I Kill in Peace Read online

  Except there was no joy, no sense of accomplishment. I felt bare, exposed, sick with the anticipation of judgment.

  Finally, Father Brendan said, “What drove you to commit these acts?”

  I wanted to say “insanity!” That sounded better than telling him the texts on my computer and phone, the voice in the car and my head. But I had gone this far. There was no sense holding back now.

  “I’m not sure,” I said, wiping tears from my cheeks. “Someone or something that calls himself AO has been telling me what to do, providing the tools I need, punishing me when I disobey him. I don’t know who he is or how he’s found a way to control me, to torture me.”

  The seat creaked on the other side, as if the priest were moving closer to the partition.

  “I think you do know who this AO is,” he said.

  My head dropped down until my forehead touched my clasped hands.

  “If he’s real, how is he doing this to me? How can he get inside my head?”

  “Because he is AO.”

  Something in Father Brendan’s tone changed. My head jerked up.

  “What does that mean?”

  Father chuckled, chilling my blood. “It has been too long for you. All that religious education out the door, traded for earthly desires and possessions.” There was a long pause. All I could hear was my own labored breathing. “AO. He is the Alpha and the Omega, Peter.”

  How did he know my name? I was pretty sure I hadn’t told him. I got up from my knees, sitting back on the padded chair.

  “No,” I croaked, feeling the confessional spin around me.

  It wasn’t possible.

  “You remember Revelation, don’t you, Peter? ‘When the lamb broke the second seal, I heard the second living creature saying, “Come.” And another, a red horse, went out, a fiery red one. Its rider was given power to take peace from the earth, and that men would slay one another; and a great sword was given to him.’”

  Standing up, I fumbled for the knob. I had to get out.

  “The red horseman is a harbinger of war and destruction. You’ve been chosen, Peter! Chosen to herald the end of corruption and the beginning of eternal peace! Listen to the Alpha and the Omega. Your soul rests in the bosom of the Lord God!”

  “Noooo!”

  I kicked the door open so hard, it came off its hinges. My body ignited. It was as if I’d been doused in melted iron. Father Brendan continued spouting quotes from Revelation.

  “God wouldn’t do this to me!” I shouted back.

  I was overcome by a desire to make the priest shut up in the most violent way possible. I found a heavy candle stand and grabbed it. I was going to put it in places that weren’t meant to be explored.

  Father Brendan, still inside the confessional, said, “Those worthy will drink from the water of life. Without you, Peter, they would not be able to testify, ‘Yea, I am coming soon.’”

  The air shook with the sound of a towering foghorn, an otherworldly rumble that came from the sky and buried itself into the earth. I stumbled backward, using the candle stand to keep from falling.

  What the hell was that?

  It should have terrified me, but my anger was far greater than my fear.

  Grabbing the handle to the confessional, I yanked it open with a primal scream.

  The candle stand dropped from my hand, clattering on the tiled floor.

  It was empty.

  How?

  “Father Brendan?” I shouted.

  He’d just been inside, screeching his insane holy words. I checked for any hidden ways out. My rage was so ebullient, I tore the wooden confessional to pieces with my bare hands. Hunks of wood clattered everywhere, smoking from where I’d touched them.

  “Where are you, Father? I am not the red horseman! You hear me! I will not kill for God.”

  The words struck me, stopping me in my rage.

  Wasn’t I about to kill Father Brendan? In just a few days, killing had become easy, something I had yearned to do. I couldn’t get it up for Candy, but given the chance to bury the scimitar in someone’s flesh and I was in porn star territory. And now I was the human torch, tearing up a church, desperate to rip a priest to pieces just because I didn’t like what he had to say.

  My hands glowed red. My eyes burned, but I could see perfectly.

  AO. The Alpha and the Omega. The Greek term for Christ, for God, the deliverer of the end times in the Book of Revelation.

  I didn’t want it to make sense.

  I stormed down the main aisle, walking past the altar, to the door where Father Brendan had come from earlier.

  He was hanging by a white cassock in the sacristy. His swollen tongue filled his open mouth. The flesh of his face was blue, his eyeballs gray and bulging. His hanging wasn’t fresh. Father Brendan had been dead for days. The stench of his fruiting body made me gag. I turned and ran.

  The fresh air outside stung my burning body like nettles. I stopped on the top step.

  Who had I been speaking to in the church if Father Brendan was dead?

  AO.

  The Alpha and the Omega. God.

  What seemed impossible just minutes ago now felt all too real. I’d never been much for the book of Revelation—that was hyperbolic claptrap for half-mad Bible thumpers. I was a lapsed Catholic with a capital L. I was no horseman.

  And yet, somehow, I was.

  Father Brendan’s voice called out behind me. “’How long, O Lord, must I call for your help, but you do not listen? Or cry out to you, ‘Violence!’, but you do not save?’”

  I turned, but he was not there. He couldn’t be. The man who had been Father Brendan was rotting at the end of a noose.

  “‘Look at the nations and watch—and be utterly amazed. For I am going to do something in your day that you would not believe, even if you were told.’”

