###
That evening, Will camped himself out in the living room. We weren’t given the full explanation about what happened, but I imagine that it was going to take some time for Tor to forgive Will; if she decided to do so at all.
Tabby and I left Will alone and got ourselves arranged in the library for the night. Part of me felt like I should feel guilty for not asking Will to share the library with us, but for me, it was nice to have a break from his incessant questions for at least part of my time here. He didn’t mean to, but he was grating on my nerves.
“You know,” I said. “I’m glad we have the chance to get a good night sleep tonight.”
Tabby laughed. “And of course, saying something like that is going to give fate a reason to do the opposite.”
“Why do you say that?” I asked.
Tabby pulled her blanket up over her legs. “So I’m superstitious.”
I shook my head. “You aren’t that superstitious, crazy maybe, but superstitious, not so much.”
She sighed. “It’s like this. In my life, fate has always liked to whap me upside the head just when I’ve gotten comfortable. Now, you had to say that we were getting a good night sleep, and I just know something is going to happen.”
“God, I hope not.”
“Think about it, Jimmy. Last night was calm as Hell. Lucy did her thing earlier, but I can’t help but think tonight isn’t going to be easy.”
I smiled at her, trying to calm myself, but it didn’t work. “You sure do know how to put someone at ease, you know that?”
Tabby threw her pillow at me. “Shut up.”
I complied.
###
It would have been nice to say that I was right and Tabby was wrong, but unfortunately, Tabby can gloat all she likes. Round about three, God I was getting tired of that number, Tabby and I woke to a loud booming noise. I looked up. The doorway to the library was glowing green and a huge dark figure—professional wrestler huge, loomed in the doorway. Every few seconds, he would raise a massive hand and strike at the open space of the doorway. He looked like a cross between a mountain troll and a Mack truck, all organic yet cybernetic.
I stared at Tabby. “What the fuck is that?”
She shook her head, eyes wide. “I have no idea.” She pulled the blanket back from her legs and sat up, still staring at the doorway. “If the wards hold…”
The thing kept pounding. I could see the symbols vibrate each time the creature beat against the wards. The symbols were pretty in their own way, but I didn’t have time for admiration.
“Why do they glow green like that?” I asked.
She looked at me. “What are you talking about?”
“The wards, they glow green each time Mr. Meathook decides to bounce a hand off them.” I noticed that now, I didn’t have to turn my head to see the wards pulsate. Either my ability to see magic was stronger as long as Lucy was stronger, or I was just flat out opening up a part of myself I had suppressed for a lot of years.
She stared at me, a worried look in her eyes. “Um, Jimmy?”
“Yeah?”
“That’s not normal.”
I slumped back on the sofa. “What do you mean?”
She took a deep breath. “When I drew them, I couldn't even see them.” She pointed to the main symbol, or at least its general area. “Draw it for me.”
I grabbed a piece of paper from my notebook and traced it as best I could. I held it out to her when I was finished.
Tabby’s mouth dropped open. “Jimmy,” she said. “Could you do this before?”
I shook my head. “It started today when you were warding the doorway.”
She leaned closer. “Wow.”
“Wow what?”
She shook herself and then paused, as if thinking. “I think you’ve been given a gift of sorts.” She rubbed her hands up and down her arms as if trying to get rid of a chill. She looked back at me. “Can you see other things?”
I shrugged. “Not as far as I know of.” I looked around the room. “I mean, I really haven’t tried.”
“Just… let me know if you see other things, okay?” she asked.
I nodded.
Finally, Mr. Meathead stopped. Nothing he could do would let him pass Tabby’s wards. He stood there for a moment, just staring at us. Then, with a crack he disappeared.
Tabby and I hunkered back down. We needed sleep, and I had a really bad feeling about tomorrow.
Chapter Twenty Four
Revelation
“Priest,” it whispered in my ear.
I woke up, looked around the library, and saw nothing. There were no beasties, no demons, nothing went bump in the night. Tabby was fine. She was resting peacefully. The blanket was pulled up to her chin. The entrance to the library looked the same. It was completely normal. There was nothing there.
“Priest,” the voice whispered again.
I sat up and put my elbows on my knees. I wondered if it was a trap; Lucy doing something to get me to leave the library. I focused my ears, there was no sound. If Lucy was in medical distress, the alarms on her equipment would be going off.
“Priest,” it said again.
“What,” I said sharply. I thought I heard an almost little girl giggle softly.
“Come and play with me,” the voice said.
I shook my head. “No, I don’t think so.”
It was quiet for a moment, then the banging on the wards began again. Tabby jumped awake.
“What is it this time?” she asked.
“Absolutely nothing,” I said, and I didn’t lie.
She looked around. “Where’s the noise coming from?”
I shrugged. “Just Lucy. There’s nothing attacking the wards that I can see. I’m going to guess that our Lucy is a mimic.”
Tabby paused. Her face went blank. “That’s kind of interesting, but scary.”
I nodded. “It means we are really going to have to be on our toes. If she can impersonate a noise, you know she can mimic any one of us.”
