The Second Coming

By Greg Hansen

Damien Ross is an Exorcist, an exorcist who no longer believes in the teachings of the church. In fact, he no longer believes in God. He remains a priest, though, because his life is easy.
Zell is a demon, one who possesses a body once every six months and demands the Damien be the exorcist he deals with.
When Damien tells Zell that the exorcism he is performing will be his last, Zell offers him a deal. If Damien goes public with his condemnation of all organized religions, Zell, by possessing people, will enable Damien to perform miracles and, therefore, convince the world that he is the second coming of Christ. Zell has an ulterior motive, though. He is not really a demon, but a spirit trapped in this universe through some cataclysmic event. He believes that, with Damien’s help, he can get back to his own universe. To achieve his goal, Zell must make Damien so popular that no one will deny him the resources he needs to send Zell back.
Damien agrees to the plan. When a crazed zealot shoots him, though, and he seemingly dies. Three days later, he returns to life, thereby cementing the world’s belief that he is, indeed, the second coming.
Zell’s plan is apparently successful. Without Zell’s help, Damien knows that he cannot perform any more miracles. He is wrong, though, and begins to belief that he is somehow divine.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Greg Hansen
• Release date: Apr 29, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005265397

Greg Hansen

I have been the leader of an artificial intelligence group, a modeling and simulation professional, NSA analyst, certified ethical hacker, white water kayak instructor, pickleball instructor and former police commissioner. I have published six non-fiction books, two with Prentice Hall. I am now venturing into the field of general fiction, calling on my experience in AI to develop a harrowing view of the future, as well as my experience as a police commissioner to detail methods of criminal investigation.

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

I dreamt that I was surfing, the kind of boogie board surfing I did when I was a kid at the Jersey Shore. I would leisurely paddle out to the waves, catch a wave suitable to ride, accelerate toward the shore, slow down when I got close to the shore, make a sudden stop to avoid scraping on the sandy bottom, and do it all over again. Over and over and over.

I heard my buddy Jimmy Taylor calling to me. Big one coming, dude.

His long, black, wet hair was stuck to his back, his blue eyes glistened, and his smile, his ever-present smile, shined white against the gray waves. I was surprised to see him because I thought he was dead. Wasn’t he? Whatever the case, I was so happy to be with him. Coming, man, I shouted.

We grabbed a wave, a four-footer, and rode it to shore, trying to see who would go the farthest before we wound up grinding against the gritty, shell-lined beach.

I was ahead of Jimmy when a loud, hissing sound jolted me awake. I opened my eyes and looked around in a bit of a daze, finally recognizing the interior of a New Jersey Transit bus. The surfing motion I had been feeling was the bus pulling away from a stop – its steady acceleration, the constant movement as it cruised, the slowdown as it approached the next stop and then, of course, the stop itself. The hissing sound I had heard was that of the airbrakes when the bus came to a halt.

I thought, briefly, that Jimmy might be on the bus with me. He wasn’t, of course. He was, after all, dead. I wanted to doze off again so I could continue my dream, but that wasn’t going to happen. Instead, I studied my surroundings.

The interiors of NJ Transit buses always seemed to be the same, even when they were brand new. Dark, mottled floors were illuminated by eerie fluorescent lights, some of which were occasionally coming loose, dangling precariously over the heads of the passengers.

The cloth covering on the seats consisted of a dark blue background topped by orange swirls. My guess was that the design was chosen to disguise the stains that would undoubtedly appear on the seats. The interior of my bus was gloomy, despite the fact that the sun, low in the sky, was beaming through the windows.

As far as the passengers were concerned – well, they seemed gloomy as well, especially since the overhead lighting turned their skin a weird shade of gray. The passengers never made eye contact with anyone, as if talking to someone, or even looking at someone you didn’t know, made you a person to be avoided. My dream probably made me twitch on occasion, so all the more reason to stay away from me. Paranoia always ran deep on New Jersey mass transit.

Anyway, I was on a local bus, not an express bus from Manhattan, so my fellow passengers were people who couldn’t afford a car to go to and from their jobs, jobs they probably hated. A trip that might have taken fifteen minutes in a car most likely took forty-five minutes on a bus. When you’re going somewhere you don’t want to be, forty-five minutes could seem like an eternity. All the more reason to be gloomy.

Me? I like taking the bus. I like looking out the windows at the houses passing by and thinking about the people who live in them. I try to imagine a fifties style environment where the dad, dressed in suit and tie, comes home from work to be greeted by his wife, who is dressed in a flowing dress and holding a martini glass.

