She stepped out of her clothes without a sound. She looked at her husband. He motioned to the wall.
She gulped. The wall was where it was the worst. She walked over to the wall, legs shaking, and placed her hands in position.
In no time at all, he fastened her wrists to the cuffs attached to the wall. She could feel his breath on the back of her neck.
She wanted to beg him, plead with him not to hurt her, but she knew better. It was better to keep quiet. Begging made him hurt her much worse.
A woosh and a smack.
Her body shook with pain. She could feel the searing pain across her back, the blood dripping down her legs.
Woosh. Smack.
This time, she cried out.
He laughed.
Woosh. Smack.
Her whole world went black.
###
Present.
I jerked awake, looked around and took a deep breath.
“Jesus Christ.”
It was as if the pages were haunted, but why was it that he experienced this? Will hadn’t told me anything about visions while reading the articles. Did he see the same things and keep them to himself? Or was this something special? At least Will didn’t lie, this creepy assed guy really did do all that strange shit in the house. How could I deny his activities when I had been in that room? And now, with this vision… But this led us to proof of a haunted house, not proof of a possession. The question was, why was Lucy affected by the house, and is she acting out because she’s scared or because the ghost of Black has been teaching her things? Which it was, I didn’t know—yet. But I was going to find out.
Chapter Eleven
Trouble
When we got back to the house, I didn’t know what to do. I still didn’t know why Will thought I could help Lucy. Maybe it was the priest thing, but they’d already tried one, and that priest did the same thing I would have done: recommend a psychiatrist. Will’s logic puzzled me.
The vision, however, creeped me out. If Mr. Black’s ghost was trapped here, that would account for some of the weird things going on. Of course, I was getting myself nowhere with all of the speculation. I was jumping from one idea to the next without any regard for the information as it stood.
I needed to get back to the basics. Will asked me to help Lucy. It was Lucy I needed to see.
Will had parked the car in the front drive rather than drive around the back side of the house where the garage was. I guess it was for my benefit, but I didn’t ask. We came in the front door and took off our coats. Will hung them on the antique coat rack beside the door. He turned to me. “So, you wanna meet Lucy?”
“Sure,” I said. I was trying to look at meeting Lucy like I was being introduced to any other child, but that picture of Lucy from Will’s phone kept coming to mind. Now, that picture was something else. At least seeing Lucy in person would allow me to tell if she really looked like that or if Will was using make-up on her for some sort of a scam. I still couldn’t figure out what he would gain by having a possessed daughter, fake or not.
Will led me up the main stairway, and instead of turning right toward the master suite, we went left. When we entered the hallway, I immediately noticed how cold it was. I tried to remember where the attic room was in relation to Lucy’s bedroom, but I wasn’t sure. If the attic room was above Lucy’s room, there might be some bleedover. I know I wouldn’t want my daughter sleeping below a room that had once held black magic.
We stopped at the first door to the left. Will knocked on the door and opened it. “Hi Lucy,” he said.
I walked in behind him, and I saw Lucy. The picture on the phone was nowhere near as bad as it really was. There was a smell so foul, I had to force myself not to gag. It was the smell of rotting flesh and over ripe fruit. I looked around and saw nothing that would account for the smell. The walls were off-white. I could faintly see the nail holes on the walls where pictures once hung. There were no toys, nothing that made me think of anything but institutional. “Lucy,” Will said. “This is Jimmy. I knew him when I was a kid.”
Lucy directed her horrid eyes towards me. Seeing her eyes full of blood was freakier in person. I carefully looked at her eyes. She definitely wasn’t wearing contacts.
She snarled in a voice much too deep for her to have. “What do you want, Priest?”
I wondered if Will had told her I used to be a priest. If they hadn’t, a six-year-old psychic was just as scary to me as a possessed little girl. A little girl who could know things that quickly would be a hard child to raise, and it would be difficult to keep people from exploiting her talent. I hoped she wasn’t psychic, but I really hoped she wasn’t possessed. I could almost deal with psychic. Possession, however, not so much.
“I’m just here to check on you, Lucy. Your dad asked me to come,” I said.
A choppy growl burst from her throat, then I realized it wasn’t a growl at all, but laughter. She was six, but she didn’t act like she was six. Even if she was very smart, her voice couldn’t sound like that. You could tell from the tone and articulation of the words that you were not talking to a little girl, you were talking to something else.
Will cleared his throat. “We’ll leave you to your rest, Lucy.”
She smiled at me, showing her teeth. They looked rotten and broken. If Will did that to her, I was going to kill him.
As we were leaving, I noticed that she was tied to the bed. Once he’d closed the door behind us, I stopped. “How do you know if she needs something?”
“Baby monitor.”
###
We went back downstairs and met up with Tor in the kitchen. She was just pulling the pot pie out of the oven.
Will and I sat down at the table. “Need any help?” I asked Tor.
She shook her head. “You’re already doing too much.”
Her demeanor had softened. Now, she just seemed tired and worn. Maybe it was just the stress causing her to lash out. She served up lunch and after I finished eating, I pushed my plate to the side. “So, I guess I’m going to be here awhile.”
