It was four days until Halloween, and the Grand Hotel had its “grand” opening two weeks ago. Its building was part of the revitalization effort of city leaders to rebuild downtown St. Louis to promote tourism and economic growth to a struggling city.
Its design was based upon the Drake Hotel in Chicago—that retro look. Of course, the Grand Hotel isn’t as tall, or as “grand” as is the Drake Hotel, but it’s not without amenities: ornate revolving door entrance; cavernous, luxurious lobby with marble floors; spacious rooms with plush carpets and bathrooms with marble bathtubs and gold-plated fixtures; in-room dining and in-room massages; a full gymnasium and in-door pool on the lower level of the hotel; fine dining by a world-renowned French chef in a five-star restaurant—and the least expensive room there is three hundred dollars a night.
It was supposed to have opened two years ago, in 2006, but besides the usual delays that hamper any construction, there had been three incidents which had halted construction each time a person died. The first person who died was a construction worker who threw himself to his death from the 12th floor of the building, which was the highest floor. His Foreman and his co-workers kept trying to talk him out of doing it, but he kept yelling that the Foreman was going to tell everyone how when he had been in Iraq he had murdered an innocent family; had killed the father, the mother, and the brother and had repeatedly raped the daughter before killing her. The Forman kept telling him that he didn’t know what he was talking about, but the construction worker jumped to his death all the same.
The second person who died was an electrician. Just before he fried himself by grabbing the live wires of the generator he had just installed, his co-workers heard him yelling: “You’re right. They’re going to find me out. They’re going to find out that I caused that fire at our last job. I caused that building to burn down; I killed all of those people. I’ll lose my job; I’ll go to jail; my family will suffer. No, no, no—Noooooooo!”
The last person who died had been one of the newly hired concierges, who had hanged himself last month by one of the long cords to the drapes that festoon the exterior of the circular marble staircase that leads to the dining-room of the restaurant on the east mezzanine. No one knows why he hanged himself, but it is believed that he was involved in a botched robbery at the previous hotel where he had worked.
In spite of all of that, the Grand Hotel had finally opened, and now, with Halloween just four days away, at exactly seven p.m, there was another suicide and a murder.
****
The tall, slender, impeccably dressed bellhop of only eighteen years of age, with a handsomely boyish face, had just helped the tired, middle-aged, out-of-town, lonely businessman with his luggage, setting the remaining two suitcases on the king-size bed of room 1002, next to the shining, mahogany-stained nightstand, with a shaded lamp upon it and a narrow, crystal vase filled with water and containing two white roses.
The bellhop had turned to the man to see if he had wanted anything else. Their eyes met and the man smiled at him. He was about to reach into the back pocket of his suit pants and remove his wallet when he saw the bellhop’s boyish, happy face go cold and stern, as if he was listening to something that he didn’t like hearing, that he couldn’t stand to hear.
He became furious and shouted: “You better not tell anyone my secret! You better not! No one knows my secret. I deny it and deny it. You’re not going to tell anyone!”
He looked down at the nightstand. He grabbed the crystal vase, smashed the top of it off on the edge of the nightstand, ran over to the man and began stabbing him with the jagged top of the vase.
“You’re not going to tell anyone!” he continued as he kept stabbing the man. “You’re not going to tell anyone! No one! … I like dick! I like the sight of it; I like the smell of it; I like the taste of it! I like it! I like it! I like…” he kept shouting as he kept stabbing the man, over and over again and again.
The door to the room had been open, and the horrified tenants who had passed by and heard and saw everything, quickly shuttered themselves in their rooms and franticly called downstairs to the front-desk.
By the time that Detective James Hurts got there, which was ten-to-eight, it was all over. The man had been murdered and the bellhop had committed suicide, slitting his wrists and throat with the jagged edges of the top of the vase.
“Jesus H. Christ,” Hurts said to the patrolmen in the room. “There’s an awful lot of goddamn blood in this expensive room … Stupid little fag.”
Detective James Hurts had seen it all in his thirty years of being on the force—shootings, robbery, rape, drugs, prostitutes, stabbings, murder. Yes, Hurts has seen it all. It changes a man, too; scars you for life seeing all of that despair, trouble and hopelessness, physically, mentally and spiritually and Hurts has the physical, mental and spiritual scars to prove it: Physically, he has a long, jagged scar that runs down the left side of his pudgy, drooping, sullen face. He got that scar when he had been a young patrol officer, while arresting a punk for robbing a store. He beat that kid so bad that he had to be taken to the hospital. And for cutting him like he did, Hurts planted a gun and some dope on him just for the hell of it. Now as for mental and spiritual scars, Hurts doesn’t believe in anything or in anyone.