I decided, however, that the suburban neighborhoods I saw were those where mom or dad came home to be greeted by a nanny, or, more precisely, an au pair, because both parents worked. If that wasn’t the case, the dad would come home to be greeted by a wife who was pissed off about something, as well as by one or two snotty kids. I’ve had the unfortunate opportunity to deal with that particular demographic many, many times.

Anyway, riding a bus gives me an opportunity to ponder my very near future.

I closed my eyes again, thinking about my own job, one that I would undertake in less than an hour. There would be a woman waiting for me, but she sure wouldn’t be wearing a flowing dress or holding a martini glass.

I took several deep breaths and tried to relax. I was half asleep and half-awake when, again, I was jolted into consciousness, this time by the voice of the driver.

In a heavy Jersey accent, he said, Hey, Foddah. This is your stop.

I rubbed my eyes, stole a glance out the window, picked up my brown leather bag and stood up. Thanks, I said.

I almost made it out the door of the bus before the driver said, Hey, Foddah. I got a question for you.

I knew, of course, what the question was. My hair, pulled into a ponytail, now reached down to the middle of my back, and the driver was going to ask me how I, a priest, could get away with that. The real question he should have been going to ask was – why did I grow it so long? The answer was simple – it pissed off some of the other self-righteous priests in the rectory. On the other hand, a few of the members of the church, especially the younger women, liked the look. Ultimately, though, the real reason I wore it so long was that I just felt like it. But I decided to let the bus driver ask the expected question.

What’s that?

The driver nodded in the direction of my head. When did the Church allow priests to grow their hair as long as yours?

The answer was simple – I’m an exorcist and, as such, I can get away with things other priests cannot. That includes growing my hair long and having a beard. Given that I’m six-four, fairly muscular and have very dark eyes, I may appear to be maniacal, kind of like Rasputin, the mad monk. When I’m dealing with a demon, I want to look maniacal.

I didn’t want to tell the driver that I was an exorcist, though. It would have taken less than ten minutes for him to tell someone else and, before you knew it, everyone in the area would know that an exorcist had gotten off the bus in their neighborhood. So, I used my usual explanation.

I run a boxing program for underprivileged youth, I said. I want to relate to them, and the hair and the beard help. That explanation was actually true, and the driver seemed to accept it.

I got off the bus as fast as I could, though, because, based on past experiences, I knew the driver would ask me some other question, and I was in no mood to chitchat.

When the bus pulled away, I knew that I was about to be engulfed in a flume of noxious smoke, so I made a beeline to the interior of the bus stop shelter, hoping that the plexiglass walls would protect me. They did, more or less. Only a tiny bit of the rotten egg smell reached me. After surviving the cloud of smoke, I opened my bag to rummage through it.

My bag is old, maybe a hundred years old, and large. It contained a lot of stuff that I would need, like a couple bottles of drinking water, a small bottle of holy water, a white sash wrapped in brown paper, a bible, my phone, a little bit of cash, an old pack of cigarettes and some other stuff, including a surprise for the demon.

The church didn’t give me my bag to help me with my exorcisms, mainly because I started off as an understudy to another exorcist, one who had been performing them for years and years. When I became the main exorcist, I was about to purchase a bag, but my predecessor and mentor, Father Padraig Considine, gifted me his. In a heavy Irish brogue, he told me, I got this from another priest. It was so fookin long ago, I forget his name. You take it. I’m too old for this shite, and you’re good at it.

Father Considine, who was about 70 when he gave me the bag, had lived in the US since he was 10. Why he didn’t lose his Irish accent in the ensuing 60 years is beyond me, but perhaps it was an affectation he enjoyed. The older ladies in the congregation really seemed to like his accent and Father Considine, like me, seemed to take the vow of celibacy as a suggestion, not an absolute.

Back to my bag. It’s made of cowhide and, having been beat up over the years, has numerous craggy lines in it running across the surface. It’s the kind of bag you'd see doctors like Doc Holliday carrying in old Westerns, and is adorned by two flip-over latches, a lock, and a leather handle. Younger women in the congregation, the few that there are, love the bag. One woman told me that these vintage bags are high fashion now and can fetch close to $1,000.

The bag had another feature that I liked. When it was open, a pleasant aroma wafted up from the inside. I can’t put my finger on it, though. Whatever, the fragrance was soothing, so much so that I often opened the bag just so I could experience the scent. On occasion I would stick my face in it and inhale until my lungs were full.

After a few seconds of rummaging, I retrieved a pack of cigarettes from my bag. I wondered if the cloud of bus exhaust would have been more detrimental to my health than a cigarette, but decided that a cigarette alone was less lethal then bus exhaust.

