Sorrow''s Point

  She came in the back door, thumping her arm against the doorframe. “Dammit.” Her eyes were sparkling, she looked ecstatic.

  She rubbed her arm for a moment, closed the door behind her and walked towards me. “I found the perfect thing,” she said.

  I pointed down at the mud still on the floor. “Be careful.”

  Her brows pursed together,” What’s that?”

  I smiled. “That is the mess that Will tracked into the house after unclogging the fountain.”

  She stepped over the mud, walked over to the table and put the bag on it. Then, she placed her hands on her hips. “Well, why didn’t you clean it up?”

  I rolled my eyes. “I was waiting for Tor to come back downstairs so I could ask her where the cleaning supplies were.”

  Tabby shook her head. She walked over to the pantry, opened the door and pointed. Sure enough, mops, brooms, etc, were all there, waiting for me to use them. “It wasn’t hard. You just have to think, Jimmy. Don’t you ever think?”

  I held up my hands. “I’m a dumbass.”

  “Just get up and help me!”

  I hopped up and grabbed a broom.

  We got the kitchen floor cleaned, leaving the shoe tracks to the downstairs bath because we weren’t sure what Tor used on the hardwood floors. We did, however, sweep up as much as we could.

  Tor walked into the kitchen just as we were finishing up. “You didn’t have to do that,” she said. “I was going to make Will do it since he made the mess.”

  Tabby swiped the back of her hand across her forehead, wiping away the sweat. “We were just trying to save you some extra work.”

  Tor walked over to Tabby and I and snatched the mop from my hands. Then, she put it in the pantry, grabbed a rag and some cleaner and set them out on the kitchen counter. “Those,” she pointed, “are for Will to use. The two of you have done enough.”

  Again, I was surprised. Tor could go from hard and cold to friendly in a nanosecond.

  “Now, shoo,” she said. “I’m making dinner. No buts.”

  “If you need help—” Tabby started.

  Tor held up her hand. “No, if I need you, I’ll call you.”

  Tabby grabbed her bag from the table and we scooted out of the room.

  I followed her down the hall. “So what did you get me?”

  Tabby hit me on the arm. “You’ll see soon enough.”

  ###

  We went into the library. Tabby closed the massive double doors behind her.

  There was a huge part of me that wished that those doors could lock even though I knew that a mere lock wouldn’t keep the beasties out.

  I walked over and sat down on my sofa.

  Tabby put the bag on the coffee table in between us. She slipped out of her coat, stashed it with her things and sat down opposite of me.

  “Ready to see it now?” she asked.

  I nodded. It was kind of funny to see her that excited. She pulled a small box out of the bag and handed it to me. It was a black velvet ring box. I looked at her with a raised eyebrow, then focused my attention on the box. I opened it, not sure what to expect. There, nestled in ivory silk was a man’s ring. It wasn’t an engagement ring, it was just a ring. Somehow calling it just a ring didn’t fit either. It was a larger man’s ring with a Celtic cross in the center. The metal was either white gold or platinum, I wasn’t sure which. The cross was bedecked in diamonds and emeralds. It was a beautiful thing, but was too much.

  “I can’t accept this, Tabby,” I said.

  She smiled back at me. “You don’t have a choice, Jimmy Holiday. That’s the one that spoke to me when I was looking. Besides, you’d be surprised at how much I paid for it.”

  I scratched my arm. I could already feel the goosebumps raising. No, I probably didn’t want to know. “How much?”

  “Uh, uh. No, you don’t. Let’s just say that flea markets are sometimes very good things, and the lady that sold me the ring wasn’t sure if the diamonds were real or not.”

  I sighed. It was no use in arguing. I was stuck. “Just as long as it didn’t cost you much.”

  “Not much at all.” She began digging in her bags and placed some candles of various colors on the table. “Now, do you want to be here while I work?”

  “I’d like to be.”

  She nodded. “All right then. Give me a piece of your hair and relax. This will take awhile.”

  I plucked a hair out of my head like she asked and handed her both the hair and the ring box.