“And the library is the only safe place in the house.”
I scratched my head. “You could ward other places.”
Tabby shook her head. “We saw how well that worked when I warded the room upstairs. We’re lucky the wards worked here.”
I sighed. She was right. For some reason the library worked. “I don’t know what else to do. If we could find out exactly what that thing wants, we’d be a step closer.”
Tabby ran her hands through her hair. “You told me yourself that demons are tricky.”
“Yeah, so?”
She took a frustrated breath. “Don’t forget what it told you. It wants Lucy’s soul, but it wants more too.”
“Of course it wants more, it’s a demon.”
Tabby rolled her eyes at me. “It’s more than that, Jimmy. It’s like she’s affecting your brain somehow. You aren’t usually this easy to jump to conclusions, and this thing with you being able to see magic… It’s scary, Jimmy.”
I stared at her. “What are we going to do about it?”
“I’m fine,” she said. “You need to keep yourself in check. I don’t know what is going on, but honestly, I don’t like it.”
I threw my hands in the air. “Dammit, Tabby, what do I need to do, huh? You know all this weird shit. I know about graphic design, saying Mass, and keeping my house from falling apart.”
“Shh,” Tabby put her finger over her mouth.
“Oh come on, if they didn’t wake up with all the booming, I hardly think my voice is going to wake them.”
“Jimmy, God you can be such a doofus. Did you notice how tired Tor was today? Maybe she hears the noises, and then can’t sleep. I don’t know, but I don’t think Will and Tor don’t hear it. I think they do, and I think subconsciously, they are glad it has new people to pick on, even if they are still getting hurt.”
She had one Hell of a good point. I couldn’t deny that. It had been stronger here from the beginning. Maybe I’d be
en dead wrong about the whole thing.
“Okay, what can I do to keep my head straight?”
Tabby smiled. “I’ll go out tomorrow and get you a piece of jewelry to wear. Then I’ll spell it for clarity, so that anytime you wear it, which will be all the time, it will keep your brain from getting muddled.”
“Okay.”
“Now, can we go back to sleep now, please?” she asked.
And we did.
###
The next morning, while I waited for Tabby to wake up, I couldn’t help but wonder a few things about Lucy. First, did all of this really begin with the house? I mean, if Will was screwing around on Tor in D.C., then the problems with this family started a Hell of a lot earlier than Lucy’s possession.
Possession was something that occurred when a certain set of criteria were met, at least the way I understood it. If the child was unbaptized, that certainly made it possible, but not a sure thing. Those who became possessed tend to be those who don’t have a strong sense of self—the people who hide away from conflict and drift through life waiting for someone to help them with everything.
While Lucy was only six, that brought up the question as to if Lucy had known about her father’s infidelity before her mother did. Children are very sensitive to any aspect in their house stability, and if Lucy knew, and Will and Tor fought quite often, that left Lucy open.
Every time I turned around new questions would pop up. Instead of things becoming clearer, it seemed like it was just getting more and more complicated.
There was something else too. A strange feeling and a thought that hit my brain when I first woke. Now, granted maybe I’d seen too many horror films, but what if the house and the magic and the attacks were all a ruse? What if this thing had been in Lucy for awhile, and just chose now to make itself known?
Sure, I realized that this could be another trick, that it could be the demon’s way of trying to stay inside Lucy. Doubt was a powerful weapon in its own right.
Finally, I shook myself. Speculation would be no help unless I had information to back up my thoughts. If Lucy wasn’t baptized, then I had a couple of possibilities. If she was, there was no way this thing could have been there from the beginning. My problem was the same, no matter what I did or asked—too many questions, not enough answers.
###
After breakfast, Tabby left to get something so she could make the clarity charm for me. Will was out doing yard work, trying desperately to get Tor’s approval. I offered to help, but Will gave me that look that said, “I need to do this alone, otherwise it won’t matter.”
I understood it, I really did, but I couldn’t help but feel moochy. It was hard to sit around and do nothing. I’d been working my entire life. Even though most of my work had to do with books, some things weren’t so easy—like giving the last rites. I guess Will felt he needed to kill himself to get Tor’s approval. All he really needed was to be strong and faithful, but so far, he’d failed on both counts.
Tor came in not long after Will left the house. Her arm was still wrapped, but she seemed to be in less pain than the day before.
She sat down at the table beside me and stared out the window. “Tomorrow, I think I’ll cook breakfast,” she said.
“Feeling better?” I asked.
She nodded, then turned her heard towards me. She began staring at me in a strange way. I felt unsettled and her eyes looked slightly crazed.
“Something is bothering you,” she said.
“A lot of things are bothering me.”
She got up, poured herself a cup of coffee and sat back down at the table. She wrapped her hands around her coffee cup. “Like what?”
I settled back into my chair. This looked like it was going to take awhile. “Was Lucy baptized?”
She paused, then glanced at me. “Yes, at my family’s church. I have the pictures somewhere. She wore my great-grandmother’s christening gown.”
