now that the evil was gone the house was restored almost to its pristine beauty. Haley thought it remarkable the difference in her notes she had made to what would be required and what had actually been necessary to restore the house.
Another interesting fact was the west wall of the house required other repairs than had originally been indicated in her notes. It wasn’t significant, but the attempts by Clarice to burn the house, somehow masked when the evil was in possession of the house had been revealed, once the evil was vanquished. Her notes showed no need to repair burnt places on the west wall, but the signs of a brief touch with fire were now apparent and Haley had to scrape and sand burnt boards before applying a fresh coat of paint.
As a B ‘n B it was immediately successful. Besides the pristine beauty of the Victorian styling, and the panoramic view afforded on the hilltop overlooking the valley below, the west side of the house continued to bloom in the Bluebonnets and Indian Paint Brush.
Photographers and artists that waited each year for the advent of spring and that ever so brief explosion of color on the Texas landscape when these two species normally bloom, kept the house booked with a waiting list to paint or photograph the explosion of flowers on the west side of the house.
Chapter 65
Haley hadn’t had to have the other sides landscaped. The flowers that had appeared spontaneously on the west side soon spread to the other three sides, so it seemed appropriate she call her B n B ‘Bluebonnet House’. She had the small area of woods on the west side pushed back to create a meadow for the beautiful blue flowers to flourish in. Driving by on the state highway that fronted the property, even in the dead of winter, it was like you had passed into a time warp and the clock had been moved back to some spring in an earlier era of time. A mantle of freshness always cloaked the place.
She had built her gazebo around the well Chirsty Johansson had drown herself in rather than deliver her virgin daughter to the evil Master, and called it a wishing well. Some said they had sipped the sweet waters from the well, and their illnesses had been healed. Soon it became a Mecca for those who were ailing and sick.
When dealing with some of these folks, she thought of the research she had done on demonic possessions and how modern Christian-thought considered them symptoms of mental disease rather than actual evil-influenced phenomena. Evil induced or psychiatric, Haley didn’t care, she just felt good seeing her guests come in troubled because of this or that, and suddenly feeling alive after a visit to the well. There was nothing unethical she felt about them chunking a quarter into the well and making a wish. The disheartened look on their face replaced with a smile and hope after doing so.
First she figured, a quarter was well worth the result. She realized the healing powers of the human mind, and that if someone feels positive on an outcome, that outcome is usually likely to be achieved. Lastly, she never intended to ‘harvest’ the quarters, nickels, dimes and pennies the walls bottom held. She felt the dreams were attached to those coins and they must stay forever in the waters that would supposedly deliver those dreams to fruition.
The success of the B n B had been so tremendous, Haley paid the note off the first year it was open.
Haley came to enjoy the company of her guests.
She had always been a ‘people person’ but never really a ‘social butterfly’. Now though, she loved sitting on the massive front verandah, sipping iced tea with her guests and ‘swapping’ stories about important events in each others lives. She never could bring herself to tell the story of the battles she had undertaken to make Bluebonnet House a reality.
Even when asked how she managed to keep Bluebonnets and Indian Paint Brush in bloom year-round. She sloughed off any queries by just telling a portion of the true story.
She would tell her guests, she had painted the house with Holy Water based paint, and the only thing she could figure is the Lord was pleased.
These sessions of the front verandah were commonplace, lasting well into evening in the summer months when the sun refused to set until nearly 10 at night. So it wasn’t unusual that Haley was sitting there when she next got the sign her battles with the forces of evil were not yet concluded.
Chapter 66
It was one summer afternoon a couple of years later, Haley sat on the massive verandah sipping iced tea with some of her guests when a young boy came up from the yard, carrying a dead puppy in his arms and crying. The small dog was drenched in blood, and when Haley enquired about the puppy, the boy replied,
“We were playing in the yard and I lost sight of him in the tall flowers by the house. Then I heard him yelp. When I went to find him, he was laying in the flowers wrapped in these stickers.”
The puppy was wound tightly in what Haley immediately recognized as the ‘thorny vine of evil presence’ the boy had identified as stickers.
She went to the side of the house to investigate and discovered a resurgence of growth along the west wall of the house that resembled the tight symmetrical spiral of the bramble that had existed when the evil had been in residence before, intertwined deep within the growth of flowers that had lived there since her success in ridding the house of its evil. She noted the flowers that contained the bramble were appearing weak and instead of the luscious blue of the Bluebonnet were pale and faded in comparison to the others in the meadow.
She instructed her manager to make signs saying the west side of the house was off limits and to alert all the guests the house would be closing for renovation that weekend and everyone must be checked out by noon on Sunday. Then to call all those who held reservations and alert them their reservations had been cancelled because of structural defects discovered in the house, which would require repair before the house would be safe for occupancy again.
He looked at her in astonishment, he knew of no structural defects, and as general manager he had his finger on the pulse of everything that went on in the house. Seeing the determination in her eyes, he didn’t question the instructions he had been given, or press the point in any way. The structural defects and the fact the house wouldn’t be safe for occupancy weren’t too far from an accurate description in reality, so Haley wasn’t really lying.
Haley went to her closet and retrieved the alter vestment from the shelf where she had placed it all those years ago. She removed the dry cleaning bag and draped the vestment over the same chair she had used to hang it from to dry after soaking it in Holy Water, and began to prepare to once again to do battle with the forces of evil.
