It made Kerry's head hurt to try and understand every time he tried. A man named Hill, nearly eighty years before, had created the angel. That much was revealed in the journals shown to him by, what the faded, hand-written books called a Tulpa.
The entries were erratic fragments of half usable pieces of information. But Kerry believed a Tulpa to be a creature made of stray bits of men and imbued with a little piece of the creator's spirit. The other thing that was clear was that Hill had dedicated his life and what was left of his sanity attempting to stop some horrific event that his father had set in motion.

    There was mention of a rite of Ishtar and a page torn from another older volume written in some strange brown ink that described the beast: it could be summoned to devour the womb of a victim, and by swallowing her eggs, spawn creatures that would appear all too human, but would feed on the flesh of living and dead alike until they were strong enough to serve as hosts to the powers of the Nephilim. They then would spawn others until all other animals were but a memory in the Shepherd's world.

    Hill had created the Tulpa to arise and prevent the demon souls of the Nephilim from escaping their place of waiting in the void. The beast would be slain; the sacrifice's eggs destroyed or the world would end slowly eaten to death from within. And in Hill's ravings there was one clear message: Beware my father Ezzered Hill, the Shepherd. It had all started with his father's conjuring of this being, it obsessed him, controlled him until he took on the name of the Shepherd.

    A young woman named Theresa French was a faith healer that had married Immanuel Esposito and bore him a child. As her life moved on, she had found a direct pipeline to God through the whisperings of the Shepherd. Young Hill himself had witnessed the Shepherd in flagrante with Mrs. Esposito and making her the promises of eternal life if she could but bring the Nephilim back to this world. It was then that Hill had snuck into The Shepherd's lair and stolen the ritual from that black book.

    Dimly, Kerry recalled hearing about the Nephilim when he was in college; some people thought they were angels who didn't take sides in the war in heaven, others that they were aliens that came to earth, seeded humanity for slave labor, and then abandoned them. What the truth was Kerry could not decipher from the journal, but the possibilities scared the hell out of him.

    For years, Carver Hill had devoted all his energies to sealing the individual spirits of the Nephilim into the soul cage and creating the Tulpas to defend it. But only a sacrifice of blood could open the cage, and poor Mrs. Warrens qualified.

    The Angel itself had told him that he had awakened it with his desire to protect the individual known as the chosen. Charity's belief had given the Tulpa the suggestion of the angelic but it was a weak magic and its true nature could be glimpsed through holes in the glamour.

    In the mundane world, Mrs. Warrens was no more alive after the sun went down. Kerry was now armed with knowledge of the impossible events he had somehow become a part of. The implication of himself as the creature's new master, since the only other person in the room was the deceased sacrifice that had summoned it and opened the cage, was clear. Like most men,

    Kerry had always harbored some quiet sense of a larger destiny for himself, but at this point he had dismissed it like all the others. He sat in the stinking presence of the sometimes angel trying to both digest and reject the knowledge he now had. He had no notion of how much time had passed until it spoke again.

    "The time is nearly upon us."

    Kerry sighed.

    "Then I guess I'm out of choices."

    The flock had been gathered for the better part of the day and nothing had happened. To all appearances they had managed to outpace the Hill curse. They had been downstairs chanting for the better part of the day and the Shepherd's beast had awakened.

    Charity stood in the kitchen barefoot and naked on the tile floor. The Shepherd remained with her, motionless but eyes affixed to her every breath, every movement.
    "Now is the time," the Shepherd said, the only words Charity had ever heard him speak. It was a monotone, dispassionate voice like you might hear from the throat of a corpse. He grabbed her and ushered her to the basement door. His grasp was tight enough that she couldn't feel her arm below the elbow. She focused on that as he took her down the dark winding stairs deep into the earth.

    Charity still remembered every detail of the room even though she had only been down there once before, five years earlier. But this time it was filled with the Flock. Chanting through the day they had worked themselves into a dazed swaying sea of bodies along three walls of the room. The last wall, directly across the room, bore a circular portal six feet high. Something through the hole was panting humidly in anticipation and the sound like the smacking of a huge tongue was heard at interval.

