The Goat [Completed]

The Painter

I had been on earth for about a week since my appointment. I still couldn't adapt to the extreme drop in temperature. At night I could hear the screams of the ever burning bodies. In my dreams the heat fell on me like a bag of corpses. The heat was so real I could feel its fingers as it drained sweat out of me. I never had nightmares because I never had dreams. No matter how hard I tried to kick the voices out of my head I couldn't. It felt like some invisible tiny strings still attached me to that place; both spiritually and physically. I forced myself out of the lousy bed. My feet tickled as I rested them upon the dusty wooden floor. A voice cracked through my mind almost fracturing my skull. It was his voice, he, satan. I rolled on the floor in pain.
"Get to work." He repeated the phrase over and over again. I closed my ears with my thumbs but that was no good. I could no longer think straight, I heard footsteps, an old man staggered into the room. He had a bowl of ash in his hands, he grabbed a hand full, blew into the air and the voice vanished. He looked like an angel whose wings had been chopped off.

"How are you?" He said in a struggle, his English poisoned with his age and French accent. "He should leave you for now, you need to rest. It's not an easy task to switch realms. I am Joseph by the way."
"Tom." I replied as he helped me to my feet.
"The pain will be gone but it might take a while." He said as he observed me massaging my head endlessly.
"Where am I?" I asked walking away from him towards an open window which allowed the morning sunlight to flood into the room.
"Yaounde." I looked at him confused. I had never heard about a town called Yaounde. 'I most be in Asia' I whispered to myself. "You are in Cameroon my friend. What's your name again?"
"Tom." I replied. 'Will I be this stupid when I grow old?' His stupidity baffled me. How could you forget a three letter noun in less than ten seconds?
"So Tom you've never been to Africa." He walked towards me.
"No I havn't. I'm not much of a traveller. I ..." I went into a momentary freeze when my eyes fell on the art work which covered the white ceiling. A perfect use of geometry to represent the forces of cosmos. I had been to several art displays but I had never seen something so abstract but full of meaning. The details were perfect not a single fault. Not a single symbol out of place. "... what's this?"
"This my friend is what brought you to earth." He paused, scratched the few surviving strands of hair he had on his aged head. "That and this." He blew some of the ash into the air.
"And what's that." I really wanted to know so that whenever satan toyed with me I could just blow it around. A smile formed on my face as I thought.
"I can't tell you. He said I shouldn't. We both know why." He began to laugh but his laughter suddenly turned to a series of loud dry coughs. I felt like squeezing life out of him; that's if he still had life in him.
"Follow me." He said as he staggered towards the door. "Let's talk about you and he who sent you here."

We moved into a larger room. Paintings hung on the walls, around two dozen paintings. They seemed unhappy to be left in the cold and dusty room. Most of the paintings were astronomical paintings. A couple of potraits and several nude half human half animal paintings. His paintings tempted the eye to keep on looking, keep on examining the details, keep on searching for flaws though there were none to be found.
"Ever since I painted a Church in my neighbourhood and demonic activities increased there my work has been termed demonic by my clients. Even those who had my paintings in their homes returned them to me. The pastor even almost exposed me but luckily I had some ash in my pocket." He spoke for about half an hour. He spent most of the time talking about the painting he did in the church. It was a painting of Jesus trapped in the star of David. Above Jesus' head Joseph had written:
'I came' (in Greek) and 'for you' (in Armanaic)
Across the star he had written:
'Not' (in Greek) and 'because you were holy' (in Armanaic)
Then below Jesus' feet he had written:
'But I wanted' (in Armanaic) and 'to save you' (in Greek)
The combined message read: 'I came for you. Not because you were holy. But I wanted to save you.' At first everyone was fascinated except the church's pastor. He still didn't understand why Joseph had choose to mix Armanaic and Greek. Joseph's response was easy when questioned. "The old testament was written in Armanaic and the new testament in Greek, Jesus came to unify everything." Joseph became a biblical intellect to most and the sell of his paintings grew. He had helped Satan helped him. No one realised this. When the church begun losing souls instead of winning souls people began digging for answers. One Sunday evening a young boy had walked into the church to pray. God is up so he looked at the church ceiling while praying. He looked into Joseph's painting of Jesus and Jesus cried. The young boy heard a laugh echo through the empty church. Frighthened he rose to run but the church doors shut closed. He opened his mouth to scream but he couldn't move his tongue. He looked again at the painting as he made a short prayer, Jesus was still crying. The boy was confused and terrified he headed once more for the door but a few feet away his legs became numb. He had the feeling most people get when they realise they are prey but the can't figure who or what the predator is. He tried to crawl to the door but his hands too slowly became useless. The boy looked at the crying painting again. This time all the words in Greek shone red. He rolled over to a wooden bench and scratched the words unto it before life slowly drained out of him. The next morning when the boy's corpse was found the message was translated. It read:

I came not to save you.

