Rebekka Franck - 03 - Five, Six ... Grab Your Crucifix

Five, Six … Grab Your Crucifix

Rebekka Franck [3]

Willow Rose

DMC (2011)

Rating: ★★★★☆

Tags: Mystery, Horror
Mysteryttt Horrorttt

The Priest is a man with a mission from God. He is to help those possessed by evil to finally become free from their stronghold. He has expelled demons for years and had great success.

But there is one demon he never managed to cast out. And that demon has now come back to get him.

Rebekka Franck and Sune are on a vacation in Northern Zeeland when they suddenly find themselves involved in what turns out to be their most horrifying case to this date.

“Five, Six … grab your crucifix” is a spine-chilling Scandinavian mystery-novel from the International Bestselling author Willow Rose. It is the third book in her series about the Danish reporter Rebekka Franck.

FIVE, SIX … GRAB YOUR CRUCIFIX

By Willow Rose

Copyright Willow Rose 2012

Published by DMC

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission from the author.

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of characters to actual persons, living or dead is purely coincidental. The author holds exclusive rights to this work.

Unauthorized duplication is prohibited.

Cover design by Jan Sigetty Boeje  
http://sigetty.wix.com/coverart

Special thanks to my editor
Jean Pacillo 
 
www.ebookeditingpro.com

Connect with Willow Rose:

http://www.willow-rose.blogspot.com/

www.facebook.com/willowredrose

https://twitter.com/madamwillowrose

To all of my dear readers. You are the reason I keep on writing.

Prologue

The main door to the dining hall was ajar when the Priest approached it. A small knot of women and men stood watching, their backs turned to him as he walked closer. They were humming, chanting. The light from the candles was flickering, the spectators casting long shadows on the bare walls. Someone was screaming. Not ordinary screams. These were screams of evil from a possessed soul, screams from the pit of Hell. In the middle the Priest spotted a figure. A young naked girl was on her knees. Crying out, screaming. Her face was deformed and almost hairless. A big lump grew out of her forehead, making her face lopsided. She was torn with pain and strained. Her eyes glowed green when they stared at the Priest. She threw herself at the floor, screaming in agony and pain, her knees bleeding from hours and hours of kneeling.

She stared at the Priest who thought he saw the girl’s skin turning green and fuming. Then he looked at her hands. They were covered in blood. The girl lifted them and pointed at the Priest. Blood dripped from her fingers and ran down her arm.

“YOU!” the girl screamed.

The word hit the Priest like a clenched fist in his face and he felt himself stumble backwards. The voice was so forceful, nothing like the girl’s normal voice that the Priest knew so well.

The Priest lifted his hand holding a crucifix. “In the name of Jesus,” he stuttered, still overwhelmed by the force of this demon that possessed the girl. “In the name of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ I command you to leave this girl.” But his voice was too weak; he knew that all too well. Evil spirits didn’t listen to weak voices, they needed strong forceful commandments, and they needed to be driven out of the body.

“Filthy man. Shut up!” the naked girl screamed.

“In the name of Jesus, I command you …”

A loud scream followed. The girl kept staring at the Priest. Then she laughed. Not the sweet laughter of a normal twelve-year old girl. No it was the laughter of death. The Priest felt her cold breath hit him in the face. It gave him chills. The naked girl threw herself on the ground, then got up and screamed again just before she bent over and ran as fast as she could towards the wall, banging her face into it, tumbling to the floor, bleeding from her mouth and lip. She looked at the Priest with a grin, licking the blood from her lip.

“She wants this,” she said as if the demon was talking through her to the Priest. “She invited me in; she wants to come with me. I’m taking her.”

The Priest walked closer then lifted his hand with the silver crucifix in a chain high in the air. “NO!” he yelled. “I command you to leave this body! I command you to leave her now!”

The girl stared at him. Then down at her body. Her skin was moving, almost bubbling, boiling underneath. The glowing green eyes were lifted and locked with the Priest’s. He fought hard to tamp down his growing fear but felt himself stagger backwards. These eyes were not of this world. The pupils were dilated and looked like black holes leading to eternity, an eternity of pain and agony.

Like they were a gateway to Hell.

The priest lifted the cross, trying to cover himself with its holiness, protecting his eyes, shielding them from the evil staring at him, trying to drag him to Hell with them.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“I’m the one who was within Cain,” the girl stated with a devilish voice. “I am stronger than death. No one is stronger than me.”

Then all sounds were drowned out by a sudden outburst of flaming timbers falling. Windows were popping, glass shattering everywhere, flames creeping up the walls making them black with soot. The Priest stared at the girl. Her face was plastered with a mixture of grinning and agony. Soon long lashing flames were licking the girl’s legs and body. Through the hissing crackling sounds of fire the Priest could hear the girl laughing.

