Sorrow''s Point

  “Once you give up the priesthood, you can’t wear the uniform. Think about a cop who is no longer a cop, they can’t wear the uniform, it’s against the law, considered impersonating a police officer.”

  Tabby paused for a moment. “Well, maybe you need a different ritual.”

  I laughed. “And where am I going to find that?”

  She smiled. “You don’t have to. We’re going to write one.”

  I sat up, my book dropped to my lap. “We are?”

  She set her book down on the table and dug in her bag. She came up with a notebook and pen.

  “To do magic you don’t need a special outfit,” she said. “A lot of people work skyclad.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Is that what I think it is?”

  Tabby smiled.

  “I am not doing an exorcism nude.”

  She laughed. “I don’t expect you to. Clean clothes will do.”

  “Alright, what else?”

  “Evidence of the four corners. North, south, east, and west. Earth, air, fire and water.”

  “I don’t know about this.”

  She snorted. “It’s better than your plan of winging it.”

  I felt sheepish as Hell. She’d nailed me. I had nothing left. I was intending to just yell at the demon. “Okay, I’ll trust you.”

  ###

  When it was my turn to sleep, it didn’t take long to crash. I was too tired.

  The dream began as a scene. I was in the kitchen of Blackmoor. The cabinets were wooden with criss-crossed slats over the glass so you could see the china inside. The table was a large rectangular wooden thing that stretched the length of the kitchen. There was no center island. A baby sat in an old fashioned wooden high chair. A pretty brunette was running around the kitchen, fixing something. She stopped, almost like she sensed me.

  Suddenly, she turned around. Both of her eyes were blackened. She was as thin as a corpse and the severe black dress she wore did nothing to take away that impression.

  She held her hand to her lips. “Shhh. It will hear you.”

  She looked around wildly, then walked towards me. Her walk was in fits and starts—almost like she would appear at different points as she moved forward. She pointed towards the ceiling.

  “Don’t take her there.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “You know…”

  I jerked awake and looked around. Everything was fine. Tabby and Tor were across the room playing cards. I lay back down.

  “Jesus Christ.”

  ###

  When I woke up, Tor and Tabby were sitting on Tabby’s sofa, apparently watching me sleep.

  I sat up. “What time is it?”

  “About six,” Tor said.

  I got up, walked over to the chair where Will was sleeping and kicked his foot.

  His eyes popped open.

  “Come on, bucky. We’ve got work to do.”

  He sat up, wiped the sleep out of his eyes and stood.

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  We made a stop at the garage so Will could get some tools. Then, we headed upstairs.

  When we got to Lucy’s door, Will opened it. The room was cold, but there were no foul smells, there were no sounds.

  I looked at Lucy. She appeared to be sleeping. Will and I dismantled the camera system. She never woke. We left the room and closed the door.

  “That was uneventful,” Will said.

  I hit him on the arm. “Don’t jinx us, you idiot.”

  Will looked at me stonefaced. I led the way back down the stairs and into the dining room and up the attic stairs. I flipped on the light.

  The covered furniture looked like an army of ghosts. Of course the bulb was burned out near the door to the little room. I laughed.

  I took a deep breath and opened the door to the little room. I looked around. This time, instead of magical artifacts scattered around the room, I saw projectiles Lucy could throw at me. “I need a big box.”

  “Why?” Will asked.

  I pointed around the room. “Too much stuff.”

  Will set down the camera equipment and grabbed a box, upended it and dumped the contents onto the floor. He handed me the box.

  After that box and two others, we had all of the crap out of the room.

  I was tired. Sweat dripped off my brow. I looked at Will; he wasn’t in much better shape than I was.

  “Let’s do this,” I said.

  We hooked up the camera and after a few trips downstairs, we got the wireless feed working properly.

  “Fuck, I need more sleep.”

  Will looked at me. “You don’t have to do this today, you know?”

  “Yeah, I do. I don’t want to drag it out any longer than it needs to be.”