  The horn sounded again. The trees swayed from the soul-shaking bellow.

  A strong wind battered the church, and within the wind, I heard the cries of men, women, and children.

  My car was gone.

  The red Mustang was in its place, the motor running, smoke belching from the tailpipe.

  Get in!

  It was the voice of AO. I clenched my fists.

  “Just let me die!” I shouted.

  You know who I am. Do you trust in me?

  “Trust in you? How can I trust in a god who turns an innocent man into a killer? I’m not one of your horsemen. They come from heaven, or hell, I don’t know! They don’t come from here.”

  A part of me wanted to collapse and weep before the church, but a growing part wanted to obey AO, to let him take me wherever he desired.

  Shots popped in the near distance. The smell of smoke drifted on the breeze.

  You have places far to go, with many days and nights without rest. Follow my words, and you will be saved.

  I couldn’t reconcile the God I had prayed to as a child offering salvation for my soul through the act of murder. My legs walked to the car against my will. The concrete sizzled with each step.

  Sitting in the car, I looked at myself in the rearview mirror.

  My heart froze.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  I no longer looked human. My skin was as red as a ripe tomato. The whites of my eyes were crimson, the pupils a glowing gold. I watched in horror as the hair from my head burned off, black ash peppering my shoulders.

  The scimitar was on the seat next to me, shining as if it had been recently polished. The back seat was crammed with cases and crates. All of them, I suspected, contained weapons, the tools to ignite mass murder.

  Sitting in the Mustang, looking like the devil incarnate, I could no longer rationalize AO and what had been happening to me away. The less I struggled internally, the more the burning desire to carry out his word took control,
easing my mind.

  “I…I want to say goodbye to my family,” I said, putting the car in drive.

  I am your family.

  “Candy and Katie are the family I made here, on Earth!” I shouted, pounding the wheel, feeling insane, raw power surge through me. If an army had been sent to stop me from going to my house, I was pretty sure I could lay waste to them, even without the scimitar. “You teach love. I love my wife and my child. It can’t be wrong to love them so much that I want to see them one last time.”

  I pinned the accelerator. Route 302 was empty. It looked like there were several fires in the town. Smoke corkscrewed up from the tree line in every direction. There were no bleating fire engines rushing to the rescue.

  The horns. They signaled the end. What little horror that had been held back must have exploded at the first blast. Everything had gone to total shit in an instant.

  AO…no, God…didn’t say another word as I sped to my house. When I pulled into the driveway, I saw my neighbor, Benny, lying dead on his front lawn. Blood pooled around his head. I didn’t have time to find out what had happened to him.

  Stepping out of the car, my point of view shifted. I was seeing the world from a different perspective. When I got to my front door, I realized I was taller than before. I would have to duck to get into the house. My frame nearly filled the doorway.

  What was I doing? If Candy and Katie saw me like this, I might scare the life out of them.

  Is this what God wanted, why he didn’t stop me?

  It was too late for second thoughts. The door swung open, the knob melting from my brief contact.

  “Candy? Katie?”

  Even my voice was deeper.

  There was no answer. Had something happened? Had they run from the house? Maybe Benny had been trying to protect them from someone, or something. Or had they fled out the back door when they spotted me walking up the drive? I wouldn’t blame them if they had.

  Maybe it was for the best.

  I turned for the front door, consigned to leaving my life and loves behind. Who was I to think I even deserved to see them again? Something wicked had to have lived in me all my life for God to choose me to be his messenger of war and hate. How could Candy have not seen it in me all these years?

  The dying part of my soul wept.

  My gaze caught something on the couch.

  It was them. Both sound asleep in an unnatural slumber. They looked so peaceful, contented. I stood over them, Katie sleeping in the crook of Candy’s arm. I exhaled with a big sigh when I saw their chests move. For a moment, I’d thought they were gone.

  A heavy explosion rumbled through the house. Outside, a chorus of pained cries split the humid air.

  Madness had taken complete control.

  “Peter.”

  “Yes.”

  “You must leave them.”

  I reached out to touch them, saw the pulsating crimson in my hands, and pulled away.

  “But first you must take their lives.”

  I recoiled, staggering away from the couch.

  “You can’t ask me to do that!”

  Another blast made framed pictures fall from the walls. It felt as if something underground had erupted.

  “If they live, they will suffer. The world will no longer be a place for them.”

  “Couldn’t you just take them up? They’re innocent. Please don’t ask me to do this. I can’t murder my wife and child.”

  “You must trust in me.”

  “Why would you make me do this? Haven’t you done enough to torture me? I won’t! Why me? Answer me that. Why me?”

  To my surprise, I wasn’t struck by pain, made to drop to my knees in agony until I acquiesced. Candy and Katie slept, oblivious to the chaos outside and the beast that was their protector inside.

  “They will feel nothing. Better that than the pain that is to come. Better from the hands of the one who loves them than a stranger.”

  My tears hissed like droplets of water steaming on a hot plate.

  “This was always your burden to bear, Peter. I made you for this, an ordinary man in my image.”