That night she wore the familiar garment to bed as a muffler as she had before, not leaving anything to chance in her understanding of the powers that appeared to have returned to her home.
In the wee hours she once again felt the familiar chill on her left cheek that signaled a visit from the spirit friend Clarice. She opened her eyes and the girl spirit hovered in her customary place just above her bed.
“Hello, dear friend.” Haley exclaimed as she saw her friends face and the deep blue pools of the girl’s eyes.
“My friend, I am sorry to have to say it is time once again for you to do battle with the Master and his evil.”
The End
This part, as well, as the two parts that preceed it are Copyright 2003, 2004 by Charles F. Johnson and all rights are reserved and protected under the Copyright laws of the United stats and other countries.
Chapter 57
There was only one problem. Though their hooved feet and strong muscular legs made them speedy outside where they patrolled each night, on the stone floor of the basement, they had difficulty gaining traction and never did get up to speed before Haley reached the steps that led to the relative safety above.
As she ran up the steps two at a time, the ogres reached the bottom after she had only covered about half the distance to the door frame above, and a fourth of the way to the safety of the room the stair emptied into. One of the two ogres stepped onto the bottom step and launched himself up after the fleeing Haley.
Grabbing her by the leg, he started to pull her back into the chamber below. His hand started to smolder as it landed on a part of the overalls, which had received the treatment of mist when Haley had stopped by the humidifier on the two passes by it enroute to the chamber. Releasing her leg, his hand slid to her foot, grabbing the tennis shoe the woman wore.
Fortunately for Haley these weren’t form fitting athletic shoes and only cheap canvas tennis-style shoes, she had purchased for tasks such as painting and cleaning, for her foot slipped easily out of the shoe.
She regained her feet and continued to climb up the stairs. The ogre lost his balance slipped backwards as her foot came out of the shoe, and he fell to the bottom step.
He immediately regained his footing though and started up the stairs, his hooved feet managing to gain traction on the wooden steps better than the stone floor.
Haley was just making the doorway when the ogre, covering the steps in mighty bounds started up after her. He reached her just as she entered the mist from the humidifier.
He recoiled as the fine spray of holy water hit him, like a giant fist had slammed into his chest, and clattered down the steps to end up in a heap at the base of the stair knocking his sibling down as he fell backward.
Haley escaped into the kitchen, shaken and shocked by the close call she had just experienced. She sat in the kitchen trembling for a moment, and watching as the two ogre creatures attempted to climb the stairs several times only to be repulsed when they encountered the mist of the Holy Water. After several attempts, their efforts ceased.
Once Haley regained her composure, she went outdoors.
Though it was nearly dark she could see the window had already been closed, though in the dark it was hard to tell if her nearly catastrophic attempts to clean the window had produced any results.
The woman was almost calm after her harrowing events of a few moments before, and her mind was already at work on a way to circumvent this setback. Fortunately, she had already been considering the possibility her efforts today would be rendered moot with the over night delay her plan called for.
Returning to the house she went to her stash and got a small container of the metal dust created from the melted religious paraphernalia and walked boldly up to the window by the basement. She sprinkled the metal dust on the edges of the shrubs on either side of the gap created when she tested the holy water.
No discernable result was apparent immediately.
Disappointed she returned to the house and started her preparations for the next day. She considered as she went the possibility her plan wasn’t valid. No reaction had been apparent when she had dusted the thorns with the ground up metal dust. So the efficacy of the dust might not exist.
She had estimated she would need 4 gallons of paint to coat the north and east walls of the basement chamber, so she added a half bag of metal dust to each of the four, gallon cans of paint pigment base she had purchased, then filled each with holy water, making a gallon of paint in each pigment base can.
She used her drill and a paint stirrer attachment to thoroughly mix the paint in each can and replaced the lids on the cans. She had two bags of holy metal dust remaining for the next phase of her plan.
She moved the paint and the brushes and rollers and roller pans to the top of the stairs that led to the basement chamber. She checked the humidifier, and discovered the level of holy water in the reservoir had gone down only slightly, even though the humidifier had been putting out a constant spray of fine mist for almost 10 hours. She topped off the reservoir as she intended to leave the humidifier operating throughout the night.
She wasn’t certain if having been discovered in the basement by the evil entities if perhaps they might come for her now, seeing her presence there as a sign she had succumed to their wiles.
She didn’t think the concubines, as vaporous beings could manhandle her to the basement, but felt certain the ogres could as they had with Clarice.
She had seen the mist of Holy Water repulse them already and so hoped if her presence had somehow set in motion a possibility she could now fall victim to the chambers horrors, she could somehow delay it by keeping the ogres at bay until she could complete her plan the next day.
Chapter 58
She peered into the chamber but could see no activity. Even the noise and the moans that were characteristically emanating from down below were strangely absent. The only noise was the sound as the humidifier disseminated its holy mist of water.
She had gone about her preparations in such a deliberate manner the scare of an hour or so earlier had completely left her mind. Now she was famished, not having had anything to eat since early that morning, and then only a toasted English muffin with a little jam. She stopped and ate the sandwich she had prepared at noon, but had been unable to eat. The bread was a little stale after having sat on the cabinet all afternoon, but the sandwich worked well to sate her hunger.
