Chapter 15 #2
"You're supposed to stay quiet while he confesses. He's not done."
"Tell your daddy what you did to me after all that." Nikki prompts him. "Don't skip the details."
Nick whimpers, the tears on his face glistening in the little light.
"I made her cum so I could slip inside."
"How did it feel?" Nikki asks, eyeing him.
Nick closes his eyes; funny that now the shame is sinking in. "Good."
"More details." Nikki says, tapping a finger against the blade. "Use your adjectives."
"Warm." He sobs. "Silky."
"There you go." She nods in approval. "So, you came, obviously, and then realized you'd stolen my virtue.
You know, The Old Testament would have required us to be married for that.
" She scoffs. "And I wanted to leave, so I did.
But you guys weren't done. Your friends followed me, to take their turns. And they did, out in the snow..."
"Is he hard?" Nikki asks suddenly, drawing Father Ryan's attention.
I glance down at the discreet tenting of his pants. He's been hard since he put on the porn; it may have gone a bit soft for a while, but it came back in force when she started making Nick describe what he did to her. I'm not surprised, and neither is Nikki. In fact, I think it's what she intended.
"Very."
"Good." She nods. "Keep going, Nick. Tell him about how you watched. Your dad loves to watch, so I'm sure he gets it."
"I... I watched." Nick confesses.
"But I heard Brant say you killed Noah, and that made me try to fight again. So, what did you do?"
Nick sobs again. At the start of this, it was a sound I relished. Now, it's mostly just tiresome.
"I bashed you over the head with the snow globe."
"And then..."
"Dumped you in the lake behind the church."
"That's fucked up." I say, filling the silence once he falls quiet.
"Do you think the lord forgives him for all that?" Nikki asks, her eyes on Nick’s father.
He's clearly still rattled, too disarmed to figure out what to do. His whole life, he's had authority simply because he expects it. But he's not in control now, and it's funny to see how it makes him question his entire existence... an existence which is very nearly about to end.
"The lord forgives us of all—"
Nikki cuts him off when she digs the point of the blade into Nick's neck.
She doesn't give him a minute to realize what's about to happen. She doesn't even make him suffer. She just digs the point into his flesh and drags it through skin and cartilage, exposing the inside of his throat as blood pours from the wound.
"Nick!" Father reaches toward his son, like he can do anything to help him. Like he can put him back together.
"The lord may forgive you." I tell him, fingers closing around the back of his neck as I shove his body forward, against the grate so that he can see the life leave his son's eyes. "But we don't."
Nick's body drops forward, right against the grate. His empty eyes stare, unseeing, into the other side of the confessional.
Nikki passes through it easily, her specter moving through the wood and metal before rearranging before Father Ryan and pushing him back into the seat.
Tears stream down his face, mixing with snot as he cries over the son he victimized.
Maybe he didn't get off on his own son. Maybe he got off on having his son touch Nikki, since he knew he couldn't do it.
Maybe he lived vicariously through his own child, bullied the two of them into compliance.
After all, good boys and girls obey their parents.
Nikki straddles him as I watch, lifting his chin so that he has no choice but to look at her.
"If thy right eye offends thee..." She tips her head, waiting for him to finish the sentence as I offer my knife to her... the one that's been bent by the metal partition. When Father Ryan doesn't offer to finish the sentence, she sighs. "Pluck it out."
He's too dumb to realize until it's too late that she meant that literally. Unfortunately for him, the blade is already buried in his eye, which squelches around the metal as she draw it back, his screams cutting through the air.
The congregation will be here soon, expecting a Christmas mass that will make them feel better about themselves.
They'll come expecting to unburden themselves of the chaos of the season, to feel better about being so focused on the monetary emphasis of the season, so that in the morning as all their gifts sit neatly under the tree, they can bask in the glow of 'the reason for the season'.
They won't be getting any of that.
Before we came here, Nikki and I decided to send a different message to Church and Lakes. They won't understand it until the news station gets the tape... the one that documents who the pastor at their church really was beneath the image he presented to the world.
He's still screaming when Nikki drives the blade between his thighs, stabbing him through the other offensive spot.
Unlike Cole, though, she doesn't go to the lengths of removing it. There's no point. Father Ryan was the last name on the list.
I see it in her face, too, when she looks at me.
His screams are fading into the background as his blood pours out around him, and when Nikki slides off his lap, he doesn't even try to stand. Clearly, he's in shock.
I turn to grab the candle that's flickering on the entryway table, admiring the view of Nikki in the flame as I pass it to her.
"Consider this a blessing, Father," she says, appraising him thoughtfully. "This is just a taste of what you're going to have to deal with for eternity."
He doesn't react until she tosses the candle into the booth and then steps through, joining me as I slam the door shut, half a second before Father tries to slip his fingers through and it closes in his face.
His shrieks renew, louder now, desperate howls and agonized screams as he pounds against the door I'm holding shut, begging to be let out.
The flames are just beginning to creep out from the door when he falls silent with a thud, his cries ending as abruptly as they began again.
“Silent Night” begins playing through the church, right on time. It's so perfectly cued up that I can't help laughing when I see her face at the irony.
"So?" I tug her against me, the magnetic feeling of her essence against me filling all the void that have been left open since I had her ripped away from me by my death. "What's next?"
In addition to sending the Father's tapes to the news station, we also sent a tip for where they could find her body.
That will at least give her mother a sense of closure, we hope.
We talked about going to visit... if we can present ourselves to people we want, we could go and let them see us.
But we decided together that it was probably less painful this way.
Going to see her mother means answering questions that would only hurt her.
.. questions that she will get the answer to along with the rest of the town.
"I don't know." Nikki smiles, a look so sweet it's at odds with the scene around us as the flames crawl up the walls, exploding across the drapery and devouring the Christmas trees at the front of the altar. "But there's one thing I want to do before I go."
I nod my agreement; I already told her I'd follow her anywhere.
But the next place she takes me is the best place I can think of being with her.
To the east, the west, the north, and the south, fires blaze into the night sky, illuminating the town in a way it's never been lit before. In each fiery column, another church collapses as we skate across the ice, watching the world we're about to leave burn down around us.
Our town will survive, but hopefully not without substantial change.
The belltower in the church closest to the town center tolls, telling us that it's midnight.
By now, they've likely called on neighboring towns to come help put out the fires.
People have tried to go to church only to be told that there isn't a single one left in town, and there will be no midnight mass.
I imagine them standing together like the characters in the Christmas movie I used to watch every year, singing in spite of their losses, because Christmas isn't about the material.
.. and that includes buildings... maybe even people.
We're ghosts, and yet, skating through the night chasing each other around the frozen pond while the twenty-two foot evergreen glitters before us with twinkling lights and big bulbs, I feel more alive than I think I ever did before.
On the final toll, I skate up behind her, wrapping her in my arms so that I can drag her to my chest.
The diamond on her finger promises forever as it glints in the light from the tree before us.
"Merry Christmas, Nikki."
She sinks into my touch, and we coalesce into one, the way we were always meant to be.
"Merry Christmas."