  “You could take a nap,” he said.

  I shook my head. “No need. If I don’t make it, I’ll get all the sleep I’ll ever need.

  ###

  Back downstairs, we met Tor and Tabby in the kitchen.

  “Everything ready?” Tabby asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Don’t forget to take the mirror in with you,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “You might be able to use it to move the demon away from you. It won’t want to go back into the mirror, so you might be able to herd it.”

  “Herding a demon. That’s a new one. What am I supposed to do? Take a big stick, smack it on the ass and sing the Rawhide theme?”

  Tabby chuckled.

  “When do you want to get started?” Will asked.

  “Get some breakfast. I’m going to go get ready.”

  ###

  I left the kitchen. As I walked to the library, I remembered I had used my last set of clean clothes the day before. When I entered the room, I found my clothing out of my bag, clean, and folded on my sofa. They must have done them while Will and I were getting the camera fixed. “Thank God for women.”

  I changed clothes, grabbed the items Tabby had set out for me, including a bottle of holy water, a feather, a candle, and a rock. I put the pages of the ritual we had written in my pocket.

  I yawned. I didn’t know what to make of that dream I’d had. Could that have been Mrs. Black? The one who’d been eaten? I really didn’t know.

  Warning me away from the room was kind of sweet in a way for a ghost, but I really had no choice anymore.

  I knelt down in front of the window. “Heavenly Father, give me the strength to do this. If someone has to die, let it be me. Lucy has a whole life to live.”

  And then, I heard a whisper. “It will be alright, Mr. Holiday.”

  The voice was the whisper I had heard days before. It was also the voice of Lucy—her voice before she was possessed.

  I took a deep breath and left the room. After this, if I survived it, I was going to need therapy.

  ###

  When I got back to the kitchen, Will was just finishing up his breakfast.

  “How are you going to get that hospital bed up to the attic?” Tor asked.

  I really hadn’t thought about that. “Hopefully, we won’t be up there that long.” I turned to Will. “Got any hooks we can screw into the floor?”

  Will sat there, thinking. “You want to chain Lucy to the floor?”

  I nodded.

  Tor lowered her head. “So we’ve come to that.”

  I dug the pages out of my pocket. “It’s not going to be for long. Just long enough to read what is on these pages.”

  Tor stared at the pages for a moment and nodded. “All right. Do it.”

  Will jumped up and I followed him out to the garage. We ended up stealing the freezer latch off the walk-in freezer. We placed a couple of books against the freezer door to keep the door closed.

  Will and I ran up the attic stairs with his electric drill in tow. I carried the roofing screws.

  We went into the attic room.

  “Where do you want it?” Will asked.

  I pointed to the far corner. We screwed the latch to the floor.
The steel end flipped up so that the chains could be passed through it.

  I grabbed the mirror from outside the room and put it just inside the door. Then, we went downstairs.

  “Ready to get Lucy?” Will asked.

  “As ready as we’ll ever be,” I said.

  ###

  We got into Lucy’s room just as she was waking. At the door, she was still sleep. When her father walked to the side of her bed, her eyes were wide open.

  “What are you doing?” Lucy asked.

  I smiled. “We are taking you where you want to go.”

  “And where is that, Priest?”

  I smiled. “To the room in the attic.”

  Lucy visibly relaxed. “You’ll have to take the chains off the bed to do that.”

  I nodded. “Yes, but remember that if you do anything to either one of us, you can’t make it to the attic room.”

  Its eyes narrowed, then relaxed. “As you wish.”

  Chapter Thirty Two

  Sweet Release

  I undid the chains from Lucy’s handcuffs. They clinked in a way that sounded almost final. It wasn’t a usual chain sound; it sounded more like an old iron gate being closed. Will detached Lucy’s feeding tube, took her in his arms and walked out of the room. I followed behind with the chains. Lucy kept her word. She was completely docile. She allowed Will to carry her without any problems. When we entered the attic, Will let me go first. I attached the chains to the latch screwed to the floor. I doubled them up so Lucy couldn’t get too far. We gently set Lucy on the floor while I attached her handcuffs to the chains.

