The Unexpected Exorcist: Episode 29

The Fort Knox Demon Depository

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New episodes every Tuesday and Thursday at 3 PM PDT!!

- Adam Lutzi Rockwell

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Recap

Last week on The Unexpected Exorcist: Special Agents Uziel Axe and Sister Catherine escaped Purgatory only to find themselves on a remote lighthouse island harboring one of the world’s most powerful demons: Ahriman

Today, we jump to one of the most important places the DED operates in:

The Fort Knox Bullion Depository - Kentucky

The Fort Knox Bullion Depository¹ serves as much more than a simple gold depository. It also serves the needs of the Demonic Exorcism Division.

Beyond the electric fences, machine gun posts, mine fields, and other security measures, stands a simple, granite structure. Two stories tall. The gold vault itself is surprisingly small, only four-thousand square feet. Despite its appearance, the building holds over half of the United States gold reserves.

Through the massively thick, twenty-one-inch, impenetrable vault doors are rooms of gold bars. The gold has been in storage there since the Gold Reserve Storage Act of 1934.

There are two levels of the vault known to the American public. The main level, through the gigantic vault doors, and the basement level.

No politician and few civil servants have ever visited the second, hidden basement. A tiny sub-basement that was secretly placed there during its construction in 1936.

Over the years, the Fort Knox Bullion Depository has been a hotbed of conspiracy theories. Everything from the vault holding no real gold to the storage of a small alien spacecraft. The conspiracists believed everything and anything. Exactly what those in charge wanted.

The US Mint Police, the government unit that guarded the vault, never commented on stories about the vault and never refuted any of the conspiracies.

Only two people in the entire US Mint Police knew the true purpose of the Gold Depository’s strange sub-basement. Since 1995, the sub-basement had been home to three master goldsmiths and exorcists who worked for the Demonic Exorcism Division. These dedicated goldsmith-exorcists trained in both the art of gold smithery and Catholic incantation.

They worked in eight-hour, single-person shifts, day and night. These DED specialists were tasked with preparing and containing the demons captured by field agents.

Fort Knox was the only place anybody could agree upon to do the work of encasing demon-stones. The gold made it impossible for demons to see the work being done, and security was the tightest in the world. Being surrounded by gold was one of the best methods to hide a demon. The vault worked perfectly.

Two Catholic priests and one Jesuit monk worked around the clock in the secretive sub-basement. There they encased captured demons in gold. The gold was melted down and shaped around the demon-stones into small, simple egg-like holding cases. After the gold was poured around the stone, it was stamped with the Seal of Solomon for good measure.

The only reason the egg-shape was selected was that it made for easy transport.

It was incredibly difficult work that could only be done by the most ardent acolytes of the DED.

Brother Robert Ricci, sixty-nine years of age, was the man in charge of what was affectionately known as the Fort Knox Demon Depository. Of course, the name is incorrect, as the stones are only temporarily deposited.

The other priests followed Brother Ricci’s orders to the letter. Brother Ricci reported directly to Director Jinpa. He had worked in the vault since he was forty-five years of age.

Once the demon eggs were ready to go, they were transported to the Pentagon. The largest demon storage facility in the world. The Depository itself was much too small to hold all the captured demons.

Twelve gold demon-eggs per transport was the maximum allowed to travel to the Pentagon via truck. Anything more than twelve could be catastrophic in a crash, or God forbid, a hostile takeover.

The preparation the priests made for each demon shipment was much more complex than it appeared. Each demon in each holding diamond was researched and interrogated before transport to the Pentagon. Getting the name of the demon was the goal, that is, if the exorcist who trapped the demon had not already extracted the name, which they usually had not.

The work was thankless. Demons were less likely to talk than a dedicated Jihadist at Guantanamo Bay.

Before the gold encasement, the stones were placed on a specially designed altar. Each of the priests were also adept seers that were able to commune with the demon through the stones. Occasionally, they were able to get the name of the demon from the demon itself. About two percent of the time. Methods such as subterfuge were utilized to gain as much information as possible about their demons before being shipped out.

Brother Ricci spent the entire day laboring to prepare for the month’s shipment to Washington. A secure truck was arriving precisely at nine AM the next morning to pick up the encased stones. Nine eggs that shipment. Nine demons.

But one of those demons was incredibly tricky and still needed sealing. It would not speak. The demon was so quiet that Brother Ricci would not have believed the demon was in the stone if he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes.

