Blood and Blasphemy Read online

  BLOOD AND BLASPHEMY

  Compiled and Edited by Gerri R. Gray

  Also by Gerri R. Gray:

  The Amnesia Girl (HellBound Books, 2017)

  Gray Skies of Dismal Dreams (HellBound Books, 2018)

  The Graveyard Girls (HellBound Books, 2018)

  Contributor to:

  Ghost Hunting the Mohawk Valley (Black Cat Books, 2013)

  Beautiful Tragedies (HellBound Books, 2017)

  Demons, Devils & Denizens of Hell 2 (HellBound Books, 2017)

  Poetry Quarterly (Prolific Press, 2017)

  EconoClash Review (Thrill Hill Bottom Press, 2018)

  Deadman's Tome Cthulhu Christmas Special (2018)

  Hyper-tomb: Crypt of the Cyber-mummy (Horrified Press, 2018)

  Trump Fiction (Thrill Hill Bottom Press, 2018)

  Jitter (Prolific Press, 2018)

  Coffin Bell Journal (2019)

  and others.

  Contents

  BLOOD AND BLASPHEMY

  Also by Gerri R. Gray:

  FOREWORD

  INTRODUCTION

  THE CHERUB

  PURGATORY

  FATHER HENRY’S LAST HOMILY

  BLACK MARKET

  THE PRIEST’S TALE

  Part I

  Part II

  BETWEEN HEAVEN AND HELL

  THE CULT OF SOL

  VOW OF OBEDIENCE

  FROM THE MOUTHS OF SNAKES

  THE STILL

  SISTERHOOD OF THE SALAMANDER

  THE GOD SEEKER

  December 10, 11:23 p.m. - midnight

  3:17 a.m.

  December 19

  December 21

  FINDING CHRIST

  THE END

  THE CURTAIN

  THE ALTAR BOY FROM HELL

  BORN AGAIN FOREVER

  THE FULLFED BEAST

  HOLY MEAT

  THE END

  JUDAS ISCARIOT - VAMPIRE SLAYER

  VICIOUS SCISSORS

  Epilogue

  THE ARCHEUS

  FEELING SORRY FOR ASSHOLES

  THE BAPTISM

  THE FLENSED GOD

  FELLOWSHIP

  SOMEDAY, IN HEAVEN

  NO ORDINARY DISORDER

  BAPTISMAL SCARS

  AND SATAN CAME WITH THEM

  EUCHARIST

  WHEN HELL FREEZES OVER

  HOLY SHIT!

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  “God save us from religion.” –David Eddings

  FOREWORD

  By James H. Longmore

  Pious Hypocrite has to be one of my favorite literary lines ever, and a million thanks to William Peter Blatty for putting those two words in Regan MacNeil’s demonically possessed potty mouth.

  When Gerri first came to me with her idea for Blood and Blasphemy, as someone living on the fringes of the Bible Belt, where being an atheist is actually one notch higher on the hate list than Islamic fundamentalists, my mind quickly conjured the vast potential for causing offence, along with the exceedingly good chance of HellBound Books falling foul of the religious PC brigade.

  And so, dear readers, here we are… We live in a time where religion runs rampant, and those who believe do everything within their power to prevent those who do not–and any who dare question–living their lives as they see fit; do remember that Marx described religion as ‘the opiate of the masses,’ and think about just who should be judging whom!

  As you enjoy the deliciously irreverent, downright blasphemous tales that nestle between these wonderfully impertinent covers, do spare at least a passing thought for all those pious hypocrites out there, and relish the fact we are taking them down a notch or two. Salute, too, the amazingly talented wordsmiths who have given their all to populate this wonderful tome and stand testimony to what a godless lot we horror authors really can be; but, we all sell our souls eventually, so we may as well get a fair price for them.

  November 2019.

  INTRODUCTION

  Welcome, my friends (and fiends), to Blood and Blasphemy. This is the second horror anthology I’ve had the pleasure of compiling and editing for HellBound Books, the first being Graveyard Girls—a spine-tingling collection of short horror stories and the darkest of poetry, all written by women.