Tor looked at me, her face relaxed. “Can you take the time off work?”
I nodded. “Already arranged. I’ll be honest. I don’t know what’s going on here.”
Will smiled grimly. “Neither do we.”
“There is something is odd about this house,” I said. “And Lucy isn’t well. Does any nursing staff come to see her?”
Tor took a drink from her glass. “We used to have a nurse when Lucy was more docile, but since she attacked the nurse and the priest, we figured we’d better not risk it.”
Will stepped around me, opened the refrigerator and began rummaging.
“How do you handle it all? Lucy’s tube feeding, her medication?” I asked.
“I had the nurses at our local hospital teach me what to do. I can do it as good as they can now. If Lucy needs something more, we take her to the doctor right away.”
“So, why exactly did you start tube feeding her?” I asked.
Tor sighed. “You’ve seen her teeth?”
I nodded.
“She chewed on the walls, the bars on her bed, she chewed on everything until she broke all her teeth.”
Will sat back down at the table, a dish of ice cream in his hand. “We haven’t even been able to get her to a dentist.” He shook his head. “Dentists wouldn’t work on her without knocking her out, and with her health… I want to avoid her getting sedated as much as possible.”
“Also, she was spitting the food at us. She got so thin,” Tor said, wiping tears from her eyes.
Some of what they described sounded more like a spoiled brat than a demonically possessed child. I couldn’t tell them that of course, but I wished I could. If the house was just haunted, we could deal with that. If I could just find a logical explanation with proof, we could go about finding Lucy the doctors she needed, but there were too many unanswered questions. Part of me had to wonder if the house was causing the issues with Lucy. But, I c
ould not eliminate the possibility that Lucy was drawing things in with the help of the room upstairs. It gave me even more to think about, not that I needed more, but whatever. I guess I was up to the task. I had to be.
Tor took our plates and put them in the dishwasher. I arranged my notes.
“How would you describe Lucy’s speaking voice?” I asked.
“Like any little girl's, I guess,” Will said. “We have some home movies if you’d like to see her how she was.”
I nodded. “That would be helpful.” I paused, unsure what to ask next. It was difficult trying to figure out what information the church would want. “Tell me about what happened with the first priest.”
Will’s eyes became distant. “It was before she was in the hospital, like I told you.”
He stared into the flower arrangement on the kitchen table. It was silk, some lilies, but it wasn’t a cheap arrangement. “We were at our wit’s end. No doctors seemed to be able to help her. Then, after talking to my mother on the phone one afternoon, she mentioned going to the church. Now, she didn’t recommend exorcism, understand.”
“So you grew up Catholic?” I asked.
He nodded. “Orthodox. My mother is from a Russian family.”
“So what did she say?”
“She reminded me that priests were also counselors, and maybe it wouldn’t hurt to try. It wasn’t bad advice, just apparently not the right choice for Lucy.” He wiped his face with his hands.
What was and what wasn’t right advice for Lucy remained to be seen. It was strange almost how everyone around them tried to help, but it seemed like Will was Hell bent on believing Lucy needed an exorcism. Maybe he was right, maybe he wasn’t, but either way, Lucy needed serious help.
“So,” I said. “Give me the details.”
Will sat back in the chair. “We’d just finished with yet another round of doctors. None of them could tell us anything, they all kept saying psychiatry, even though Lucy had had three psychiatric diagnoses at this point. So I called the only Catholic Church here. It’s a Roman Catholic church.” He paused, as if waiting for me to do or say something. When I didn’t, he pressed on.
“I called the church and was put through to Father John. Father John is pretty young, honestly, in his early thirties. I explained that I was having trouble getting a diagnosis for Lucy, that we’d exhausted medical options, and thought the church might be able to help. We made arrangements for him to stop by that afternoon. We hadn’t started tying her hands down yet, the self-mutilation was still pretty mild.” He sighed.
Tor handed us fresh drinks and sat down at the table.
“When Father John got here,” Will said, “Lucy seemed anxious. Father pulled up a chair in her room and sat down beside her bed. He’d barely asked a question before she jumped up and snatched him by the throat. She’d moved so fast that we couldn’t stop her. Somehow, her little body had so much strength, she was really choking him. It took both Tor and I to get Lucy off him. After that, we started restraining her when there were visitors.”
“Father John recommended the hospital. I don’t really blame him. He probably didn’t know what the hospital would do to Lucy.”
“When did the subject of exorcism come up?” I asked.
“After the attack, I asked Father John about it before he left. He said he didn’t believe in exorcism or demonic possession.”
That’s the other thing about the church. Demonic possession has been underplayed so much by the church that many priests do not believe in it. I heard a small amount about it in seminary, but everyone treated it almost like a joke. While I imagined that most people who believed themselves to be possessed were either full of it or insane, I also kept an open mind. There were too many things that science hadn't quite figured out.
Will really was set on the possession angle. I didn’t know what it was going to take to convince him otherwise. “Again, why do you think she needs an exorcism?”
He slumped down in the chair. “We’ve tried everything else. If it doesn’t work, I’m afraid I’ll lose her.”
