Confessional: Father Gunter, Demon Hunter, #4

By J.R. Pestel

"Startling, scary, moody and atmospheric all at once." - Readers' Favorite

A priest is killed in a confessional, and demon hunters Johann Gunter and Robert Durling come to the church to investigate.

When they speak to the one and only eyewitness to the murder, they realize they are dealing with something supernatural.

Speaking with the remaining priest from the parish, Johann and Robert learn of an accidental death from several years earlier. Not only does Johann now question the integrity of the priest, but it causes him to wonder if there is a vengeful spirit at work here.

Burning the remains of the corpse tied to the suspected vengeful spirit should solve the problem, and with the priest's help, Johann and Robert locate the burial site, and do just that. But when another victim is claimed after the corpse is burned, they realized something more powerful is in play...a demon.

The fight to exorcise the demon reaches fever pitch. It nearly costs one demon hunter his life—and the other must agree to the unspeakable to save him.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Janine R. Pestel
• Release date: Nov 22, 2023
• ISBN: 9798989552122

Book preview

Confessional

A Father Gunter, Demon Hunter Supernatural Thriller

J.R. Pestel

~~ Screaming Demon Books ~~

This book is dedicated, as always, to my loving husband Joe and to my family and friends for all their love, support, and just plain believing in me.

Copyright (C) 2018 Janine R. Pestel

Layout design and Copyright (C) 2018 Janine R. Pestel

Published 2023 by Screaming Demon Books

ISBN: 979-8-9895521-2-2

Cover Design by Janine R. Pestel

Cover Photo by: leolintang / 123RF stock photo

Edited by Paula Grundy

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the author’s permission.

Edited by Paula Grundy

https://paulaproofreader.wixsite.com/home

-1-

Kaden Lunn looked around the inside of the church. Somehow, being in a church always made him feel small, diminutive, unimportant. Of course, he knew that was only in his mind. By no means was this a cathedral. It was just a small brick church that held three hundred parishioners at a time. He cursed himself for having such a low opinion of himself.

Kaden casually ran his fingers through his long, shoulder-length, black hair. He was a singer/musician in a hard rock band. On stage, he was the personification of macho. The musician chuckled to himself at how far from the truth that was. His mundane, everyday existence was far from the leather-brandishing macho man he portrayed when he was the front man for his band.

Lunn placed his hands on his lap and nervously tapped one of his fingers on his leg. Why was he so nervous? It wasn’t like he was a bad person or anything. Kaden hadn’t done anything terrible. At least nothing to be ashamed of, anyway.

The votive candles near the altar gave a dim illumination to the area. Kaden glanced up at the statue of Christ on the cross and quickly looked away. He could swear Christ was staring at him, and it made him nervous. When he wasn’t on stage almost everything made him nervous.

He sat in the pew awaiting his turn to go into the confessional and tell the priest on the other side of the booth all the bad things he had done since the last time he came to confession.

Bad things. How silly that was. Bad by whose standards? Certainly not his. Kaden Lunn didn’t do bad things. He only did human things. And that was what these were—human things.

Kaden turned his attention to the confessional when the squeak of the opening door pierced the quiet in the church. A young woman named Jenny Hill came out and walked to the altar to do her penance. She was a year or two his junior. He knew her reputation, so his eyes were glued to her as she walked. Oh, great. One more thing I gotta confess now.

The person who was sitting next to him got up and went to the confessional. That left only Kaden waiting in the pew. He reached into his pocket and took out his favorite nervous playtoy—a guitar pick. He tumbled it over and over with his fingers as he contemplated what he was going to tell the priest. How could he word everything, so the priest wouldn’t make him spend the rest of his life at the altar praying for forgiveness?

A breeze rushed through the church and caught his attention. He looked at the doors of the church. They were closed. He furrowed his brow. Where did the breeze come from?

The candles at the altar flickered, and some went out. The lights hanging from the ceiling on heavy chains swayed and flickered. Kaden couldn’t be sure, but he thought he heard a light whisper when the breeze happened. Almost like someone drawing a breath next to his ear.

