writernextdoor
First Post
[Mechanical spends are in braces]
((GM Notes are in parentheses))
Father Craig was midway through Paul's second letter to the Corinthians when the phone rang and that sad little boy called. Craig knew he was sad, the tone was so clear, but it lay buried under excitement.
"I think it's time for dinner." the boy said so clearly, and Craig agreed, asked one more time for the address, and then told the boy to make his way to the church and to sit in the first pew until Mace showed up.
The phone call ended and Craig went to his closet. He pushed the suits to one side and drew the sheet back on the large gun safe. He tapped in the code
11-17- his daughter's birthday.
05 the year that monster tore off his daughter's head and threw it through their living room window during Thanksgiving.
For the last seven years Father Craig did two things every night before going to sleep - he prayed for strength and he cleaned his guns.
Joanna wasn’t coming home for Thanksgiving. Too much snow on the ground and too many hours of work at the hospital. She had a new job, and she thrived in it. Her absence hurt Craig and Linda, who had planned a great holiday of togetherness and delicious food.
When Craig and Joanna talked that morning, she made him promise not to tell Linda she was coming to surprise her for dessert. So Craig kept the promise, ending the call as always with “I love you, be safe, be blessed.”
Craig and Linda tucked into dinner and ate slowly, talking about the snow and the Miller twins who spent all day shoveling walks in exchange for cocoa and pocket money, and of the lack of reasonably priced produce. Craig checked his watch discretely, never letting on that there was anything worth expecting.
You see because at this time Craig was sort of a believer. He attended church on holidays and on random Sundays when it wasn’t too hot or too cold or when they had a special fuss – he liked special fusses because they always brought doughnuts and coffee.
But his faith was far from perfect. At least until the phone call.
The phone rang just before he tucked into his third helping of stuffing. It sounded like someone was playing a skipping record while riding a roller coaster, the background noise of yells and breaking glass mixing into panic and the tiny voice on the phone.
Joanna.
“Daddy…”
He could hear his little girl, scared and hurt.
And then the phone cut out.
Right there on the kitchen floor, Craig fell to his knees and prayed. He prayed for strength. He prayed for Joanna. He prayed for forgiveness for every Sunday he slept in and for every cheek he didn’t turn. Linda found him on the floor and with one teary-eyed look, they prayed together until dinner was as cold as dessert.
The waiting was interminable. Linda packed up dinner. Craig did all the dishes. And they tried to watch TV, but everything sounded like Joanna screaming.
When it happened, they didn’t expect it, because the doorbell rang first. Linda went to the door, and saw a man she didn’t recognize standing on her front lawn. He was thin, short, and she thought maybe he was a junkie or a homeless person. She read about them last week in Today magazine as being a problem. He asked to be let in. He even knew her name.
But Linda didn’t trust him, so she told him to go away.
The man, this junkie, this animal, didn’t go away though. Instead he backed up to the middle of the lawn and lobbed a box, one of those boxes you pack papers in when you move, through the front window.
The mess was terrible, but fixable. And when Craig looked out over his lawn, the man was gone. But Craig opened the box.
Joanna. In pieces. Tucked neatly into a box.
Linda screamed for five straight minutes, until neighbors came over to see what was wrong. Craig fainted.
Five months later, Craig bought his first gun, a shotgun, and thanks to a video on the Internet, sawed off the barrel. Linda started taking ill after that, and it wasn’t long before she passed. The doctors all say it was a weak valve. Craig knew though that it was a broken heart.
He went back to school the day after Linda’s funeral, and within 3 years was in Seminary. He took vows and found Faith, with a capital F. And when he asked questions about the horrors of the world, his teachers told him only not of the sins of man, but also of the monsters that probe the darkness. The beasts with fangs. The tentacles. The hideous eyes. All of it.
Craig came out of Seminary reforged. He committed himself to a Navy SEAL regimen of training. He mastered the parang, the kukri, the machete. He became an expert in ammunition-smithing and all the wards and banes he could find across a multitude of culture.