She went to her room and removed the alter vestment and placed it on a chair back to finish drying before bed. She went to the sitting room and as she sat on the antique armchair in the room, a let down occurred. The impact of the close encounter suddenly registered in her mind and she began to sob violently.
After a time she performed one of her rituals of self-castigation and got her crying under control, she was suddenly worn out and decided to go to bed.
Returning to her room, she removed the overalls, and replaced the vestment muffler style around her neck. Kneeling at her bedside, she spoke the 23rd Psalm prayer again and then snuggled down into the bed.
She was wearing the holy water shirt and the vestment and the cup and pitcher of holy water stood ready by her bed. She fully expected to receive evil visitors that night, because the moon was just past new so the skies were dark, and because of the events of earlier that day, but the only visitor she received that night was Clarice.
Fatigue quickly overtook Haley and she was almost asleep when she felt the familiar draft on her cheek. She opened her eyes to see the vaporous image of the girl floating in the space beside her bed as usual. She smiled and Clarice spoke.
“You did good today, but you must be more careful.”
“I couldn’t foresee the unfortunate chain of events, but considering the outcome, it appears I had adequately prepared for it.”
“Yes, but a lot of it was luck and chance and more times than not those won’t work to your favor when you are dealing with an evil as you are here. Rest now for you will need all your strength tomorrow. I will stay by your side tonight so your sleep isn’t disturbed.”
Clarice caressed her face as she spoke the final words to her human friend, and Haley, comforted by her presence, drifted off, quickly, to an exhausted sleep.
She awoke as the sun’s rays bathed the room in warm light the following morning. As she sat drinking her morning tea, she reassembled her plan in her mind. She hadn’t planned it that way, but the day she would attempt to permanently thwart the evil in her basement, was Sunday.
Appropriate she thought as the fact registered in the young woman’s head. While she drank her first cup of tea, she turned the 4 cans of paint upside down to allow the metal particles, no doubt settled in the bottom a chance to re-suspend in the paint.
When she finished her first cup of tea, she went to the tool storage and retrieved the paint stirrer attachment and her drill. She went to her room and placed an old T-shirt she wouldn’t mind getting paint spattered in the basin of holy water. She also placed the alter vestment in the basin and added additional holy water to thoroughly cover the two articles.
She didn’t like the idea of possibly getting paint on the alter vestment, which she intended to return after this ordeal was over, but there was no way she was going to go into the basement chamber without the proven certain safety it provided.
She wasn’t certain, but she felt at least, if she encountered the evil they would have to convince her to remove the religious items she wore, the soaked shirt, the vestment and the crosses before they could potentially force her submission to their service.
She slipped off her T-shirt from the day before, and pulled the wet one from the basin, wrung the excess water from it, and slipped it on. The effect was the same as it had been the prior times, but again, it didn’t have the embarrassing effect it had the first time when her breasts were brought to prominence by the cling of the wet, thin fabric, and the cold reaction of her nipples.
She slipped the vestment on next and pinned it in place, then slipped on her overalls, in hopes the bib on the overalls would protect the vestment from some of the paint spatter.
She returned to the kitchen and filled a spray bottle with holy water. She retrieved her hammer from the toolbox, and went to the yard. When she got the west side, she immediately noted where the metal dust had been sprinkled on the shrubs had killed them back further.
She felt emboldened now as she walked up to the basement window, and started beating it with the hammer. After the glass shattered, she continued to beat on the window destroying the casement along with the glass, as well. Creeping along the ground, the thorny vine moved toward the woman’s ankles from both ends of the damaged growth.
Haley felt the vine wrap around her right ankle, and a shot of fear went through her. She felt her preparations would work, but now she had to see, as she felt nothing was entirely certain. She reached for the spray bottle of holy water hanging from the hammer loop on the leg of the overalls, and started applying the sacred spray to the vine around her ankle. It quickly recoiled from the mist of burning liquid its thorns cutting her ankle deeply as it quickly unwrapped from around her leg in retreat. The wail of the day she tested the water on the vine began again. The vine that had started at her feet from the other direction stopped its advance.
Haley again started raining hammer blows on the remnants of the window casing, seeking to destroy the window completely. As soon as she started to strike the house again, the vine that had stopped advancing toward her stated moving in her direction again.
Haley saw the movement of the vine in her peripheral vision and turned the spray bottle on the approaching evil plant. The spray stopped it again, and satisfied her efforts on the window were satisfactory considering the danger that existed by her continued presence, she retreated from the spot by the window.
At a safe distance from the thorny vine to stop, Haley turned to survey the damage she had managed to inflict on the window and that the vine had managed to inflict on her ankle. The glass was gone, the casement all but destroyed, from her vantage point, she could see the light of the sun falling on the far wall in the room below.
Mission accomplished.
Chapter 59
Her ankle flesh was ripped deeply, the bone all but revealed in a couple of places. It was bleeding though not an untoward amount, so Haley proceeded with her plan, just pulling her sock up to cover the ankle wound.
Returning to the house, she quickly removed the lids from the cans of paint and stirred them with the electric drill. Then she ferried the paint to the basement in two trips. The first trip revealed the room bathed in sunlight, though the morning sun was on the other side of the house. The place on the wall where the sunlight struck the strongest was just below the shackles where the common concubines hung each night. The wall smoldered as the rays of sunlight struck the evil residue the wall was coated in.