The Priest woke up in his bed screaming the words:

“She’s coming. She’s coming!”

The priest inhaled deeply a few times trying to catch his breath, slowly realizing it had all been nothing but a bad dream. He squinted at the alarm clock in the corner. Almost midnight. There was still time to get more sleep. He considered going to the bathroom to pee, but the soft pillow held a stronger appeal. With a relieved sigh he put his head back on the pillow and went back to sleep.

The sound of the wooden floor creaking followed by footsteps outside of his room roused him only a few seconds later. In the still darkness he reached to his nightstand and grabbed his crucifix.

Chapter 1

“The wheels on the bus go round and round, round and round …”

We were all singing along in the car. Even Sune who had once told me he would never sing for anyone in public again after a girl once laughed at him when he had sung a serenade written for her in his teenage years. I looked at him while repeating the verse for the fifteenth time since we left Karrebaeksminde. He was smiling as widely as I was. We had been looking forward to this vacation for weeks now. Since Christmas. I turned my head and looked at the kids in the backseat. My dad was sitting between them with an arm around each of them. He had grown as fond of Sune’s son Tobias as he was of his own granddaughter, Julie.

“It’s right up there, you have to take this exit,” I said and pointed at the sign saying Arnakke.

Sune took the exit and soon we were lead through a thick pine forest with nothing but trees reaching into the sky surrounding us. I rolled down the window and took in a deep breath of fresh forest air. I looked forward to leaving the city behind and getting away from everything.

Even if Karrebaeksminde was very small for its size it was still a town with people and cars and work. Once Sune and I decided that we wanted to go on vacation together with the kids and Dad, we agreed that it had to be somewhere away from everybody and especially from work. Arnakke was still on the island of Zeeland, but it was further north and far away from the area that Sune and I normally covered for the paper.

This was going to be very relaxing, I thought to myself as Sune drove further into the deep forest.

Arnakke was a small town with only three hundred and ninety-four inhabitants. The area around Arnakke had been inhabited since the Stone Age. The name meant “eagle’s neck” since there used to be a lot of eagles fishing in the fjord that was called Isefjorden. You could still spot them occasionally, I was told, but it was rare now. I looked up at the sky between the trees but saw only crows. The road was slippery from the wet snow. The trees covered in the white powder. We had packed the car with sledges and winter clothing. I looked forward to tumbling in the snow with Julie and building a huge snowman or a snow cabin. I inhaled the icy air deeply into my lungs. The kids complained that it was getting cold in the car so I rolled up the window. I looked at Sune. This was going to be great, I thought. Just me and the people I loved in a small cabin far from everything, taking long walks, sledging down the hills.

Just what the doctor had ordered.

He actually had ordered me to relax, to get away from everything. The emotional stress I had put myself through the last couple of years, had begun to wear on me. On top of it I had almost been killed six months before and I had had a hard time sleeping ever since. I kept waking up at night screaming and crying, scaring Julie who thought she had to constantly take care of me. That was not how it was supposed to be. I was supposed to hold her hand when she had bad dreams, not the other way around.

I sighed and looked at her. She was playing a game with Tobias; they were laughing and teasing Dad who laughed happily. Julie had been so tough, so strong through all of this. I had no idea how she managed to be like that. I knew I had almost reached my limit. At least that was what the doctor had told me.

“No one is supernatural and can do everything. You have to face that you have limits as well. You have to know these limits and learn to respect them. Otherwise you might burn out.”

His words had scared me like crazy. I had seen numerous colleagues break down from the pressure of the job and never come back. Being a journalist wasn’t for the weak, but even the strong had limits, I had learned. I was stressed all the time and felt like I was never good enough.

Probably hadn’t helped that I had to fight for my reputation ever since I helped overthrow the government six months ago by writing a story about the Prime Minister who allowed lobotomies performed into the Nineties on criminal teenagers that no one knew where to place or to do with since they were too young to go to prison, but kept getting themselves in trouble.

It all occurred before she was elected Prime Minister, yes, but she had been Minister of the Health Department and that was enough for the opposition to claim that she should step down. Now a new election was on its way and I had faced everything from threats of a lawsuit filed against me to attacks on me as a person in the media exhibiting me as a bad mother leaving my sick husband when he needed me most and having an affair with my photographer who was also a criminal.

Luckily they had left my daughter alone so far, but I was terrified that they would approach her again like they had when they tried to force me to not run the story. She had been the one persuading me to run it. I would never have done it if she hadn’t wanted me to. But she was so right. If you don’t stand up to a bully, they will bully someone else. I had no idea exactly who was behind all of these media attacks but I knew that it wore on my strength having to disavow all those rumors they kept writing about me. I wasn’t going to let them discredit me but I was just about to say that I’d had enough by now. It was so childish and wouldn’t change a thing in the end.