    The Shepherd led her into the center of the room for all the eyes to survey. The women of the flock cast appalled and scandalized looks in her direction; old, sagged and well past their primes. The men made no efforts to hide the lust in their eyes, though all had seen and had her many times. She was young and she was lush and she was there to be had. But this time, this was to be their last gaze at her, as she at last would realize her true worth through sacrifice.

    Grandmother rolled into the center of the room beside her granddaughter and nodded to the Shepherd to release her arm. Then Grandmother smiled in the dim light of the cavern and Charity had a momentary flash of her Grandmother as a lizard, complete with forked tongue whipping out to test the air.

    "It is time, Charity," Grandmother said, "as the sacrifice of Abraham and Isaac shall you show your faith to God. Walk proud child, in the Shepherd's name and meet your destiny."

    Charity bowed her head and took a step towards the portal. The thing within stirred and came to meet her half way. It was the size of a rhinoceros and walked on two chicken legs. Long violet stalks tipped with strange bulbous eyes adorned it's top, and waved like a garden of seaweed underwater. It had a large tubular maw, four feet in circumference and lined with dozens of playing card sized teeth not designed for chewing but horizontal for shredding. Transparent skin sacks drooped off the rest of its pachyderm-like body each jiggled from whatever fluid was contained within.

    Charity froze and stared in disbelief. This creature was not one of God's creations; its very existence was obscene. It took a chicken step towards her and she opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came. She took a stumbling step toward her destiny. It whipped its trunk at her and snorted viscous black phlegm onto her. It burned where it landed on her but she had become helpless to flee or even move.

    "I am he that holds the keys to the abyss," an angel said in a voice like thunder. All turned to him and were sore afraid. He had a face like lightning and carried a sword as a tongue of flame. "And I am here to chain you and hurl you back into that void and your spawn with you."

    The chanting ceased.

    The Flock stood paralyzed at the sight before them. The angel spread wide his wings and Grandmother was flung from her chair and into the wall with a brittle crack. The Shepherd curled his lips in anger and looked to the stairway through the door.

    Kerry stood in the doorway, eyes shielded from the flame of the angel's sword, a baseball bat held in his right hand. Every childhood fantasy of heroism laid bare as fantasy he looked into the abyss and wanted nothing more than to flee. What held him fast he did not know.

    The angel raised his sword to bring it down on the Shepherd and the ceiling caught fire in its wake. The Flock screamed and bolted for the door. But the angel brought his sword down on the group closest to the doorway. The Shepherd grabbed Charity's shoulder and flung her towards the beast that snorted anxiously at the fire and the angel that wielded it.

    "Charity," Kerry yelled and dashed under the angel's wing to get to her, his own courage tasted of madness in his mouth. The sword passed over his head as three more of the Flock tried to get out the same way Kerry got in. They burst into flames as the sword brushed by them. Their cries sounding like the chants they had intoned all day and night.

    Kerry's bat arced down on the Shepherd's head. It made a dull thunkthat snapped Kerry back to the real world. Did I just attack this…demon?
    The cadaverous man staggered forward and shuddered from neck to knees. His dead gaze turned back to glare at Kerry as he hit the floor.
    Charity looked back blankly at her neighbor as he grabbed her by the wrist. She vaguely thought that she should try to cover herself, but it didn't seem important. What that man was trying to say she had no idea, it turned to gibberish as it hit her ears.

    "Come on," he tugged at her. “We have to get out. The ceiling is on fire and they want to feed you to that thing!" Noble blather and supplications bubbled from Kerry's panicked lips. Every childhood speech, every good reason and impassioned plea to reason he had ever conceived rushed out of him in one desperate surge to save this one child's life, to snap her from her course towards the altar of pointless sacrifice.