Father Craig became a one man army.
His goal tonight was to get Billy out of the orphanage. He didn’t really like the setup: too many innocent bystanders and the building was likely a killbox. So rather than go for the heavy guns – the AR-15, the shotguns - he grabbed two sawed-offs, a big tin of salt, some spray paint, the combat knife, the machete and a few silver chain garrotes.
There were no adults involved in this, he told himself. Just monsters and children.
Craig loaded up his car, filled up at the gas station down the street (including the spare tank he kept in the trunk in case things went south) and took the twenty-minute drive to Bartlett. He kissed the pictures of Joanna and Linda that he kept his wallet before going to war.
The Ephraim Adoption Agency didn’t have a lot of external security. [Notice 2] Sure there were cameras over the door and bars on the windows, but roof access was a matter of squeezing past a bush and climbing a ladder on the far north side.
On the roof, Craig’s objective was easy. The large sprinkler water tank had no lock on it, just a spring hinge. With a little muscle he popped it free and dropped in one of the rosaries he kept in his pocket. A few quick prayers and the rosary flickered blue as it sank into the water.
Back on ground level, he walked up to the exterior camera, gave it a dousing with spray paint and entered the building, making a beeline for the office.
One security guard was standing in the room, waiting for him.
“Good evening sir.” The guard said.
Craig was praying when war broke out.
Our Father, who art in Heaven. The sawed-off shotgun burped fire and the blast took the guard off his feet. The stink was intense.
Hallowed be Thy Name. Craig walked into the hallway, found it empty and began laying salt in thick lines across all the doorways.
Back in the office, he found the public address speaker and cranked it on. His voice was soothing and mellow.
“Kids. My name is Father Craig. I’m a priest. The fire alarm is about to go off. Stay in your rooms. Do not, I swear, do not leave your rooms. I am here to kill the monsters.”
He left the mic hot as he left the room.
Thy Kingdom Come. He pulled the fire alarm. No doors opened. Good kids. But coming down the hallway came three women, moving faster than Craig thought they should be. Out came the machete and [Hand to Hand 3] he carved them up finer than the Thanksgiving dinner they took from him.
Your Will Be Done. The sprinklers hissed and popped to life, and he heard the excited shrieks of children.
And then the smell started rolling towards him. It came in waves. A burning fatty smell, like frying something in a pan that’s too wet. This was followed by howls that silenced the kids down. Animal howls, both literal and figurative echoed down the halls.
On Earth As It Is In Heaven. He strode down the halls, and reached the Church’s doors when three wolves came at him. He dropped the first one via shotgun [Shooting 1], and the second with the machete [Hand to Hand 1]. The third bit and tore at him, but nothing a visit to an ER couldn’t patch up. Eventually it too met the business end of a machete.
The door presented no resistance to a size-11 combat boot. And there Craig was, in Church. He checked his watch.
He even made it to Church on a Sunday.
“Billy!” His voice caromed off every surface. “I’m Father Craig!”
Billy Thompkiss was curled up in the fetal position in the first pew. He ran to the Father, and the two embraced.
Craig handed him a crucifix and gave him instructions. “If anything that isn’t you or me come at us, I want you to hold up that crucifix, can you do that? It’ll be scary, but we’ll be brave together, okay?”
Billy nodded. The crucifix was solid metal, and the lower stalk was round. It felt natural and easy to hold.
The duo marched down the hall and back to the office. Craig found a phone, and made himself sound panicky.
“Hello, 911, please you have to help, I’m the night security guard at the Ephraim Adoption Agency, please, hurry, there’s a mad man here with a shotgun. Oh….”
He then put another blast into the already dead guard and let the phone clatter to the ground.
Billy and Craig walked out into the cold night air, then into Craig’s car, where they drove to a small convenience store. Billy polished off two roast beef sandwiches and was into a third when a Jeep pulled up. A man Billy didn’t recognize came up to Craig, handed him a gym bag, and came over to Billy. He knelt down.
“I’m Mace Hunter, Billy, how about we get out of here?”