Hurts had been a patrol officer for fifteen years and was with the Vice Department for seven years. He had liked the Vice Department. He liked the investigating aspect of it; having to use your mind, and the chase. He would have ended his police career there, but from time to time, whatever case that he was working on, money seemed to always disappear. Internal Affairs was never able to pin anything on Hurts, but his supervisors suggested, demanded, actually, that he transfer to a different department. Hurts chose Homicide, where he has been for the last eight years.
In May, Hurts had had a big win. For the past two years, a serial killer had killed six women, and through diligent investigation, and dogged hard work, Hurts had solved the case. At the time, Hurts had told himself that he was going to retire—go out on a big bang. He had all of the paperwork done for his retirement, but he just couldn’t bring himself to set the actual date. What would he do with himself when he retired? His only fun in life—maybe even passion—was fishing: Hurts owned an acre of land along the Meramec River in the rural township of St. James, Missouri, which is about a hundred miles south of St. Louis. When it came to fishing, Hurts spared no expense. He had the best fishing gear; a premium tent; cot; sleeping bag which went over the cot; pillows; a propane stove, with all types of pots and pans, and he had intentionally bought his 1997, grey, Nissan Pathfinder, with a full rack on top, for the very purpose of hauling all of his fishing stuff. Hurts went fishing every chance that he got, but how often can a guy go fishing?
When Hurts had been a young man, he had been married for six years, but his wife, Barb, got tired of his bullying ways; his habitual hanging out in bars and gambling; his cheating and slapping her around from time to time during a heated argument. She tired of it all and divorced him. Hurts has two children; two girls, Marsha and Megan. He used to call them his two little M & M’s. After the divorce, he had tried to remain close to them, but his wife had turned them against him, or so he always believed. They wanted nothing to do with him. His youngest daughter, Megan, got married three months ago, and Hurts hadn’t even been invited to the wedding, as he hadn’t been invited to his oldest daughter’s marriage. That’s the thanks Hurts got for paying all of that child support for all of those years; for feeding them and clothing them, for sending check after check on birthdays and Christmases and on other occasions. Yeah, that’s the thanks Hurts got.
“You got things about wrapped up in here, Hurts?” said Detective Sergeant Thomas Sanders, after stepping into the room.
Talk about your odd couple. You would be pretty hard-pressed to find two people who were as different as Sanders and Hurts. Sanders is only two years younger than Hurts, but whereas Sanders is slim and well-built, Hurts is out-of-shape and fat, from years of eating fast-food, heavy smoking and drinking. Whereas Sanders is always bathed, clean-shaven and impeccably dressed in suit, tie and hat, Hurts is more-often-than-not sporting a two-day salt-and-pepper stubble to his un-bathed face: the salt-and-pepper of Hurts’ beard matches the salt-and-pepper of his crew-cut hair. The only time that Hurts ever wears a hat is when his fishing, a black cap with a big bass embossed on the front of it. The three suits that Hurts owns are tattered and always wrinkled, as if often slept in, which they often are. And whereas Sanders is a strictly-by-the-book guy, family man, church-goer, ex-Marine: had done two tours of duty during the Vietnam War, Hurts saw nothing wrong with bending the rules, especially when bending the rules favored Hurts.
“Yeah,” Hurts replied after turning around and facing Sanders, “everything done.”
“Do you have the phone numbers and addresses of the victims’ relatives?”
Hurts removed a notebook from his breast suit-coat pocket, and said: “Yes, I got..“
"I know of all that drug money you stole over the years and I’m going to tell. You’ll go to jail and die there—all alone."
“What did you say to me?” Hurts said.
“I said,” Sanders repeated. “Do you have the phone numbers and..“
“No, no,” Hurts replied, interrupting him. “What did you say after that?”
“I didn’t say anything,” Sanders stated.
