Chapter 7.6: Last Rites

March 17th

Gio Placido did not get all the answers he wanted, but he did get some of them.

The Disciples of Amorth were aware that there were various gates to Hell sprawled throughout the globe, but most of them were dormant, like volcanoes, but now their fumes were blowing downwind into the direction of the populace, and it was hard to breathe.

Paranoia was not enough to describe the taste in the air.

It was all one could taste after the October Massacre , monsters risen from the grave, there to eat and kill their children, Satanic Panic come to fruition. Now it was a foul taste, not like burnt food, but like your favorite dish, mismanaged, eaten at a restaurant you had not been to before, in a town you were visiting.

A faint and awful memory, but the taste still there, lingering in the back of one's mind.

The taste had returned, as video circulated from one of the helicopter's live feed of what happened at the Cecil Hotel. It was the usual boring stream, on the usual, boring crime sites that one of the officers would upload his recordings and streams to make his cash on the side because his state benefits didn't pay enough, or he believed they didn't.

It didn't matter either way because both were the same to him.

With the burnt smoke pushing into the direction of the Church and the taste of fear stuck in people's throats, ready to spit up back onto the world, a choice had to be made. The Church could ignore what was happening and continue their undercover operations killing whatever goes bump in the night, or they could reveal to the public how to stay safe and their concerns.

They did what was best in the situation.

What was best for themselves.

Satanic Panic drove up church attendance after the October Massacre, and it drove it up again the night after the incident at the Cecil Hotel. Which naturally increased tithes. Which naturally increased profits charitable contributions. So, the public only knew what it needed to know, and in turn, Gio only learned what he was able to know because he pried himself into the Church and refused to leave.

So Gio had his answer, that the gates were open, and they were letting people in, but would they let whatever was on the other side come out? There were a few gates that they knew of where spirits spew forth like lava and magma, corroding the landscape, oftentimes literally.

Gio needed to know if they could leave and come to the other side, would he get who he was looking for to come out on where he was waiting, at Adamah. When Gio came to Adamah, it was too late. His brother was long gone from the realm of the living, and his brother was no saint, even though he liked to call himself one.

Gio still held out some hope that he could find his brother again, so once a day he waited for him in various places he thought his brother would appear. Today he was going to wait for him in a place he hoped he would turn up if God were kind enough to give mercy upon his wretched soul.

Gio was at the children's hospital, an hour over into the metro area, as he usually was once a week. He offered his services to those who wanted their last rites and to those who would have no family, leaving the world alone at such a young age.

He sat in the sterile room disguised to look friendly.

The IV drip bag was decorated with cutesy and flowery stickers, as was the theme of the room. The tiles were bright green, imitating grass, the lower part of the walls was green with oversized painted tulips, and the ceiling was painted blue with puffy white clouds. The finishing touch was a little sun in the far-left corner of the ceiling, like a children's drawing, complete with sunglasses and a smile.

The girl who lay in the bed did not look her age. Her legs were shriveled from lack of movement and musculature loss, her skin grey, and her head bald. She did not bother to wear caps or scarves unless her head was cold, because she didn't want to pretend there was anything left to cover up.

Her breathing was scratchy and labored, and the nurses would come and go every now and then to check up on her. After an hour, their visits became more infrequent, as the living were more important to them to check-in on, her fate already sealed.

Gio knew he was supposed to read the small girl her last rites, but it was a futile effort. Her sacrifice was needed for the greater good. She was baptized, but without her last rites, she would be able to hitch him a ride where he needed to go. Gio was a very impatient man, and several times the thought flashed across his mind of suffocating the small thing in her bed, a snake strangling the breath out of a mouse, but he did not want to ruin his own chance of salvation, so he sat patiently in the chair beside her, with the little smiling frog drawn on the seat.

In a final consolation, he held her hand.

He held it and waited, and waited, and waited, and then he waited until her little frame went limp, and in a sick sort of pleasure, he was excited that he had another chance to see his brother. Gio gave her weak hands a soft little squeeze, laid back into the chair, and closed his eyes, leaving the realm of the living with her.

There was something so benign about Purgatory every time Gio came to visit. He was still holding the hand of the young girl, who no longer looked as frail, the color returned to her skin, her hair curly and brown, and a twinkle in her green eyes, yet the spotted blue and white hospital gown was still on.

"This place is so much better," she said.