Joseph ushered me to a painting he had made of the boy. The boy was sorror was evident in ink. To Joseph the boy was nothing but a sacrifice he had to make to get wealth. A total of fifteen people had died mysteriously in the church or around the church. A woman had killed her five children on the altar before hanging herself on the cross. Joseph had turned the house of God into the devil's playground with a painting. The evil of art.
"I want he who sent you to fix this problem he has placed me into. I don't know how long this ash can protect me." Old Joseph looked afraid. I checked the room to make sure another being had not crept in.
"Why do you keep calling satan 'he who..." The voice cracked through my mind again. This time it was worse. I saw a flash then I saw no more. When I awoke I found myself squeezed into the far end of the room. The paintings had been scattered around the room leaving a large space at the center. Joseph was steadily tracing out some patterns on the floor with white chalk powder. I rose to my feet for a second and crashed back to the floor immediately. My entire body was in pain it felt like i had been ran over by a train or something larger. I managed to crawl to the center.
"What happened?" I asked in confusion my voice had become so faint I could barely hear myself.
"You were possessed." He said as he traced the patterns steadily. His life was on the line.
"So I drew this. What's this suppose to be?" I could recognise some of the symbols and numbers but my mind was so damaged even thinking hurt.
"My friend this will liberate my soul from God's control, so that pastor won't have leverage over me." He smiled increasing the number of foldings on his face. If my face ever got that messed up I will jump out a window.
"God created your soul and your body. You can't just shut him off." I knew everything had limits but Joseph was taking his occult knowledge to extremes.
"So you don't trust he who sent you here. That's your trouble, I wonder why you were even appointed. He should have picked someone like Antone Lavey to do his work on earth for him." The room became quiet as he finished tracing. It was so quiet I could hear silence breathing into my ears. I watched him as he walked into the centrally located circle which was embodied in a triangle which was embodied in another. A circle then a three triangles then two circles then three triangles. The gateway to the demonic realm. Joseph had created several other gateways but this one was beyond his grasp. The symbols and numbers burried within the pattern could switch a soul to another body. Slowly he took off his clothes exposing his slagging skin. I closed my eyes immediately, if I saw anymore I should have vomitted. I would likely have vomitted out my finger nails, that's all I had eaten since coming back to earth. I heard Joseph laugh then slowly he began coughing. He coughed so loud I feared his lungs might come out through his mouth in the process. I opened my eyes and realised the old man was slowly dying in pain. 'This isn't suppose to happen this way.' I said to myself. "Is this suppose to be like this?" I asked.
"No Tom!" He screamed then returned to his coughing. "He has tricked me..." He coughed out something red and slimy. "... He..." He kept on punctuating his words with a series of dry coughs. I couldn't understand him.

A couple of minutes passed away to the place time always passed to. I stood there staring at the old man as he tried to save his soul. The old man suddenly became more physical as hands appeared aboved his head. They seemed to be pulling something out of him.
"Help!" He screamed. I could taste the fear in his voice. He tried in vain to push the hands off his head. They just kept on increasing. He tried to run out but he couldn't cross the inner circle. I bent over to wipe off the chalk so as to break the pathway but the instant my fingers touched the chalk i found myself back at the far end of the room. "Help!" The old man kept on screaming until he could scream no more. His tongue suddenly shifted to the side of his mouth like that of the little boy he had painted. I witnesseed him age as the hands drew out whatever they were drawing out of him. It wasn't just his soul they were taking they were taking the souls he had in him. When the hands had pulled out what they wanted the white chalk gathered into a single mount. Slowly silence walked into the room and quietly she sat by my side. The room was full of strange beings:

A dead living man from hell, a dead man whose life, soul and spirit had been ceased from him, a lady who most never see and the spirit of God which is always around.