((GM Notes are in parentheses))
Father Craig was midway through Paul's second letter to the Corinthians when the phone rang and that sad little boy called. Craig knew he was sad, the tone was so clear, but it lay buried under excitement.
"I think it's time for dinner." the boy said so clearly, and Craig agreed, asked one more time for the address, and then told the boy to make his way to the church and to sit in the first pew until Mace showed up.
The phone call ended and Craig went to his closet. He pushed the suits to one side and drew the sheet back on the large gun safe. He tapped in the code
11-17- his daughter's birthday.
05 the year that monster tore off his daughter's head and threw it through their living room window during Thanksgiving.
For the last seven years Father Craig did two things every night before going to sleep - he prayed for strength and he cleaned his guns.
Joanna wasn’t coming home for Thanksgiving. Too much snow on the ground and too many hours of work at the hospital. She had a new job, and she thrived in it. Her absence hurt Craig and Linda, who had planned a great holiday of togetherness and delicious food.
When Craig and Joanna talked that morning, she made him promise not to tell Linda she was coming to surprise her for dessert. So Craig kept the promise, ending the call as always with “I love you, be safe, be blessed.”
Craig and Linda tucked into dinner and ate slowly, talking about the snow and the Miller twins who spent all day shoveling walks in exchange for cocoa and pocket money, and of the lack of reasonably priced produce. Craig checked his watch discretely, never letting on that there was anything worth expecting.
You see because at this time Craig was sort of a believer. He attended church on holidays and on random Sundays when it wasn’t too hot or too cold or when they had a special fuss – he liked special fusses because they always brought doughnuts and coffee.
But his faith was far from perfect. At least until the phone call.
The phone rang just before he tucked into his third helping of stuffing. It sounded like someone was playing a skipping record while riding a roller coaster, the background noise of yells and breaking glass mixing into panic and the tiny voice on the phone.
Joanna.
“Daddy…”
He could hear his little girl, scared and hurt.
And then the phone cut out.
Right there on the kitchen floor, Craig fell to his knees and prayed. He prayed for strength. He prayed for Joanna. He prayed for forgiveness for every Sunday he slept in and for every cheek he didn’t turn. Linda found him on the floor and with one teary-eyed look, they prayed together until dinner was as cold as dessert.
The waiting was interminable. Linda packed up dinner. Craig did all the dishes. And they tried to watch TV, but everything sounded like Joanna screaming.
When it happened, they didn’t expect it, because the doorbell rang first. Linda went to the door, and saw a man she didn’t recognize standing on her front lawn. He was thin, short, and she thought maybe he was a junkie or a homeless person. She read about them last week in Today magazine as being a problem. He asked to be let in. He even knew her name.
But Linda didn’t trust him, so she told him to go away.
The man, this junkie, this animal, didn’t go away though. Instead he backed up to the middle of the lawn and lobbed a box, one of those boxes you pack papers in when you move, through the front window.
The mess was terrible, but fixable. And when Craig looked out over his lawn, the man was gone. But Craig opened the box.
Joanna. In pieces. Tucked neatly into a box.
Linda screamed for five straight minutes, until neighbors came over to see what was wrong. Craig fainted.
Five months later, Craig bought his first gun, a shotgun, and thanks to a video on the Internet, sawed off the barrel. Linda started taking ill after that, and it wasn’t long before she passed. The doctors all say it was a weak valve. Craig knew though that it was a broken heart.
He went back to school the day after Linda’s funeral, and within 3 years was in Seminary. He took vows and found Faith, with a capital F. And when he asked questions about the horrors of the world, his teachers told him only not of the sins of man, but also of the monsters that probe the darkness. The beasts with fangs. The tentacles. The hideous eyes. All of it.
Craig came out of Seminary reforged. He committed himself to a Navy SEAL regimen of training. He mastered the parang, the kukri, the machete. He became an expert in ammunition-smithing and all the wards and banes he could find across a multitude of culture.
Father Craig became a one man army.