He’s lying. He’s always hated you. He’s been working with Internal Affairs. Not only do they know of all of that drug money you stole, they know you shot and killed that serial killer after you had him handcuffed and down because you didn’t believe a scumbag like that had a right to live … He’s going to arrest you tomorrow. You’ll go to jail. You’ll die in prison all alone … Shoot him now, while you got the chance. Shoot him now before it’s too late! Shoot him!
“Who have you been talking to about me, Sanders?” Hurts demanded to know.
“What?!” Sanders replied.
“What have you got on me?!” Hurts shouted. He’s going to arrest you tomorrow. You’re going to jail. You’ll die all alone—in prison, penniless. “Stay out of my fuckin’ business, Sanders!”
“What are you talking about?!” Sanders shouted at him.
“You don’t have nothing on me!” Hurts shouted. Shoot him! He’s going to arrest you! You’ll die all alone! Shoot him! Shoot him—now!
Hurts dropped the notepad that he had been holding in his hands. It fell to the blood-stained, plush blue carpeted floor. With his right hand, Hurts slid the right side of his beige-colored overcoat back and the right side of his pen-striped, dark-grey suit back and reached for his holstered 9mm. semi-automated pistol.
“Reese! Campbell!” Sanders shouted to the two patrol officers, “grab him!”
They did. They struggled with Hurts to hold him down.
“You keep your mouth shut, Sanders!” Hurts screamed. Shoot him! Shoot him! He’s going to arrest you! You’ll die all alone! Shoot him!
“Get him out of here!” Sanders shouted to the two patrol officers. “Take him outside—and stay with him. I’ll be down in a minute.”
“I’ll kill you, Sanders!” Hurts screamed as the two patrol officers ushered the struggling Hurts out of the room. Shoot him! He’s arresting you tomorrow! You’ll die all alone! Shoot him! “I’ll kill you, Sanders! I will! I …”
****
Although Hurts could smell sewer gas emanating from beneath the lid of the sewer in the middle of the red cobble street on Washington Street as he leaned against the edifice of the Grand Hotel, it felt good breathing in the fall, cold, night air. He lit a cigarette and took long, deep drags from it, savoring the smoke deep in his lungs. Campbell and Reese stood guard on both sides of Hurts, but none of them spoke.
About ten minutes later, Sanders came marching up to Hurts. He got in Hurts’ face.
After a few moments of silence passed, Sanders said: “You want to tell me what that was all about up there.”
“I don’t know,” Hurts replied. “I don’t know.”
“You were going to kill me, weren’t you?!” Sanders screamed.
“No, I wasn’t,” Hurts replied.
More silence passed between them, and then Sanders said: “You’ve lost it, Hurts. You’ve finally lost it … Go home. Take the rest of the night off … Hell, take tomorrow off … Hell, why don’t you do everybody a favor and just retire tonight! No one will miss you.” Having said that, Sanders turned around and marched away.
****
Hurts woke up the next morning in his modest, old, red-brick home in the city with one of the worse hangovers that he had ever had. He had spent the night drinking beer after beer, and chasing it all down with shot after shot of bourbon, while he smoked cigarette after cigarette, and while he went over it and over it in his mind what had taken place in that hotel room, for the life of him, he just couldn’t figure it out.
He had fallen asleep in front of the TV in his small living-room. His mind felt fuzzy and hurt, and his mouth felt as dry as cotton balls. He decided to get out of that suit and shower, shave and change into his usual clothes—his jeans and plaid shirt. Before he headed for the small bathroom, Hurts made a pot of strong coffee.
Sitting at the long, old wooden table in the kitchen, drinking cup after cup of coffee, and smoking cigarette after cigarette, Hurts went over again and again in his mind what had happened in that hotel room.
Did that really happened to me last night? he kept asking himself. Or, am I losing it like Sanders said? … If I am going nuts or something, shouldn’t this have happened to me before? … No, no. I heard someone. I felt a presence. I smelt something—it smelt like-like something rotting and evil. I’m not losing it. I’m not … Then what was that? Why did you hear it? … I don’t know. I don’t know. What could this be?!
Whatever it was, Hurts was convinced that it was evil—the most evil thing that Hurts had ever encountered. He got up from the kitchen table and went into his small bedroom where his computer was. Hurts only bought a computer to keep in contact with the many fishing clubs he belonged to across the country.