Her voice echoed in the void, over the grassy field, and Gio looked at the sky, eternal dawn. She let go of his hand and ran off, not tethered down anymore, and Gio let her run, no use in stopping her.

It was not the best nor the worst place to be, and he reasoned that she would be fine.

So, he did as he always did in these situations, and he waited. There was no way to tell how much time had passed on the other side, but he did learn that time on the other side moved much slower than time on Adamah, and he set his watch for a minute.

He raised his left hand and pressed his digital watch, tapping on its tiny glass screen, upset by the robotic repetitiveness of it all, and waited. He sat in the grass, listening to the crickets, watching little sparks float through the air, letting the dew on the grass drip onto his skin, and he waited.

He knew he could stay longer than a minute, but sometimes he was afraid that if he stayed too long, he wouldn't be able to leave. Unlike the others he came with, he had a body to return to, so after a very short visit, he was back in the room, his watch beeping, and his hand still in hers, now cold, and the room still as terrifying as it always had been, the cruel sun staring down at them from up above.

Gio went through the motions as he always did for this sort of thing.

Getting a nurse. Time of death. Witness. Etcetera. A bit of fib, sometimes saying they had a few last words. He didn't bother to lie about the last one this time.

He was silent the entire way back to Chiusi, driving down the dirt roads with his older model vehicle, a putrid bright green. He liked the little bumps it made in the road, the little crunches that filled the silence as he drove back to the monastery, not even the radio on, nothing but the sound of his own thoughts and the crunches of the dirt road to fill the void.

He did not feel any guilt because he told himself that they were not long for this world anyway. He did not lose a wink of sleep over it, because he did not find the need to sleep at all. Gio could sleep and did so when bored to pass the time or to not raise suspicions, but tonight he did not feel like sleeping because he was troubled.

He pulled up to the old driveway, parked his car next to a young and wiry tree, slammed his car door behind him, and mentally prepared himself to deal with the devils he knew. It was night by the time Gio had arrived, the sounds of crickets talking to each other and chirping, greeting him as he walked underneath the stone terraces, and a bitter taste was in his mouth as Gio discovered that the devils in human form had returned alive.

Their inclination for human flesh and blood was one thing he could ignore and squash down into the deep recesses of his mind, until, of course, Gabriel decided to ingest Carlos in front of him the other day. One thing he could not ignore was their strange habit of staring into each other's eyes, sometimes blinking rapidly, sometimes grabbing each other's wrists or moving their lips, mouthing unintelligible words.

They were staring at each other again, sitting at one of the stone benches next to a rose bush underneath a veranda, and Gio hated it. He hated that every time he came across it, it was like he was interrupting something personal, not like they were disturbing everyone with their devious actions.

Gio watched from afar and waited. He didn't want to be anywhere near them unless necessary, and there was nothing new they could give him for now. Gio only wanted Gabriel because he was easier to manipulate and was hoping that Carlos would die, and Gabriel would be the only one that would return alive.

He told himself to be patient, that God gives good things to those who wait.

Gio did not breathe nor blink as they got up and left, finishing their silent conversation. He did not breathe nor blink as he walked up the old stone steps, down the old, eroded halls, so old the stone floors were smoothed out and whittled down by years of footsteps pacing up and down, fragments of the past still alive in the walls and floors.

Gio opened the door to his study and let out the first breath in the past three hours.

It was a sigh.

Another day wasted, and no closer to finding his brother. His fingers grazed over the spines and his eyes dazed off into oblivion as he had very few options left. He considered jumping into the pits of Hell itself to find his brother because as much as he hated to admit it, there was only one place he could have gone.

Their father was gone, and he could finally leave home without punishment, but the excitement and allure were not long-lasting. He did not like his earthly form, he did not like walking among the living, pretending to be interested in their inane topics. Their conversations were the equivalency of an astronomer having astrologists tell him that they knew more about his field of study than he did because Venus was in retrograde.

Gio was starting to hate the name he chose for himself, even though he had chosen it for himself, and wished he had spent more time on it, but time was of the essence when searching for his other half. Gio returned to reality and slumped forward into the bookcase, and a few tears came out.

Gio caught himself in his own pity, and irrationally told himself, even when alone, that he would never let his enemies see him cry.

With nothing else to do for the night, Gio sat on the old chair in the corner, sat still as a statue, and lifted his left hand again to set his alarm. In a few taps, his alarm was set, and he sat still in the corner, not breathing or blinking, not in the mood to sleep either.

He sat there until daybreak.