The room’s altar was a simple, flat granite podium. A gold bowl filled with holy water blessed by the Pope himself sat in the middle of the altar.

Brother Ricci decided that before the final encasement of the day, he would make one final attempt to communicate with the demon. There was nothing he hated more than marking a stone as “unknown in origin.” If a name couldn’t be pried from the demon, at least a general description of origin and makeup could be notated on its accession card for the database.

The age of seventy was the mandatory age of retirement for most DED agents. Brother Ricci was only eight months from retirement. He would be damned if he let the damned get the best of him. Most demons loved to talk, primarily in riddles and lies, but this one was different.

Brother Ricci stood at his simple wooden workbench and examined the rather large, finely cut diamond. Reddish in color. The demon was in there. The three previous times that he had touched the stone, waves of nausea flowed over him.

He prayed the simple Lord’s Prayer and braced himself. He picked up the stone.

The waves of nausea did not occur. He was surprised, but he also knew that nothing should surprise him when it came to dealing with a demon. It was most likely working an angle.

Brother Ricci carried the stone gingerly to the golden bowl and dropped the stone into the holy water. The water did not boil as it had in the previous encounters.

What was that thing up to in there?

He dropped to his knees and took a little gold cross from under his robes and kissed it. He prayed ardently to God and Jesus for protection. He even prayed to the Holy Ghost for good measure.

Something was off in the room. Something he couldn’t put his finger on, but he would find out what the demon was up to, one way or another.

Brother Ricci stood, took a simple red candle with the image of Jesus holding a sheep, and lit it. He placed it next to the bowl.

In order to commune with demons in the stones, one must be extraordinarily careful and well-trained. A soul can easily be lost to the fallen. He knew this, and many of his friends had died at the hands of demons, but he did the job anyway.

Brother Ricci placed his fingers in the water, on either side of the stone which glowed a bright blue in the center of the bowl, and immediately found himself standing in the Void of the stone. Blackness enveloped him.

The unnamed demon appeared from the darkness. It stood before him.

The demon was unlike anything Brother Ricci had seen before. It was almost a man, but mostly a tree. A dead rotting fruit tree.

Demons that took the shape of the tree were often European in origin, and more susceptible to Christian, Jewish, and Nordic rites of exorcism and protection. It could be the reason it was so reticent to speak with a priest.

This demon walked with trunks as feet and emanated a blue aura. Past attempts to communicate with the demon were completely unsuccessful. It would not even show itself.

Brother Ricci examined the demon closely.

The demon outstretched its branch-like arms as it stood in the void. This time, however, it spoke immediately, in a low, raspy voice. Perfect English. “Why, old man, have you trapped me in this stone? Why have you not released me? I have business in the world of man.”

Brother Ricci was shocked. It spoke! Why had it taken so long to speak? He had to remind himself that whenever a demon spoke, it had ulterior motives.

“What business could you, aberration you are, have on the Earth-Plane?” he asked the creature with a slight Italian accent. He attempted to emotionalize the demon.

The demon thought for a full minute before answering. “What business do you have trapping me and my brethren in these diamond abominations?” It was angry.

Brother Ricci had read the file on the possession this demon had been responsible for. It was incredibly disturbing.

The demon had taken possession of a lobster fisherman on an island off the coast of Maine. The demon’s entry point to the Earth-Plane was never discovered. It had killed the possessed’s entire family. Wife, three children and even the family’s two dogs. It had done so with its bare hands and an electric carving knife at their Thanksgiving dinner. It lived with the dead bodies of the family for over a month. The smell had brought the police.

The possession was discovered by a local priest doing rounds at the Town of Stonington’s jail. He immediately called the possession into the local bishop who in turn brought it straight to the DED.

The exorcism of the Maine fisherman did not go well. Two DED exorcists were dispatched but only one returned. The other ended up in a mental hospital in Augusta, unable to speak.

Discussions at the highest levels had occurred with how to deal with the nameless demon. It only registered as a class-two on the Bowdern Demonic Classification Scale. However, it created such havoc that the DED Council was called.

Perhaps the demon was attempting to move up the demonic hierarchy. The suggestion had been made to seal the stone in gold, place the gold egg in a brick of concrete and drop it into the middle of the Atlantic. A few of the members on the Council agreed, but it was the job of the DED to do what others could not.

