THE DEVIL’S ADVOCATES
A Short Story by C.D. Reimer
Copyright 2012 C.D. Reimer
Smashwords Edition / February 2012
This 5,340-word short story was first published in Strange Tales of Horror anthology (NorGus Press / February 2011).
The cover art image was licensed from http://www.istockphoto.com.
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About The Author:
C.D. Reimer lives and works in Silicon Valley. His interests are ceramics, painting, tropical fish, and web programming. These keep him out of trouble when he’s not fixing broken users and consoling hurt computers.
After serving two tours through The Twilight Zone as a child and a young adult Christian, he writes about everyday reality that he often finds weird, twisted and absurd for being so normal.
He’s currently working on various short stories and his first
novel, and blogs about writing
and everything
else when he's not busy playing video
games writing fiction.
Connect With Me Online:
Smashwords: http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/cdreimer
Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/cdreimer
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/cdreimer
Website: http://www.cdreimer.com
THE DEVIL’S ADVOCATES
John Wormwood, a reporter for the free weekly tabloid called The Silicon Valley Gazette, hid himself in the under lit grove with his camcorder aimed at the illuminated 21-foot-tall bronze statue known as The Gates of Hell, mounted on a taller granite wall that dominated the Rodin Sculpture Garden of the Cantor Art Center at Stanford University. Twenty men in black robes with the cowl concealing their faces had gathered here at midnight under a moonless sky.
Benedictine monks they were not.
After cutting the throat of a young goat that was bled dry into an orange bucket, three of them wrapped up the carcass in a tarp that they carried over to the old pickup truck parked on the street. Another took the bucket of blood and a bristle brush to paint a large pentacle on the concrete in front of the statue. Others set up and lit the five candles at the points of the pentacle that touched the circle. The three who carried the goat carcass returned with a struggling figure wrapped in a canvas sheet like a Turkish rug on their shoulders. The rest watched in silence with their arms folded into their sleeves, waiting for the sabbat to start.
Their leader threw back his cowl to reveal a clean-shaven young man that many people would mistake for a minister’s son. He removed the canvas sheet from the struggling figure to reveal a blue-eyed, blond-haired woman who stood naked with a brilliant bikini tan. She was bound and gagged with a nylon cord, staring at him with wide-eyed terror. He kissed her gently on the lips like an old lover and punched her in the face like a jealous lover. Blood squirted from her nose as the darkness took her. He swept her curvaceous body into his arms to lay her down in the center of the still wet pentacle. Being careful not to smear the circle with his boots, he stepped away to kneel before the pentagram. His followers kneeled behind him in a half-circle, where they chanted in a low murmur for ten minutes. He pulled out something from inside his robe that he held high above his head with both hands.
Wormwood zoomed in the lens of the camcorder.
A long knife with an elaborately carved handle of a ruby-eyed goat head and curving ram horns. The wicked sharp blade glimmered in the light. The chanting continued until hitting a crescendo five minutes later. The knife plunged downward in both hands. A squirt of blood shot straight up to splatter on the leader’s forehead, making him staggered backwards in either shock or surprise. The knife was buried into the woman’s heart, nestled between her bloodied bosoms. Her fading eyes shot open in pain and glazed over from tears running down her face. He stepped away to kneeled with the others, where they continued chanting for another ten minutes. The woman’s naked body grew colder.
“Oh, God,” Wormwood said, staring above his camcorder.
A piercing crack emanated from the bronze statue, where an orange line appeared in the seam between the two gates. They stopped chanting as the gates were pulled back in a loud, rust-tinged squeal, revealing a luminous orange glow that filled the gateway. A wave of heat rushed over them like a baptism by fire to billow their robes and Wormwood’s gray hair. The air shimmered around them from the heat furies.
A hunched figure in a tattered robe sat on the back of an ashen-gray horse that rode out from the orange glow to stop at the pentagram. Bony fingers threw off the cowl to reveal a goat head with glowing ruby eyes and curving ram horns. Looking down upon the sacrificial offering and at the kneeling men, an all too human smile appeared on that demonic face.
“I am the Horseman Death and the rider of the Pale Horse.” The eerie voice was a whisper that thundered across the stillness. The Horseman Death got down from his steed and gestured a bony hand over the dead woman. “Your virginal sacrifice is appreciated.”