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HOUSE OF WOLVES

It made a sound like tearing paper, the lightning in the black sky. Cartoon lightning – stark and graphical and completely surreal. Or maybe his eyes were just sharp from the pain. A red, explosive pain. His lifetime of two and a half decades had been abbreviated into these last few moments: of running with a bleeding arm from a faceless man intent on burying one more bullet in his body.

It felt like a joke. April’s Fool was yesterday but everyone got a bit fuzzy about the calendar sometimes. This particular one just happened to be a psychopath with a gun. But Alain didn’t think it was a joke, because the laugh he was waiting for never came.

Through the fading rain, the grey cathedral loomed up ahead like a huge granite angel. A Romanesque monster with a hint of old French Gothic and too-modern towering oak doors. A sudden reminder of abandoned faith and burdensome testaments. Not that it mattered. As he came closer his eyes travelled to the slightly weathered golden plaque. The Church of Our Lady Of Sorrows.

Save me, lady, if you cry for me. As he climbed the first step of the stairway to the cathedral doors, the second bullet tore a hole in his back. He felt the metal brush against his bone and screamed. The dying weight that had suddenly replaced his body collapsed on the cold rain-slicked limestone.

Keep on going, he told himself. One step at a time. The assassin must have hit home: he felt a warm liquid ooze up his throat and spat out thick red droplets on the white stone. Well. Any time now. Keep going until the time comes for you to stop.

He heard the final click of the gun. He raised his eyes and for the first time saw the Madonna Addolorata peering from her pedestal above the doorway. In the thunder flash her mournful expression began to bleed white tears.

Or so the remnants of his stolen faith insisted – that the Madonna smiled sadly down upon him. The ruined believer whose voice spoke with his lips now, spitting out more blood and whispering:

“Someone save me.”

There was a bang, but it was not from a steel barrel. Alain’s fading vision saw the church doors swing open and hit the walls with a mighty thud. He heard footsteps, pitter patter lightning quick, fading into the night. His assassin was gone.

He never saw the bishop in the doorway whose hands were too massive and callous for a cleric’s, or the young woman who stood beside him with a knowing glint in her eye. As the jet-black feeling crept over him, he felt those hands lift him up and the sharp, low female voice that said “He’ll live. He’s stronger than he knows.”

Then the night rose to meet the chainsaws of fading red-hot pain and consumed everything.

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Inspired by several things including an urban legend of a church of devil-worshipping cultists and these songs:

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