  For your reading enjoyment, I have now compiled over thirty of the most blasphemous horror stories ever written. Within this realm of the unholy, you will find a deliciously dark array of strange and terrifying gods, malevolent priests, fiendish altar boys, nuns with bad habits, the unholiest of holy relics, and other sinful offerings from twenty-nine of the horror community's finest writers.

  But be warned: If you're hoping or expecting to find salvation or divine intervention among the chilling tales contained within this anthology, I'm afraid your hopes and expectations don’t have a prayer in hell. And if you happen to be one of those readers who find themselves easily offended or triggered by irreverence to religion, you'd best leave now and save your mortal soul before it's too late.

  However, if you're like me and enjoy your horror dipped in buckets of blood and sprinkled with generous amounts of blasphemy, then you've come to the right place. Between the covers of this book, nightmares of sacrilegious, disturbing, and terrifying proportions await you.

  Enter at your own peril.

  THE CHERUB

  By Jeremy Megargee

  Pastor Wormwood crouches on the cracked tile of the bathroom floor, a spidery hand with mottled skin gripping his daughter’s used tampon, squeezing the menstrual blood from it, the blood rubies running down his palm to pool on the silver collection plate between his knees. The plasma is thick, viscous, a healthy consistency for a girl of eighteen years. But that isn’t the most important thing. For Wormwood, what matters most is the purity of the blood. The claret that flows from his little orchid’s veins is virginal, and like a dark nectar; he milks it to a feed another child. A special child, one both maligned and misunderstood, so grotesque upon birth that Wormwood had no choice but to sequester the squealing babe away to a sanctuary in the shadows. At first the good Pastor thought that the Almighty had seen fit to inflict a curse upon him, but as months passed, he saw his unique son as less of a burden, and more of a test of faith. That little fetal lump of twisted organs, bulging eyes, and limp limbs drooping in places where no arms or legs are ever meant to be, not a fiend, not a monster, but a blessing made raw, something in need of proper cultivation.

  He chose the root cellar beneath the chapel where he preached as a fitting place to house his boy, and at first he worried the sunken earthen walls and the gloom would ruin the child, making him insular, but soon the little miracle adapted to his environment. He had no need for pacifiers, because he’d use a chubby hand to pull plump nightcrawlers from the floor, sucking at the worms until sleep overtook him. The rats that nested along the rotting wooden beams provided him with nocturnal lullabies, their chattering conversations serving to soothe him during those first few cold winter nights. He was only a few months old when he began to crawl, and gravity was nothing but an obstacle to be conquered, for the child would grip at the roots embedded in the dirt walls and climb across all surfaces, even the drooping ceiling. Wormwood entered once this way, the multiple skeleton keys for the multiple padlocks on the door jingling together, and his adventurous boy dropped from above into his waiting arms to give him a painful kiss that left a deep scar along his cheek for years to come.

  A happy little thing, a boy-angel in flight, and so it seemed only fitting to call him The Cherub. Jars of Gerber would never do for such a sensitive palate, and so the child’s meals were of his own making. He’d dig ferociously in the dirt, pulling moles from their burrows and chomping them down while they still lived. Beetles become a favorite, and how hi
s eyelids closed with bliss each time his teeth closed on the shells, offering that satisfying pop before the coming of the juice. And just as Christ turned water to wine, sometimes the child would gouge at his own flesh, bringing the red, fits of desperate melancholy overtaking him, and this self-made wine he would smear against his lips, drinking of self, dining on that which is contained within, a sacrifice that left across his tortured skin wounds that almost rival that of the crucifixion.

  Wormwood preached to his congregation year after year, spreading the word, maintaining his place as a pillar of the community in his small Appalachian town, and year after year he watched his Cherub grow. Of course his wife and daughter could never be permitted to see, he’d lied and claimed the child died of complications hours after its birth, but it was a lie forged only to protect the women in his life from undue emotional distress. The Cherub is not their cross to bear, only his. Such a boy needed the support of a strong male authority figure in order to flourish, and Wormwood was just the pious man for the job. Capable of doling out love and discipline in equal amounts, just as the Good Book proclaims it should be.