  My stomach lurched when I looked down and saw the scimitar in my right hand. I knew I had left it in the car.

  “Please, spare them. Spare me. I’ll do anything else you ask of me. Just don’t ask me to do this.”

  Katie mumbled in her sleep, shifting so her face was nuzzled in Candy’s breast. Candy pressed her cheek atop her head, a smile creeping onto her face.

  “You have much to do, but not until you place your absolute faith in me.”

  “I do. I do have faith in you!”

  “Then believe in me when I say this has to be done.”

  There was a series of gunshots just outside the house. A woman screamed and there were more shots. That could have been Candy. My chest ached.

  If I left, whoever was out there could come into my home and do the same to my beautiful girls.

  My beautiful, perfect girls.

  “Please, forgive me,” I said, sniffing back tears as I lifted the scimitar.

  “You need not ask me for forgiveness.”

  “I’m not asking it of you!”

  The scimitar sliced through the air as I screamed, a peal of lament that shattered windows, rending a path in the heavens for their souls to ascend.

  World Without End

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The roads to D.C. were littered with smashed cars, people dead or dying of disease or wounds. The Mustang cleaved through them all as if they were nothing but phantoms.

  I stopped at the gates to the White House. The black fence stood strong, its barrier secure as ever.

  Three other Mustangs screeched to a halt beside me. One was black, the horseman known as famine. The scales of justice were emblazoned on its hood as if it had been detailed by one of those shops you saw on cable TV. Next to it was a white Mustang, the conquering horseman, the bringer of disease and pestilence. Even the windows were tinted white, a dense impenetrable fog. On the other side of my car was another Mustang, painted an unnatural pale that trailed a black, vaporous mist behind from its rumbling tailpipe. The pale horseman had frightened me as a child, because it was death, the most fearsome and final of us all. It scared me now, just idling beside it.

  I couldn’t see the drivers in any of the cars because of the tinting, but I knew they were men, just like me. Had AO asked them to make the same final sacrifice?

  It made me feel better to think he had. To know I wasn’t alone in my sorrow, or my duty.

  We had converged on this spot for just a moment, a respite from our work, a break from so much destruction. This would be our last stop here. I wasn’t sure where we’d go next—Canada? Europe? The Middle East? Even great oceanic divides wouldn’t stop us.

  The white and black Mustangs peeled away, barreling in opposite directions, headed for their destinies.

  I revved the engine, looking over at the pale Mustang. The black cloud undulated. If I stared hard, I could see inhuman shapes shifting within the venomous fog.

  The pale horseman and I had work to do.

  The sooner we got it done, the sooner I could once again be with my family. I screamed their names and revved the engine.

  Together, the pale rider and I mowed the fence down, tearing up the Great Lawn for our meeting with the leader of the free, and damned, world.

  Acknowledgements

  Well, that was fun, wasn’t it? Odd that this is the story that demanded to be written during the Christmas holiday.

  There are so many people I’d like to thank not only for this book, but for everything I’ve been able to do, spinning yarns, for the past five years.

  First, thank you to my first readers and editors—my sister, Carolyn Wolstencroft, who has been the eagle-eye first line editor for all my
books; Jason Brant, a terrific writer, for giving me his thoughts and insight; and my wife, Amy, who never looks at me funny, no matter how demented the story.

  I am so thankful to everyone at Samhain, from super editor Don D’Auria to Jacob Hammer, Tera Cuskaden, Amanda Hicks, Christina Brashear, Tanya Cowman, and Kaitlyn Osborn. You all rock hard.

  Mega gracias to my agent, Louise Fury, and Monster Brother, Jack Campisi.

  Thank you to all the priests, nuns, and brothers who did their best to raise me right. You made writing stories like this one easy, because I don’t need to spend weeks doing research. You taught me well and made sure everything stuck!

  And to all of you who read this tale. Thank you for reading the voices in my head.

  About the Author

  Hunter Shea is the product of a childhood weaned on The Night Stalker, The Twilight Zone, and In Search Of. He doesn’t just write about the paranormal—he actively seeks out the things that scare the hell out of people and experiences them for himself.

  Publishers Weekly named The Montauk Monster one of the best reads of the summer in 2014, and his follow up novel, Hell Hole, was named best horror novel of the year on several prestigious horror sites. Cemetery Dance had this to say about his apocalyptic thriller, Tortures of the Damned: “A terrifying read that left me wanting more. I absolutely devoured this book!”

  Hunter is an amateur cryptozoologist, having written wild, fictional tales about Bigfoot, the Montauk Monster, the Dover Demon, and many new creatures to come. Copies of his books, The Montauk Monster and The Dover Demon, are currently on display in the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, ME.

  He’s proud to be one half of the Monster Men video podcast, along with his partner in crime, Jack Campisi. It is one of the most-watched horror video podcasts in the world. Monster Men is a light-hearted approach to dark subjects. Hunter and Jack explore real life hauntings, monsters, movies, books, and everything under the horror sun. They often interview authors, crytid and ghost hunters, directors, and anyone else living in the horror lane.