After ferrying the second load of paint and the painting supplies, Haley walked around the room, spraying down the walls she intended to paint with the holy water. The north and east walls both smoldered briefly at the application of the water, but when she sprayed the west wall, nothing happened. Haley quickly concluded the north and east walls were where evil ingress portals could be achieved, and not on the west wall.
The south wall was under the staircase, so not of concern to Haley. She hoped she wouldn’t come to regret not checking that wall, but to get in behind the stair would not have been an easy task, so she was content her original plan to only paint the east and north walls was sufficient.
Besides the next phase of her plan, should eliminate any threat from the south wall.
Returning to the ground floor, she refilled the spray bottle and the humidifier, and then went to the basement again.
She stirred the first can of paint with a stir stick and poured some into the roller pan. Filling the roller with paint, she began to roll it on to the wall. As she rolled she continually recited the Prayer of St. Michael she had memorized that night on the Internet.
‘Most glorious Prince of the Heavenly Armies, Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in our battle against principalities and powers, against the rulers of this world of darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the high places. Come to the assistance of men whom God has created to His likeness and whom He has redeemed at a great price from the tyranny of the devil. I venerate thee as my guardian and protector; to thee, the Lord has entrusted the souls of the redeemed to be led into heaven. We pray therefore to the God of Peace to crush Satan beneath our feet, that he may no longer retain men captive and do injury to thy children. We Offer our prayers to the Most High, that without delay they may draw His mercy down upon us; take hold of the dragon, the old serpent, which is the devil and Satan, bind him and cast him into the bottomless pit ... that he may no longer seduce the nations. Amen’
She had added the ‘Amen’ just as she did with her 23rd Psalm prayer repeating the prayer over and over as she went about her work.
Chapter 60
It took several hours, but Haley painted and prayed as if possessed. Once she had concluded painting both walls, she went back and touched up the places where the actual portal existed and where the common concubines hung chained to the wall. Both places had bubbled up after they were painted. The spray down with Holy water had apparently prepared the other surfaces adequately, because nowhere else did the 'holified' paint react to contact with the walls. As Haley finished touching up the two places, she was running out of paint.
She left the basement chamber and returned to the main floor of the house and noted the time. It was 1:45 and it would be 3 before the next phase of her plan would execute, if all went well.
Haley was decidedly calm, figuring her plan was likely going to work fine. The chamber first off was bathed in sunlight and the walls were coated with paint made from Holy Water and containing the particles of metal from the ground up religious paraphernalia.
She felt as if the house had taken on a festive air. She prepared herself a light lunch and made a pitcher of iced tea. The portals would be blocked only temporarily by the holy water, but even when the paint dried, the metal dust particles ground from the religious articles should continue to serve as an effective barrier.
At least that was what Haley hoped would happen,
but there was another step to her plan, and that would be concluded in just a little while. For now though, the sunlight, Holy Water based paint, and metal flakes would certainly hold back the tide of evil that might attempt to reenter the basement chamber. It would seem no ingress portals existed any longer.
Haley was however a lot wiser than when this all started and she had no doubt there could exist other avenues of ingress for the evil.
In her Bible studies she had noted the number 6 had significance in Revelations in relation to the devils existence, and had heard news accounts when she was younger about ‘666’ being the devils number.
So she surmissed the fact the basement west wall was on a perfect 6 degree to 186 degree axis was for a reason and that was why the architect had been so adamant about the laying of the foundation and had required the builder restart it numerous times.
That coupled with the European gargoyles and no doubt the Comanche burial ground, all combined to make the house attractive as an entry portal for the Master and his minions, and as a base of operations as they sought to unleash their evil on the unwitting human mortals of the earth.
After eating the lunch, she went back to the basement to see the result of her work. The walls were almost dry to the touch and as she ran her hand along the wall, she could feel the rough texture created by the metal dust.
She thought to test the paint job, and it seemed dry enough to do so. She used the spray bottle of holy water and sprayed all over the walls and no where did she get reaction from the application of the water, indicating to her in her mind the evil threat was probably eliminated, yet her plan wasn’t complete yet. She went to the verandah and took the time to doctor and bandage her ankle where the thorny evil vine had attacked her earlier.
Though the wound was fresh, it already appeared to be infected. The vine-induced illness of the Mexican landscape crew came to Haley’s mind.
Removing the sock that covered the wound caused it to start bleeding again. She thought to wash it with Holy Water, but rejected that idea for fear of a severe exothermic-like reaction to any evil residue the thorny vine might have left behind.
Though she didn’t like the prospect, just as Clarice had thought her sacrifice would have been worth it if she lost her life in her pursuit of burning the house, if her leg got infected and ended up scarred or even if it ended up having to be amputated it would be worth it if her attempts today were successful.
Chapter 61
At 3 pm precisely the trucks arrived.
Two cement mixers pulled in and as she sat on the verandah, the alter vestment put away, her shirt all but dry. The first driver asked where she wanted the concrete delivered.
She limped as she came off the verandah to greet and give direction to the drivers of the trucks. Her ankle had started to swell where the thorny vine had cut into her flesh. The bandage had already soaked through once with blood and had been replaced with a fresh bandage. Haley was a little concerned about the wound, considering the facts she knew about the Hispanic workers health issues after their encounter with the vine and its attack on them. The bloodied condition of the workers that morning weeks earlier when they had removed the original vine from the property was vivid in her mind.