Sitting down in front of his old computer which was situated on a small wooden desk in one of the corners of the room, Hurts turned it on and then went to Google. Then, he said to himself: This is nuts. You don’t even believe in God or ghosts. Well, here goes nothing. Hurts then typed the word “ghosts” into the address box. This gave Hurts nothing. It gave him information on what ghosts are and such, but nothing that was of use to him. He then typed in the words “Evil spirits.” This was of no help to him either. It informed him of Demonology—their origins, their purpose, how to protect yourself from them and how to extricate yourself from them. He then typed in the words “Demons that speak to you and drive you crazy” and—bingo! What came up hit Hurts hard in the face like a punch.
What came up was article after article of something called Thesulac demons. The more Hurts read, the more he was convinced that he had really hit on something. It all fit what had happened to him in that hotel room. Thesulac demons possess telepathic abilities. They haunt areas where large numbers of people are, and they use their telepathic abilities and whisper into the minds of their victims, feeding upon their innermost fears and insecurities. It can drive their victims to insanity and to commit acts of violence, like suicide or even murder. There was even a picture of one from a TV series called “Angel.” Apparently, this Angel guy—a vampire with a soul who does good—fought one and killed it. One of the articles Hurts read stated that Thesulac demons are immune to most forms of killing. It stated that electrocuting it was probably the best means of destroy it.
By four p.m, Hurts had had enough of reading. Actually, he was fed-up. Actually, he didn’t know what to believe. All of it just seemed so unbelievable—and stupid. But it fits everything that happened to you in that hotel room, Hurts kept telling himself. But all of this is fiction—fairytale stuff of TV and movies, and of goofy people. We’re talking reality here: The “real world.” It just can’t be true. It can’t! … Maybe Sanders was right—you’re losing it … But it all fits! It fits! It does.
Out of sheer frustration, and anger, Hurts stormed into the living-room, dropped down heavily onto his tattered old, leather recliner, flipped on the TV with the remote, and decided to give it all up.
A SPECIAL NEW REPORT flashed across the screen. A local female reporter began reporting that earlier in the day there had been another suicide at the Grand Hotel. She stated that the police at this time were not releasing any details about the suicide, other than that the victim was a sixteen-year-old girl.
Hurts jumped up out of the chair as fast as his heavy, out-of-shape, aged body would permit and dashed into the kitchen. Grabbing the receiver of the black phone that hung on the wall next to the entrance of the kitchen, he called Jenkins.
Detective Jenkins told Hurts that the victim had been a local girl from a middle-class family who lived in the suburbs of the County. She had told her parents that she was going to spend a few days with one of her girlfriends to celebrate Halloween, but that was all a lie. She was two months pregnant, and she was scheduled to have an abortion tomorrow at the clinic three blocks away from the Grand Hotel.
“Get this, Hurts,” Jenkins said. “She drowned herself in a marble bathtub—a marble bathtub. Can you beat that?”
She had left a suicide note. In it she begged her parents to forgive her for having sex before she was married and for becoming pregnant. He kept telling her that she had disgraced her family, and God, and that the only way out of this was to take her own life.
When Hurts anxiously asked Jenkins who the “he” was, Jenkins told him that the parents had told them that she had been seeing a boy occasionally, and that Sanders believed that that was who she was talking about.
“Another suicide there, Hurts,” Jenkins said. “Can you believe it? They ought to start calling that place Hotel Death.”
Now Hurts was convinced. He was convinced that he wasn’t crazy, and he was convinced that there was something evil in that hotel. Hurts called Sanders and told him that he wouldn’t come to work for two more days; that he was still feeling a bit under the weather. Sanders couldn't have cared less.
****
The next morning, Hurts rose from bed early: He had drunk only beer the night before. He wanted his mind sharp. Dressed in suit, white shirt, tie and overcoat, Hurts drove to the police station. He got a few things from lockup and then he drove to the ally behind the Grand Hotel. Hurts waited until no one was around. When the time came, Hurts bolted from his car.
Hurts unscrewed one of the large metal panels of the air-ducts. Then he removed three stink bombs from his overcoat pockets. After lighting them, he tossed them into air-duct and then got the hell out of there and drove back home.
For the rest of the day, while he drank cup after cup of coffee and smoked cigarette after cigarette, Hurts anxiously, nervously, watched TV.
At exactly three p.m., it came—another SPECIAL NEWS REPORT. One of the owners from the Grand Hotel made the announcement. He stated that in the wake of the recent tragedies, and what with the hotel needing to be fumigated, the owners of the Grand Hotel had made a decision to close the hotel for one week.