  His kindness was often on display, because after each lashing of the boy with a stripped hickory branch, those piercing howls echoing through the empty churchyard in the middle of the forest, his Cherub curled into the fetal position in the soil, blowing out bubbles of mucus from malformed nostrils, the Pastor would lower himself down to his son’s level, and pet the weeping child, much like benevolent soul would stroke the heated flesh of a suffering dog. He’d offer words of encouragement, and receive confused and terrified grunts in response.

  “Christ suffered too, sweet boy. His wounds gaped as yours gape. But that was the cost of swallowing the sins of the world…”

  The Cherub would often mewl like a kitten after these inspiring words, a kitten all alone in the world without a mother, and the boot of life pressed against its skull and applying more pressure with every passing second. The child seemed brainsick at times, so Wormwood was always left to guess if his little private sermons had any comforting effect on his son. No matter, he’d tear pages from Revelations and press them into his child’s avulsions and lacerations, soaking up the blood, smearing the scripture into his hurts to offer solace, for no bandage but ones pulled from the Bible would do for his little miracle.

  A decade passed, and Wormwood’s hair from brown to white, the church’s congregation from many to but a few, the death of seasons, the birth of smartphones and technological revelries, and the Pastor started to fear that God’s eye had wandered far from his small mountain parish. The Cherub was a child no longer, but a full-grown man, stunted and ape-like in the root cellar, much like an animal that would have grown much larger if allowed to exist in the wild, but a life of imprisonment had diminished him, and his true potential would never be reached. The Cherub seemed to sense this on some level, and his adolescence brought with it terrible lamentations, a rage to rattle the floorboards of the church, to make the pews tremble at his screams, so primal were his roars that Wormwood had no choice but to permanently close the doors of his church and send his flock to neighboring towns for their Sunday sermons.

  For the first time in ages, old man Wormwood began to see his son as less of a gift, and more of an abomination.

  He started to dream of fire. A great cleansing flame to be seen all across the valley. And wasn’t it Abraham that God tasked with killing his own son? A sacrifice, a proving of loyalty, and sure, God stopped Abraham at the last minute before Isaac was put to the torch, but if God doesn’t stop Wormwood, isn’t it still a show of fealty? It simply means that his Cherub is destined to burn and join the rest of the fallen in the lake of fire…

  Day and night he prayed, and when he wasn’t praying, he was stocking up on gasoline at the little rust bucket Mom n’ Pop store on the outskirts of town. He took to sleeping in the church, because his wife had the early phases of dementia, little more than a walking scarecrow, and his daughter was off to some fancy college, so no more blood from her pure cunt to feed The Cherub, and this seemed to contribute to his downward spiral. Wormwood would be resting on the hard floor among the pews, and he would hear his son’s fists battering against the floor. He could literally tell each time a knuckle split and bled, because a mini-earthquake would shake the church and send dust tendrils drifting down from the rafters.

  Wormwood’s eyes became lost in darkened hollows, his weight dropped, and he took on the visage of a haunted man. He’d drag a stool down to the root cellar on certain nights when sleep escaped him, and he would stare at his son. He’d long ago affixed an old iron manacle to the boy’s ankle to try and contain him a bit more, but the more he fights, the more the links of that chain weaken against the iron ring set into the stone on the floor.

  Wormwood also made the mistake of giving his Cherub a copy of the Old Testament several years ago before his mind had fully succumbed to derangement, and despite all odds, his son has taught himself how to read. It’s a rudimentary grasp of language, draped in low cunning, but something about it disturbs the Pastor so deeply that it makes his soul itch. Certain passages that his son favors are hung up on the walls of his room/cell, speckled there with glue made from his own shit and saliva. When his father visits, The Cherub immediately stops slamming himself against the walls, and he sits on the far wall, lowering himself to a sitting position with the Bible clasped between his bony knees like a talisman. His glare is baleful in the dark, and Wormwood is reminded of the eyes of a fox searching for the best entry point to the henhouse.

  The Cherub’s mouth is obscured in the gloom, and Wormwood is grateful for that when he speaks. It is a broken, wet smacking noise, a jaw full of ingrown teeth with a tongue that hangs from the lips, a hound made rabid in his isolation.

