Fires Rising Read Online Free PDF Page A

nodded. "You're welcome, Father."
    "If I've sounded crass, please know it's because I've been living in this rectory for seventeen years. After getting evicted…well, let's just say that the last two months of my life have been less than comfortable."
    "I understand," Henry Miller said unconvincingly, seemingly impatient with the priest.
    Pilazzo shook his head back and forth, suddenly and quite inexplicably assaulted with feelings of anger and resentment. "No, I don't think you do, Mr. Miller. Imagine this: one day you wake up and there are city employees knocking on your door telling you that one of their paid-for-hire attorneys has just found a loophole in your sixty year-old contract, and that now they own your property, and "thank you for your business sir", but you now have exactly one week to gather up your things and get out. Think about it Mr. Miller. How would that make you feel?"
    Henry Miller nodded, dark eyes again aimed toward the ground. He looked like a scolded child—one with a hidden weapon up his sleeve. "Not too good, I suppose…" He hesitated, adding as Pilazzo gazed at the open door, "If you don't mind, Father—" He pointed up the street, signaling his exit. "I'm on union hours."
    Pilazzo brushed him away with one hand. "Go, then. I'll be fine."
    "There's some protective gear on the table to the right, as soon as you walk in. There's also a yellow envelope in there. Inside are the documents for you to sign. The ones on top are for the donations, the others are damage waivers. But again, I must tell you we'd rather not have to move—"
    "I'll hire a mover," the priest retorted, keeping his gaze pinned to the door and the black space beyond. "But I won't sign anything until I have to.. I have to sit in the confessional this afternoon, and really can't afford any distractions."
    Let the foreman wait.
    Henry Miller grinned smugly. "Tomorrow, then. But I'd prefer if you came at noon, so there won't be any work going on while you're inside. For your safety." He tossed his hardhat into a tailgate cab, and bustled away, the sun beating down against his spotted baldness.
    Father Anthony Pilazzo remained standing on the cordoned-off sidewalk for what seemed an eternity, staring into the stark blackness beyond the doors—the void of his church that seemed to plead for his cooling presence.
    This time, no whirling dust…but still, it calls me. I can feel it… He took a deep breath, then paced away from the place he'd called home for nearly twenty years.

Chapter 3
     
    A gain Jyro dreamed of the fathers of the church who'd labored so hard to erect its walls and adorn its interior. Like a fly on the wall, he witnessed the men of the past digging a ditch at the bottom of a similar hole to the one he found in the rec room. He watched as they threw their shovels down and lowered the crate with the odd lettering into its hidden depths.
    Dozens of others—men, women, and children—looked on from the upper perimeter of the hole. They were crying and praying with their eyes closed and their heads shaking back and forth, tears glistening in the flickering candlelight.
    The men standing in the hole began to shovel dirt back on top of the crate. An odd wash of red light spilled out of the crate and spread across the entire hole. Now he could see dead, naked bodies lying in the hole, dozens of them, men women, and children, bleeding out onto the dark soil. They'd been quartered, their arms and legs positioned across their torsos like logs on a flatbed, drawn bowels exposed to the elements. Blood streamed from their eviscerated abdomens into the ditch where the crate was buried, seemingly flowing of its own accord.
    Jyro tried to move closer to the action taking place—he wanted to confirm that what he was seeing was real, that they were in fact murdered…no sacrificed people being buried in the hole, that their blood was actually flowing across the bottom of the ditch. He felt himself floating down from his place of