Moloch Come!

Moloch Come!
ossia The Embrace
A Novel with a Soundtrack
by Harrison Gradwell Slater

"The Ritual" (Soundtrack)
by Apostolos Paraskevas
The Embrace CD: Music of Tchaikovsky

"They shall not prosper, will not thrive....

Their sin too great from God to hide."

- Nostra Damus, 28 August 2012

Chapter Eleven
An Excerpt from Moloch Come! with Soundtrack

Prague

     Father Jerzy was stunned by the cacaphonic madness taking place in the Church of St. James, which had been set up as a huge anatomical theater, to accommodate hundreds of the most famous surgeons and theologians in Europe. Watching from above in the theatrical loges were erudite ecclesiastics and medical specialists from every corner of the Western Christian world.
     On the anatomical table was a woman with restraints on her wrists and ankles, gyrating in a genuinely mad and perverse fashion, as two older priests tried desperately - and unsuccessfully - to keep her breasts and other private parts covered.
     "The devil has really outdone himself," Father Erynn whispered to Jerzy. "Can you imagine the irony of all these old priests being forced to watch this? Many of them have never seen a woman's body in their entire lives."
     "What's happening to her?" Jerzy asked.
     Erynn reflected for a moment. "It seems to me like the devil is having carnal relations with her, right here on the table."
     Above their heads, shadows of huge flocks of bats swooped down from one side of the frescoed ceilings to the other. Jerzy had difficulty deciding if they were real, or just shadows.
     "Don't pay attention to anything going on here," Erynn said, shouting above the wild noises - sacred and profane. "Moloch is a liar. These are tricks and illusions."
     Chandeliers loaded with huge candles were causing bizarre lighting effects throughout the church. The flames of tapered candles were suddenly popping off, then reigniting with bright flares. Because of the changes in the light, each time Jerzy looked, the candles seemed to be a different color: At first, they were traditional ivory; then the diabolical ebony of a Black Mass; then the shifting light made them a deep mahogany red, dripping with what looked like thick clotted blood.
     "I told you not to pay attention," Father Erynn shouted, bolting Jerzy back into the real world. "We have to stop this exorcism."
     There were so many experts packed into the church that Father Erynn found himself exasperated in his attempts to get to the Archbishop reciting the first-century rite of exorcism in Aramaic. "What part is he reading now?" Erynn shouted.
     "I just heard the word, 'Moloch'," Jerzy replied, pushing harder through the mad scene. "You know what that means."
     Erynn and Jerzy crossed themselves fervently. Shouting, "One, two, three!" the two priests hurled themselves violently against the crowd, using the full weight of their bodies.

     Suddenly, they found themselves lying on the floor, immediately in the center of the ceremony.
     When the Archbishop spoke the Aramaic word, "Come," the entire church shook as all the windows blew outward into the dark with a noise that resembled a punctured balloon racing around a room.
     "Saints preserve us," Erynn said, crossing himself and reverting back to the Irish brogue of his youth. "Don't look."
     Jerzy had yet to see what had happened, but instantly he regretted it. "Oh, God," he said. "Oh, God."
     The limp body of the woman on the table resembled an inflatable doll that had lost all of its air. Her internal organs, moist and still throbbing, were lying on the table beneath her: Pancreas, liver, lungs, intestines, heart, gall bladder. All had passed out of her body cavity from between her legs and were as easily recognizable as the transparent charts of a grotesque anatomical textbook.

Click here for "The Expulsion of Moloch" ossia "The Embrace"