Kaden saw something in his peripheral vision. Startled, he looked to his right, and there she was. A nun. He looked at her face. He had gone to the Catholic school in this small town when he was younger, but he didn’t recognize her. She must be new. At least, new since he had gone to the school. She, herself, appeared to be young.

Kaden raised his eyebrows when he noticed she was staring at him with a blank expression. Always being self-conscious when he was stared at unless he was on stage, he looked away for a moment then looked back at her. She was gone.

Surprised by her sudden appearance and disappearance, he was intrigued and looked around. She was nowhere in the church that he could see. Was it his imagination? What would bring something like that on? Guilt? He didn’t know and much less cared.

He played with his bottom lip and contemplated what happened. He felt inspiration for a song coming on. He bobbed his head in rhythm to an imaginary beat as he thought up the words for his new song.

The soft squeak of the confessional door signaled that the elderly gentleman who went in before him was finished. As the man walked to the alter, Kaden got out of the pew to take his turn in the confessional. That didn’t take him long. I guess when you get old, there isn’t much bad stuff to do. Well, let’s go see what Father Batchelder is going to make me do.

As he listened to the sound of his footsteps echoing off the walls, Kaden was overcome with a feeling. It was strange. He felt like he did on stage. It was that same feeling of irreverence and machoism that enveloped him when he was performing. He felt like a different person. He wasn’t used to feeling like that off stage, but he welcomed it just the same.

Kaden stepped into the confessional and closed the door. He knelt facing the priest. The clergyman was barely visible through the lattice in the wall, but Kaden could make him out.

Bless me Father, for I have sin— Kaden started. He stopped abruptly when he thought he heard a voice in his head. The priest waited patiently for him to continue. Kaden knitted his brow, then cleared his throat and continued.

Bless me Father, for I have sinned. He finally got the first words out but stopped again. His hands were trembling. His stomach was tight as though someone had punched him in the gut. He winced from the pain.

The musician’s eyes darted around the confessional booth. The walls felt like they were closing in on him. His pulse raced as the confessional seemed to get smaller and smaller, tighter and tighter.

Kaden gently rocked back and forth. Terrible thoughts were going through his mind. He had no idea where these visions were coming from, but they filled his mind. Images of death and violence. Blood—all he saw was blood. It was everywhere and covered everything. All the while, he could hear only one thing…a voice whispering to him.

Do it. Do it. Do it, it said. Kaden had never heard the voice before. It didn’t sound at all familiar to him. The repetitive drone of the words ate at him. They were driving him to the point where he would do anything to stop it.

He brought his hands up to cover his ears only to find it didn’t help. He still heard the voice. He dragged his hands down the sides of his face, squeezing in his cheeks in frustration.

The pain in his head started to pound as his blood pressure built to alarming levels. He knew that at any moment he would either give in to the voice, or his head was going to explode. Either way was okay with him. He just wanted it to stop.

Sweat ran down his cheeks from his forehead, and dripped off the bottom of his chin, and onto his hand. Kaden’s breathing was labored as he stared at the priest. All he could feel was contempt for the priest. It didn’t matter to him that he knew Father Batchelder well. It just mattered what he was feeling at this moment.

He could see the priest on the other side, and the sight of the cross the clergyman was wearing was making Kaden even angrier. More than that, it was making him feel ill. Without looking at Kaden, the priest tried to gently urge him into the rest of the act of contrition.

How long has it been since your last confession, my son? the priest asked gently. He knew Kaden well and recognized his voice. The priest was well aware that at times, Kaden needed gentle prodding.

He waited for Kaden to answer. Kaden’s eyes darted around the tiny enclosure. His muscles tensed, and his breathing became rapid. He winced in pain as his fingernails grew into spikes. He stared in disbelief at his hands. What was going on here? He never took LSD or any other hallucinogenic drug. Was this real? Were his fingernails really growing like this? The pain sure felt real. His fingertips burned with the new growth.

He closed his eyes as tightly as he could and distorted his face to keep from screaming out. Suddenly a strange feeling came over him. Stranger than what he was already feeling. It felt like he was standing next to himself, watching. He felt powerless to do anything with his own body. What the hell? What’s goin’ on here? Did somebody slip me some stupid shit or somethin’? I look like a fuckin’ dog with rabies or somethin’.