  Will stepped away quickly.

  “Do you want to stay?” I asked. His eyes were wide. He looked petrified.

  Will shook his head. “How long do you think this will take?”

  “I don’t know. About an hour or two.”

  Lucy laughed her choppy laugh.

  Will swallowed hard. “All right,” Will said and left the room, closing the door behind him.

  I looked up at the camera. The red light was on, indicating that it was recording. This was it. The nervousness in my stomach made my guts rumble. I turned to look at Lucy. She was sitting up, smiling sweetly—or what she considered sweet. It looked damn freaky to me.

  “Why do you like this room so much?” I asked.

  She snarled at me. “It is a place of power.”

  My heart began thumping in my chest. I could feel the vibration through my sternum. I took a deep breath. Then, I pulled the items out of my pocket.

  I looked around the room. The room was bright. It was early enough that the sun was still shining through the dormer windows. At least because of the sun, I could tell where east was. I set up my magic circle with salt the way Tabby had told me to do, doing my best to make a semi-correct circle on the floor with myself standing in the middle as I drew it in salt.

  Suddenly, what sounded like many claws skittered around the walls. The scratching seemed to echo. I paused. The circle was not complete yet, and the theatrics were already beginning. For a moment, I wondered if there was more than one demon in Lucy, and then I remembered—Lucy was a mimic.

  “You don’t think that circle will save you, do you?” Lucy asked.

  I stared at her. Again, she was smiling. I finished the circle, ignoring her. I set the items where the four corners should be and began calling the corners in the clockwise fashion.

  Lucy rolled her eyes at me. “You’re doing it wrong. Widdershins is most powerful.”

  I shook my head. So hard, this demon was trying to get me to do evil. Tabby had explained to me that counter-clockwise was the way of black magic.

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  It smiled. “You know my name. It is in your book.”

  I sat down in the middle of the circle, and brushed the excess salt off my hands. “Which book?”

  She snarled. “Your religion.”

  This thing was so entrenched in Lucy, she couldn’t even say anything holy—anything to do with God. “Okay, you mean the Bible?”

  Lucy spat a gob of bloody phlegm at me. It didn’t reach. It bounced off the invisible shield of the circle, except it wasn’t invisible to me, it glowed a pale blue.

  This was it. My heart was hammering. Lub Dub. Lub Dub. LUB DUB. I could feel the electricity rising in the room. Lucy was going to do something, what I didn’t know. I had to begin.

  “Hail to the guardians. Guardians of light, strength, hope and peace. Hear my call.”

  Lucy snarled again. The room shook with a massive rumbling. Then it stopped. She looked at me. “This is boring.”

  The floorboards groaned.

  I paused. When nothing else happened, I continued.

  “By the power of three times three, save this little girl. Send her soul back to her, back to the light. Expel the dark one. Bind him, hold him, keep him from others for a thousand years.”

  Lucy growled then. The room shook again. My bottle of holy water fell over. I looked around. The sunlight had dimmed. It was almost like a darkness was taking over the room. The sun was trying to come through, but the darkness was canceling it out. It got darker and darker until the only light that could be seen was the light from the four candles in the circle.

  “Bind me!” It screamed.

  Wind blew around the room like a tornado. I felt the pull of it, but so far it didn’t move me.

  It held its hands over its head; the light flickered in the room, jumping back and forth from the complete darkness to the sunlight and back again. Lucy’s face clenched. The skin was stretched tightly over her face, so tightly that I thought it might tear. She grimaced so hard that her teeth broke further and a few chunks of her teeth fell out of her mouth.

  The wind picked up. I fell over and was pushed across the floor until I slammed into the barrier that was the magic circle. My head felt off, my mouth was dry, and my skin felt like it was going to be ripped from my body.