  She took her time. Once she began working, again I saw colors. I was getting used to it now. It wasn’t so strange and unknown.

  One thing that did cross my mind was that if the colors were the result of whatever Lucy was doing, then when I put the ring on that Tabby was fixing for me, the colors would stop. Otherwise, if they remained, I’d know that something had happened to me. Whether it was good or not, well, that remained to be seen.

  After she was done, Tabby handed me the ring. I tried to put it on my right hand ring finger, and it fit perfectly. The logical part of my mind told me it was coincidence, but my gut told me otherwise. I wasn’t the same man, and I kind of liked it.

  Chapter Twenty Five

  Developments

  We went back into the kitchen. Tor was working furiously on dinner. From what I could see, it was some sort of steak dish. She had several bowls full of herbs and ingredients sitting around the counter as she worked. Every so often, she would grab something from one, fiddle with the steak, and then move onto the next one.

  Tabby booked to the refrigerator and got herself a drink while I took a seat at the table.

  “Where’s Will?” I asked Tor.

  She continued fussing with rolling pieces of bacon over bits of steak and securing each one with a toothpick. “Checking on Lucy,” she replied.

  Tabby sat down at the table beside me. We exchanged a look, but kept quiet. Tor seemed tense, and I know I didn’t want to disturb the master at work.

  “Did you get done what you needed to get done?” Tor asked, putting the last steak bit on a baking pan.

  “Yes, it was pretty easy,” Tabby said.

  She looked at Tabby. “Do I want to know what you did, or should I just pretend nothing odd is happening in my house?”

  At that, I had to laugh. Strange was the norm here. She had a daughter who was a victim of demonic possession and she was worried about Tabby’s magic? Egads. “If you can pretend that nothing is weird in this house, then I have to salute you,” I said.

  Tor giggled. “You have a point.” She put the baking pan into the oven and set the timer. Then, she turned, walked over to the table and sat down beside Tabby. “So what did she do?” she asked me.

  I smiled at her and purposefully didn’t look at Tabby. I could feel her temper begin to spark and I didn’t want to add to it. “She made me a good luck charm of sorts,” I said to Tor. It wasn’t the full truth, but it wasn’t a lie either. I felt lucky to have a piece of Tabby’s handiwork, and I didn’t want Tor to act any stranger than she already was. Evidently, the stress of her and Will was getting to her. She wasn’t acting like this before we went to charm the ring.

  I held up my hand for Tor to see the ring.

  “That’s a Hell of a ring,” she said.

  I patted Tabby on the head. “I told Tabby it was too much, but she wouldn’t listen. Of course I’m not sure she ever listened to me much.”

  Tabby punched me on the arm. I looked at her. She was seething. I’d better cool it.

  “Ow,” I said.

  “Tease,” she replied.

  Suddenly, a huge crash was heard from upstairs. Tabby, Tor and I ran from the kitchen and up the stairs. I could hear Will whimpering from Lucy’s room.

  Tor ran down the hall ahead of me. When she reached Lucy’s room, she jerked the door open.

  Lucy was standing on her bed, the torn restraints hanging from her wrists.

  Will was slumped in the far corner of the room away from Lu
cy. Blood was spilling down his face from a gash in his forehead. His eyes were closed and his breathing seemed labored.

  I looked at Tabby. “Help Will.”

  I walked over to the foot of Lucy’s bed and stared up at her. “What did you do?” I asked her.

  She laughed. “I gave him the punishment he wanted.”

  “Uh huh. How did you break the restraints?”

  She stared at me with her narrowed bloody eyes. “It’s not like they were very strong.”

  I wasn’t about to argue with her, but the restraints were made of canvas, not something easy to break.

  I knew I had to be savvy about this, but I honestly didn’t know what to do. So, I did what I always did when I was at a loss. I winged it.

  “All right, Lucy. Are you going to cooperate?” I asked.

  She let herself fall to the bed and cackled. Her body bounced several times before settling. “Depends on what you mean by cooperate, priest.”

  I snatched a receipt from my pocket that I found and grabbed the felt marker from my shirt pocket. I scribbled a list on it and handed it to Tabby. “Take this and get me some supplies.”