She pointed to the west side of the house as she came off the porch. When the man backed his truck up, and then got out, she thanked him for being so punctual.
She had gotten rather abrupt with the man at the cement yard when he had charged her premium for delivery on Sunday, and had told him under no uncertain terms he better be punctual.
She queried the driver regarding the viscosity of the mix. He told her he had never delivered a load as viscous as this. He said that wasn’t a problem, it would still dry, but he had never seen a project that required concrete this loose.
Haley told him it was to seal the basement so she needed it soupy to find all the corners. She also gave each of the drivers 3 of the 5-gallon jugs of holy water and a bag of the metal dust and asked them to mix them in with he contents of their mixers.
She then had each of the trucks back up to the window and empty their load of concrete into the basement. As the liquid concrete flowed down the chute and into the window, she watched the room fill. As the loosely viscous concrete sought the corners and filled every space in the room, she sighed a sigh if relief and thought that perhaps finally she would be able to see her plans for the completion of her B n B reach fruition.
As the concrete reached the gargoyles standing in the corner, they burst into flames when the concrete contacted them and Haley felt certain of the Holy characteristics of the concrete. It was strange to see something as non-volatile as clay or ceramic or whatever similar substance had been used to create the hideous little statues spontaneously burst into flame and burn so readily in the corner.
The concrete flowed so quickly into the chamber the statues were covered quickly, so even the fact they were burning at no point placed the house in jeopardy of catching on fire.
The next morning on her way to work, she dropped the alter vestment at the cleaners to have it cleaned.
When she got home, she went to the west side of the house and checking on the progress of the drying, found the concrete had almost completely hardened to a solid mass. Yet she could still feel heat coming from the surface as she reached through the window to test the concrete.
What was really surprising but an extremely pleasant surprise was the thorny vine was completely gone. In its stead a full mat of Bluebonnets and Indian Paint Brush covered the beds where the thorny mass had grown. This wasn’t too strange as the Bluebonnet is the state flower of Texas, and grew wild all over the state.
Usually the bright blue flowers were accompanied by the yellow and red Indian Paint Brush, also wild and native flowers.
What was uncharacteristic was the plant was a short day bloomer and only had a brief period where it bloomed and flourished and that was in the spring, in late April and early May. Yet, it was September. Yes the days and more importantly the nights were approximately the same length as they would be in the spring, but the heat this time of year in Texas was just starting to abate from the relentless high temperatures of summer and usually after the bloom in the spring you never saw these two species again until the next spring.
Chapter 62
That night Haley received visitors again. Five in total, four she recognized, but the fifth had to be introduced to her. The first to appear was Clarice. The familiar cold draft on her left cheek brought her out of that floating state you feel right before sleep overtakes you.
Haley opened her eyes to see the deep blue pools of Clarice eyes looking into her own. The look on the girl spirits face was different, somehow happier. As she came awake, she noted three spirits standing at the foot of the bed, as well.
The two common concubines and the raven-haired lady were standing there.
Usually the common concubines would be in the corner of the room when the raven-haired concubine appeared and only come to the foot of the bed after she had moved to Haley’s side. It was as if their ‘station’ in the scheme of things was lowlier than that of the Master’s concubine and they were held to a more servile position in the room. But this time all three stood at the end of the bed as if ‘station’ or caste or whatever it was had changed.
Though they wore the same style of diaphanous clothing as before, the color of all three women’s garments was now white like Clarice’.
They stood at the foot of the bed making no attempt to come any closer to Haley. Perhaps they thought she might recognize them, as she had, but not recognize the uniform change, which she had.
She felt no fear at all. Only the magnificence of being in the company of so many benevolent spirits apparently with no possibility of being visited by evil, spirit or otherwise.
Besides had not Clarice said the servants and minions of the Master couldn’t visit while she was in the room. All these thoughts raced through her head, as the spirits hovered at the foot of the bed, casting off enough pure white light to appear it was daylight, instead of the minimal light that normal prevailed less than a week after the new moon.
Then Haley noticed another spirit, hovering just behind and beside Clarice. The lack of recognition on her part to this fifth being caused Clarice to speak.
“Dear friend, this is my mother.” Clarice spoke, her arm embracing the spirit that floated beside her.
“Your selflessness and you diligence to destroy the evil here, has given her back to me. It has earned you a special place in The Holy Father’s presence, as well. These others were also freed with your success.” Clarice gestured to the three at the foot of the bed.
“Now they too can take their rightful place in heaven with the Holy Father and his Son.”
“When you destroyed the evil in this house, you broke the bonds of servitude the master had over these women. Their weakness has been recognized and their transgressions forgiven, by a God who knows no ill intent toward any of his true believers.”
Haley finally spoke, a touch of irony in her voice.
“How can they be called ‘true believers’ if they served the Master of consummate evil?” Clarice response was simple.
“In order to believe and follow absolute evil, you must first believe there is absolute good. The Holy Father and his Son understand the wiles of the Master are treacherous and powerful. They love all his children, and want all to have a place with them in heaven. They are incapable of bearing ill will. He will punish those who don’t believe though, as what purpose would it serve to have those around him that don’t believe in his divine greatness?”