It had worked. Hurts had wanted to get as many people as he could out of that hotel, and he had done it. The stage was now set for what he would do tomorrow morning—kill that thing!
****
As he had the day before, Hurts rose early, and once again, he had drunk only beer the night before. Once again, dressed in suit, white shirt, tie and overcoat, Hurts drove to the Grand Hotel.
As Hurts drove over to the Grand Hotel, he thought about last night. He thought about how, in the loneliness of the night, he had thought about calling someone, but who?—and what would he have said?--that he was going to do something dangerous and might be killed? He had thought about calling one of his daughters, or both of them, but, no, they didn’t want anything to do with him. He had thought about calling his younger brother, Paul, but, no, they had never been close. Not that they had ever fought or anything like that. They just lived in different worlds. Paul was a family-man. He had a wife and kids. So, in the end, he had called no one. In the end, he had just suffered through another long night of loneliness and being alone.
He also thought about how “that thing” had gotten it wrong. “That thing” had told him that he had killed that serial killer because he believed that a scumbag like that didn’t deserve to live. He had killed that serial killer out of sheer anger and revenge. The third victim of that serial killer had been Hurts’ niece, Amanda, Paul’s youngest child. It was bad enough that that monster had forced all of his victims to perform oral sex on him before he slit their throats, but what had really hit Hurts hard about Amanda’s death was seeing Paul crying and wailing at her funeral about how much he loved his daughter and couldn’t live without her. That had really gotten to Hurts. He didn’t know why, but it had.
The two side glass doors that flanked the revolving door of the Grand Hotel were propped open, and a guard stood in front of one of the side doors. Hurts flashed his badge at him and told him that he needed to tie-up some loose ends on the investigation of that suicide yesterday. The guard waved him in.
Once inside, Hurts made a B-line for the swimming pool on the lower level. As he descended the marble staircase to the lower level, Hurts told himself that it didn’t smell all that bad in here. It smelt like rotting eggs to Hurts, and he told himself that maybe he just liked the smell of rotting eggs.
The pool was long and wide, about the same size of what a basketball court would be. It was made of white marble, and the water was deep blue and inviting. It was semi-dark in there. The only light came from the skylights at the cavernous, vaulted ceiling. The room had a quite eeriness to it.
Hurts went to the edge of the pool and then turned his back to it.
With his heart pounding away and breathing heavily, Hurts shouted: “Where are you, you son-of-a-bitch!”
Silence followed. Only the echoing of Hurts’ voice was heard.
“I know who you are and what you are,” Hurts continued. “You’re a Thesulac demon. You feed off people’s fears and insecurities.”
More silence.
“Oh, c’mon,” Hurts shouted. “Are you a coward? Show yourself. Face me, man to—well, man to demon. C’mon, show yourself.”
Hurts was stunned—stunned! Suddenly, it stood there before him, about three or four feet away from him.
It looked almost like the picture he had seen of one. Dressed in a black robe, it stood seven to eight feet tall, but thin. Its skin was pale and grey and scaly, and it didn’t seem to have arms or hands. At the bottom of its long body were tentacles, which kept moving in and out, like a snake. To Hurts, it looked like a sickly tree with long roots. But what frightened Hurts the most about it was its eyes, they seemed like two balls of red fire.
Out of instinct, Hurts drew his weapon and pointed it at the demon.
“Well, lookie who we have here,” it said in a gravelly-sounding, thunderous voice. “I’m impressed, Detective. Very impressed. Not many humans are that smart, or they choose not to believe, even when the evidence is so overwhelming and those few who are fortunate enough to escape from me never come back. So, it behooves me to ask: Why are you here, Detective? To kill me? With that?” it said and lowered its head in the direction of Hurts’ weapon. “Not a chance, Detective,” it continued, and before Hurts realized what had happened a tentacle lashed out from it and grabbed Hurts’ weapon from him. “You make me laugh, Detective. You’re not as evil as you think you are. For someone with a hunger like I got, you’re nothing more than a snack. You made me laugh, Detective. You really do, but you’re interfering with my feeding—and that I won’t tolerate. I’m going to kill you myself.”