His goal tonight was to get Billy out of the orphanage. He didn’t really like the setup: too many innocent bystanders and the building was likely a killbox. So rather than go for the heavy guns – the AR-15, the shotguns - he grabbed two sawed-offs, a big tin of salt, some spray paint, the combat knife, the machete and a few silver chain garrotes.
There were no adults involved in this, he told himself. Just monsters and children.
Craig loaded up his car, filled up at the gas station down the street (including the spare tank he kept in the trunk in case things went south) and took the twenty-minute drive to Bartlett. He kissed the pictures of Joanna and Linda that he kept his wallet before going to war.
The Ephraim Adoption Agency didn’t have a lot of external security. [Notice 2] Sure there were cameras over the door and bars on the windows, but roof access was a matter of squeezing past a bush and climbing a ladder on the far north side.
On the roof, Craig’s objective was easy. The large sprinkler water tank had no lock on it, just a spring hinge. With a little muscle he popped it free and dropped in one of the rosaries he kept in his pocket. A few quick prayers and the rosary flickered blue as it sank into the water.
Back on ground level, he walked up to the exterior camera, gave it a dousing with spray paint and entered the building, making a beeline for the office.
One security guard was standing in the room, waiting for him.
“Good evening sir.” The guard said.
Craig was praying when war broke out.
Our Father, who art in Heaven. The sawed-off shotgun burped fire and the blast took the guard off his feet. The stink was intense.
Hallowed be Thy Name. Craig walked into the hallway, found it empty and began laying salt in thick lines across all the doorways.
Back in the office, he found the public address speaker and cranked it on. His voice was soothing and mellow.
“Kids. My name is Father Craig. I’m a priest. The fire alarm is about to go off. Stay in your rooms. Do not, I swear, do not leave your rooms. I am here to kill the monsters.”
He left the mic hot as he left the room.
Thy Kingdom Come. He pulled the fire alarm. No doors opened. Good kids. But coming down the hallway came three women, moving faster than Craig thought they should be. Out came the machete and [Hand to Hand 3] he carved them up finer than the Thanksgiving dinner they took from him.
Your Will Be Done. The sprinklers hissed and popped to life, and he heard the excited shrieks of children.
And then the smell started rolling towards him. It came in waves. A burning fatty smell, like frying something in a pan that’s too wet. This was followed by howls that silenced the kids down. Animal howls, both literal and figurative echoed down the halls.
On Earth As It Is In Heaven. He strode down the halls, and reached the Church’s doors when three wolves came at him. He dropped the first one via shotgun [Shooting 1], and the second with the machete [Hand to Hand 1]. The third bit and tore at him, but nothing a visit to an ER couldn’t patch up. Eventually it too met the business end of a machete.
The door presented no resistance to a size-11 combat boot. And there Craig was, in Church. He checked his watch.
He even made it to Church on a Sunday.
“Billy!” His voice caromed off every surface. “I’m Father Craig!”
Billy Thompkiss was curled up in the fetal position in the first pew. He ran to the Father, and the two embraced.
Craig handed him a crucifix and gave him instructions. “If anything that isn’t you or me come at us, I want you to hold up that crucifix, can you do that? It’ll be scary, but we’ll be brave together, okay?”
Billy nodded. The crucifix was solid metal, and the lower stalk was round. It felt natural and easy to hold.
The duo marched down the hall and back to the office. Craig found a phone, and made himself sound panicky.
“Hello, 911, please you have to help, I’m the night security guard at the Ephraim Adoption Agency, please, hurry, there’s a mad man here with a shotgun. Oh….”
He then put another blast into the already dead guard and let the phone clatter to the ground.
Billy and Craig walked out into the cold night air, then into Craig’s car, where they drove to a small convenience store. Billy polished off two roast beef sandwiches and was into a third when a Jeep pulled up. A man Billy didn’t recognize came up to Craig, handed him a gym bag, and came over to Billy. He knelt down.
“I’m Mace Hunter, Billy, how about we get out of here?”