While Clarice explained, the concubines slowly drifted to the side of the bed. An explanation having been tendered to the woman, they probably felt she would feel no threat if they moved closer. Standing next to her, the Raven-haired lady took her hand and stroked it gently, then spoke once Clarice had finished.
“You freed us from the bonds of service to the evil Master. For that we are all three grateful. When you find your place in heaven after your time here on earth is done, we will all be united again and we must certainly celebrate the great good you have done.”
The common concubines almost in unison offered their appreciation to Haley.
“Thank you Miss.”
Haley blushed at the accolades she was receiving. Thinking to say something to make light of her efforts, and to point out her principal purpose, at least in the beginning, was to merely secure her investment in the house. But understanding the only way to graciously accept a complement or apology, she simply replied, “You are so welcome.”
The concubines slowly dissipated out of existence, at least in the room anyway. At almost the same instant the concubines disappeared, the spirit of Chirsty Johansson appeared at her side where they had hovered the instant before. She took Haley’s hand as the raven-haired lady had, and held it tenderly in her own. Haley noted warmth to her touch she hadn’t experienced with the others.
“Thank you for restoring my soul and allowing me to be with my precious daughter again.” Haley felt the drops of moisture on her arm as the spirits tears dripped from her face.
Clarice spoke again.
“You have earned a place in the Holy Father’s kingdom equal in stature to that of the Apostles and the other sainted ones. You have prevented a Great evil from being unleashed on all mankind. Your service to the Father and the Son and the protection you have provided his children is great in his eyes and your reward shall be eternal. But not like the eternity promised by the evil Master. The Father’s eternity is real and one worth being proud of and worthy of the greatness you have achieved. You are Seraphim in God’s eyes now. You need no longer to fear the evil. From this day forth, evil will tremble in your presence. You have been designated by the Holy Father as a warrior equal to or greater than the great warriors of his Kingdom, like Michael the Archangel. You need fear nothing, my friend.”
Clarice had a huge endearing smile on her face, as she bent and kissed Haley on the cheek.
“Will I ever see you again?” Haley asked the spirit of the girl.
“I am here as always if you need me.” The spirit said as her and her mother slowly faded away. The room was suddenly dark, and Haley just as quickly felt completely alone.
Also occurring in her mind was she knew nothing of the concubines existence before they had become minions of evil for the Prince of darkness. What had their lives been like? The lives of Christian, Chirsty and Clarice Johansson had been fairly well documented in Clarice Diary and in the gaps she had filled in, in the discussions the two had participated in.
Yet, Haley had no idea regarding the other three women. Had they been robbed of rich lives and consigned to lives devoid of ‘normal’ happiness after falling victim to the seduction of the Master or some of his evil hoard? Had their destiny been slated toward significant discovery that would have benefited all mankind?
Haley could see where a young scientist poised to discover a cure for cancer or an ambitious young leader positioned to prevent a war might become the target of evil, for these results, favored by all mankind, would run contrary to the plans of the evil lord. It seemed to fit his agenda, to not only bring evil and ill will to all mankind, but to stand in the way of discoveries that might serve to benefit man.
The accounts of his evil deeds spoken of in the Bible and less credibly in the fiction and lore that came down through time giving testament to his sole purpose of preventing man the comfort he sought and the goodness the Father and his Son promised to those who followed his teachings of goodness of character and obedience to the basic tenets of living life following the right path and doing the right thing for all of his fellow men.
It was comforting to know despite their transgressions, if falling to the temptation and the wiles of the devil could be considered merely a part of the fallibility of man, and not a transgression, that the Father and his Son were willing, out of an abundance of unconditional love, to accept them back into good graces and the promise of eternal salvation. At that moment she felt a new appreciation for those who felt it their calling to spread the word of God to those who would listen with an open heart.
Having fought with the devil, Haley couldn’t help but wonder what the lives of these unfortunate women had been like before they fell into the evil Masters trap of lies and deception.
She lay in her bed for hours, not sleeping, not afraid, and yet feeling somehow incomplete. Then something miraculous occurred.
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Across the room from where she lay, an image appeared. This image was of two men, looking ancient and wise, one sitting on a great throne, the other sitting at his feet. Cherubs, laughing and giggling and having a merry time, surrounded them. Some tumbled and rolled around on the floor, while others hovered on gossamer wings, on the sides and above the seated men. The older one seated on the throng spoke, his voice seemed to shake the very earth itself.
“Go in peace my child, I am with you always.”
Haley felt a warmth steal over her and sleep came.
Haley awoke the next morning, feeling as if the world had been whitewashed pure and clean. When she arose from her bed, she noted the limp was gone and there appeared to be no infection in the wound created by the evil vine. When she removed the bandage, there wasn’t even a hint there had been a nasty wound there the day before. There wasn’t even a scar, yet the wound had been almost to the bone in a couple of places and had bled profusely, soaking first her sock, then one bandage and almost soaking its replacement.
She went to work, and everyone commented on her freshness of spirit. At lunch she went to the dry cleaners and picked up the alter vestment.
After work, she went by the Catholic Church to return it to the priest she had befriended during the ordeal she had just passed through. When she explained to him she had stolen the garment and why, and started apologizing profusely, he stopped her and in an almost reverent tone spoke.
“My child, I knew you had taken the item the day you took it. The night before your first visit here, I had a dream, and in that dream an angel of the Lord appeared to me and told me not to seek its return. I was reminded of the story where the angel appeared to Joseph in a dream telling him not to divorce Mary for being with child, for the child she carried was of the Lord.”
