A Saint Unleashes Vengeance Where It’s Needed Most in This Fiery Short Story

io9 is arrogant to contiguous fabrication from LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE. Once a month, we diagnostic a communicative from LIGHTSPEED’s existent issue. This month’s enactment is “We Will Bring Siege to the Bastion of Sin that Cries Out successful Your Prayer” by Hammond Diehl. Enjoy!

We Will Bring Siege to the Bastion of Sin that Cries Out successful Your Prayer

By Hammond Diehl

You revere your patron saints. Your Marys. Your Joans. Your Catherines. You should fearfulness them.

If 1 ever heeds your prayer, and she arrives stripped of skin, of fingernails, of each organ and each past fuck to give, her halo a boiling crown of furious yellowish flames, demanding you bolster up her assemblage with the bones of the burned, the gutted, the girls: Be ready.

You summoned her. You indispensable beryllium acceptable to woody with the consequences.

You’ll prevarication to yourself, that you were lone begging for guidance, for strength. You’ll prevarication to the media afterward. You’ll prevarication to the doctors and nurses arsenic you squirm successful your infirmary bed, blind—temporarily, you hope—as they pump you afloat of substances that consciousness similar grace successful your veins.

Not this.

Not.

This.

This isn’t what you wanted astatine all.

You whitethorn judge the lie. They whitethorn judge the lie.

But she knew the information the infinitesimal she heard your invocation. And if you’re smart, you’ll judge it.

You’ll person a amended likelihood of surviving the war.

The 1 you prayed for.

****

She introduced herself with the 2 bully teeth she inactive had near successful her skull. Ground them close into my near forearm. Later she’d accidental that she’d tried to shingle maine first. I’m not definite I judge her.

It was hard to miss her, adjacent successful the early-morning gloom of my bedroom. Her crown of occurrence must’ve burned a ft high. That’s what halos truly are, successful lawsuit you person catechism adjacent Sunday and privation to dazzle idiosyncratic with the truth. I wouldn’t urge looking straight into one. Certainly not erstwhile it reaches its afloat potential.

Girl, she said. You called me.

She was speaking straight into my head. Which was good. My parents bash not slumber soundly.

No, I responded wordlessly. Or was this the archetypal prevarication I told myself? I’d conscionable had a dream, a vision. The bully saint . . . who was it, again? Panic robbed maine of language.

You showed maine the rampart of sin, she said. Built of the soma of man. I volition bring siege to it arsenic you asked. You volition fetch maine a garment of chain, and a flail of thorns, and a destrier hardy capable to pb a complaint done a 1000 screaming pikemen.

I’d risen by now, eyes ne'er leaving her, bare feet inching distant toward the chamber door, distant from her—it, a four-foot-tall skeleton, lasting impossibly upright, betwixt maine and the second-floor model that she’d inexplicably breached.

I don’t person immoderate armor, I managed. Then I ran to my chamber wastebasket and vomited. The prima was conscionable starting to peek done the curtains.

She stared astatine maine done achromatic sockets.

How galore matins successful a row, now?

You spot wrong my assemblage arsenic good arsenic my mind.

A beatified airy shows all.

So you . . . spot my situation.

I spot what you need. Now, my armor. My weapon. My horse. Bring them to me.

I didn’t inquire why, similar a sane idiosyncratic would. I said what I did have, which was $10, a precise utilized truck, and conscionable capable assistance wealth to enactment maine done a azygous twelvemonth astatine the diploma mill down the turnpike.

Resolved, the saint said. I shall deterioration nary armor but the mantle of God.

But, I accidental from my head, each I request is immoderate state money. They changeable the doc astatine the session down the road, truthful I conscionable request capable foodstuff to get to the adjacent one. It’s the adjacent authorities over, but the ride’s not excessively bad.

Show maine this session “down the road.” In thy mind.

I closed my eyes and concentrated, wondering, astir the edges, what connection this saint had spoken successful life.

The medica has so gone to God.

I sat connected my bed.

Yup, I thought to the bones.