  “God maded me, Fatheher? He maded me from water, and from clay, and from stars?”

  “Yes. He made us all, son.”

  “And Jesuth, his son, he sent him down, down low. To take the spear. To take the nails. To bleed. To hurt. To cry. To wear crown, crown of pain, always pain, forever pain…”

  The Cherub’s eyes shine in the dark. Eyes brimming with trauma. Eyes glassy with tears. Eyes that bespeak of years of abuse, years of mistreatment, decades of dehumanization… and the overlying hate that covers it all, like scum overtop an abandoned pool.

  “Is this the thing a Fatheher givesth his son? Pain? You have givesth to me. So much of it. So to me, you are God.”

  The Cherub leans forward, large concave skull pulling his neck to the side, mangy blonde hair obscuring one side of his face, cleft lips pulling back from jagged teeth in a blatant snarl.

  “I’ll givesth back, God. Oh yes, I’ll givesth back.”

  Wormwood could only stare at that declaration, his harrowed face pinched as he wrung his hands together. Was Abraham ever pushed like this? Was Isaac ever this ungrateful? He searches his heart, trying to find even a sliver of love left for his son, but he feels only fire…

  * * *

  A malformed hand scrubs at the earth with fecal matter, urine, bile, tears, all fluids that might serve as a substitute for ink. Eyes glitter with veiled intelligence, but it is a mind that has been left to rot in unsavory conditions. New scripture is being written, because the old is cruel, and pain has reached an unendurable level.

  No rule about rewriting what once was.

  What would have happened if Jesuth had pulled the nails from his wrists, leaped from that cross, and marched back up to Heaven to smite his true tormentor?

  The gnarled fingers scrawl and write, and in the new scripture, a plot formulates…

  As the moon rises beyond the root cellar, the sound of gnawing competes with the chirping of the crickets.

  * * *

  It sloshes from the can, the stench burning his nostrils, and so he pretends that it is holy water, just the blood of the lamb pouring out to saturate the pews, the pulpit, the church where he spent most of his adult life preaching the good word. The mat
chbox sits heavily in the back pocket of his blue jeans, and he caresses the outline of the box for strength with each splash of gasoline.

  He saved the root cellar for last.

  Abraham wouldn’t falter. He would see it through, because that is God’s will. Wormwood must follow in his footsteps. Before departing to the outer panel doors that descend into the root cellar, the Pastor retrieves a match, taking just a moment to strike it and gaze into the fluttering flame.

  He pitches it against a pew, and his eyes reflect the firelight as the conflagration takes over. The wood of his church is old, and so it burns all the faster. He must be quick, and he must not linger in nostalgia.

  Wormwood makes his way to the cellar doors, his hips creaking with age, and he uses his collection of keys to open each coinciding lock. He descends the earthen steps slowly, gas can sloshing, a single match burning for light.

  He shines it back and forth, seeking his son, and at first glance he does not find him. Something is amiss. There is a pool of fresh plasma in one corner, and there in the middle of it like a dead snake sits the manacle that should be around The Cherub’s ankle. The old man searches, peering from side to side with his makeshift light, and that is when he notices something warm and wet dripping across his nose. His hands lifts, and his fingertips come back streaked in red.

  His wrinkled face slowly tilts upward, and there to greet him is not a child-like angel, but a loping troglodyte, a slavering freak with a bloodied and bitten ankle, a face so black with evil it radiates in waves before The Cherub flips himself down and drives a meaty forearm into his father’s face, crumpling the old man to the ground like a sack of brittle bones.

  Dark fades in and out, and Wormwood is vaguely aware of his body being dragged up steps, and fitting that pain should bring him fully back to consciousness. His eyes flash open just as his only begotten son drives rusted carpentry nails through his wrists, nailing him to the beams above the pulpit, his own body weight supporting itself in excruciating fashion with nothing but those frail wrists. The Cherub discards the hammer, standing in the aisle between the pews and observing his father, and Wormwood almost forgets about the flames before the heat starts to bake at him from all sides. An inferno of his own making. A Hell born of his own hands. And in the center of it all, a very personal demon…