I smiled. At least I now had another question answered. “Before you left D.C., did Lucy act upset?”
Tor stared out the window as if thinking. “Not strange exactly, but clingy and withdrawn. One minute, she’d be crawling all over me or Will, the next she just wanted to be left alone.”
I had to tread carefully here. This was already a family in crisis. Things were bad enough without my interfering, but I needed the answers. Lucy’s life might depend on something that Tor or Will would view insignificant.
I took a deep breath. “Any chance Lucy could have known about Will?”
At first, she seemed puzzled. Then, her eyes darkened as she realized what I was asking.
“It’s possible, but I don’t know how she could have.”
“I guess we’ll have to ask Will then,” I said.
Tor snorted. “Asking Will about anything is pointless, haven’t you figured that out yet?” She pushed her coffee cup away. “Now, I have a question for you. Will told me that he’d told you about the affair the day before he told me, is that true?”
I nodded. “He told me on the way back from getting my new phone. He was worried that his transgression caused Lucy’s possession.”
“Did it?” she asked.
“No. Plenty of kids have parents who split up and have affairs, and most of them are never possessed. So, no, I don’t think what Will did had anything to do with it.”
She sighed. “Why Lucy then?”
I rubbed my face with my hand. “That’s the question, isn’t it? If it as simple as her being the one to scratch the black paint on the mirror? Is it as simple as Lucy being a very sensitive child? I don’t know. That’s one of the hardest things about possession. It forces us to see what is good turned into something foul.”
Tor smiled at me. “You’re very astute, you know that?”
I chuckled. “I wouldn’t say that. More like for my first job, I was trained to listen, think and see how others actions affect those around them…. The way I always thought about it was like this: A priest is the parent for the community. He guides us; he works towards helping us with our lives.”
“What about the molesters?” she asked.
It always came to this. The fucking perverts had forever changed the view of what was once a trusted position and I hated them for it. “Like anything else,” I said. “It only takes a few bad apples to spoil the bunch. There are good priests out there. Sadly, every priest now had to fight that stigma and the molesters usually don’t get enough punishment.”
“What do you think should happen to them?”
I sighed. This was going into an area I wasn’t crazy to talk about. It was too close to home. “They should be killed. Molesters are broken people. Studies have been done, even castration doesn’t stop them. A lot of people will argue that a molester’s victims get to move on with their lives, so it isn’t that bad of a crime. Bullshit.”
“Priests aren’t supposed to advocate killing, are they?”
I grinned. “I don’t have to worry about that anymore.”
“Don’t you think condemning someone to death is a little harsh?”
I stared at her. She’d never been there. “People like to think that it’s easy to recover from things, rape and molestation in particular. In reality, after someone has been raped or molested, their lives are ruined. They have to fight to live with themselves and the horrors they experienced. Too many people think it isn’t so bad and it can be just brushed under the carpet. That’s far from the truth. You think about your sins, whether you believe in God or not. Your body suffers, sometimes surgery is needed to repair things. And people say the molesters have rights? What about the right of the victims?”
“You really feel powerfully about this. Were you molested?”
I shook my head. “No, my sister was.”
“How is she now?” Tor asked.
I looked her in the eye. “She’s dead. Killed herself when the police let the bastard walk because there wasn’t enough evidence.”
“How did your parents co
pe?”
“They didn’t. They both drank. My father drank himself to death.”
“What about your mother?”
“She lives in a small apartment in a retirement community. She goes to A.A., tries to keep straight.”
Tor leaned back in her chair. “I had no idea.”
“Neither does anyone else. That’s what I meant about actions affecting others. The man that raped and molested my sister cost her her life and completely broke my family. Ironically, the church was more understanding than anyone else.”
“And your view on the church protecting molesters?”
“When I felt safe at church was long before any of that went public. Now, I’m just disappointed. Kind of glad I left.”
“You could still be a minister.”
I shook my head. “It’s coming out in other faiths now. This horrid part of the population just found a trusted position they could get in to have access to children, same thing with the Boy Scouts.”
“It’s a scary world we live in.” Tor hugged herself.
“And I don’t see it getting better anytime soon.”
Tor’s eyes got wide, “Are the ‘End of Days’ near?”
I laughed. “No! If you want to talk about the ‘End of Days’ talk to the Pentecostals. Catholics don’t concentrate on Revelation much. We’re more interested in the state of your soul and how to be a good person.”
“You know, Jimmy. I bet you were an awesome priest.”
I shrugged. “I did my masses like everyone else.”
“You are a humble man, Jimmy Holiday. That’s hard to find these days.”
“Eh, just start hanging around ex-priests.”
Will walked through the kitchen door, mud up to his armpits.
“Good God, what did you do?” Tor asked, grabbing towels from a nearby drawer.
“The fountain was plugged. I had to dig around to find the shut off, then drain it and unplug it.” He looked at himself. “I’m kind of a mess.”
“I think that’s an understatement,” I said, smiling.
###
Tabby came back a little after Tor got Will ushered up to their bathroom to get cleaned up.