    For a moment he dared hope; she let herself be pulled back a few steps and then stopped to look at the trumpeting beast. Kerry pulled at her wrist again but she resisted. A sudden burst of anger had her pull free of his grip and run towards the beast.

    "Charity what the hell are you doing," he yelled, incredulous, as the Shepherd grabbed him by the shoulders.

    She looked back at him, a feeling… something like gratitude evident on her face. A thought occurred to her and she spoke to him her last word. "Raphael."

    The Shepherd hurled Kerry to the ground with a fist into his ribs. Lights exploded as his head bounced off the floor with the name Raphael ringing in his mind. The Shepherd's foot planted itself on his chest and pressed down with jarring force. Kerry gasped as the air escaped him.

    The trunk descended upon Charity without ceremony. It slid over her head and shoulders, compressing instantly around her. Her body jerked upwards about a foot just before a wet gargle escaped her lifeless body. Dark blood began to seep down her breasts and belly as she was strained into the creature's snout. If Kerry had breath, he would have screamed for her. He could not understand- this had been her whole life; she did not want to be saved.

    The Shepherd smiled smugly down to the man beneath his foot. A final, soundless laugh of triumph escaped him as he mashed his foot down, eliciting another snap from Kerry's ribs. One more broken rib, one more lost flail at meaning left him a faceless sacrifice one step behind Charity on the road to nothing.

    Fire filled his vision. The angel's flame crashed into the Shepherd. The ghoulish creature staggered off of Kerry and into the feeding beast. Strange trumpeting erupted from the great gray monstrosity, as it turned Charity's precious ovum into the gnashing devices of the world's end. Angelic wings spread menacingly as the Tulpa stepped over Kerry towards the Shepherd and his beast.

    Kerry pulled himself to his knees, his body shot through with pain. The Flock had either escaped or squirmed in burning, twitching piles on the ground. He crawled to the doorframe and saw the beast back away from the sword of fire. The Shepherd burned as he moved, and drove his fists into the angel. The veneer started to lift from the angel and its true form bled through as the room filled with the stench of rot and burning flesh.

    Kerry used the doorframe to regain his feet and took one last glance back as the room was claimed by fire. He climbed one painful step at a time, certain he would never make it out of the house before the flame overtook him on the steps. Smoke raced past him as he made his way inch by inch to the top of the stairs, creating a hopeless cloud of black, sweet vapor.

    Then, the air got suddenly clearer as he burst from the stairwell into the cool tile of the kitchen. Coughs racked him and sent jolts of agony through him. It was a pain only the living could feel. Something like hope swelled in him.

    "Who're you?" the little boy's voice asked. He stood in the kitchen doorway that led to the dining area. His stance showed that he fully expected to be answered.
"I'm the man your sister sent to take you out of here," he said. “You're Raphael, right?"

    He nodded soberly. "Mommy's dead. Am I going to stay with Charity now?"

    "God I hope not," Kerry coughed.

    He put a hand on Raphael's back and guided him through the dining room and towards the back door. They burst into the night air and back into the reality that Kerry woke up to every day. He pushed Raphael through the yard and toward the gate to Mrs. Warrens’ house.

    His energy returned as he clung to the idea that he could at least save the child. But Raphael burst from Kerry's grip almost as if someone had poked him with a pin. The chubby face turned and looked suspiciously at his savior.

    "I don't know you! I'm not going anywhere with you!" The boy ran back across the yard towards the house where flames could now be seen to flicker in the windows. Kerry squinted after the boy but knew that he would never catch him. Shards of bone in his chest laughed at his desire to even try.

    Resigned, Kerry turned his head back towards the gate and hobbled forward. He had to get back to Mrs. Warrens house and call 911. His head swam as he walked near the edge of his endurance just to cross the street.


    As he crossed the yellow line in the street he heard a sound. For the slightest instant he feared it was an angel sounding the judgment horn. But the sight of flashing lights told him it was only the sound of distant sirens coming closer.
    This damned town, he thought, this fucking place…