Tor patted Will on the shoulder. “Any ideas for dinner?” she asked. “I need to go to the store.”
We’d just had chicken pot pie for lunch and she already wanted to cook us something for dinner. I wasn’t sure if my stomach could take it. “Anything is fine,” I said. “Do something easy.”
Will laughed. “Tor doesn’t cook easy very often.”
I smiled. Right now, they seemed almost normal, but I knew better. Maybe they really were trying to be nice to each other, but I didn’t buy it. Some of this was for my benefit—make me think that even though they think their daughter is possessed that they have the perfect family. Heh, there is no perfect family. They hadn’t seen or heard the things I had from my time as a priest. A possession didn’t necessarily mean that anything suspect was going on in the house, but familial turmoil was a symptom of a haunted house. Things were just too complicated. “I’m going to go into the library and do some research. Let me know if you need anything.”
Will nodded. I didn’t stay to see Tor leave.
###
When I reached the library, I sat down at the huge desk, arranged my notes and opened my copy of the Roman Ritual to the section on exorcism. I had a set of twenty-one instructions that needed to be met before I could do anything.
I already knew that an exorcism needed to be approved by the bishop, so I skipped that and the part about the chosen priest needing to be schooled in exorcism. Section three contained information I could use. First, I needed to exhaust all possibilities of something physical causing Lucy’s condition. Second, Lucy needed to speak or understand languages she could have no way of knowing. Third, she needed to demonstrate knowledge of things that are hidden. Finally, she needed to exhibit strength beyond her age and condition.
These things, if Lucy was possessed, should be easy to see. If I could not find proof of any of them, I could get Will off this possession kick and get him to investigate specialists for Lucy.
I flipped through the rest of the section, which dealt with carrying out the exorcism itself. That didn’t apply to me.
But a nagging feeling wouldn’t leave me alone. I wanted to ignore that room in the attic. I wanted to ignore the mirror. And above all, I wanted to ignore Lucy herself. Her face was not normal. Her eyes were not normal, and there was still an unanswered question. How did she know I had been a priest?
###
I left the library and walked down the hallway in search of Will. I found him in the living room watching TV. The living room was massively white. The mahogany paneling either had been taken out of the room, or was never present to begin with. The walls were white. The sofa was ultra modern and white. The coffee table and end tables were a black glass or plastic with silver metal supports. This, I could tell, was Will’s room.
“Hey, Will,” I said.
Will was sitting in a black chair. He turned towards the doorway. “Finished?”
I nodded. “With research, yeah.” I looked around the room. Along one wall was a large LCD TV. The TV sat on a large black piece of furniture that contained various electronics and DVD’s.
“Can I see one of those home movies?” I asked.
Will’s eyes darkened. “Sure.”
He got up and opened the cabinet below the TV. After a moment, he pulled out a DVD. He turned to me and motioned for me to sit down on the couch.
I sat. After a few moments, the movie was playing.
“This is last Christmas,” Will said.
The screen was filled with a beautiful Christmas scene. There was a large tree with multicolored lights and topped with a golden angel. The wall behind the tree was cream colored. Surrounding the tree were numerous presents, some big, some small, but all ornately wrapped.
“Tor likes wrapping presents,” Will said.
I smiled at him. “I can tell.”
Then I heard a giggle that sounded like a bell. Lucy appeared on the scre
en. Her blond hair was messy, but it was messy with sleep. She was wearing a red plaid nightgown.
“Daddy!” she said with a giggle. “I wanna open presents.”
On the TV, I could hear Will laugh.
Tor came into view. “I don’t know why you have to film everything.”
“Oh come on, Tor. I like to preserve things,” Will said, off screen.
“Well, at least let your daughter open her presents,” she said.
The rest of the video was more of the same. Lucy unwrapped all her gifts, complete squeals of delight at everything. A solid black cat played amongst the torn paper around the floor.
This was not the same Lucy as the one upstairs, and for the first time, I let myself really think that there was something supernatural wrong with Lucy herself. What, I didn’t know, but I knew in my gut this was something I had to see through to the end.
###
Will stepped out of the room when the movie was over. I could hear him sob from outside the room. I stayed where I was to let him have his privacy.
Women never seemed to understand that about men. Men cry in private. It isn’t so much that we are ashamed, it’s more that we are so concerned with being protectors that showing weakness is never a good idea. Granted, it’s dumb prehistoric bullshit, but it’s one of the few instincts the human race has left.
Of course this train of thought got me thinking about the last time I’d cried. It was when Tabby and I broke up. Even though it had been mutual, I knew I’d been a dumbass and if I’d paid more attention, we’d probably still be together. Even now, I couldn’t imagine a girl more perfect for me. She taught me to live and be comfortable in my own skin.
What was ironic, and what would have made the church a lot harder on me if they had known, was that Tabby was a witch. Not a ride on the broom sort of witch, but a goddess fearing pagan. Of course, there really wasn’t any fear about it— except that her magic scared the crap out of me. Maybe it was I who was goddess fearing and not Tabby?