Chapter 19

Debbie came to when the cold of the wind cut across her stomach. She realized her dad had tied her to a big stone altar. He had taken her coat and ripped her clothes, exposing her stomach. With his hands raised and eyes looking up, he stood to the left and prayed out loud, proclaiming that he had the whore and her demonic offspring ready for sacrifice. He was pleading with God to accept the child as payment for the sins of the town. She noticed that in his hands was a large, curved dagger. He continued asking God to consecrate the blade. Then he asked for the blood of his child and her evil, unborn child to wash away the control of the Demon that enslaved the town.

“Daddy. Stop. You don’t want to do this. My baby’s death won’t please God.”

Her father looked at her and ranted in his sermon voice about her sin. Her willingness to fornicate with the spawn of the demon. To have his child.

“Daddy, Heath isn’t the baby’s father. It was a guy from Denver I met at the bridge.”

“Don’t lie, girl, and make your sin and betrayal worse. God told me the baby is the demon spawn’s child.”

“Daddy, it isn’t, I swear it.”

But he wasn’t listening. He ranted about her sin and the sin of the town. He screamed about how the Gladstones had given the town to that demon who was masquerading as their ancestor. “But I know the truth. God has told me the truth. HE showed me how to cleanse the town. Your demonic baby’s blood and your blood will break the evil hold over this town. My sacrifice of you and your child will appease the wrath of God and cleanse the town.”

He stepped up to where she lay and raised the knife over his head as he continued to rant. She knew as soon as he was done, he’d plunge the blade into her stomach and destroy her child and herself. “Daddy! Stop! I’m begging you not to do this!”

Her father’s voice reached a crescendo. “I sacrifice them to you, God!”

She silently prayed for God to save them as she saw her father’s hands streaking for her belly. She heard the anguished cry past him that sounded like Heath. “NOOOOOOO!”

Then a loop of a rope dropped over her father’s shoulders, and it yanked him backwards, just before the knife reached her exposed stomach. He fell flat on his back and she could see Heath, and beside him, hands still pulling on the lasso, was Grandpa Harold. Her father looked up and his face turned red as he saw the Phantom. “NO, demon, you won’t stop me. He slashed the loop off himself with the knife, and scrambled to his feet, heading her way, determined to plunge the blade into her and defeat the evil he saw in his broken mind.

Deborah watched as Heath ran up to her father and grabbed him. Spinning him away from her again. Her father swiped at him with the blade. Heath stepped close and blocked the arm that was wielding the knife. His other hand slammed into the wrist of the hand holding the knife, and there was a snap as her father’s wrist broke. The knife dropped to the ground. Her father screamed and reached for the blade with his other hand. Heath kicked the knife behind himself, and his other fist connected with her father’s chin, rocking his head back. He followed with two blows to the side of her father’s head, and her father dropped, knocked clean out.