  It was worth a shot. Maybe Lucy wouldn’t know what was on the list if I didn’t make it obvious. “Don’t look at the list until you leave the house,” I told her.

  Tabby nodded and ran out of the room. Tor was crouched next to Will, holding a towel to his head. I nodded at her. Will had woken up and he was helping her hold the towel to his head. She eased Will up and ushered him out of the room. I closed the door behind them.

  I turned to look at Lucy.

  “You going to fuck me now, Priest?” Lucy asked.

  This wasn’t going to be easy. Not mentally. Not physically. This was going to suck. “No, I’m going to sit here to make sure you don’t hurt yourself. You’ve sent your dad to the hospital, someone has to watch you.”

  She rolled her eyes in the back of her head and a strange gelatinous substance started coming out of her mouth and drifted towards the ceiling.

  I’d only seen anything like it in old photographs from the séance craze in the early part of the century.

  “The ectoplasm doesn’t scare me, Lucy.”

  Suddenly, it disappeared just as quickly as it appeared. She focused her eyes on me again.

  She sat up—her lower body not moving at all. “What does scare you, priest?”

  I smiled at her. “It would be kind of stupid for me to tell you, wouldn’t it?”

  She laughed her choppy laugh. “I’ll find out eventually, so you might as well tell me.”

  I sighed. “How old are you, really?” I asked. “Lucy’s six, but I know you’re much older than that.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I don’t think it matters much, do you?”

  “What are you afraid of, Lucy?”

  She grinned, her jagged teeth looked painful. “I am afraid of nothing. I am oblivion.”

  I knew I was treading dangerous territory here, but I had to keep her distracted until Tabby got back. If I asked questions that were normally part of an exorcism, did that automatically put me in the middle of doing one, or did you have to have the costume for it to really count? I had no idea. I was left there alone and I was grasping at straws. How does one entertain a demon? I sure as Hell wasn’t going to let the thing enter me like they did in the movies. No way in Hell.

  “You should rest, Lucy. I’m sure you’ll want to play more tricks this evening.”

  She stood back up, but her body did nothing to make it happen. She was suddenly just standing. It felt like a video feed had skipped forward, but I was watching her myself, not on a DVD or through a lens. If it wasn’t for the fact that I was so focused, I think I would have pissed myself.

  “If you would stay out of that room, I could play lots of tricks.”

  “I’m not a big fan of your tricks, Lucy.”

  She laughed. “You are no fun at all.”

  I heard footsteps pounding up the stairs. Soon after, Tabby opened the door and thrust a bag at me.

  “No,” I said. “You need to do that part. I’ll hold her down.”

  I tackled Lucy down on the bed. She bucked beneath me, her hands scratched at me. “Keep still, Lucy.”

  “Fuck you!”

  She threw me across the room like a sack of potatoes.

  My body slammed into the wall. I saw stars. My back hurt, but getting Lucy down was more important. I threw Lucy back down on the bed and began to pray. I heard the clinks of the chains. Lucy made guttural noises, but the more I prayed, the stiller she felt. By the time we were done, Lucy was outfitted with padded handcuffs from a sex shop and various dog chains fastened to the metal of the hospital bed.

  “Okay, it’s done,” Tabby said.

  I got up and stopped my prayers.

  “I’ll see you dead, Priest.” Lucy said.

  I smiled at her. “I’ll see you in Hell first.”

  ###

  Tabby pushed me out the door and closed it behind us. I followed her down the hall and back downstairs. Lucy was now as secure as humanly possible.

  “Where on earth did you find the handcuffs?” I asked as me walked down the stairs.

  Tabby snorted. “Tor had them. Apparently, Mrs. Freeze likes things a little naughty in the bedroom.”

  “I don’t think I needed to know that.”

  “Hey, you were the one that asked.”

  When we got to the kitchen, we sat back down at the table.

  “Tor take Will to the hospital?” I asked.

  Tabby nodded. “He needed stitches.”

  “Well, when he gets here, we can look at those tapes.”

  Tabby sighed and ran her hands over her face. “Can we contact the church now, please?”