“The angel told me a Holy Warrior had been born and had use of the item. The angel advised me to support you in whatever way you needed, and said you were sent to me by God because of my deep faith. I was complemented by the message. It is yours to keep and I thank you for coming to me when you sought the Grace of Our Lord, the Holy Father and his Son our Savior.”
Haley was again astounded at the reverence in which her meager fight for Good over Evil had elevated her to. This characteristic humble nature seemed to complement the humble nature God looked for in his warriors. It was the same humble attitude exhibited by Father Andrew.
She stayed and talked with Father Andrew for a couple of hours that night and visited with him from time to time in the days and months that followed. They became good friends, and she learned a great deal from him regarding religion, though she had no intention of pursuing a faith-based lifestyle.
In fact, she was rather disappointed with Judeo-Christian beliefs and the fact they stumbled forward in a kind of blind optimism, choosing to ignore the fact the evil that counter-pointed the good of God and Jesus existed. This was a regular topic of discussion between Father Andrew and herself.
Father Andrew was really at a loss to explain why things appeared this way. He stated the Catholic Church had rites and masses that were designed to rid demonic possessions, and similar occurrences, and even had priests who specialized in administering these rites.
The only explanation he could give as to why followers weren’t routinely given instruction on how to rid their surroundings of demonic presence was it required a precise approach and the danger associated with an attempt was too great to subject lay believers to.
Moreover, he felt the Lord would rather have people coming to him for the rewards of eternity in heaven rather than to avoid the potential of eternity in the kind of satanic hell that was the other side of that coin.
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Haley had continued to study the Bible after her harrowing experiences with the evil bent on its downfall. This to better prepare her should another occurrence present itself that required she do battle with the forces of evil. She was supposedly a ‘holy warrior’ now, so she needed to arm herself should another call come. She felt the ‘rose-colored glasses’ approach of the church was a selfish approach. or immature at the very least, because the bible clearly stated and graphically depicted the results of not being found faithful in the end.
Father Andrew didn’t whole-heartedly agree but he didn’t disagree either, having pursued an independent study of Biblical doctrine. Yet, he explained he was constrained from deviating from the doctrinal teachings of the church, time tested through Centuries.
When she arrived home that night, she placed the alter vestment, in its protective dry cleaning bag in the top of her closet in the ground floor bedroom of the house.
The evil vanquished, Haley set about the restoration of the house. She never moved to Clarice old room, finding comfort in the ground floor room that had been witness to the battles she had just won.
When the concrete in the basement dried, Haley went to look at the result of her handy work. The level of the concrete was about two feet below the level of the floor above, so she could crawl around and move in the space that remained. She wished it had filled completely. But the extremely loose concrete that had been used to fill the basement would not have easily been contained with the window gone.
She was disappointed but not alarmed to discover the space behind the stair had not filled completely with concrete. The liquefied mixture had streamed into the area at first, but once the floor around the stair had started to fill, the flow had been stemmed somewhat.
This left a gap under the stairs. She wasn’t overly concerned about it, but would rather to have had it completely blocking all the walls in the chamber. The stairs were on the south wall, and the north and east walls were the ones that had apparently been used as the portals. Yet the point where the south wall met the east wall, directly under the stair, wasn’t filled in with the Holy mixture she had concocted.
In the corner where the north and west walls came together and the Gargoyles had stood a depression existed in the level of the dried concrete.
Haley rightly figured this was because the statures hadn’t completely disintegrated until after the concrete had been poured and started to set. Then when the space below became empty, the depression occurred. It wasn’t filled with adjacent flow as it had set hard enough it didn’t flow into the newly formed space left when the concrete with the aid of gravity settled into the newly formed space created as the statures were reduced to dust. The only thing that bothered her was this left a rather large space on the north wall, where her understanding left her feeling a new portal could be established.
Not to mention the fact the north and east walls had two-foot gaps from the top of the layer of concrete and the floor above that made up the ceiling of the room.
Haley used the entry to the stair as a storage room, building a floor, level with the adjacent floor and shelving along the walls that were used to mark the descent path into the chamber below. When she was finished you couldn’t even tell it was once anything other than the storage room she had created.
The similar treatment was performed on the window space in the west wall of the house. She covered it, and other than looking newer than the adjacent walls, it looked as if a window had never existed there. The flowers that had spontaneously grown on that side of the house covered the space effectively, as well. So you had to get on your hands and knees next to the house to see the non-weathered appearance of the repairs contrasting with the appearance of the adjacent foundation walls.
She finished restoration of the house and it opened as a B n B the next spring. The actual restoration work the house had required had diminished from her original estimates. It was almost as if the evil had run the house down to prevent interest in it and now that the evil was gone the house was restored almost to its pristine beauty. Haley thought it remarkable the difference in her notes she had made to what would be required and what had actually been necessary to restore the house.
Another interesting fact was the west wall of the house required other repairs than had originally been indicated in her notes. It wasn’t significant, but the attempts by Clarice to burn the house, somehow masked when the evil was in possession of the house had been revealed, once the evil was vanquished. Her notes showed no need to repair burnt places on the west wall, but the signs of a brief touch with fire were now apparent and Haley had to scrape and sand burnt boards before applying a fresh coat of paint.
