Along the perimeter of the chapel’s patched-up walls, he’d spread enough salt to kill a man as salt kept the weaker demons at bay. The line had not been broken during the night so it would hold again that night;
Inside the large door and across the wooden slat that would soon bar it he had carved images of Christ and scrawled prayers around Him to increase the potency of His image. None had bubbled under the pressure of constant assault. None required reinforcement;
Finally, he’d painted Aramaic symbols along the chapel’s bullet-riddled walls, both inside and outside. Father Kilkenny couldn’t deny that the looked odd; at first, people had rejected him for amending his chapel so. At least, those whose crops weren’t guarded by the Lord’s favour had. And Father Kilkenny could understand why. But when the real troubles began, they’d turned back to him and the Lord. The symbols were still whole, still warm to the touch, and so still ready to hold back the evil when it came.
The chapel was ready. Well, ready as it could be.
When he was done, he checked again. It would not hurt to be certain. As he did so, he wondered which demons or devils would come that night. He hoped it wouldn’t be the ones that had once been children… They upset the flock greatly, mostly because some folk could still pick out which ones had been their children. Even leathery and twisted, with great bone wings, they were clearly someone’s child.
But they weren’t even the worst things they might face. No, Father Kilkenny thought the harriers posed the greatest threat, they with the real weapons to match their devilish powers. It was they who shot at the chapel; at first they’d tried to shoot the glass but the Father’s prayers easily protected against that. Recently, they’d taken to shooting at his chapel in the hope of killing him. So far the thick wood had done its job but Father Kilkenny didn’t know how long the Lord would protect him for.
He would just have to trust that He thought the Father was doing the right thing…
That reminded him; he needed to reinforce the walls. After rechecking the outer walls, he went back into the chapel and opened a panel in his stage. Inside were his tools, hidden so the children wouldn’t play with them. The Father grabbed his hammer, some nails and wood; he didn’t have much of the last two left but there was enough for now.
In the last hour or so before full dark, he made good. The sunlight faded as he worked and the whole town was under his roof and ready by the time he was done. He did a quick count and confirmed they were all present before barring the door. With any luck, no-one would be leaving until the morning.
Then he walked over to his stage, climbed up and stood behind the lectern. “Evening all,” he said, as he’d said every night.
“Good evening Father,” they parroted back.
He gave them a smile. “Tonight, I thought I’d give the demons a reading from Leviticus again. Do ya have any objections to that?”
“Nay,” they replied.
Father Kilkenny opened his Bible to Leviticus. The last but most important part of protecting his flock was reading aloud from the Bible; the prayers and salt and symbols were only as good as the man who wrote them and it was his strength, his faith, that tied it all together. For it was only a man’s love for His God that could keep the demons at bay. And Father Kilkenny was never more certain of the majesty and strength of the Lord than when he was reading from His book.
“Alright then. Try to get some rest and don’t you be looking at the windows all night. I’m talking to you in particular there, Mary; you’ve got work in the morning.”
His flock laughed; Mary had fainted at some point during the night almost every night so far. At first there’d been sympathy for the woman and embarrassment from her but by now it had become something of a joke. It eased the tension to make light of such things.
Mary, about as old as Father Kilkenny at thirty eight, waved a hand at him. He smiled back.
The people of Crucifix settled down as the sun already had. All was darkness. They did not even light candles in the chapel for fear it would attract more demons than already came after them. All they had was one length of wood from the pews soaked in oil so it would burn all night, provide just enough light to see by.
Father Kilkenny lit the length of wood and resed it on the lectern. Then he began to speak the Lord’s words. For the first few hours, he’d recite Leviticus from memory but he would have to turn to the Bible as he tired.
“And the Lord called unto Moses, and spake unto him out of the tabernacle of the congregation, saying…”
That was when the scratching began. The demons were already at the door, already coming for them. Father Kilkenny couldn’t help but smile as he recited; they would not be getting in, not whilst he still drew breath.