Suddenly, Hurts felt a tentacle wrapped around his throat, choking him. Hurts struggled to loosen the tentacle from his throat with his hands, but it was too strong for him. It kept squeezing Hurts’ throat, cutting off his air. He couldn’t breathe. Then, it started moving closer and closer to him.
When it was less than a foot away from Hurts, Hurts lowered his arms and hands underneath his overcoat and suit-coat to his back and pulled something out from his pants. He brought his arms and hands forward, and in both hands he held a Taser gun. He pointed both guns at it and fired them both.
“Ouch! That hurt!” it screamed, and released Hurts.
Hurts dropped on his knees by the edge of the pool. Still pressing the triggers of both guns, Hurts plunged his hands and arms into the lukewarm water.
“What are you doing?!” it screamed in pain. “No, no. Don’t do that!”
The water increased the electrical voltage of the Tasers. Hurts could feel the electrical charge surging through the water, and he could now feel it surging through his hands and arms, but he kept pressing the triggers of the guns. Sweat was pouring from Hurts’ body and face.
“C’mon, die, you son-of-a-bitch,” Hurts shouted, his whole body shaking and contorting from the electrical charge. “Die, you son-of-a-bitch. Die!”
“No, no; noooooooooo!” it screamed. Its body writhing and twisting in agony, like a worm on a fish hook. Hurts saw sparks fly from its body and head. Then it burst into flames.
Hurts stopped pressing the triggers of the Tasers and let them fall to the bottom of the pool; raised his hands and arms out of the water, and collapsed forward onto the edge of the pool.
He felt light-headed, and his chest felt tight, as if he were having a heart attack. Lying there helplessly, he watched as the flames of that thing came closer and closer to him, closer and closer they came; closer and…
****
The tips of the flames of the campfire Hurts had made, danced and popped in the cold, night wind. Hurts sat in his padded lawn-chair, staring into the fames of the campfire that was directly in front of him. His pitched tent was directly behind him. To his left side was his propane stove, with a tin coffeepot on it steaming away. To his right side was a large red plastic ice-container with a white lid. In it was a case of beer and some packaged meat.
Hurts set the tin plate that contained a fork and knife down on the lid of the ice-container. Just a half an hour ago, the plate had been filled with two large rainbow trout, steaming hot baked beans and potato chips.
After Hurts had zipped-up his camouflage-field jacket to ward off the coldness of the night, he reached over and grabbed the tin cup off of the lid of the ice-container and poured himself another cup of coffee. He lit a cigarette and then heard a wolf, or coyote, howling in the night directly across the river from him.
Hurts looked in that direction. He wondered if it was howling because it was in want of a mate, or if it was howling because it was Halloween night and it was trying to scare him. It didn’t matter and Hurts tipped his cap with the big bass to it. Then Hurts returned to staring into the flames of the campfire.
As he stared again into the flames of the campfire, he played over again in his mind the events of the day.
After he had regained consciousness, Hurts saw nothing of that thing. All that remained was a scorched black spot at the middle of the side of the pool. Hurt then dragged his almost lifeless body back to his car and drove home, where he collapsed onto his bed and fell asleep. He awoke four hours later. He immediately called Sanders and retired—effective immediately. He removed his clothes; bathed, shaved; dressed in his jeans and plaid shirt; packed all of his fishing and camping gear into the car and left the city.
He was free—free from work, and free from something else that he just couldn’t put his finger on.
He thought of how that thing he had killed, had said that he was not as evil as he had thought he was. Could that be true? Hurts wondered. He thought of his youngest daughter who had recently gotten married. He thought of how he had watched her that day from far away as she came out of the church, as he had when his oldest daughter had gotten married. They both had looked so happy and beautiful. A tear dropped from Hurts’ left eye and rolled down his face, following the jagged contour of that long scar on the left side of his face.
“Maybe it’s not too late,” Hurts said to the night. “I’ll tell them how sorry I am, and that I’ll take whatever they will give me, no matter how much or how small. I’ll take it. I’ll take it.”
There’s evil in the world, Hurts mused. Real evil exists in the world—demons and Satan. But if evil really does exist, so does good: God and Jesus … How does that prayer go? … Our Father who art in heaven … Yes, that’s how it goes. Who taught me that? It certainly wasn’t my drunken mother or my drunken father. I must have learned it from the few times that they had taken Paul and me to church … But that’s how it goes. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy…..