He clawed at the wood shelf he rested his hands on. Saliva dripped from his mouth, reminiscent of the foam of a rabid animal. He sniffed the air, his sense of smell heightened.

He smelled something that was very unfamiliar to him. It was a little like a combination of iron and bodily fluids. Kaden’s nostrils flared when he realized it was the odor of the priest’s blood as it flowed through his body. He could smell something else—the scent of the priest becoming anxious about what was happening. It was fear itself that was assaulting the young man’s senses.

When he didn’t receive an answer to the question, the priest leaned a little closer to the lattice opening in the wall between the two. He was so close to Kaden now, he could feel the man’s hot breath as it struck his cheeks.

Something in the priest’s mind told him not to press, but to run away as fast as he could. But, being the good priest that he was, he had to try to help Kaden make his confession. He pressed on.

My son. How long has it been since your last confession? the priest pressed Kaden again. The young man could feel rage building inside. He put his face up to the division between him and the priest.

"Do you really give a damn? When was your last confession? They still don’t know about her, do they? They don’t know what you did, but they will. It’s time for your confession and penance," Kaden whispered in a raspy voice. The priest turned and looked at him, puzzled. He clutched his crucifix and kissed it. His stomach tightened as he turned his full attention to the man on the other side of the confessional. His pulse and his mind raced.

Pardon? the priest asked.

Kaden’s mind snapped. Everything became a blur to him. The wood splintered as he thrust his hands through the thin wood wall between him and the priest. His spike-like nails dug into the flesh on the priest’s throat. Like a wild animal, Kaden ripped into the priest while letting out a wail-like scream that echoed through the church rivaling the howl of a wolf.

He felt pleasure at the sound of the priest’s flesh as it tore in his hands. The warm wetness of the clergyman’s muscle tissue and blood fed his frenzy like a shark after bloody prey. As he watched the priest die a fast but horrible death, a feeling of satisfaction flooded Kaden. It was as though a score was being settled.

The clergyman slumped in his seat as Kaden ripped at his throat. In short order almost all the flesh had been stripped from the priest, leaving only small fragments of muscle tissue on mostly bare and bloody bone.

Blood flowed from the priest’s face and neck, down his robes and pooled on the floor, exiting under the door. The priest’s lifeless eyes stared into the abyss from his saturated red skull. Blood covered the inside of his part of the confessional.

Jenny Hill and elderly man at the alter turned when they heard all the noise explode from the confessional area. They looked at each other with their brows drawn together in confusion and fright. Looking up, they could see the lights were flickering. It wasn’t summer, so it was unlikely that there was going to be a brownout. Their hair moved from a breeze that was coming from both somewhere and nowhere at all. The wind was warm. It was like a midsummer breeze on their skin. The young woman narrowed her eyes and crinkled her nose. The breeze had a funny smell. Actually, it was an awful smell. It reeked of sulfur.

It’s the end of the world, the elderly man shouted as he ran away from the altar. Fearing something terrible was about to happen, the man hobbled out of the church as fast as he could. Jenny was now alone in the church with whatever was making the awful sound.

Jenny’s muscles tensed as she, too, prepared to run. Her fight or flight instinct was kicking in, and she wasn’t sure which she wanted to do. She only knew that she had to decide soon, or something was going to make the decision for her.

Jenny stared at the confessional that now sounded like it contained something that was a cross between a bear and a lion. She could hear the flesh being torn from the priest.

The wet ripping sound made Jenny shudder as she tried desperately to figure out exactly what the noise was. It sounded like someone was ripping wet paper and throwing it on the floor.

The lights in the church flickered even more than they already were. The ceiling groaned under the weight of the massive fixtures that swung from the breeze. She looked up cautiously watching to see if the lights were going to fall. She felt something brush by her. She couldn’t tell what it was. It felt like a breeze, but somehow harder like a person she couldn’t see. Whatever it was, it made the candles flicker. The rest of the candles went out. Some of the glass containers fell from the display and shattered on the concrete floor.

Jenny looked over and couldn’t believe her eyes. It seemed like the glass votive holders were jumping off the display. Like they were committing suicide. Her eyes