As a B ‘n B it was immediately successful. Besides the pristine beauty of the Victorian styling, and the panoramic view afforded on the hilltop overlooking the valley below, the west side of the house continued to bloom in the Bluebonnets and Indian Paint Brush.
Photographers and artists that waited each year for the advent of spring and that ever so brief explosion of color on the Texas landscape when these two species normally bloom, kept the house booked with a waiting list to paint or photograph the explosion of flowers on the west side of the house.
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Haley hadn’t had to have the other sides landscaped. The flowers that had appeared spontaneously on the west side soon spread to the other three sides, so it seemed appropriate she call her B n B ‘Bluebonnet House’. She had the small area of woods on the west side pushed back to create a meadow for the beautiful blue flowers to flourish in. Driving by on the state highway that fronted the property, even in the dead of winter, it was like you had passed into a time warp and the clock had been moved back to some spring in an earlier era of time. A mantle of freshness always cloaked the place.
She had built her gazebo around the well Chirsty Johansson had drown herself in rather than deliver her virgin daughter to the evil Master, and called it a wishing well. Some said they had sipped the sweet waters from the well, and their illnesses had been healed. Soon it became a Mecca for those who were ailing and sick.
When dealing with some of these folks, she thought of the research she had done on demonic possessions and how modern Christian-thought considered them symptoms of mental disease rather than actual evil-influenced phenomena. Evil induced or psychiatric, Haley didn’t care, she just felt good seeing her guests come in troubled because of this or that, and suddenly feeling alive after a visit to the well. There was nothing unethical she felt about them chunking a quarter into the well and making a wish. The disheartened look on their face replaced with a smile and hope after doing so.
First she figured, a quarter was well worth the result. She realized the healing powers of the human mind, and that if someone feels positive on an outcome, that outcome is usually likely to be achieved. Lastly, she never intended to ‘harvest’ the quarters, nickels, dimes and pennies the walls bottom held. She felt the dreams were attached to those coins and they must stay forever in the waters that would supposedly deliver those dreams to fruition.
The success of the B n B had been so tremendous, Haley paid the note off the first year it was open.
Haley came to enjoy the company of her guests.
She had always been a ‘people person’ but never really a ‘social butterfly’. Now though, she loved sitting on the massive front verandah, sipping iced tea with her guests and ‘swapping’ stories about important events in each others lives. She never could bring herself to tell the story of the battles she had undertaken to make Bluebonnet House a reality.
Even when asked how she managed to keep Bluebonnets and Indian Paint Brush in bloom year-round. She sloughed off any queries by just telling a portion of the true story.
She would tell her guests, she had painted the house with Holy Water based paint, and the only thing she could figure is the Lord was pleased.
These sessions of the front verandah were commonplace, lasting well into evening in the summer months when the sun refused to set until nearly 10 at night. So it wasn’t unusual that Haley was sitting there when she next got the sign her battles with the forces of evil were not yet concluded.
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It was one summer afternoon a couple of years later, Haley sat on the massive verandah sipping iced tea with some of her guests when a young boy came up from the yard, carrying a dead puppy in his arms and crying. The small dog was drenched in blood, and when Haley enquired about the puppy, the boy replied,
“We were playing in the yard and I lost sight of him in the tall flowers by the house. Then I heard him yelp. When I went to find him, he was laying in the flowers wrapped in these stickers.”
The puppy was wound tightly in what Haley immediately recognized as the ‘thorny vine of evil presence’ the boy had identified as stickers.
She went to the side of the house to investigate and discovered a resurgence of growth along the west wall of the house that resembled the tight symmetrical spiral of the bramble that had existed when the evil had been in residence before, intertwined deep within the growth of flowers that had lived there since her success in ridding the house of its evil. She noted the flowers that contained the bramble were appearing weak and instead of the luscious blue of the Bluebonnet were pale and faded in comparison to the others in the meadow.
She instructed her manager to make signs saying the west side of the house was off limits and to alert all the guests the house would be closing for renovation that weekend and everyone must be checked out by noon on Sunday. Then to call all those who held reservations and alert them their reservations had been cancelled because of structural defects discovered in the house, which would require repair before the house would be safe for occupancy again.
He looked at her in astonishment, he knew of no structural defects, and as general manager he had his finger on the pulse of everything that went on in the house. Seeing the determination in her eyes, he didn’t question the instructions he had been given, or press the point in any way. The structural defects and the fact the house wouldn’t be safe for occupancy weren’t too far from an accurate description in reality, so Haley wasn’t really lying.
Haley went to her closet and retrieved the alter vestment from the shelf where she had placed it all those years ago. She removed the dry cleaning bag and draped the vestment over the same chair she had used to hang it from to dry after soaking it in Holy Water, and began to prepare to once again to do battle with the forces of evil.
That night she wore the familiar garment to bed as a muffler as she had before, not leaving anything to chance in her understanding of the powers that appeared to have returned to her home.
In the wee hours she once again felt the familiar chill on her left cheek that signaled a visit from the spirit friend Clarice. She opened her eyes and the girl spirit hovered in her customary place just above her bed.
“Hello, dear friend.” Haley exclaimed as she saw her friends face and the deep blue pools of the girl’s eyes.
“My friend, I am sorry to have to say it is time once again for you to do battle with the Master and his evil.”
The End