  I don’t know why the wind could come into the magic circle, and the demon and myself were separated by it. Maybe because I had called on air… . Maybe the demon was manipulating the elements.

  Then, she became the demon. Her skin rippled as if something was underneath it. When the rippling stopped, her skin appeared scaled. She snarled and her breath appeared out of her mouth like green steam. The smell that radiated from it was like a cross between curdled milk and charred human flesh. The pupils of her eyes elongated like the eyes of a viper.

  I forced myself to stand against the wind, but it was too strong.

  “No one will bind me. No one will bind Asmodeus!”

  The plaster of the ceiling cracked and bent. The howling of the wind was loud enough that I couldn’t hear anything. I could see Lucy standing up, somehow not bothered by the wind at all. Her hair didn’t even move. I could see her mouth open as if she were laughing, but I could hear nothing but the wind.

  I forced my foot through the salt, breaking the circle. I paused, keeping my footing. The wind forced my feet to scuff along the floor until I was slammed against the wall. I looked around for the mirror. Then I saw it, it was being forced across the floor by the wind. I gathered what will I had and thrust my hand out against the wind and managed to grab it. “Leave her!”

  Asmodeus snarled and began to levitate. “This cunt is mine.”

  The wind blew harder in the room until I was pressed into the wall so hard I could barely breathe. I held on to the mirror as hard as I could. I felt something invisible pry my fingers away from it—one by one. And then, the wind ripped the mirror from my grasp.

  The wind stopped. I stepped away from the wall. I looked over at Lucy. It held the mirror.

  My heart hammered faster. I felt like a beat machine turned up to the highest speed. A great booming sounded around the room. Lucy gagged and coughed. Three iron nails fell from her mouth, covered in bloody mucus. She smiled, then looked at me. “Shall I gut you, Priest? Dig these little hands in deep?”

  I stood there. My feet plante
d in the floor. I looked her in the eyes. “You won’t be gutting me, or anyone else.”

  She laughed her choppy laugh. It echoed in my brain and I bent over, the pain of the echo made my head feel like it was going to explode.

  I fought the pain and stood back up. I panted, trying to force myself to ignore the pain. I held up my hand and made the sign of the cross. “Leave her, you foul being. You denizen of the deep, teller of lies, face of many. You are not welcome here!”

  It laughed. “All said to me before. Can’t you come up with anything that is original?”

  I wasn’t sure how much longer I could take it. She was pulling me towards something dark. I could feel it. “Lead me not into temptation…” I murmured.

  It laughed. “Oh, you’ll get more than temptation when I’m done with you. Your sister knows all about that.”

  My head jerked up. “Fuck you.”

  It giggled. “Such colorful language coming from a priest.”

  I stood up taller. Sweat ran down the back of my neck. I closed my eyes, centering myself. When I opened my eyes, I felt different. My heart was calm. The world seemed to have stilled. “Leave her!”

  It was strange when I yelled that time. The ripples of the force of my scream beat through the air. I could see them.

  It dropped the mirror. The glass shattered across the floor.

  “Leave this world for your own. Leave the world of light. Leave this pure child of God!”

  “Fucking priests!” it said.

  A shard of glass stood up from the frame of the mirror.

  I jumped back and pressed my back into the wall. I threw my hands up over my face— expecting the glass to come flying at me.

  She was going to kill me. I knew it. How she was going to do it, I didn’t know.

  I heard a loud thump and a bump.

  I lowered my hands. There was Lucy, felled on the floor. The shard of glass had been driven through Lucy’s left eye. Blood spread around her body in a pool. She was dead. The demon had arranged it all.

  “Stupid, stupid priest. The girl is ours!” Asmodeus’ voice echoed throughout the room.

  I howled in rage—my voice sending white light around the room. Everywhere my voice reached, the darkness seemed to run from it. Impulsively, I felt myself walk towards Lucy’s body. I made the sign of the cross on her forehead with my finger. I heard a bang. The room felt normal. The darkness was gone.