The pack was a couple of months old, so the cigarette was gruesome, but smoking before an appointment was part of my normal routine. After one vile drag, I stubbed out the cigarette and tossed the butt into the bus stop trash can. That’s all I ever did – take one drag. I’m not sure why I started smoking before an appointment, but it seemed to soothe my nerves.

Anyway, I pulled my phone out of my bag to check the time. I had forty minutes to kill before my appointment. That was the thing with buses – you either arrive early or late for an appointment, but never on time. When dealing with a demon, timing was everything, so I let my mind drift for a while.

It was a great setting for mind-drifting. The street was covered with a canopy of elm branches which, fortunately, blocked out most of the sun. That was a good thing, because the plexiglass roof over the bus shelter probably would have acted like a magnifying glass. The hot summer sun might have cooked me to well-done if not for the shade. The bus shelter across the street was in direct sunlight, but it had two rows of trees blocking the sun. It was probably quite pleasant in the summer and brutally cold in the winter. It didn’t m atter – I had no intention of returning to this area again.

There was a lot of activity on the street.. Not only did a car pass me by about once every fifteen seconds, but people ran or skateboarded along the sidewalks. I watched one young woman jogging behind a baby stroller, singing along with whatever was playing through her earbuds. Just about everyone I saw had earbuds stuck in their ears, mostly wireless ones. I had not yet succumbed to the need to get a pair, given that I rarely listened to the radio or music that often. But, if I ever were to get a pair, they would certainly be wireless.

So, with a half hour or so to kill, I began to analyze my surroundings in a bit more detail. I was in a residential area lined with homes built in the 1920s and 1930s that sat on skinny lots with a detached garage in the back.

I used the internet to study the area before I accepted my appointment, wanting to know as much as I could about the inhabitants. They were mostly white, mostly Catholic, and mostly upper middle class.

Violent crime in the area was quite low, but property crime was quite high. This told me that there were teenagers roaming around after school with little to do, or that the area was targeted for daytime thefts because so few people were at home. The divorce rate was above the national average, something I decided was caused by the abundance of au pairs. Many families posted pictures of themselves on social media, and I had seen quite a few that showed an attractive, young woman huddling with little children. My guess is that the au pair also huddled with one of the parents, usually the father. I say usually, but not always. That information I also got from studying the divorce records.

Despite all that, the neighborhood, based on the house prices, was desirable, not only because all the homes were well-maintained, but the street was a main commuter route into Manhattan. As you moved away from the main thoroughfare and into the side streets, house prices fell. The area I was going to was a different story, but more about that later.

A man across the street, about two houses down from the bus shelter on that side of the street, was sitting on a riding mower, cutting the grass on his front lawn. Mind you, there is a city right of way that extends from the curb to the lawns of all of the houses, and then there is, at most, twenty feet of lawn from the sidewalk to the house itself. Because of the driveway, the width of the lot is no more than forty feet. So, this guy was using a riding mower for a tiny patch of grass.

That’s the way it is in these suburban neighborhoods. The owners want to show off their wealth by the cars they drive, or the clothes they wear or, as in this case, the toys they have.

I found the man to be annoying, but his mower made a low, humming sound that I found comforting, and sent a pleasant aroma of freshly cut grass my way. I was in danger of falling asleep in the warm bus shelter, but I was saved by the approach of a young woman walking a Golden Retriever. I couldn’t tell if she was 15 or 30 – teenage girls try to look older than they are, and thirtyish women try to look younger than they are.

Whatever the case, I wanted to greet the Golden Retriever. I love dogs, especially retrievers. Unlike humans, they’re nonjudgmental and always friendly.

CHAPTER TWO

The young woman was either on her phone talking to someone or off her meds. No phone was in sight, but the earbuds she wore made it clear what was happening. Her hands and arms were wigwagging, and she laughed on occasion as she walked. Her Golden Retriever, an older dog, walked beside her perfectly. She probably could have let go of the leash and he would have stayed with her, that’s how well behaved he was.

As she got closer, it was easy for me to determine that she was indeed a teenager. Her long, brunette hair was parted down the middle, something kids did more often than older women. She wore a pair of navy-blue shorts, sandals and a button-down NY Yankee uniform top, one that probably had her name on the back. I’m a Mets fan, but I forgave her for wearing the shirt.

She eyeballed me suspiciously as she got closer to me, ending the call and keeping her eyes straight ahead. I couldn’t blame her – after all, I did say that I looked maniacal. When she was about three feet away, I asked, Would you mind if I said hello to your dog? I love Retrievers.

She slowed