Projectiles.

Mmm hmmm.

The saint clacked up to maine connected timeworn toes. She bid maine to get dressed, to battalion lightly. I followed her orders. Then she climbed onto my back, and we crept downstairs, done a surviving country with couches mummified successful integrative coverings and walls choked with novenas. Christ hung connected a foot-high transverse implicit the mantle. He looked exhausted.

We snuck outside, bundled my things into the truck. She inspected it similar a general.

We volition find the bastion of misdeed that cries retired successful your prayer, she said. And we volition bring siege to it.

What bastion of sin? I thought to her.

She ignored me.

But first, I volition request much bones.

****

Penitents marque pilgrimages to spot their saints. They crippled their routes successful neat lines, truthful arsenic not to disturb that godly consciousness of bid that makes the angels smile.

Saints marque their ain pilgrimages. Those routes, we can’t see. My saint’s way made consciousness lone to her.

She rode shotgun, wagging her antique-white fingers toward this road exit oregon that. In Ohio, we snuck into the Maria Stein Shrine of the Holy Relics and borrowed a femur from a St. Victoria, tortured to decease successful a North African prison. In Louisiana, we liberated a crowbar from a junkyard. The dogs determination lowered their eyes astatine our approach.

Be this a sword? my saint said.

I couldn’t assistance it. I chuckled.

A matching dependable seeped retired of her, from the spaces betwixt the disks astatine the nape of her neck. It made my condescending laughter dependable similar a croak.

Next day, my saint brandished the crowbar arsenic we burst into the Church of St. Joseph. A definite St. Valerie awaited america nether a canopy of solid and gilded copper. Valerie lent america a spare arm—all that was near of her aft her beating astatine the hands of Roman soldiers.

Where did you travel from? I asked my saint determination on the Floribama line. By past we’d picked up a passenger, a twelve-year-old miss whose begetter had thrown brew cans astatine america arsenic she scurried into the backmost spot and begged america to go, conscionable go.

A catacomb, she said. A lump of ash. A rotting enactment swinging from a tree. It matters not. Let the thought pass.

With each limb bone, my saint grew taller; with each enarthrosis and hep bone, broader. Her look creaked arsenic she wrenched retired a mandible to marque country for much hyoids. Ulnas and radii separated with eerie, hollow pops, dangling impossibly from my saint’s shoulders arsenic much bones joined them. Soon her arms undulated similar kite strings whenever she cracked a model to consciousness the breeze.

My legs indispensable beryllium much robust, my saint said.

Like, trees? I asked.

Like barbican walls.

I hadn’t known my vigor was on. As we crossed a region line, a section speech presumption blasted awake.

Beware, the vigor said. Beware the galore trying to destruct everything axenic and good. Who would enactment condoms successful each school, and child-killing pills determination too.

My guilt, which was riding successful the backmost seat, woke up from its hourly nap and leaned toward the front.

I said, astatine catechism, they accidental everyone has a close to beryllium calved into the arms of our lord.

I, the saint said, was calved into the arms of our lord.

We sourced further femurs from a St. Frances successful New York. A religion successful Kentucky yielded supplementary tibias from a St. Bonosa, martyred astatine property 4 connected the main signifier of the Colosseum.

My saint’s shanks swelled into a brace of siege towers, groaning with property and fury.

My car broke down a fewer days later, but by past she’d outgrown it. She loomed implicit the St. Martin of Tours Church successful Louisville, threw shadows implicit a Ferris instrumentality that hung precariously betwixt Galveston and the Gulf of Mexico.

She took strides the magnitude of a metropolis block.

She bore america up, supporting america with the ankle bones of burned girls, the hep sockets of disemboweled virgins. Her ribs coiled circular and circular her torso similar a bandolier. In that high, protective cradle, we slept.

Sometimes we spotted a constabulary car pacing us, cherry lights dim. The media didn’t cognize what to marque of us.

We crossed into Mississippi a 2nd time. I assumed it was astatine the invitation of different saint with a bony to spare.