  Her voice seemed shaky. I’d never seen her this upset.

  “Yes, tomorrow.” I reached over and took hold of her hand. It felt right.

  ###

  Tor and Will came home a couple of hours later. Will had a bandage across his forehead. He looked tired and bruised, but otherwise unharmed.

  Tabby was fussing with the steak. I don’t think the way Tabby salvaged it was what Tor was after, but at least it was edible. Tabby set a plate in front of Tor and Will when they sat down at the table.

  Tor made sure Will was settled, then hopped up and got him a bottle of iced tea from the fridge. She grabbed herself a cup of coffee.

  “Did you watch the video?” Will asked.

  I shook my head. “We didn’t stop the recording, and I’m glad we didn’t. A lot happened after you left.”

  Will ate for a bit, then wiped his mouth with a napkin. “I don’t know how many more injuries we can take. As it is, the hospital is asking questions. I mean, how are all of us getting hurt this close together? None of this would happen normally. But at least since it’s us getting hurt, and not Lucy, they aren’t doing anything. Not yet.”

  I nodded. “I’m getting the church involved tomorrow.”

  “What about the rest of the evidence?” Tor asked.

  “After what happened this afternoon, we’ve got all the evidence we need. It’s not going to be easy for them to ignore it.”

  Will nodded.

  After he and Tor were finished, he ushered Tabby, Tor and I into the living room. He left us to go after the DVD from the security system. We had ourselves settled around the room. When he came back, he popped the disc into the player and fast forwarded to where he was visiting with Lucy.

  For awhile, everything was calm on the DVD. Then, Will said something about needing Lucy to be nicer to her mother and Lucy just exploded. At least that’s how I would describe it. She raised from the bed like Nosferatu rising from his coffin. She was stiff as a board and simply raised into a standing position on the bed, the restrains ripping as she rose. Will stared at her, his mouth gaping open.

  “You do not give me orders,” Lucy said, and promptly struck Will so hard that he flew across the room, hitting his head on the window sill. He
collapsed into the corner.

  Then, it showed us coming in and everything Tabby and I went through getting Lucy re-restrained. One thing was different, while I was holding her down, my body was blocking her face from the camera. But somehow, the DVD showed a close-up of Lucy’s mangled face and she smiled.

  “Jesus Christ!” I jumped.

  Then the DVD went back to normal and showed Tabby and I finished up and Lucy and our last exchange.

  “That was … disturbing,” Tabby said.

  I took a deep breath. “I think we all better sleep in the library tonight.”

  Tabby turned to look at me. “That’s probably a good idea.”

  ###

  We all hunkered down in the library with the lights on after that. It just wasn’t safe enough for us all to sleep in different parts of the house whether I needed a break or not. It was hard to get that image of Lucy smiling at the camera out of my head. It honestly scared the shit out of me.

  Tabby and I kept our sofas. Tor took over a sofa that was placed in front of the windows and Will deposited himself in a chair he moved from the other side of the room.

  “I think we should take bathroom breaks together,” Tabby said.

  “That’s not a bad idea,” I said. “A lot cleaner than my idea.”

  “And what was that,” Will asked.

  I grinned at him. “A really big bucket.”

  Tabby hit me with her pillow. “You know, honestly, we should try to all use the bathroom early. Then there will be no one out of this room late tonight.”

  “When’s the latest we can go?” Tor asked.

  I scratched my head. “To be safe, I’d say ten. And we can bring a bucket in here for emergencies. Stuff tends to happen around three, and Tabby and I can attest that the stuff isn’t good.”

  “Okay, next time we go out we’ll get a bucket and some toilet paper,” Will said. “What about water?”

  “Not a bad idea either,” I said. “Some snacks too, just in case someone gets the nervous munchies.”

  Everyone was quiet then. I looked at them all. They were trying so hard not to show that they were afraid, but I could still see it. Each time the house settled, the level of fear rose with it.

  Me, I didn’t care about the house. Unless the house decided to fall on me, it was pretty damn harmless. Lucy-demon-thing, however, was not.