Mr. Murder

faces, gouged eyes, torn throats, slashed torsos, flashing knives, hatchets, axes, severed limbs, women on fire, screaming children, the bruised throats of young prostitutes, flesh dissolving under a spray of acid…
        He crawls out from among the pews, into the center aisle, rising into a crouch.
        The walls swarm with glowing extraterrestrial hieroglyphics.
        He is in the nest of the enemy.
        Alien and strange. Hostile and inhuman.
        His fear is great. But it only feeds his rage.
        He hurries to the front of the room, through a gap in a railing, toward the door beyond which they retreated.
        Light as thin as fish broth seeped down from unseen windows above and around the turns in the spiral staircase.
        The buildings to which the church was attached were two stories high.
        There might be a connecting passage between these stairs and another structure, but Marty had no idea where they were headed.
        For that reason he almost wished they had taken the door that led out side.
        However, the numbness in his arm hampered him severely, and the pain in his shoulder, which grew worse by the minute, was a serious drain on his energy. The building was unheated, as cold as the world outside, but at least it offered shelter from the wind.
        Between his wound and the storm, he didn't think he would last long beyond the walls of the church.
        The girls climbed ahead of him.
        Paige came last, worrying aloud because the door at the foot of the stairs, like the sacristy door, did not have a lock. She edged up backward, step by step, covering the territory behind them.
        They soon reached a deep-set multifoil window in the outer wall, which had been the source of the meager illumination below. Most of the clear glass was intact. The light on the twisting stairs above was of an equally dreary quality and most likely came from another window of the same size and style.
        Marty moved slower and his breathing grew more labored the higher they ascended, as if they were reaching altitudes at which the oxygen content of the air was drastically declining. The pain in his left shoulder intensified, and his nausea thickened.
        The stained plaster walls, gray wooden steps, and dishwater light reminded him of depressing Swedish movies from the fifties and sixties, films about hopelessness, despair, and grim fate.
        Initially, the handrail along the outer wall was not essential to his progress. However, it swiftly became a necessary crutch. In dismayingly short order, he found that he could not rely entirely on the strength of his increasingly shaky legs and also needed to pull himself upward with his good right arm.
        By the time they came to the second multifoil window, with still more steps and gray luminosity ahead, he knew where they were. In a bell tower.
        The stairwell was not going to lead to a passageway that would connect them to the second floor of another building, because they were already higher than two floors. Each additional step upward was an irreversible commitment to this single option.
        Gripping the rail with his good right hand, beginning to feel lightheaded and afraid of losing his balance, Marty stopped to warn Paige that they better consider going back. Perhaps her reverse perspective on the stairwell had prevented her from realizing the nature of the trap.
        Before he could speak, the door clattered open below, out of sight beyond the first few turns.
        His last clear thought is the sudden realization that he does not have the.38 Chief's Special any longer, must have lost it after being shot at the front entrance to the church, dropped it in the snow, and has not noticed the loss until this moment. He has no time to retrieve it, even if he knew where to search. Now his primary weapon is his body, his hands, his murderous skills, and his exceptional strength. His ferocious hatred is a weapon, as well, because it motivates him to take any risk, confront extreme danger, and endure cruel suffering that would incapacitate an ordinary man. But he is not ordinary, he is a hero, he is judgment and vengeance, he is the rending fury of justice, avenger of his murdered family, nemesis of all creatures that are not of this earth but would try to claim it as their own, savior of humanity.
        That is his reason for existence. His life has meaning and purpose at last,