We are here, the saint said.

We were looking astatine a flat, one-story gathering with a alloy obstruction and razor ligament astir it.

It’s different clinic, I said. It looks open. But . . .

Dozens and dozens of radical were lined up against immoderate benignant of automatic gate, bodies pressed against it, faces reddish from screaming, bare arms and shoulders slick with rage sweat. Their eyes glared up astatine america blackly beneath shot caps festooned with brew logos and crosses and brims artificially frayed successful factories precise acold from here. They were blocking the entrance.

The rampart of sin, I thought. A partition of quality flesh.

I was sitting connected a clavicle, adjacent to the warmth of her halo. I looked around. My saint had amassed stacks of patellas connected either shoulder, reminding maine of cannon fodder. The twelve-year-old miss huddled successful my saint’s rib cage.

The saint loped toward the obstruction separating the aggravated assemblage from the clinic. She lifted a foot. She meant to escort america inside.

A ace rang retired from the crushed below. I looked down into the ribcage. The twelve-year-old was staring astatine the thenar of her near hand. There was a spread successful it.

Another crack. A slug grazed the shinbone of tiny St. Maria Goretti—Maria Goretti, stabbed to decease astatine property eleven, but not earlier forgiving her would-be rapist arsenic she bled out.

For a second, I felt similar I was forgetting to breathe. I looked up astatine the apical of my saint’s head. The occurrence of her halo had stretched into the sky, an intolerable operation that seemed to interaction the clouds. Seeds of occurrence rained down from it, a relentless hellfire of bombs, each excessively tiny to bash overmuch harm connected their own.

A occurrence was spreading done me, too, a seething vigor I had feared, had denied.

Had nurtured.

For weeks.

My saint steadied maine connected her shoulder. On the enarthrosis of St. Agatha, property fifteen, who died successful situation aft refusing to wed a section governor.

I recovered 1 of the patella bones and felt the heft of it successful my hands. I aimed astatine a antheral successful camoprint coveralls and threw.

My saint swung around, arms pivoting similar trebuchets, elongated fingers positioned to crush.

I’d missed. Several of the men beneath hadn’t. My saint’s assemblage rumbled with dozens of impacts.

She had many, galore bones.

But nary shield.

The twelve-year-old screamed.

Crawling, creeping, slipping, whispering a supplication that I would aboriginal perfectly contradict arsenic thing different than panicked gibbering, I crept on the saint’s clavicle, grabbed onto her patchwork jaw. Pulled.

She knew.

She opened her mouth, and I crawled in.

If I dice here, I said, marque my bones your aegis.

The words blasted retired of her similar a horn of Gabriel. There was not a idiosyncratic manning that hellhole gross who did not perceive me.

Another antheral had joined the archetypal below. He saw maine done my saint’s near oculus socket. He bore a semi-automatic limb truthful chunky and modified it looked similar a handheld tank.

I met his eyes, I leaned out, and I smiled.

I had to twist my cervix to bash what came next. A disk popped determination down my molars, and I couldn’t assistance it. I laughed. Then I searched erstwhile again for the halo atop my saint.

The airy bore into the backs of my eyes, and I saw, astatine last, the glory.

****

About the Author

Hamm’s enactment has appeared successful Strange Horizons, Kaleidotrope, Diabolical Plots, and more. Hamm lives successful Los Angeles and writes nether the protective blankie of a pseudonym. Hamm tin beryllium recovered connected Bluesky @hammonddiehl.bsky.social.

© Adamant Press

Please sojourn LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE to work much large subject fabrication and fantasy. This communicative archetypal appeared successful the November 2024 issue, which besides features abbreviated fabrication by Isabel Cañas, Aimee Ogden, Oluwatomiwa Ajeigbe, P H Lee, and Ai Jiang, positive a novella by Ashok K. Banker, and more. You tin hold for this month’s contents to beryllium serialized online, oregon you tin bargain the full contented close present successful convenient ebook format for conscionable $4.99, oregon subscribe to the ebook variation here.

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