I fell back and landed on my buttocks and elbows. I scuttled away from the huge figure, who tracked my movements with that same, unblinking leer.
“Fortunate Patterson came along when he did,” the voice growled. “He makes the perfect host.”
“No,” I said in a strangled voice. I was shaking my head, but the figure only watched me, the eyes seeming to change now.
To emit a lurid red glow.
“I entered his body as you were being helped out of the reservoir,” the voice said. “When you grasped Patterson’s hand at the hospital, I showed the priest your secrets. It shattered his faith, craven, knowing you’d murdered Sutherland.”
I was weeping, thrashing my head in mute horror. Sister Rebecca’s blood continued to drip steadily, the flies buzzing and flitting over her mutilated carcass.
“Your fingerprints are all over this office, craven. The virgin’s blood will bathe your quivering flesh.”
The Patterson-thing stalked around the desk, my friend’s body seeming mountainous now, misshapen. The elbows and knees stretched the fabric of Patterson’s clothes, their knobby joints threatening to burst the seams. Patterson’s stout neck, too, pulsed and hopped, as if the muscles there were trying to escape the Roman collar that bound them. For the first time I noticed the clear plastic gloves he wore.
“You will be anathema, Crowder. The city will howl for your arrest. The priest who mutilated the nun!”
I tried to crawl backward toward the door, but the Patterson-thing loomed over me, bent unnaturally at the waist, and brought his face close to mine. The red eyes gleaming, the fanged teeth bared, the Patterson-thing said, “You will be apprehended. You will languish in prison while I slaughter Liz, while I slay her whelp of a daughter.” The leer expanded, stretched the demonic face wider. “But not Casey. He and I will revel in our butchery. Together, we will make the Sweet Sixteen Killer look like a child’s fairy tale. We will redefine horror.”
The Patterson-thing’s slaver dripped onto my cheeks, the bloodcurdling face mere inches from mine. “And without my strength,” Malephar said, “you will be helpless to stop us.”
He seized me by the hair. I writhed in his grip, battered at his hand, but the powerful fingers were implacable. “What are you doing?” I asked. “Let me go!”
The Patterson-thing dragged me toward Sister Rebecca’s sagging corpse.
I bucked against the Patterson-thing, but it towed me steadily closer, closer. Then it was shoving my face toward the mangled hole between Sister Rebecca’s legs. I shrieked, knowing finally what Malephar intended. The ultimate degradation, a befoulment so profane it would shatter my sanity.
“No!” I implored. “Don’t make me!”
But my face entered the glistening, flyblown cavity, my screaming lips moistened by the gore.
“Taste of the virgin’s blood!” Malephar bellowed. “Drink from her holy womb!”
About the Author
Jonathan Janz grew up between a dark forest and a graveyard, which explains everything. Brian Keene named his debut novel The Sorrows "the best horror novel of 2012." The Library Journal deemed his follow-up, House of Skin, "reminiscent of Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House and Peter Straub's Ghost Story."
Since then Jonathan's work has been lauded by writers like Jack Ketchum, Brian Keene, Edward Lee, Tim Waggoner, Bryan Smith, and Ronald Kelly; additionally, Booklist, Publishers Weekly, and The Library Journal have sung his praises. Novels like The Nightmare Girl, Wolf Land, Savage Species, and Dust Devils prompted Thunderstorm Books to sign Jonathan to an eleven-book deal and to give him his own imprint, “Jonathan Janz's Shadow Side.”
His most recent novel, Children of the Dark, received a starred review in Booklist and was chosen by their board as one of the “Top Ten Horror Books of the Year” (September 2015-August 2016). Children of the Dark will soon be translated into German.
Jonathan's primary interests are his wonderful wife and his three amazing children, and though he realizes that every author's wife and children are wonderful and amazing, in this case the cliché happens to be true. You can learn more about Jonathan at www.jonathanjanz.com. You can also find him on Facebook, via @jonathanjanz on Twitter, on Instagram (jonathan.janz) or on his Goodreads and Amazon author pages.
Also by the Author
Novels
The Sorrows
House of Skin
The Darkest Lullaby
Bloodshot: Kingdom of Shadows
Dust Devils
Castle of Sorrows
The Nightmare Girl
Wolf Land
Children of the Dark
Novellas
Old Order
The Clearing of Travis Coble
Witching Hour Theatre
A Southern Evening
Coming Soon
The Dismembered
The Dark Game
Coming Soon
We Are Always Watching by Hunter Shea
A Soundless Dawn by Dustin LaValley
Just Like Hell by Nate Southard
Find these and other horrific books at www.sinistergrinpress.com
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
Exorcist Road
Dedication
Before
Part One
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Part Two
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Part Three
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
After
Exorcist Falls
Dedication
Epigraph
Before
Part One
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Part Two
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Part Three
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
About the Author
Also by the Author
Coming Soon