Demonic possessions had taken a violent turn during the previous six months. Murder by demon was uncommon since the Middle Ages. It happened regularly, but nothing close to what had been happening the past six months.

The world of demons was angry.

The demon Brother Ricci was questioning had crossed many, many lines with its murders. Most treaties with Hell had been broken by the abomination.

The demon spoke again, slowly and calmly, “I was just living a peaceful life on the coast of Maine. Your exorcists ripped me from my good life. What right have you to attack me in such a way?”

Brother Ricci was almost at a loss for words. “You MURDERED six innocents!” He tried not to lose his temper. That was what the demon wanted.  He calmed himself, “You and your Legion are running amok all over the country. Why the murders?”

The demon turned to him with a coy smile, “Do I have your attention?”

His attention? He had nothing but his attention for the past week. “Yes, demon. You’ve had it for quite some time. What is it that you want?”

“Are you truly listening to me?”

“Yes!”

“I will give you the Legion’s warning.”

“I’m listening,” said Brother Ricci.

“This containment policy must end, Father Ricci.”

“Our containment policy?”

Brother Ricci had a flash of understanding. Why the treaties were being broken. Why the demons had grown so violent.

Operation Demon Trap. It had been discovered. But how? A mole? Possible. He had to get out of The Void and get the information to HQ as soon as possible.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Demon,” he said, but the demon knew he lied. Demons are quite good at spotting a lie, being the masters of lies.

The demon shouted at Brother Ricci, “You know EXACTLY what I’m talking about, Brother. Did you think Legion would not notice our members disappearing from the Earth-Plane? They could no longer speak with us! Do you think us fools? We are not that, I assure you! We are ONE!”

“Demon! Calm thyself! Allow me to speak with my superiors and relay your concerns. Tell me your name and I will be on my way. I will bring your concerns to our Council of Elders. Perhaps I can get them to release your brethren,” he lied.

The demon laughed. “You thought you were going to leave here that easily? No Brother Ricci, your lies are done. I will release our lost Legionnaires myself!”

Brother Ricci took a few steps back. The demon sent out its roots from its feet. Long, tangly tentacles. They shot under Brother Ricci’s feet and tripped him as he moved backward.

The Brother landed on his back and a moment later the demon stood above him, holding him in place.

“Our treaties are null and void, Brother Ricci. And now, if you don’t mind…”

The demon jutted its hands into Brother Ricci’s chest as he lay on the floor of The Void. The demon tore at the insides of Brother Ricci’s soul. He screamed in agony and felt his mind blipping out of existence.

Who was he? Where was he? Was his soul at peril? Could this demon… get… the better of him? No it could not be. It was not possible! The diamond was in the holy bowl!

But it was possible. The demon did get the better of him.

Both demon and man disappeared in a blink from The Void.

Back in the encasement room, Brother Ricci’s hands smoked. He quickly pulled them out of the bowl and dried them on his robes. Hours had passed since he had placed his hands into the bowl. His legs ached.

There was a knock at the basement door. Brother Ricci turned around, eyes glowing blue. The demon looked around, picked up one of the encasement eggs and went to the door.

He opened it.

Standing on the other side was Father Thomas Reinfeldt. A short priest, just showing up to his shift.

As soon as Father Reinfeldt saw Brother Ricci’s eyes, he yelled, “Oh no! Oh my God! No, Brother Ricci! Help! Somebody help!” But nobody heard his cries.

The demon lifted its hand and smashed the holding egg on the side of the priest’s skull, killing him instantly.

The demon looked down at the dead priest. “There is no Brother Ricci,” it said, pulling the dead body into the room. “There is only Azrael!”

He laughed and laughed. The remainder of the egg lay at his feet. He picked up the holding stone and put it in its pocket.

Brother Ricci was gone. Replaced by Hell’s Commander, Azrael. The demon stood in the middle of the little room and looked down at the dead priest.

Things were off to a wonderful start. His mission would be a success.

The demon had to take a few moments to get used to its new body. It slowly walked around the room, moving its head from side to side. It raised its head and screeched. Nobody would hear it down in the sub-basement encasement vault.

Azrael just needed to wait for the appointed time, but he was impatient.

All demons were impatient.

<Episode 28 | Table of Contents | Episode 30>

New episodes every Tuesday and Thursday at 3 PM PDT!!

1. Official name: The United States Bullion Depository